5000m World Record Splits: A Progression

Michael Bautista wrote:

from 1954 to 1966 the 5k wr went from 13:58 to 13:16!! =-O=-O=-O

in the past 10 years the 5k wr has dropped like 20 seconds or so...this was caused by emergence of kenyans/ethiopians and/or drugs......but was there any new training methods around?

Also, why the huge drop in 5k wr in 54-66? (42 seconds)?

First of all, 20 seconds from 14 minutes is a smaller pecentage than 20 seconds from 13 minutes.

Secondly, look at the number of runners breaking the record in the 50s. There was a huge level of competition at that time, which pushed times on.

Thirdly, World War 2. WRs in the middle-distance events progressed rapidly in the 50's as well. This is because a generation that hadn't been maimed, killed, or simply spent a number of years fighting in war, were taking the place of the previous generation that had.

Isn't it a massive coincidence that the emergence of 'naturally superior' Kenyans and other Africans as a dominant force occurred exactly at the same moment in track history that the first real endurance enhancing drug became widely available?

Coevett wrote:

"the first real endurance enhancing drug became widely available?"

You mean rocket fuel - the "game changer" PED for some starting in the 90s?

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

calculo wrote:

if sal had brains to pay for 2nd set of pacers for mo to bell, he wouda been looking at 1.93s faster for a clocking of 3'27-flat !!!

if mo is capable of that gebremeskel was entitled to better, thus definitely into 3'26s

Classic you should go into standup comedy, because that ⤴is hysterically laughable. When Mo ran 3:28.9 he looked embarrassed, guilty and confused all at the same time. +2s is a massive amount to make up, 3.53m per lap. If you look at that race he was already fully stretched.

Agreed.

The problem with many of those posting on this thread (and it is clear that several are from the same person using different names) is that they are under the illusion that practically everyone can run under 3:30, despite the fact that in recent times only a couple of athletes manage it in any one year. Talk of anyone, not to mention a predominantly 5000m runner, being able to 'easily' run 3:26 or 3:27, is ludicrous. This misguidance stems from the silly times posted in the EPO era, and the use of these enhanced performances as some kind of (unrealistic and skewed) benchmark for those that have followed.

The 3:26's, 7:20's, 12:37's all went way beyond the historical progression in those events when they were established. The fact they occurred during an era when EPO testing either didn't exist or was still unreliable and in its infancy, is not mere coincidence. The clincher that they were heavily enhanced and assisted times, is the fact that it has been made abundantly clear in recent years, that most of the athletes came from a background where there has been corruption and no out of season random testing carried out by their national federations. The countries concerned are too poor.

In the last couple of years, we have had various positives of elite Kenyan middle and distance runners; despite being continually told by their coaches that EPO doesn't help elite Kenyans and that it isn't in their nature to do so in any case; the Aden incident, the Rosa court case, the story published in Botswana itself, that Amos was told when testers were on their way to him and avoided them on several occasions, to mention but a few. I'm hoping that the IAAF is finally sorting itself out and looking into these situations, and if not sorted historically, will do as much as is humanly possible to stop them occurring in the future.

The very average times and splits produced in this year's men's 800 & 1500 World Champs finals, would appear to indicate that this is the case. Only when athletes from all countries are tested on a level playing field, with equal access to their athletes from independent bodies will it be clear to see that 3:26 and 7:20 are nonsense times. We will hopefully go back to the days where sub 3:30, 7:28, 12:55, etc, become rare, and those proposing 3:26 and sub 7:20 as a normal expectation of several elites, finally understand how unrealistic they have been.

If you can't break 1:46 for 800 then you can't run 3:28 for 1500 unaided, and if you can run 12:55 for 5000m it doesn't guarantee that you can run 3:28 either. A one method fits all calculator for extrapolating optimum times from 400 to 10000m is equally nonsense. Everyone is different. That is a given and should be obvious to those who use such toys - that are not supported or used by any legitimate body in the sport.

I agree that the 'one size fits all' approach is nonsense.

At the same time, it's equally nonsense to write things like "those proposing ... sub 7:20 as a normal expectation of several elites" .. nobody has proposed that, at all. Or anything like that.

"we will hopefully go back to they days .... " ... Sub 3:30 is already rare. Sub 7:28 is rare. sub 12:55 is rare.

So you're suggesting Bekele and Kipchoge are juiced? They were the elite of their era on the track, and they're similarly still the elite of the 'thon. 12:37 isn't out of the realm of possibility. Paris 2012 showed anyone who pays attention that, perfectly clearly. Unless you're suggesting those guys were all juiced? Or do you think Dejen didn't really finish one of the fastest 5000m races in history in 54?

There is not a shred of evidence to suggest the times being run in the 90's were a function of EPO.

It's similarly absurd (and I know this was another person, but Deancoe is definitely wanting to allude to it as well) that there might not be any real natural superiority of East Africans in distance running. There certainly seems to be a very pronounced superiority of West Africans in sprinting, what on earth makes anyone think a similar talent may lie with other groups of people in other arenas?

wtfunny wrote:

I agree that the 'one size fits all' approach is nonsense.

At the same time, it's equally nonsense to write things like "those proposing ... sub 7:20 as a normal expectation of several elites" .. nobody has proposed that, at all. Or anything like that.

Um, yes they have! Ventolin has already mentioned about 3 athletes in recent years who should have obliterated Komen's WR time.

wtfunny wrote:

Paris 2012 showed anyone who pays attention that, perfectly clearly. Unless you're suggesting those guys were all juiced? Or do you think Dejen didn't really finish one of the fastest 5000m races in history in 54?

Firstly 12:46 is a world away from a solo 12:37.

Secondly, those athletes who broke 12:50 in Paris '12 were all either Kenyan or Ethiopian, and thus not part of any national OOC testing programme at the time. Whether juiced or not, they certainly weren't under the same level of testing and rigorous scrutiny as those athletes from practically any other country at the time. And we were still under the Diack era at the time. They are facts.

Deanouk wrote:

[quote]wtfunny wrote:

I agree that the 'one size fits all' approach is nonsense.

At the same time, it's equally nonsense to write things like "those proposing ... sub 7:20 as a normal expectation of several elites" .. nobody has proposed that, at all. Or anything like that.

Um, yes they have! Ventolin has already mentioned about 3 athletes in THIS THREAD who should have obliterated Komen's WR time in recent years.

A 5,000m runner can earn income over 3,000m or 10k road races.

If Longosiwa can run 12:49 and is still poor. He needs better management, heck I'd even do it for him or get someone to get him rewarded.

My question for you is, how much faster could Rogers, Dixon, Salazar, Lopes etc have run in Berlin, London, and Rotterdam? Two minutes?

"not blood self transfusion, starting in Sweden in 1968 but not used in Countries different from Finland till the beginning of 1980 (and I have a lot of evidence this practice worked for a small percentage of athletes only, and NEVER for marathon runners)."

➡I'm not so sure that this is the case, the evidence suggests transfusions are beneficial from 800m to 10k, so I don't know why the marathon parameters would be so dramatically altered. If it worked for Cova, and presumably Viren & Maaninka and probably Vainio (that we do know about), the difference between an elite 10,000m runner's training and that of a marathoner is minimal. Studies show treadmill runs to the point of exhaustion post re/infusion are superior to pre infusion, so I don't know why the marathon would not benefit simultaneously. Personally this all depends on whether Cierpinski was blood doping, if he was it clearly shows that you can take a mediocre runner and make them invincible over the marathon via blood doping.

wtfunny wrote:

There is not a shred of evidence to suggest the times being run in the 90's were a function of EPO.

Of course not...no one was testing positive for an undetectable drug. ???

Coevett wrote:

Michael Bautista wrote:

from 1954 to 1966 the 5k wr went from 13:58 to 13:16!! =-O=-O=-O

in the past 10 years the 5k wr has dropped like 20 seconds or so...this was caused by emergence of kenyans/ethiopians and/or drugs......but was there any new training methods around?

Also, why the huge drop in 5k wr in 54-66? (42 seconds)?

First of all, 20 seconds from 14 minutes is a smaller pecentage than 20 seconds from 13 minutes.

Secondly, look at the number of runners breaking the record in the 50s. There was a huge level of competition at that time, which pushed times on.

Thirdly, World War 2. WRs in the middle-distance events progressed rapidly in the 50's as well. This is because a generation that hadn't been maimed, killed, or simply spent a number of years fighting in war, were taking the place of the previous generation that had.

The 1950s were a golden period of running probably because times played catch up after WW2. There is one obvious exception, the mile in Sweden but again they were (semi) neutral. Could it be military conditioning isn't good for athletics? But then again getting shot is a better explanation! Interestingly, the sea level 100m effectively stopped improving after 1964 until Ben Johnson. Actually the depression & ww2 probably allowed Jim Peters and Arthur Lydiard to invent endurance conditioning at a later date then what otherwise would have been the case.

Deanouk wrote:

[quote]Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

the story published in Botswana itself, that Amos was told when testers were on their way to him and avoided them on several occasions, to mention but a few.

WTH? I have heard some of these stories over the years but not that one. So Amos was getting a tip off? That sounds alot like Russia etc. Amos's 1:41.7 just reeks of a dodgy smell. While a fast Rudisha race was always going to pull others through to pbs but still. Apparently if you guzzle lots of water prior to a test you can give a clean sample when otherwise hot and if you know that they are coming to test you.

Times faster than 3:28 are ridiculously fast. Basically running 4 laps relaxed and effortlessly at 1:50 800m pace. The most credible athlete to do that is Lagat (which says something) while all the rest are North Africans or implicated in the Fancy bears hack.

I don't know why Venti thinks 7:20 is soft? No one has been within 3s of that (once 18 years ago) and the IAAF obviously is skeptical, hence it is about to be scrapped. But he is inconsistent on this, he loves Komen giving him even greater super powers but then trashes his seemingly invincible record. 3k times might be the best indicator of rampant epo abuse.

Times better than the low 12:50s should also treated with caution.

Again, what happened to the endless supply of Moroccans running sub 13?

As for Ramzi, he nearly set the Olympic 1500m record in the 2008 heats!

I once studied all night for a urine test wrote:

wtfunny wrote:

There is not a shred of evidence to suggest the times being run in the 90's were a function of EPO.

Of course not...no one was testing positive for an undetectable drug. ???

Classic call, lol.

Sorry Subway, but you are not connected with the athletics of today, and don't have a real technical focus.

Of course an athlete running 12'49" can earn money running 10 km on road races : this is exactly what they do, and is exactly the reason because they disappear from the track.

Go to see the career of Gebremeskel : how many competitions on track he did after that famous Paris, in the last years ?

In 2013 he ran on track 3 times (13'31" in 5000m, a good 26'51" in 10000m for being selected for WCh, where was 16th in 27'51"). In 2014 ran once on track (winning Oslo DL). In 2015 ran 3 times, winning in Ostrava (13'23"), being 8th in Roma DL (13'00"49) an running 13'05" in Heusden. In 2016, Olympic year, ran 5 times 5000m (3 of them for qualifying according the Ethiopian system), and in Rio was 12th. This year he ran only one 5000m, for him a must, because is part of his contract with Adidas (it was an Adidas meeting).

His activity is now mainly on the road, or in indoor races during winter. This is not the best way for improving under the technical point of view, BUT IS THE ONLY WAY TO EARN MONEY FOR LIVING FOR AN AFRICAN RUNNER.

About your second consideration, I think the top marathon runners of 30-40 years ago could run from one to two minutes faster than their PB, in some competition of today, with very fast course and even pace, inside a big group of runners.

On the other side, this is another point for thinking times about 2:06 can be possible for white runners too, and are possible in clean way, so everybody thinking of doping only for justifying the massive dominance (in the lists) of Kenyans and Ethiopians goes to contradict himself, looking at the possibilities of old specialist, of course in theory.

The third assumption is nor real. At first, according to the Italian experience, self transfusion helped Cova (but don't forget he ran alone 13'18" in Otaniemi before the reinfusion before Olympics 1984, and he was not a good front runner...) but not Antibo, who ran very much faster 5-7 years after quitting the method. In Italy we had some taking advantage, but a bigger number of athletes not able to improve, who finished their career in short time.

This means that there are "responders" and "not responders", the same happens with EPO, and it's a big mistake to think the behavior is the same for every person, in a "mathematic" trend.

About Marathon, NEVER the self transfusion produced advantages. On the contrary, we had athletes who ran their WORST competition in long distances (marathon or 50 km walking) after the self transfusion, and became again top athletes after quitting the method.

Why this difference ? Because to increase the quantity of Hb in the blood can increase the POWER of the engine, but at the same time increases the CONSUMPTION of fuel. So, if (in theory) to have a blood with more Hb can give advantage on the side of AEROBIC POWER, on the other side decreases the velocity of the blood circulation, and doesn't have advantages when the athletes run under the LT, at a percentage of their Aerobic Power.

Also if some of the poster here thinks I'm naïve, or a liar, I well know what I do, and the possibility of INDIVIDUAL effects of training in changing physiological situation. I can guarantee that the limits for clean and talented athletes, always training in altitude, are well better than the current WR. Of course, we need to find top talents, and top talents need to be at top level not only under the physical point of view, but under the mental point of view, too. This is more difficult, when we look at African athletes, normally coming from areas with little education, that traditionally pushes them to do mistakes (like long period of rest, not priorities in their choices, not care when injured, an other factors).

When we find somebody with total dedication, top talent, and continuous focus, we have the best (this is the case of Eliud Kipchoge now, was the case of Haile and Kenenisa and Shaheen and El Guerrouj before).

Ventolin is crazy.

but the greater point is that this hardly constitutes what you described: "a normal expectation" .. even crazy vent makes clear he's talking about perfect conditions .. regardless what fantastic universe he actually lives in, he doesn't at all describe this stuff near so benignly as you suggest he does.

Sure it is. It's also clear from watching that race 12:46 is far from the limit of what Dejen and Hagos both had in that race.Secondly, you're suggesting these guys were juiced, and juiced for one race in 8-9 years .. that's more than a little bit odd. It doesn't matter what "era" they ran the time ... there's absolutely nothing to suggest they were doped, and quite a lot to suggest they were not.

Kipsang, Kipchoge and Bekele have destroyed the top marathon times of anyone before 2004. Is this a remnant of the "Diack era" .. or simply the results of some incredible athletes .. surprisingly none of whom look or talk like you do?

I once studied all night for a urine test wrote:

wtfunny wrote:

There is not a shred of evidence to suggest the times being run in the 90's were a function of EPO.

Of course not...no one was testing positive for an undetectable drug. ???

And yet, we have all kinds of evidence that shows cyclists were doping during that time. But we simply don't have anything like the same narrative in top tier running circles that came out of the cycling world. And we have guys like Bekple and Kipchoge who are still crushing their current competitors, just like they did back in these crazy doping eras.

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

My question for you is, how much faster could Rogers, Dixon, Salazar, Lopes etc have run in Berlin, London, and Rotterdam? Two minutes?

Lopes ran his 2:07:12 world record in Rotterdam.

wtfunny wrote:

It's similarly absurd (and I know this was another person, but Deancoe is definitely wanting to allude to it as well) that there might not be any real natural superiority of East Africans in distance running. There certainly seems to be a very pronounced superiority of West Africans in sprinting, what on earth makes anyone think a similar talent may lie with other groups of people in other arenas?

Well if you took performances in the last 20 years at face value and posited the explanation that the groups overly represented were 'genetically superior' runners, then you would have to conclude that East Africans and North Africans are genetically superior distance runners, and that West Africans are genetically superior sprinters. So we have three different genetic groups dominating running, all from the same continent (or African ancestry). Coincidence much? Particularly that North African Arabs and Kenyans, two completely genetically unrelated peoples (in fact Arabs are closer to Europeans than black Africans) are both supposedly superior to white Europeans.

As I pointed out recently, Kenya today has a young population comparable in size to that of Western Europe in the 1970's, yet put Coe, Ovett, Cram, Wessinghage, Wulbeck, Elliot, McKean, Van Damme, Fiasconaro etc.on today's tracks I'm sure they could compete with the top Kenyan middle-distance runners. Kenya has virtually no other sport to syphon off its elite athletes to, Europe has literally dozens, including above all football. European kids today are fat, spend all day on the internet, and can't even pop to the corner shop without parental guidance. Really, if you compare European middle-distance of the 70's and early to mid 80's with the Kenyans of today after nearly half-a-century of improvements in training, nutrition and in dozens of other areas, even without factoring in EPO being available like sudafeed over the counter, you'd conclude that Europeans must be genetically superior.

wtfunny wrote:

And yet, we have all kinds of evidence that shows cyclists were doping during that time. But we simply don't have anything like the same narrative in top tier running circles that came out of the cycling world. And we have guys like Bekple and Kipchoge who are still crushing their current competitors, just like they did back in these crazy doping eras.

Not this again...you sound too much like" rekrunner." ?

There's evidence with "top tier" distance runners. Start with speedsters like Mourhit, Boulami, Kaouch, Garcia, Ali Saïdi-Sief....to name a few. With the exception of Saïdi-Sief & Kaouch, all tested positive for rEPO in early 2000 (Saïdi-Sief tested positive for roids in early 2001 IC at Edmonton & Kaouch for rocket fuel in 07). Now look at their IAAF profile progression charts and you can see rapid jumps in short time frames during the 90s. Since rocket fuel made the scene in endurance sports in the early 90s, and since the initial rEPO test wasn't implemented until after Sydney, I doubt these athletes waited until early 2000 to start using rocket fuel.

In addition, there's a cloud of suspicion with the Spanish Armada marathoners that were lighting it up at WC's in the 90s.