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

"they're just better today" doesn't cut it. The athletes are coming from the same gene pool as before. Humans haven't suddenly evolved into something different in the space of one or two generations.

The fact that modern distance runners (especially from the US, at the elite level) are BETTER is pretty much undeniable.

Saying that they're JUST better doesn't help; it's meaningless. Cellphones in the year 2025 are clearly BETTER than those from 2000, but if someone asked you why, you wouldn't say ahhh, no particular reason; the people who make cell phones nowadays are "just better" than the old school phone makers.

The question is, WHY are today's runners better? Maybe they're better-funded, have better equipment, faster tracks, better coaches, better competition, better nutrition, are more likely to be discovered at an early age, have better compensation as motivation, etc., etc. But they're not better "just because".

the runners are better and more of them

the training is better and more refined

the recovery is better, they have good protocols

instead of 3 of 4 pints, its 1 or 2 max.

the tracks are better

the shoes are better

lousy running habits and form tends to be corrected.

there is micro-dosing, not always

there are nutritional and nutraceutical hacks.

and maybe recently, psychologically, the runners might actually drop the gloves and duke it out, versus hide until the last round and throw down.

only in the last year or so, did i see much hope in the younger generation in any sector, but today i'm seeing a break out on a few fronts. certainly in track the guys are doing a great job,

Okay, sure. But it can't just be "soft" records. As if people in the EPO era weren't trying to run fast or pick up bonuses?

It has to be the bi-carb + super shoes + the sprung up tracks.

I know the shoes are real. I run in Vaporflys and they "work" to make me faster. That is not up for debate. I have never tried the bi-carb but might do it for a 5000m race, why not, right? I would love to run on one of those boosted tracks myself and see if you can really feel it. Has anyone here had the chance to do that?

that was a perfectly paced race and Kessler got a free ride all the way

Goose however graduated to the next level, front running to the WR.

the guys in the field have a PR that is exaggerated by 2 seconds over good conditions race.

Goose is the only guy that has the "real" time,

Shoes are better. Tracks are better.. But EVERYONE knows what everyone else is doing now. Shared training via Strava, etc has increased the # of Fast runners because there are a lot of coaches who know what they're doing now.

how many 3:27-3:30 guys do you think there are in the world? Only 20 guys in the world even broke 3:32 in the 1500 last year according to the WA toplists and 15 of them weren't here today.

I don't have any explanation for why, but top runners seem to take indoor a lot more seriously than they used to, on top of the shoes and bicarb improvements.

Back in 2014, the qualifying standard for world indoors was 1:47.00. The US almost didn't qualify 2, top guys like Symmonds and Robby Andrews failed to hit that mark.

Brazier shocked everyone with his 1:45.9 in 2016, but now everyone expects people to run faster than that indoors.

I think the problem is you are using faster and better interchangeably.

Are today’s runners faster? Undeniably yes they are. Are they better, not necessarily.

Neither shoes nor bicarbonate make runners equal. So the answer to both questions is no.

I mean coaching is better. The change I saw in the NCAA between 2002 and 2012 was mindblowing. LOTS of bad coaching in the ivy league in 2002. Not nearly as much in 2012.

So it's not BS. But that being said if you talk to a top coach in the NCAA who also coached pre super shoes - like a Milt or Vig or Dave Smith - and they'll laugh at you if you tell them shoe tech isn't HUGE. Actually the guy we should interview is Vin Lananna. He's been around much longer. Does he think Gary Martin is way better than Gabe Jennings for example?

But back to the importance of coaching - where are the Kenyans/ Ethiopians? Nuguse shows Ethiopian men could be good at the 1500. They aren't. I do think coaching/tech must be holding them back.

Or am I sppoed to believe all the African success from the 1960s to now was drugs? Now a lot of the N. African/Spanish and some Kenyan success was, but all of it? That seems like a stretch.

Yeah Gary Martin has really been pounding that altitude training all of 2025.

I think it’s a combination of things. Progression in a number of areas compound on each other and magnify the effects of each.

shoe technology. Improving and newly engineered/reengineered training methods. Improved recovery techniques. The compounding effect of growing media (over the last decade or so) leading to more eyes and participation in the sport.

i also get the sense we just happen to be in the midst of a massive upswing in talent and participation, on a global scale and also in the US

that’s the best I can make out of the current state of things.

The track is simply bouncy, like BU. It's not against the rules afaik

Vaporflies =/= Dragonflies. It is absolutely up for debate how much impact the so-called super spikes have on elite 1500/mile times.

Soft records play a huge role here, especially in our perceptions of what we're seeing. Without context, it's shocking to watch a time held by El Guerrouj get smoked by runners who are clearly not as good as he was (even college kids are faster than him now!), but 3:48 really isn't that fast for the mile. Kejelcha was able to run 3:47 without super spikes, so I don't know how you could possibly believe 3:48 was anywhere near max effort for El G. Go down the line of other greats who have lost their indoor records to lesser athletes, it's the same story.

I don't know why top athletes care more about indoors now than they used to, but the fact is that they do. We're seeing way more elites show up in serious shape than ever before, running on fast tracks (a 200m banked track is as fast as any outdoor oval at this point) in perfect conditions, so of course the times are going to be good.

Shoes. People who dismiss this only think about race day. It is what is happening in practice with the new shoes week in and week out that really helps. This is why times and depth have improved all the way from high school to pros.

Another rojo geneticist? In my day we were better and there were more of us than a decade before. And yes, our shoes AND tracks were much better than the decade before us. Almost everyone of my peers ran in the morning before school. No one complained about sh!t.There was no such thing as meets with 10 time-trial heats in each event.

I don't claim to be an expert, but in my experience, the tendency to have a bad race (or frequent bad races) stems from a lack of aerobic development.

Elites and their coaches tend to have access to far more information regarding periodization than they ever have before, not to mention the proliferation of threshold training - which seems to have made a huge difference in both an athlete's level of performance and consistency.

I'm not putting it entirely down to this; shoes, bi-carb, training groups among other things have all made a difference, but the way mid-distance and distance runners train today is vastly different to the way they were training just 10 years ago.

You may argue that threshold training has been around for decades, but it wasn't the focal point of a program the way that it is today.

I don't know how you support that statement?