When a woman can run 8:40 for 2 miles, sub 4:00 is on.
The funny part is I actually think 8:40 is far too slow for 2 miles for a woman trying to break 4:00. That might be reasonable for a high school boy, but not a professional runner. Aerobic ability continues to improve far past where anaerobic ability does, especially for women, which is why the marathon world record for women is so good compared to something like the 800. For a woman to break 4:00, she would probably need to be 7:45ish for 3k, or low-8:20s for 2 miles. Considering all the dope in the world could only get a woman to 8:06, we'll be waiting awhile.
Of course, we just had it lowered by almost 5 seconds and we only have 7.64 more to go. On the 5K, we cut nearly 11 seconds just like that since 2020. Any reasonable curve fit on those kinds of numbers would suggest that a 4 minute mile is in the offing pretty soon, quite possibly this decade or the next and certainly within most of our lifetimes.
The 1500m WR conversions have always been faster than the mile records, and have only been improved by about 3.5 seconds over 44 years.
Are you saying a 3:50.09 1500m is better than a 4:07.64 mile? Because thats what the records were on July 2023. The women will be under 4:05 very soon, but thats a long way from 4:00.
The 1500m WR conversions have always been faster than the mile records, and have only been improved by about 3.5 seconds over 44 years.
Are you saying a 3:50.09 1500m is better than a 4:07.64 mile? Because thats what the records were on July 2023. The women will be under 4:05 very soon, but thats a long way from 4:00.
Are you sure about that? Are you absolutely certain? Maybe you want to check on that one more time, just in case?
As all the present women's records are doped it would take a drug of unprecedented powers to enable a woman to beat 4mins for the mile. 7 seconds (for a record that is already doped) is a huge margin to close. It won't be training or "shoes" that will do it.
Gene doping.
The answer is "yes" it will happen, and it very well could be a result of gene doping.
We've known this for well over 20 years, since WADA banned it (2003).
Imagine a world in which people look like weight lifters even though they’ve never set foot in a weight room, where 80-year-old seniors have muscles as strong as those of twentysomething adults, and where Olympic athletes bre...
The 1500m WR conversions have always been faster than the mile records, and have only been improved by about 3.5 seconds over 44 years.
Are you saying a 3:50.09 1500m is better than a 4:07.64 mile? Because thats what the records were on July 2023. The women will be under 4:05 very soon, but thats a long way from 4:00.
They’re currently 4:07.4 for the conversion and 4:07.6 for the mile which means they’ve finally dovetailed. In 1980, the conversion was 4:11 and the mile record was 4:21. Mary Decker reduced the gap to about 5 seconds with her mile record in 1985.
Wouldnt be shocked if faith or tsegay did a record ineligible womens sub 4 attempt.
Straight road race, illegal shoes, 4 male pacers breaking the wind running exactly 60s quarters. Maybe even a slightly downhill course. Would be pretty cool tbh
Wouldnt be shocked if faith or tsegay did a record ineligible womens sub 4 attempt.
Straight road race, illegal shoes, 4 male pacers breaking the wind running exactly 60s quarters. Maybe even a slightly downhill course. Would be pretty cool tbh
It wouldn’t be interesting at all. Didn’t Mike Boit run a 3:28 downhill mile? It couldn’t be more meaningless.
I believe realistically a women needs the speed to run around 1:52 800 m, added mile endurance notwithstanding to break 4 minutrs. Jarmila has the existing WR of 1:53.28 more than 40 years ago and only one other woman has ever broken 1:54--borth likely doped to the gills--what are odds of any breaking 1:53 let alone running 1:52 flat anytime soon? Even the an 800 m could do this, would she have the necessary strength to run a similar quality performance for a full mile?
Unless you’re confident about human extinction in the next 100 years… I will say yes, a woman will break 4:00 at some point.
Lol stop this confident tone while making ridiculous claims. No way in heck will a woman ever run sub 4- it’s click bait because it’s no possible- like saying a mens sub 9 DMR team of the worlds best crew is possible by running 3:42, 1:40,2:46, 42. Like a sub 9 world DMR is going to happen 300years before any woman ever runs sub 4 lol.
unless it’s a biological man- absolutely no way.
“unless your confident about human..” what a basic argument and style- are you 14. Also why are you on let’s run and think woman can run sub 4? You must be a liberal, or very slow like 4:30miler or slower hence the terrible understanding of reality
I'll go out on a limb and claim, once its done, other women will also break the barrier within 6 months.
Stop. This will never happen. No women will ever break 4:04 like maybe in 100 yr wit steroids I could see 4:03:99 that’s it. You’re a femboi soft boi if you think otherwise or just a bumm
Stop. This will never happen. No women will ever break 4:04 like maybe in 100 yr wit steroids I could see 4:03:99 that’s it. You’re a femboi soft boi if you think otherwise or just a bumm
The current super shoes and super spikes have sweet zones for where they assist most. For example, at 55 second 400 pace, the benefit is about 0.3 second compared to older spikes, at 60 second 400 pace, the benefit is about 0.5 second, and at 70 second 400 pace, the benefit is about 1.3 seconds. That is a function of the foams being used.
It's not that hard to imagine that in the future, there might be new midsole materials that have rebound characteristics that result in different sweet spots or tailorable sweet spots. The current super spikes have made a mockery especially of events where about 70 sec/400 pace used to be pretty good, like high school 3200/5000 runners, or average college runners in the 5000/10000. Who is to say that there won't be a super spike that will make a mockery of sub-4 in the future?
If history has taught us anything, it's that it's foolish to say that some physical feat is simply impossible. Even if it's wildly doped, a woman probably will run sub-4 in the future. Given enough time and technology, the world will become a scarcely recognizable and bizarre place.
Cheat shoes open the door for all kinds of technological advancements. Wait 20 years and we’ll see what governing body allows. They allowed cheat shoes so I’m not surprised at anything anymore.
With super shoes and everything, is it biologically possible for a woman?
So in September of 1993 at the Chinese national championships Yunxia Qu ran the (in)famous 3.50.46 WR that took Dibaba 22 years to beak by 0.31 of a second. I know there is a lot of "doping by default" narrative on these boards but I don't think it's a massive stretch to assume with almost certainty that Qu and Ma Junrens crew were doping. Neither is it a stretch with Dibaba who was visibly different in 2015 physique wise from both 2014 and 2016 when she bookended that WR with 3.55 and 3.56 performances (and then never again ran under 3.55). Oh and don't forget her coach, end of discussion. Point is, prior to 2020 performance enhancement in the sport (and for the women) was exclusively doping. Doping bought biological women to essentially 3.50.0
Now we are in a different era of performance enhancers but it's deemed legal. Footwear and wavelight. Footwear is something, but we do kind of have some evidence that the gains are distance dependent which make sense. The longer you run the gains seem to exponentially compound - or put it this way, it's not linear. On the mens side we have seen WR's over 5 and 10km but over 1500m while we have seen the pack get closer to the top (3.31 is the new 3.34) we haven't seen any impact at the very top and this could be far more related to a shift in training ideology and race execution benefits (W/L) . Long story short, "superspikes" I don't believe are making a big impact on world 1500m running - men or women.
Wavelight is different story - but it's really a different story for the women. It has been HUGE for the women and made an even bigger impact than the men. We have seen WR's over 1500m, the mile, 2000n, 5000m, 10000m all since the advent of the lights. Why? It's actually simple - womens pacemaking for years at the elite level was absurdly inferior to the mens. It just was. Without getting too deep into it, just look at were the pacemakers of choice for El G during his best years. In his 1500m WR he had Noah Ngeny pacing him 1150m and in his mile WR he had William Tanui (aslo an Olympic Champion) pacing him through 1209m. There was just so much depth of talent on the mens side we had OC's and guys that had legit world class PR's pacing guys - they knew how to structure the pace and could take it far. The women never had this - if Greta Szabo had someone who could even get her to 800m it was a miracle. It was an even bigger miracle if they could do it with good pace judgement (ie. not running 2.08 going out in 62).
So, we have two paths to basically 3.50.0 (give or take a second)
- Prior to 2020 doping
- Post 2020 wavelight/footwear (assuming and hoping Kipyegon is clean)
So how much more can we squeeze out with path 2? To run a sub 4 you need to be capable of a 3.44.0 1500m bare minimum (some people believe the 18 second adjustment but I think it's much less, especially these days). But if we just made the jump to neutralize the effects of doping (which makes a massive difference on it's own), how realistic is this next 5 seconds? Does natural talent now work with the legal performance enhancers and work it's way down that much? I think that's a massive stretch. It's such a stretch I don't even know if a doped athlete under todays conditions can do it. I honestly think it's akin to asking if the mens mile record will ever be under 3.40 or the 800m record under 1.39 - at some point we do approach a reasonable boundary of human performance.
The only way that happens (a sub 4 in the womens "category") is if the world loses its mind even more and a biological male who simply just says he identifies as a woman and is therefore eligible to compete as one, goes and does it. Otherwise nothing points to it being remotely possible.
The current super shoes and super spikes have sweet zones for where they assist most. For example, at 55 second 400 pace, the benefit is about 0.3 second compared to older spikes, at 60 second 400 pace, the benefit is about 0.5 second, and at 70 second 400 pace, the benefit is about 1.3 seconds. That is a function of the foams being used.
It's not that hard to imagine that in the future, there might be new midsole materials that have rebound characteristics that result in different sweet spots or tailorable sweet spots. The current super spikes have made a mockery especially of events where about 70 sec/400 pace used to be pretty good, like high school 3200/5000 runners, or average college runners in the 5000/10000. Who is to say that there won't be a super spike that will make a mockery of sub-4 in the future?
Can I give you a heads up on spike foams?
The reality is that none of these foams are actually very new at all. These current foams have all existed for years just in other industries, they have simply found a home in running product which as we know started on the road and made its way to the track.
My point is, there isn't just this boundless pandoras box of potential "new foams" or "midsole materials" out there, there just isn't - and certainly not ones that don't get immediately banned. The best thing you could probably make a spike out of would be a carbon fiber leaf spring, similar to a prosthetic blade (best combo of weight and energy return) - but that's never happening. And everything has a trade off - make your foam lighter (less dense) lose your ground force efficiency and resiliency. Make it more "springy" and reactive, you will increase weight. There are simple physical boundaries for optimum performance and we unfortunately are playing very close to the edges right now.
Hey - you can build a bridge out of cardboard if you want - doesn't mean it's long term viable.
There is no super spike making a mockery of sub-4 in the future - not for women.