PSA: the Half Marathon world record is not soft anymore

Connor Mantz has said recently that he will be targeting the 1/2 marathon world record in 2022.

lol. can mantz even run a 5000 at HM world record pace?

Capy short finger wrote:

Connor Mantz has said recently that he will be targeting the 1/2 marathon world record in 2022.

A caveman can throw rocks at the moon. He will miss, but he can aim.

this is a good thread imo

I disagree. Kiplimo just ran 57:30 totally solo, wouldnt shock me if he scared 57 minutes with actual pacing at the RAK half marathon in February. Not to mention he only broke the world record of a relative nobody by 1 second, and another few guys are within spitting distance of the record. Nothing to me indicates that the record wont be crushed again within a year or so.

Also using the IAAF tables isnt really a good way to compare. Its pretty clear that the scoring has not taken into account the new shoe advancements and therefore all the road records are rated way too high. Kipchoges marathon (1315), Gidey half marathon (1325), Gidey 15k (1318), all within the last 3 years. You could probably argue Gidey is an outlier, but even still, 2nd fastest half marathon time is 1303 points.

I hope so because the HM is still the death of the sport itself, if not the has-been old runners. Boring, boring, boring, duller than drying paint.

It seems like someone in marketing saw a marathon, realized ordinary people didn't have a 2-hour attention span and said "let's condense it to 1 hour" and then the ordinary people would watch. But the ordinary people don't watch. The people who found the marathon interesting aren't more interested than they were before, either. Fail.

I can see the record being broken again. But youre proving my point in highlighting the recent progression of the record. It got smashed by half a minute, by a whole pack of people. Then it got improved by just 1 second. That demonstrates my point that though it was soft before, it no longer is.

As for Vaporflys and the scoring tables, I dont want to get into that because I generally think the scoring table deniers are like flatearthers. What I will say is that there has been plenty of technological advancement on the track that gets ignored because it wasnt a part of a viral marketing campaign. The tracks today are built different, the spikes are built different. You know what isn't? The roads.

OozmaKappa wrote:

What I will say is that there has been plenty of technological advancement on the track that gets ignored because it wasnt a part of a viral marketing campaign.

+1

How does that prove your point more? A dude just soloed a world record from the gun? Its pretty clear the record will be 20-30+ seconds faster when there is serious pacing.

Also its pretty clear the shoe changes on the road have dwarfed any improvements on the track over the last 20 or so years. Random dudes nobody has ever heard of are running 2:02 and every road record 5k,10K, 15k, Half Marathon, Marathon have been obliterated (both Male and Female) during the last 3 years. The scoring tables are a solid reference point, but should not be used as the gospel particularly since they skew heavily towards road records. The half marathon is still the weakest record on the male side, and it wont be comparable to the other records untill the 57 barrier gets challenged.

I don't think he said that. Provide a reference.

the new shoes have absolutely messed up the iaaf scoring tables. ignore it if you want. The tables are also way off for indoor times.

You know what, guys? This whole comparing performances thing got screwed up ever since people started putting spikes on the soles of their shoes in the 1890s. Madness.

No, what really screwed up our sport was when we switched away from dirt tracks in the 1950s to this bouncy rubbery stuff.

The scoring tables were invented in 1982. If you cant recognize that the advancements in shoe tech on the road over the last 5 years have skewed the IAAF tables compared to more modest improvements on the track idk what to tell you. Im sure if the IAAF tables were around in the 1890’s when spikes were invented, there would be a similar imbalance. Your argument is flawed and the HM world record is going to be obliterated again, most likely by Kiplimo in about a month at RAK.

Your argument is flawed because the scoring tables take into account information gathered from before 1982, and sport statisticians were comparing performances across events since the 1900s.

Regardless, do you seriously think that there has been no technological advancement in track surfaces since 1982? Do you think spikes stopped improving since 1982? You think the only noteworthy advancement is the Vaporfly? Everything was balanced before then but the Vaporflys ruined that balance?

I'm not buying that. I maintain that there have been significant technological advancements in track running in the past 40 years which go unnoticed because they were not part of a viral marketing campaign.

In the past, the scoring system has been changed for reasons such as the inception of new pole vaulting materials and high jumping techiniques. I doubt the system will get updated for wavelights, supershoes, or supertracks. If it does happen, it wont be to restore a balance you say was lost between track and road racing, but rather to make it easier to compare modern performances to older ones. The imbalance is not between track and road, it's between new and old.

Its a simple question that you are repeatedly ignoring. Why are the road records such outliers in the scoring tables? A person with half a brain could deduce that its because of a sudden technological improvement in 2017 that knocked times in the marathon down by at least 1+ minutes. Comparing road records to track ones on the IAAF table is inherently flawed and its pretty clearly obvious why. If you wanted to compared road records to make your case, that would be valid. But putting your head in the sand as to why the IAAF tables consistently overrate road performances is stupid. I also never said that track technology hasnt improved, so nice job there creating a false argument. Its pretty clear that track improvements have been much more gradual over 40-50 years, vs the new carbon plates which just knocked minutes off of times overnight. Answer my first question please, I cant keep explaining this for you to ignore everything and write another 8 paragraph response.

The road records are not outliers. The 400mH is an outlier lmao. Karsten Warholm said it himself, theyre running on trampolines.