DuffMan wrote:
kanga shoe wrote:
The shoes
I was resisting this but now I'm starting to wonder. And not just because of this guy. He could be totally legit for all I know but ALL these crazy times all of a sudden?
Look, the dude BALLED OUT. But the problem is a lot of people don't understand the massive divide between 27:17 and say 27:45. They just think it's fast as hell but one second per lap is a massive gap.
A 3:30 1500 runner is a medal threat. A 3:34 runner is a final filler on a good day.
The problem is humans have a problem understanding small but signficiant changes. We could envision maybe one of these guys doing something sick at 10k, so we try to come up with an explanation that doesn't credit the shoes. But when 4-5 people in seemingly in ever race at every meet this winter running A++++++ races, then we need to think what do they have in common?
The shoes.
Even I was somehow denying it. Why? I don't know. We had a leading shoe expert predict this very stuff to us on our podcast a few month ago. We didn't really reallize what that prediction meant until it became reality.
It's not just Tuntivate. Ben True at age 35 after being a pro for 10+ years just ran a 26+ second pb. Is all of that the shoes? I'm not willing to say that. Is half of it? Almost certainly.
Stats people think of it this way.
Let's say at the beginning of the year, I said to you. What do you think the odds of the following happening this year are?
Two Oregon guys will run 3:50 in the mile
Kieran Tuntivate will run 27:17
Hobbs Kessler will run 3:57
Ben True will run 27:14
Would you have given a greater than 1 in 50 chance of any of those things happening? Well the odds of them all happening would then be 1 in 6,250,000. Maybe you'll say Tuntivate and True ran in the same race - take that out. Ok, well the odds of all three are 1 in 125,000.
Now I'm sure some higher level math guy is going to complain I'm not doing probablity right. As I self selected these events after the fact. Yes, I plead guilty. But I'm trying to get people to understand 1-2% differences.
Now I understand why so many global warming scientists are pulling the hair our of their head.