I don't understand the sport anymore. At the bell in the mile WR race, there were like 7 guys right there?

What is crazy about 3:27-3:30 guys running 3:46-3:48? The indoor records have been soft for a long time.

I guess everyone in the field is simply the best of ALL time. Or just barely off. Makes so much sense to me. Aouita, El G, Coe... those guys wouldn't even make the final. Nor should they. Slow MFer uncs.

Had a similar thought during the women's mile. While it wasn't as fast, the entire field except Cranny was 4:27 or faster

It's like not only are the winning times faster, almost nobody has a bad race, and there's way more depth

Better coaching, training, sharing of training information, AND being able to watch other elites/collegiates training/racing 24/7 online.

Every event, the knowledge is here online 24/7.

Are future 21XXers(and beyond) going to be digging through the crates and studying how we lived way back when?

Part of it is that the best milers in the world train in the U.S. where there are high-level indoor meets on fast tracks.

Kerr didn't run today but trains in the U.S. and the gold, bronze, and 5th place 1500m guys from the olympics all ran under previous indoor records.

You make it sound like there was no available information back in the day. It wasn't the Flintstones, my guy. Information was available, shared, and disseminated. Hell, LRC has been around 20yrs...

I also call BS to "better training and coaching". There's nothing guys are doing now that the elites weren't doing 20 years ago.

I contend this. The best of any era is about as good as the best of any other era. Guse = Coghlan. Jakob = ElG. Etc.

It's the tech that makes the top 100 of this era look as though they're superior to the top 20 of previous ones. The depth of amazing performances screams tech evolution.

Look no further than the NCAA qualifying lists - 3 sub 3:50, a sub 13, some 7:30s, Washington's stable of sub 4 guys, and on and on.

I refuse to believe it's just "better coaching" or "more information". That's so disrespectful and ignorant, frankly.

Or maybe the runners are that much better -- and more of them?

Or maybe everyone should be required to run in leather spikes with leather shoes on cinder tracks? I think
know that you're the one who's being disrespectful and ignorant. Runners are better today, even accounting for the technology. Accept it and move forward. I think it's cool, perhaps you should too?

The sport is always cool, Malmo. The performances and racing are superb. I'm clearly a fan - I watched. What I'm not on board with is the "maybe everyone is just better now" argument, which completely discards tech evolution.

Perhaps one day guys like Kennedy, Ritz, Todd Williams... and even Mark Nenow, Eyestone... Geb... Joe Falcon...

... will have their performances held in as much high regard as, say, Jesse Owen's are now. 10.36 doesn't get you to the state meet out of the Houston HS region some years. And yet it won a gold in Berlin in 1936. I don't hear fans say about Jesse... "maybe they're all just better now".

It's more the other way around. "Jesse ran 10.36 on effing cinders!". So perhaps we'll start hearing... "Bruh. Kennedy went sub 13 pre-Dragonflys". Or... "Coghlan ran 3:50 on a 180m plywood track! Isnt that crazy!"

It's the elitist disdain for the past that kills me.

But don’t you dare question the Armory track, that is, if you don’t want to see your thread immediately deleted.

Slandering people is okay with the mods here, but that ‘storied’ track is off-limits.🙄

Anyone curious about the kind of training to make the most from one's abilities; go watch top athletes training on Flotrack, YouTube. Listen to their coaches instructions, philosophies, etc. This is available 24 hours per day. Also open to discus with other experts online.

This wasn't possible back when we were using rotary phones. Smart Phones(Portable Internet) are 18 this year. We've got a full generation of athletes who have grown up with all of Human Knowledge at their fingertips.

Ever heard of books? Videotapes?

You sound like you're 15.

I remember my coach shoving article after article, book after book, in my face as a collegiate. Arthur Lydiard cassettes, Jack Daniel's tables (which are old, btw), and on and on. Coaches went to clinics, shared, talked. Wrote and shared. It ain't new.

What training revolution are we seeing, really? Give me something. And don't say double threshold or something cracked like that. That's not new either. Todd Williams was doing those workouts in the mid-90s.

My take:

1. Indoor track is as fast as the fastest outdoor now, so "world record," though technically accurate, is a 3+ second exaggeration.

2. Shoes are worth a second or two in the mile.

Totally agree with you. Something is definitely going on. 4 people break world records Either some kind of new shoe technology or flat out a new supplement that is not yet illegal or detectable. Let’s not play stupid, all these world, national and age records? All in a single meet? Not buying it. Reminds me of swimming where every race is a new world record.

Where was the outrage when Alan Webb ran in new Nike technology spikes compared to Jim Ryun?

The biggest jump in shoe technology occurred between the 1960s and the early 2000s. Not once did we have thread after thread complaining about the shoes. The latest shoe technology is a super small change compared what history has already achieved.

Shoes.

Bi-carb.

Going to Park City and Flagstaff instead of Boulder.

Go check out NAU, BYU, others training, and racing.

More and more of our experience is being documented online.

Yes and they did 10 mile tempos and 100 mile weeks at altitude 50 years ago too. It’s the tech that’s the difference