SURVEY: Why have SO many records been broke the last couple years?

F) Artificial Intelligence.

G) Special Pants.

99% the shoes

2 THE GILLS!!!!

Mind over matter. It's when you let the mins control your body and your body can't say no to being too tired to push that pace!

E) the vax. Contrary to what the silly anti-vaxxers believe, the vax makes the heart stronger.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both Girma and Katir, not to mention 49 of the 52 sub-4 guys at BU, were all wearing edible underwear.

💩🚽

Double threshold training

not to mention covid period was the PERFECT time to HEAVILY cycle PEDS.

everyone locked down. no testing. no competitions. can just dope with impunity and train hard (since tracks were still open and trails).

12-15 months of heavy unregulated doping would be a huge boon for a runner (even after they had to tone it down with testing coming back).

Because of watermelons and how cheap and abundant they’ve been.

People have always been doping, hard to argue its more prevelant now than before given the increased testing. The advanced training has been around for awhile as well. Lots of the records have been set without the light pacing.

I'll add another one, injury recovery, and time to build strong long mileage bases - a lot of good athletes recovered from injury due to lack of racing during COVID in 2020.

But ultimately it's mainly the shoes. Even at a 1% performance benefit, which evidence says its more for a lot of people, that is huge.

SARMs and PPARs have a half-life of hours. Plus micro-dosing?

Is there really a lot of testing now? Are US HS kids tested?

Doping is continually developing. It is a science - and more so than what you put on your feet.

How many of those WRs were set by Kenyans? The flow of EPO has been diverted to Ethiopia and Uganda, where the athletes probably have more natural talent.

road: mostly shoes, for marathon also better nutrition/gels during race

track: partly shoes, partly track lights,

General: more talent from east africa then ever before (esp. for lucrative road racing).

That last point is much stronger for women. The professional running development of East african women was 20 years behind the men's; it's exploded in the last 5 years or so.

Of course, there will also be doping/foul play in some cases (we have enough anecdotal evidence for that). But there is no evidence for *changes* in doping/supplements in the last 5 years, so we would expect mostly doping fueled improvements to occur at no particular time. While the factors of shoes (maybe tracks, esp. indoor) and pacing lights are evident and they are only here since ~3-5 years ago.

D! It's always been a problem and it seems naïve to think it isn't still happening as biotechnology becomes even more sophisticated.

It is undeniable that A, C, and D are all happening and are producing faster times.

One of the most interesting developments is the indoor times coming down so much. There are now American indoor records faster than their outdoor counterparts (both men and women's 3000), and others are within 1/10 of a second (M and W mile). That was pretty much unimaginable even 5 years ago.

Kincaid's new indoor 5000m record is 2 seconds faster than Lagat's old outdoor 5000m record, and Lagat's record had lasted for over 10 years until Fischer broke it last September.