What are the US men missing in marathon training????

If it is all about poverty, why are all the nationals from countries poorer than USA defeating Kenya? For example could you plot the per capita income of all nationalities in the Chicago marathon and prove a negative correlation with finishing position? Also with a larger group (as in all publically available marathon data?)

You are talking to a wall. People believe that all you need as a distance runner is legs with knees and feet. So, they look at Ritz and he has knees and feet...they look at Kimetto and see he has knees and feet...and they conclude that both are capable of 2:03. Now, when it is is really obvious what makes a particular sport's specimen e.g. basketball, you would never see a sane human being argue that Central African pigmies would beat a suburban US high school girls basketball team!

Stop making excuses. So all the sudden, black guys can run, but white boys can't? Black people can play basketball, but white boys can't? Jamaicans can sprint, but other's can't?By that same token, Brazilians can play soccer, but others can't? What's next, black guys / africans can't ride bicycles?That's the kinda of racist talk we are talking about.If you keep thinking this way, you have already lost.Your loss though.

still waiting for Mr. Canova's comments. Haven't read a single post in this thread.

And we need more top guys to train like Hall (a few years ago) and Meb. I'd like to see Derrick, Puskedra, Levins (I know he is Canadian) and others give it a shot.

Thomas wrote:

Like him or not, we need Rupp in a marathon...and soon!

Sammy Wanjiru was not a high mileage runner. He took 1 day of per week and said he topped out at 120 km per week.

Check the stats. wrote:

Didn't Ryan Hall run 2:04:59 when Moses Mosop ran 2:03:02? That is under 2:05 and he is non-East African.

I can't believe that this has not been corrected yet. No, Ryan Hall did not run 2:04:59 when Moses Mosop ran 2:03:02. Your name is 'Check the stats.' for pete's sake! Hall ran 2:04:58 when Mosop ran 2:03:06. Mutai is the one who ran 2:03:02.

How about taking some of the distance oriented schools, abandon the winter and spring season and focus the training on the marathon?

Rojo,

You're only partially right. Of course genetics win. However, there is no reason why America shouldn't have a slew of 2:06 guys. Not saying 2:03, 2:04 or even 2:05, but when you had guys of European descent running 2:07-2:08 20+ years ago, you know the genetics are there to do better than we are today.

With as many 13:10-13:40 types that American has, there is no reason we should be so far behind the Japanese and Africans at the marathon. Again, not calling for a world record holder, but certainly we should have 5-10 guys who on any day can run 2:06.

To that end, I think it is largely the training. Too much emphasis on speed and not on high quality volume, as has been mentioned. Of course, the downside to this argument is that I figured over the last 5 year or so the high volume, MP type work had taken off. If that is the case, why aren't we seeing the results. To my knowledge, 15-20miles at MP is fairly commong.

I know when I coached marathoners (quite a few guys in the 2:20s) we routinely ran 13-15 miles at MP. We also did lots of 2x10k, 4x5k, 5M/3M/1M, in and out 800s over 15 miles that averaged out to MP, etc, that was consistent with a high volume mantra. We didn't run further because our mileage was in the 70-90 mpw range. But if you're running 110-125 and treating running as a full time job, you should be able to handle 17-20 at MP.

Derderian wrote:

Math Counts wrote:

to me this is the key - if we had 100 million 15 year olds trying out for the USA Marathon team...I have no doubt that we would be right up with Kenya and Ethiopia.

We have the raw talent, but never find it...

If we had 100 million 15 year olds trying out for the USA Marathon team we would have a total population of at least 7.5 Billion - slightly more than the entire world population today. With that, I would hope that we could compete with the Kenyans (total population = 44 Million or 0.06% of our swollen ranks).

Yes, number is right and I want to add organized numbers in many, many, serious competitive clubs—at least one per city competing each other to attract and hold college grads.

Tom[/quote]

Right that with a US population greater than the entire global population that we might be able to compete with the Kenyans? Okaayyyyy.

Ho Hum wrote:

3 years to go from farmer to Chicago champ. That's talent.

Is it talent? The recent rash of 'unbelievable' marathon times has coincided with several small stories leaking out regarding doping at kenyan training camps. Most are ignored, some, like the one that popped up around London 2012 got limited airplay. I'm a cycling, as well as running, fan. It all looks eerily similar to the Lance Armstrong saga (albeit with a country, rather than a single athlete). Complete dominance accompanied by slight cracks in the facade that are mostly ignored because they don't fit the current narrative, only to be brought up later as 'evidence' by folks who 'knew it all along.' I know the money's better in the big marathons than on the track, but the testing is also much less structured(and OOC testing is abysmal in third world countries like Kenya and Jamaica, when compared to the U.S. and European countries), with long periods of training(once again, with no testing) followed by 2, maybe 3 competitions a year, rather than a consistent track race schedule likely(or at least more likely) to produce testing at several races over a 4-5 month period. To my admittedly cynical view, it just seems like a perfect storm. We can try to rationalize it, like people did during LA's time in the sun (he targets only 1 race, he pedals with a high cadence, the cancer tore his body down and he 'rebuilt' it into a TdF contender, etc.), but it looks to me like the most likely answer to this question is staring us right in the face, the majority of people just refuse to see it.

This can be summed up very simply: opportunity cost.

Octa wrote:

Now, when it is is really obvious what makes a particular sport's specimen e.g. basketball, you would never see a sane human being argue that Central African pigmies would beat a suburban US high school girls basketball team!

There is a bigger diversity of physical specimens in basketball than in running.

Culture, Society, Economics, Geography

Control for these factors and then create an assurance that drugs aren't part of the equation and then we can parse out average talent-groups more accurately.

The numbers issues is a symptom of this. If we lined up 10 Ritz's and 10 Hall's on Sunday, one of them has a 'career race' and takes the win. All our eggs were in one (maybe two) baskets in Chicago.

Also, "participation numbers" isn't the whole story either (especially without the right feeder/development system). Look at soccer in the USA: "everyone" plays soccer as a kid. How many americans are in the Premier League right now? Societal effects would have to be, at least, in part to blame or are europeans genetically better soccer players???

Paula clean or not trained harder and more miles than Ritz and Teg. I think the African women are behind the men. It will take a few yrs before they totally dominate like the men.

krispy kremlin wrote:

Culture, Society, Economics, Geography

Control for these factors and then create an assurance that drugs aren't part of the equation and then we can parse out average talent-groups more accurately.

The numbers issues is a symptom of this. If we lined up 10 Ritz's and 10 Hall's on Sunday, one of them has a 'career race' and takes the win. All our eggs were in one (maybe two) baskets in Chicago.

Also, "participation numbers" isn't the whole story either (especially without the right feeder/development system). Look at soccer in the USA: "everyone" plays soccer as a kid. How many americans are in the Premier League right now? Societal effects would have to be, at least, in part to blame or are europeans genetically better soccer players???

And I guess the question then becomes: just because we can quasi-statistically "control for" those factors doesn't mean we can "compete against" these factors.

I've said this in the past, when a guy like Ritz or Hall (or Rupp, Solinsky in 10,000m) come around, given our western economic endowment and in spite of our western societal excesses, these men can still compete. Simply incredible from that lenses.

Exactly. We shouldn't necessarily have a slew of 2:03-2:05 types, but the US should have way more guys running under or around 2:10 given our prowess on the track.

As an earlier poster noted, the marathon shouldn't be treated as a crap-shoot. It only is a crap-shoot if you don't train the body to balance glycogen and fat burning throughout the race via specific training: it's simply science.

Way less coaches in the USA have figured out marathon training than you imply. Before NYC in 2011, Bobby Curtis (27:30ish guy) posted his training online. It was basically 10k training with long runs. Anyone without a modicum of knowledge about marathon training could have guessed he was going to blowup in the 2nd half, which he did, finishing in 2:16:44.

jjjjjjjjj wrote:

which school, primary or secondary or both? Anyway, Tergat's an outlier.

Most Kenyans and Ethiopians have thousands of miles of running on dirt prior to Americans starting.

Tergat is indeed an outlier, but this running as kids stuff is overrated. Many prominent American distance runners come from soccer backgrounds, where they put in plenty of unstructured miles and "fartlek-type" workouts. However, the Kenyans have grown up through many generations adapted to living and training at altitude, and most of the successful ones come from the Rift Valley, so to ignore genetics is silly. Ritz's ceiling probably is somewhere in the high 2:06s on the perfect day with a perfect training block, and there is nothing wrong with that.

kang6789 wrote:

Exactly. We shouldn't necessarily have a slew of 2:03-2:05 types, but the US should have way more guys running under or around 2:10 given our prowess on the track.

As an earlier poster noted, the marathon shouldn't be treated as a crap-shoot. It only is a crap-shoot if you don't train the body to balance glycogen and fat burning throughout the race via specific training: it's simply science.

Way less coaches in the USA have figured out marathon training than you imply. Before NYC in 2011, Bobby Curtis (27:30ish guy) posted his training online. It was basically 10k training with long runs. Anyone without a modicum of knowledge about marathon training could have guessed he was going to blowup in the 2nd half, which he did, finishing in 2:16:44.

Frank Shorter used to do 10k training with long runs, and he ran 2:10 and won an Olympic gold medal. Of course, he also did a lot of running at altitude and was "only" a 27:45 guy.