Where did the American Sub 2:30 Marathoners Go?

Snell did run a marathon, in 2:41. I'm not sure when it happened relative to his 800 WR.

And what was Mary Decker's marathon time at age 12?

Mary Decker, who has marathon dreams again in her mid-40s, ran 3:09 at Palos Verdes as a child in her only marathon. That was a hilly course, the type that has fallen out of favor in this flat-and-fast, time-is-everything era.

"He was a master of psychology, he showed that by running marathons you can increase your speed. Peter Snell ran a marathon in November 1961 and two months later broke the world mile record."

sam w wrote:

interesting thoughts from everyone. i just get the feeling we are missing something. most all of the causes mentioned should have been in existence in 1984.

i just dont quite accept we have the answer. i think it is more complicated than this.

i do admit, i do not know the answer, but, if i was asked, would give most of the proposed answers you all have given.

I agree that most of the reasons mentioned don't seem to explain it. It's certainly not because there was money available back then for 2:30 male marathoners. In fact, even sub-2:15 marathoners back then were, in most cases, getting zip.

I do think that a lot of runners back then were grinding out a lot more miles in training.

Its not so much the lack of money for running, its more the overall decline in real wages throughout the economy since the late seventies. Put that together with how much more expensive it is to get the education nessecary to land a good job these days and you have potential sub 2:30 marathoners coming out of college already 50-100K in debt and battling it out for 35K per year jobs that require 50, 60+ hours per week.

With the average home (not house, this includes condos, apartments and mobile homes) costing over 210K (requiring an income of about 67K per year according to B of A), there just isn't the option to pursue running at a high level after college for many. Every year ealier you can start saving is super important to someday owning a home and retiring (and thats if your smart and don't buy into all the out of control consumerism). Hell you'll need to put in 7-10 years in most jobs to get your salary up enough to even get into a starter home (with a Bachelors and in some cases a Masters). Gone are the days of making a decent living off of 40 hrs per week.

Its not just running that is being effected by this societal shift, people are getting married later (averaging around 30 today), living with there parents longer (averaging around 25 today), retiring later (averaging around 70 today), and defaulting on mortgages at record rates. Get real wages back in line with what they were in the 70's so that a decent living can be made off of a reasonable number of hours and some of the financial pressures are relieved and the 2:30 marathoners will come back in droves.

cgaites wrote:

Get real wages back in line with what they were in the 70's so that a decent living can be made off of a reasonable number of hours and some of the financial pressures are relieved and the 2:30 marathoners will come back in droves.

Perhaps, although I can't honestly say that I agree with that proposition. Twenty to thirty years ago, there were sub-2:30 (and sub-2:20) marathoners from all walks of life. Back then, I think that there were a lot more people in the U.S. who aspired to those times, and were willing to sacrifice a lot to achieve them. I think that priorities have changed over the years. I'm not saying that's bad, but I do think that it makes for fewer sub-2:30 marathoners.

Problem is, those days are gone forever. Earning and spending power are in a long decline that started in the 70s and has no end in sight with so many US corporations outsourcing and going offshore as a way to find cheaper labor. This 'global economy' that the right wing has pushed for means that US corporations are being allowed to drive down the economic power of individual Americans (outside of the top few percentage points of incomes/wealth) to help the corporate bottom line and benefit shareholders. Kind of a tangent there, but it's becoming clearer that it's a long road ahead of working more and earning less while our government continues to kiss the arse of the rising world economic power, China.

But you see, the fact that you're talking about the time and income required to get a house and how it limits training possibilities shows the difference now from 20-30 years ago. I can't recall ANYONE that I ran with who even thought about getting a house. I never even wanted one, still don't even though I've got one. We'd have seen a house as one more thing you didn't want because it would screw up your training or racing.

Ok here is a question for the old timers out there: Did the sub 2:30 guys get support from local running clubs?

And what about the change that we have seen some running clubs undergo over the years, as our sport transitioned from pushing limits to just finishing?

The point isn't that there weren't or aren't still people who don't care about a house, retirement, etc..., the point is that the people who do care about those things will no longer become sub 2:30 marathoners where as in the 70's it was more possible to do both. The running bums still exist and they are the sub 2:30 marathoners of today, but in the 70's you could be a sub 2:30 marathoner without being a running bum because incomes were higher relative to the cost of living. Its the 40hr work week local elite who have disappeared (well not really disappeared, but slowed down due to less time to train), largely because the 40hr work week has disappeared. I will agree that people care more about material things today than in the 70's and thats a large contributing factor, but its an outgrowth of the decline in wages - your working more hours and have less time for family and friends etc.. so you fill that empty space with consumer goods. People aren't really working to buy that stuff, they are buying that stuff because they are working so much and are unhappy (I have a friend in marketing and she tells me the secret to effective marketing is creating a feeling of inadequacy among the people in your target market).

Bottom line - In todays world the 50hr work week is the new 40hr work week, & consequently 2:40 is the new 2:29.

Scott Douglas addresses some of the concerns on this thread with the following article.

http://www.scottdouglas.biz/Articles/secondtier.htm

They got old and the next generation of Yanks are playing XBOX, listening to Sat Radio and generally enjoying life.

Why has the average finishing time dropped?

Grandma's Marathon

1977 - 150 registered runners

2005 - 9,690 registered runners

Kudos to those who got off their fat asses went out and put in the miles, whatever their finishing time may have been.

Where are the sub 2:30 people? Dealing with life, and hopefully gearing up for the next olympic cycle.

At the last cycle there were almost 100 guys who went sub 2:22 and qualified.

What are you calling support? Occasionally, a club would give someone some money to travel to a race. If you belonged to the New York AC, you could do quite nicely in that regard and could travel to races in pretty decent style if you wanted to. Most of us would pile three or four into a car and drive to a race where we'd either sneak two or three guys into a motel room or we'd stay with a local runner.

If you're asking whether a club ever gave someone money to support himself, I would say no until Athletics West came along.

Support - any form of assistance; even if it was just a free coach or getting you into a race

When I was trying to decide what to major in when I was in college, I settled on teaching because I knew it would pay me enough to live while leaving adequate time for training and free weekends for long runs and trips to races. teaching was actually a very popular occupation among serious runners in the pre-professional era, mostly for those reasons.

Teachers today are paid at least as well today, relative to the cost of living, as we were then. So someone wanting to pursue serious running today could do what I did and teach. I lived in the DC area then and a lot of local runners had some sort of government job. They had longer hours than I did. But the work was generally lesst stressful and the hours were, as a rule, very regular. They could count on being free to train at 5:00 each day. That's another option a graduating, serious, runner could pursue.

What seems different now is that very few graduating runners seem to evaluate a job's desirability according to how it will affext their running and in the old days, almost everyone I knew did just that. Obviously, someone facing loan repayments of $400-$500 a month has to think about earning decent money. But I was not willing to take on that sort of debt and went to a cheap school.

But, consider the case of John Campbell who used to work 12-15 hours a day while running his convenience store and still ran 140 or so mpw while getting ready to run his 2:11 marathon. Running as best he could mattered enough to him that he put up with the demands on his time and effort. That's just not true for very many runners today.

Fuzzy wrote:

Support - any form of assistance; even if it was just a free coach or getting you into a race

There were outfits like the Georgetown AC, which was really just a club for athletes who'd run for Georgetown, allowed athletes to continue being coached by whoever was coaching Georgetown then. The Florida Track Club had Jimmy Carnes and Roy Benson coaching, but from what I knew of the guys who ran there, they were mostly self coached but likely heavily influenced by Jack Batcheler. If you ran for the Los Angeles Track Club, you could have Lazlo Tabori coaching you and I don't think that he charged. But, all of these clubs charged dues, usually pretty cheap dues, but the "free" coaching came with the dues as a rule. If a club wanted you badly enough, they might waive your dues. But that was sometimes done for other runners who were in tough financial straits.

One of the advantages of running for something like the Florida Track Club, if you were near elite but not quite there, was that you could get into meets at times that otherwise wouldn't be interested in you becaue the club would "package" you with a Batchelor, a Liquori or a Shorter.

But if you want a good example of how things worked then, a Boston Marathon winner thought that the next step for him was to get into the big US track meets. Unfortunately, those meets were mostly on the west coast and he lived on the east coast and couldn't afford to get to most of them. The meet directors didn't think that it was worth their while to pay the way of a Boston Marathon winner to their meets, so this guy went begging to local clubs trying to cut a deal where he'd run for them in the races where they wanted to do well in exchange for payment to a certain number of these big meets. He was turned down.

There is way, way, more support today than there was in the 70s.

Hedgehog wrote:

Scott Douglas addresses some of the concerns on this thread with the following article.

http://www.scottdouglas.biz/Articles/secondtier.htm

i read that article a few weeks ago. it was what got me wondering about this. interesting that he wrote it in 1996 and was wondering what happened to the sub 2:15 marathoners.

the article never answers the question, it does rule out the lack of prize money as a cause though.

I agree with the various points that HRE has made. I don't see any evidence that increased work hours or decreased real wages are a significant cause of the decline in the number of sub-2:30 marathoners in the U.S. There were simply a lot more runners back then who were willing to put in the training, even if it meant sacrificing in other areas, such as economic opportunities, material goods, and various outside activities (like posting messages on the Internet).

The opportunities available to runners in the U.S. today are much greater than they were for comparable runners twenty to thirty years ago. A sub-2:20 marathoner today can get into programs like WCAP or the Hansons, and can get U.S.-only prize money. Back then, you might get a few pairs of shoes, and even those came with strings attached.

oldguy wrote:

even if it meant sacrificing in other areas, such as economic opportunities, material goods, and various outside activities (like posting messages on the Internet).

I agree with everything you said except the use of the word "sacrifice". I never sacrificed anything for my running. I wanted to do it. Buying a house would have been a sacrifice to my running and not the other way around. Training is not sacrificing anything. Training is a privilege. It was in 1970 and it is today. You have to love the sport and that is what is missing today.