In latest LetsRun podcast the brojos said that Daniel Komen lived in some remote jungle village in Kenya and didn't even understand what Time is, only understood the concept of trying to run X number of laps as hard as possible. Is this true? Are there other LetsRun threads where I can read more about this?
LRC note. We started talking about Komen at the 71:36 mark here:
This is obviously a bit of hyperbole, so even if the story has a grain of truth to it, take it with a grain of salt.
https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=8849546&page=2
jamin wrote:
In latest LetsRun podcast the brojos said that Daniel Komen lived in some remote jungle village in Kenya and didn't even understand what Time is, only understood the concept of trying to run X number of laps as hard as possible. Is this true? Are there other LetsRun threads where I can read more about this?
I can't verify that but I do have a story about Joseph Ebuya - not quite as good as Komen but not bad. If you remember him he ran 12.51 and won World XC in 2010.
Ebuya was from very rural Kenya nd only started running because he saw Ben Limo out on training runs and started joining in running barefooted and in cut-off jeans. Ebuya legitimately didn't know what time was or numbers and I heard that when he first went to Europe to run they tried telling him to run a 5000m at a certain pace of lap but he didn't know what that was. His first 5000m race ever - 13.03 at Heusden having zero idea what a 62-63 was let alone what the clock was flashing with his cumulative time.
But the kicker to this story is that when he went to sign a deal with Nike after all this, he had never even held a pen before and he had to have someone hold the pen with him and scribble a signature on the contract. Classic. That is the best story I have heard regarding an East African coming from out of absolutely nowhere to be a world class runner.
I do have a good story about Komen though. I once stayed for a week next door to his place in Teddington with some guys (including Bob Kennedy) and Komen was having some trouble with the Dyson vacuum cleaner he had bought and trying to get it to work. Turns out the problem was he couldn't find the retractable cord and didn't realize he had to plug it in - so the story of him also not understanding things like time and even the concept of "effort" is completely plausible.
Bad Wigins wrote:
Salvitore Stitchmo wrote:
and even the concept of "effort"
so primitive they haven't invented getting tired yet?
Interesting that these posters use such colonial language and yet the runners mentioned have done things far beyond what the posters will ever do!
time is a flat circle
the yellow king wrote:
time is a flat circle
I can see your soul at the edges of your eyes. It's corrosive, like acid. You got a demon, little man.
It has been written even back then that he had no concept of pacing. He just ran hard as possible. I wonder if that is what is needed to get everything out of the body. Like running 800. Run fast first lap and hang in for the second lap.
Bad Wigins wrote:
Salvitore Stitchmo wrote:
and even the concept of "effort"
so primitive they haven't invented getting tired yet?
No, probably had just led such basic lives devoid of BS that associating a relative physical effort with a numerical figure (probably the one factor that holds back 99% of western athletes from really reaching their potential) just wasn't a thing.
Could that have been due to having simple lives and upbringing on farms or in foothills of the Rift? Probably. You call it primitive others might call it beautiful.
jamin wrote:
In latest LetsRun podcast the brojos said that Daniel Komen lived in some remote jungle village in Kenya and didn't even understand what Time is, only understood the concept of trying to run X number of laps as hard as possible. Is this true? Are there other LetsRun threads where I can read more about this?
Impossible. Komen was an exponent of"modern training", which means he must need have the intellect of someone like rekrunner. On further reflection, maybe the story is true after all.
BoA wrote:
It has been written even back then that he had no concept of pacing. He just ran hard as possible. I wonder if that is what is needed to get everything out of the body. Like running 800. Run fast first lap and hang in for the second lap.
I remember hearing about the no understanding of pacing thing as well. It was so bad that his coach would just tell him faster, slower, or good each lap.
robert678 wrote:
BoA wrote:
It has been written even back then that he had no concept of pacing. He just ran hard as possible. I wonder if that is what is needed to get everything out of the body. Like running 800. Run fast first lap and hang in for the second lap.
I remember hearing about the no understanding of pacing thing as well. It was so bad that his coach would just tell him faster, slower, or good each lap.
It looks like terms such as "specificity" definitely wouldn't have been part of his vocabulary. I bet "tablet" and "needle" were.
He probably had a cyclical rather than linear conception of time. Laps would have been how he understood time, not the clock.
It seems like the brojos are suggesting you can become a top runner without thinking about it; you simply run as fast as you can. Modern training appears to be remarkably simple.
“The” concept of time...
Do some study Jamin, and you will find that there are many different conceptions of time, even in the western tradition.
One of Einstein’s most basic questions, which you can read about in the electrodynamics of moving bodies, was what it meant for events to be “simultaneous”. By asking that single question he was able to devise a broad formulation that is still admired 100 years later.
Sprintgeezer wrote:
He probably had a cyclical rather than linear conception of time. Laps would have been how he understood time, not the clock.
A bit like a racehorse?
No this was just part of the racist narrative created by the west. In the same vein as believing that East Africans would never use epo because they are too poor, not smart enough, and no way to refrigerate anything in their dirt floor houses.
Bob Kennedy said the Kenyans did not perceive 13’ as a barrier. Perhaps they had a different conceptuakization.
jamin wrote:
Daniel Komen lived in some remote jungle village in Kenya
The Rift Valley is not a jungle, you imbecile.
globalview3 wrote:
Bad Wigins wrote:
so primitive they haven't invented getting tired yet?
Interesting that these posters use such colonial language and yet the runners mentioned have done things far beyond what the posters will ever do!
The confirmation bias is strong in this thread.
First, my African colleagues at a school in East Africa frequently distinguished between African and Western time, because they argued that there was a contrast between clock time that involved doing things when the clock hit a certain time, vs. by who you were with and why. Second, Komen's coach or agent used to say this very thing about him, that he didn't think about pacing or time when he ran. It is quite possible that within a certain range our race times are affected by our conception of the need to hit a certain pace. Those limits become clear when a barrier is broken and all of a sudden a bunch of people break right through the barrier of what had been possible in their minds (apres Bannister the deluge). I've seen some 4:00 milers come just short of breaking the 'barrier' over and over again because they train themselves to hit 60s, hoping they'll have that little bit left on the last lap to go under. Are they really at their physical or merely psychological limits?