Why does the US SUCK at marathon Running

You misunderstand. I stated a fact, that in the US, to the public, athletics is not as popular a professional sport as football or basketball. Hence talented athletes do not gravitate towards running as their sport of choice. There is also the issue of a broken, unprofessional compensation system. Compared to football and basketball, heck even cycling, the sport is disorganized.

I did not imply the US has no talent. I did imply that the talent is funneled to other sports.

Good post. I think US is OK at Olympics but with the three athlete per country rule there are as many as 100 plus runners who are better than our top runner who aren't in the race. If we have to focus on resource allocation in the sport the sprints, mid D and field events are more strengths of ours than distance.

The point of this thread was not necessarily to bash anyone (although it does seem like we have gotten to a point where a 2:14 is a decent show, ie Tinman recent video); rather, it is a serious question of how we can become complacent with these results EVEN while our 800-5k athletes are true world beaters.

Consider the top of you milers: cole hocker, Yared Nuguse, Hobbs Kessler, cooper teare, and then dozens of guys not far behind who’d be the next American phenom only a decade ago, as we now routinely churn out 4-flat high schoolers. With this being the case, I don’t think you can say it’s a talent problem. We have the talent; that talent just can not seem to translate to the marathon distance.

On top of this, I also think it’s important to remember that we are in the age of time of super shoes giving marathon runners a friendly couple of minutes benefit to their finish times. Let’s call it 3 minutes. Now, imagine if the legends of the 70s had those shoes. Do you really think bill rodgers, Frank shorter, Alberto Salazar, (or non-us runners like Steve Jones and Carlos lopes) would not have had times 2-3 minutes faster than their PRs?? Assuming they would, that puts these guys running ~2:05 marathons.

Now, compare that to their times on the track, and it really starts to make you see just how bad we are today at the marathon. We have dozens of guys with equivalent 5k fitness to what these from the late 70s and early 80s ran as their track PRs. Yet, those guys managed to take that track fitness and turn it into modern day 2:05-2:05 level marathoning (if they had super shoes). The modern day 13 flat to 13:15 5k guy can’t even manage to run 5 minute miles over 26.2.

So what’s the deal? I see a few main questions being reasonable assumptive unanswered considerations worth investigating:

Is there something we are doing in training? Does our sednetary lifestyle in general make us “less durable” to manifest our aerobic fitness over longer distances like the marathon?

Maybe the modern day diet with so much sugar makes us so bad at utilizing fat as an energy substrate that we can’t translate fitness into marathon performance?

Lastly, a another very interesting hypothesis worth positing that could turn this question around is the following: Maybe there’s an inherent performance trade off we have never truly understood about track performance and marathon performance, and that we could ask the same question in reverse to the marathon greats of old— ie how is it that Carlos lopes could run 2:06 in normal shoes or Steve Jones run 2:08 in Chicago after going out the first half in 1:01 (imagine how fast that’s be in super shoes) but never manage to a sub 27 or sub 13 minute 5k.

Yes, I know these guys are not US athletes but these are two great examples of incredible marathon performance decades ago from guys who only had mediocre track times. Is there a trade off between the two, and the reason we are so good on the track but relatively bad at the marathon is because we are choosing track performance over marathon performance?

3:11 Scrub wrote:

Not enough mileage.

Not long enough long runs.

Speed workouts too fast.

Not enough specificity.

Not big enough goals.

Not training consistently enough over many years.

Not attempting the marathon until after track racing.

Winner! Thread over.

Jones' 5-10 bests were 13:18 and 27:39. Lopes had 13:16 and 27:17, won the World Cross Country race three times, got second twice, and has the 10,000 silver from Montreal. You think these guys had only "mediocre" track times? What would you call "good?"

But your last sentence nails it. I said it in my first post. There was a time when he best runners in western countries were running marathons seriously. That day has largely past, Japan aside, and most of those best runners are choosing track racing and either ignoring the marathon or just dabbling.

The problem is your school system. You spend a number of years in high school/college to train for mid distance and that produces results - America has great mid distance runners but it won´t produce marathoners. Compare that to Japan, where the marathon is the only running distance that really counts.

Politically Incorrect #2 wrote:

The point of this thread was not necessarily to bash anyone (although it does seem like we have gotten to a point where a 2:14 is a decent show, ie Tinman recent video); rather, it is a serious question of how we can become complacent with these results EVEN while our 800-5k athletes are true world beaters.

One potentially simple answer to this paradox is this: 800-5K talent and marathon talent are related, but distinct. We have massive systems in place to identify youth and young adult 800-5K talent, but relatively little to identify marathon talent. So we keep identifying great 800-5K runners, some of whom later become good to decent marathoners, while being continually surprised that we don't have great marathoners. Failure to identify marathon talent until athletes reach their mid-20s means we're drawing from a shallow pool of potential athletes.

If the HS and NCAA system only raced the 100m on the track, and only seriously looked for 400m athletes whenever the Olympics came around, we'd probably discover that our 400m athletes weren't all that great as well. We'd funnel the top HS 100m runners into the NCAA system and the top NCAA 100m runners would get pro contracts, and then the less successful 100m pros would attempt to train for 400m, with mediocre results. Our fastest national-level 400m runners would all have reasonably fast 100m times, "confirming" that the system was working. The singular success of Fred Kerley would be "proof" that we were doing something right, even though our relay teams would be perpetual also-rans who rarely make Olympic finals.

If we aren't getting many great marathoners, maybe we should try identifying talented marathoners, instead of identifying talented 800-5K runners.

The imperial system.

Runners are measuring their runs in miles, not kilometers, so they are getting pace data 38% less frequently.

There is also a significant mental barrier of 5:00/mile, which equates to a 2:11 marathon.

Whereas someone who sees a marathon as 42.2K would have a barrier at 3:00/km, which is 2:06:36.

That’s why Americans have a similar view of 2:11 as the rest of the world sees a 2:06.

There's rarely any overlap between 800 and 5000. It's going to be 400/800, 800/1500, 1500/5000 or 5/10.

Since marathons are not run in HS or college, identifying marathoners is silly and 5/10 and marathons are the in same thing anyways.

There is absolutely nothing counterproductive about waiting until 25, or even later, to move up to the marathoner, and many great marathoners have done just that.

Wuss alert wrote:

The US breads weaklings and the superficial vainglorious -- belief that the ends justify the means types. Coddled and weaknesses excused rather than celebrated.

Easy there Dwight Schrute.

Lenny Leonard wrote:

The imperial system.

Runners are measuring their runs in miles, not kilometers, so they are getting pace data 38% less frequently.

There is also a significant mental barrier of 5:00/mile, which equates to a 2:11 marathon.

Whereas someone who sees a marathon as 42.2K would have a barrier at 3:00/km, which is 2:06:36.

That’s why Americans have a similar view of 2:11 as the rest of the world sees a 2:06.

I don't think this is it. I would argue that the USA has the best marathoners of European heritage so the use of miles has nothing to do with it. (More of the top European marathoners are ethnically East African/Moroccon than is true of the US.)

I think it is a numbers game. Less guys doing high mileage. If the Americans and Europeans of the 70s and 80s had supershoes and modern in-race nutrition, Galen Rupp would have a lot of company.

Lenny Leonard wrote:

The imperial system.

Runners are measuring their runs in miles, not kilometers, so they are getting pace data 38% less frequently.

There is also a significant mental barrier of 5:00/mile, which equates to a 2:11 marathon.

Whereas someone who sees a marathon as 42.2K would have a barrier at 3:00/km, which is 2:06:36.

That’s why Americans have a similar view of 2:11 as the rest of the world sees a 2:06.

Runners are tracking their training volume by mileage, Therefore, they think 100mpw is the gold standard.

In the rest of the world, the gold standard is 200km/ wk, ;)

Just Another Hobby Jogger wrote:

Lenny Leonard wrote:

The imperial system.

Runners are measuring their runs in miles, not kilometers, so they are getting pace data 38% less frequently.

There is also a significant mental barrier of 5:00/mile, which equates to a 2:11 marathon.

Whereas someone who sees a marathon as 42.2K would have a barrier at 3:00/km, which is 2:06:36.

That’s why Americans have a similar view of 2:11 as the rest of the world sees a 2:06.

Runners are tracking their training volume by mileage, Therefore, they think 100mpw is the gold standard.

In the rest of the world, the gold standard is 200km/ wk, ;)

Exactly! This guy gets it.

Lenny Leonard wrote:

Just Another Hobby Jogger wrote:

Runners are tracking their training volume by mileage, Therefore, they think 100mpw is the gold standard.

In the rest of the world, the gold standard is 200km/ wk, ;)

Exactly! This guy gets it.

Yeah, Look at all these European guys that have broken 2:06:36 in the from 2018- now. I'll save you the trouble... there's only been one that was born in Europe: Sondre Moen. 2nd best European born is Javier Guerra from Spain (2:07:27).

-14 have broken 2:10 (compared to 8 American born) almost all at Valencia and Sevilla (flat and fast). (Although the Marathon Project was flat and fast too. )

-Exactly 1 American and exactly 1 Non-African/Japanese born person has broken the magical 3:00 per km barrier since Jan. 1 2018.

So this theory is garbage unless African and Japan are the only ones using the metric system.

2:10 is the 2:05 for white guys. They just don't have the bodies to run faster. Rupp is a rarity. And you know his credentials are suspect anyway. Take a look at map of Africa. Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Etria, and Ethiopia are all right next to each other.

The best U.S. training system is currently dismantled due to the coach getting a lifetime suspension for his shady activities.

Instead of figuring out better training and nutrition for the athletes, this jackhole spent his time sneaking syringes, hiding things in books, rubbing hormones on family members, and who knows what else.

This is so obvious that I assumed you would understand that I meant we identify runners who excel at various distances ranging from 800m to 5000m, not runners who excel at all of them.

This doesn't make sense. At the pro level, you want marathoners. The place to find them in the U.S. is in the NCAA. Just because the NCAA doesn't have race walking doesn't mean it's silly to try to identify talented racewalkers in the NCAA ranks - just that the process will be much more uncertain because you're only seeing people with related talents rather than the precise talent you're trying to identify.

I suspect that this assertion is incorrect. There are plenty of 5/10K standouts and even HM stars who never managed to succeed on the same level at the marathon. If you're correct and 5/10K talent is the same as marathon talent, we'll be fine. If I'm correct and they're two related but different skill sets, we're doomed to mediocrity.

How have U.S. marathoners been doing lately? Does that suggest anything about which view of talent is more likely to be correct?

On an individual level, I largely agree. On a national level, this is the source of our failure. If a lot of top marathon talent is waiting until 25 before training for their best distance, many of them will have moved on to full-time jobs and hobby jogging before they even make a serious effort.

We need our skinny black guys to see running as an actual sport worth pursuing.