I don't understand the sport anymore. At the bell in the mile WR race, there were like 7 guys right there?

The progress we're seeing now is nothing to that in the past. We've just become normalized to slow progression in times because of the full-throttle EPO era and subsequent improvements in testing.

In the 1960 Olympic 1500m final, the top 7 finished in under 3:42 when Roger Bannister had only broken the 'impossible' four minute mile barrier just 6 years earlier.

And the 1960 final was run on cinders, just like Bannister did.

2 seconds in a mile? You are completely clueless

Well, if these performances came from people from any other country in the world, this forum would be full of posts about PEDs, "to the gills" comments and all that. But as they are Americans, not Russians, nor Chinese, nor Kenyans, not from Morocco, it's got to be the shoes, or the track, or the bicarb, or the training.

It sure is not due to more births than deaths. There are more deaths than births in advanced civilisations. Other things could be telecommunications EM radiation. There was a user by the name of king of physics who raised this good point earlier but it got whisked away by the mods. It’s an important aspect not to be overlooked don’t you think?

Which athlete are you referring to? They haven’t broken any world record right? Nuguse and Fisher did. If you don’t break a world record you don’t get accused of doping.

What you call EM rads is just another cupcake term for RF. Science has not proven that RF raises athletic maxima capacity because it can’t be done. One can only disprove a theory not the other way round. There has only been an innumerable amount of disproofs ever since such research work began but people are suffering from a disease of denial. They refuse to accept the truth and part of the problem has to be on a corrupt industry and business practices.

What does Jesus have to do with running shoes? He wore sandals.

These threads are a vain and even desperate effort to avoid uncomfortable truths about the sport. It's got to be anything but not doping! Why wouldn't American athletes not dope? They want to succeed - and the rest of the sport is doping.

Totally disagree. Nowadays every kid from 4th grade to 12th grade and up can learn what everyone is doing in youtube etc... I got 9th grade girls on my team asking when we are doing double threshold, checking strava, xtraining like PV.... That didn't happen in the 80s.

There's more depth than ever before. The difference from 1st to 10th is very small. Same with 1500m outdoors, 5,000m, 10,000m... The time spread from fastest in the world to 20th in the world for 5,000m is like 15 seconds. Back in the 90's/early 2000's we had a couple guys running 12:39 and 20th in the world was way back at like 13:10. Because there is so much depth now it's like there are pacers for most of the field that never drop out. Everyone can pack run the whole thing at very fast paces. The fastest people aren't really getting a ton faster, there are just way more people near the front. And that is helping push the records down. If hocker weren't in the 3k Grant probably only runs 7:23, maybe 7:24. If Kessler weren't in the mile giving Nuguse a push in the final laps then Nuguse probably only runs 3:47. The increased depth is making the best faster. Shoes are not an explanation for so many people being close to the best. If shoes simply made you faster then we'd have the same old spread times from 1st to 20th and they'd all just be a little faster.

Some here are saying coaching or wealth of information. The top of the game right now might not even be as good as it used to be in my opinion! Like basketball and football, people were tougher and coached tougher in the 90s., so I don't think that's it. We should hope that on average everybody's a bit smarter, but I'm just saying Joe Vigil's coaching can hang with Mike Smith any day!!

What is happening along these lines though is that there's a boom in the sport from younger ages. Kids think NXN and Footlocker are cool and there's a lot more kids in the sport. Look at how much faster the average kids are now compared to 20 years ago, and how much better the average college runners go. The ceiling isn't that much higher, but the floor went up for sure.

If there's "more depth" now then that must mean more athletes are involved in the sport than the past. How does that figure with running declining in relation to major sports as well as the proliferation of niche sports? Most people outside running have no idea who the athletes are that are routinely discussed on these threads. Running is now a "niche" sport. That doesn't create "depth".

Hypothetically lets consider this.

1. Super shoes are potentially worth 1-3% increase from pretty much most of the information available.

2. BiCarb is potentially worth 1.6% increase from the information available, plus there is research from it that dates back a good number of years. They just couldn't figure out how to ingest it without causing GI Distress.

IF you are a 4 minute miler without these things, here is what you could be with them.

super shoes: 4 minutes x 60 = 240 seconds X .03 (if you gain 3% increase) = 7.2 seconds faster.

BiCarb: 4 minutes x 60 = 240 seconds X .016 (if you gain 1.6% increase) = 3.84 seconds.

Total potential increase in performance in a perfect case scenario = 11.04 seconds.

This could take a 4 minute miler from a time without these things to a 3:49 miler. Think about how that compounds to something like a 3k or 2 mile, or 5k even.

On top of that, some of the tracks are even faster now, plus the increase in information around training, etc.

You can't compare today's times with the times that came from before these things. I also say that about times before all weather tracks, there was a big uptick in performances then also. It is just a different time now.

Everyone is on drugs. Synthroid is rampant. Could easily turn a average 7:45 3k guy to a 7:25 dude

Yeah in the 80s kids didn’t live in a virtual “world” they actually did real stuff. Today’s idiot kids think YouTube is going to teach them track. Terrible example you gave. I see YouTube comments and i think idiots

I agree here. The super shoes on the track seem to be more beneficial for slower runners (to an extent) and probably not for Olympic final 1500 runners (talking 1500/mile here). However what I’ve noticed is that NOBODY has a bad race anymore! Cranny had the flu but look at these fields of guys getting towed along to crazy times week in and week out at different meets around the US. Look back at Milrose games and NCAA indoor meets 10 years ago. Even good guys struggled to run well every race. Rupp was an alien for crushing repeated top level performances indoors that one year but come on, runners used to have bad days, really bad days.

My best guess would be that the quality of aerobic training runners can do in super shoes on the road/track without killing their legs is what’s doing this. I mean seriously, there are guys and girls who are complete non-factors to make any team who are consistently PRing and entire fields setting multiple NRs and school records etc. It’s obviously not some miracle of “better” runners all showing up at the same time. The sport has just changed and I’m happy for today’s runners. I spent college beat up, injured, tired, sometimes great and sometimes terrible. It must be nice to be on a smoother trajectory.

I think an explanation for the teen talents we see is the safety of aerobic training in super shoes. In my mind a limiting factor in the development of a 16 year old boy is health given a very limited period of time to have built a sufficient base to do elite training. Obviously there are exceptions but imagine if a few super talents without the base and durability to log elite aerobic workouts could handle that load without killing their legs. Suddenly you have one big barrier to success out of the way for younger runners who would’ve been good in the past and maybe grown up to be great but can jump straight to the type of training previous generations had to spend years building up to.

Thanks for the link David. One glaring omission was the introduction of suede uppers in the 60s-70s.