Can we now say that HEAT, has by far more effect than ALTITUDE.

Malmo,

I thought you grew up in the DC area. 75+ dew points are not that rare in the south (including DC) in the summer. Not saying I want big races in such conditions, but 75+ dew points are neither very common nor very rare.

I would support getting our best talent (under best conditions) on the team and then do what we can to prepare them for the races ahead. At least this allows the best runners to go to the Olympics.

The above was my comment and I still think that is the way to go. In other words, get the best people qualified then get them ready for what lies ahead. I tend to think the idea of the Olympics is to bring the best in the world together and see who can handle whatever they must face on that day. If you are smart enough to be better prepared for an unforseen stiuation then more power to you.

Anybody have data on the % dropout in Boulder, compared to the 18+ % who repotedly dropped out in Mombasa? Might give some indication as to which is the more difficult environment to race in. Maybe ask our team members who ran under both conditions.

Egh wrote:

I dont see though how extreme cold with snow can be acceptable but not the other extreme. Isnt that the TRUE test of one\'s athletic ability? To handle all obstacles. Zersanay Tadesse would be the first to disagree with this statement. He truly proved he was the better athlete of everyone today.

Also the trials should copy the Games atmosphere. The only reason why Meb and Deena did so well is cause they knew this was important and had a duplicate of the Athens course they trained every week on during their training and they both agreed this played a huge role in their success in Athens.

I politely disagree.

It\'s one thing to train for adverse conditions, but to take time out of a training schedule to race a peak effort under adverse conditions is probably not in the best interest of one\'s build-up for a championship race.

Whenever I hear an opinion like this, I think of Todd Williams for Atlanta. I seem to remember that they were simulating the Olympic schedule, which included trials for the 10,000. Tod ran the prelim at a very fast pace, I\'m sure because he thought that was what he was going to have to do in the Games to make the final. But between the hardness of the Atlanta track, and possibly because of making strong efforts in adverse conditions too close to the Olympics, by the time the Games came he was toast and DNF\'d at Atlanta.

UsedToBeKnowItAll wrote:

Malmo,

I thought you grew up in the DC area. 75+ dew points are not that rare in the south (including DC) in the summer. Not saying I want big races in such conditions, but 75+ dew points are neither very common nor very rare.

What does that have to do with my post? National championships aren't run in August in DC are they? It would be very rare for a Championship event, either Nationals in the US or World Championships elsewhere to be conducted in conditions with 75' dew points.

Beijing has a good chance of being one of those rare occurrences.

malmo wrote:

Souf Tejas wrote:

The negative effect of heat is heat stroke,the risk for which which begins in earnest around a dew point of 75 degrees (very common in championship/summer race situations).

This is not true. A 75 degree dew point is very rare.

I didnt write that..that was from the person i quoted in my post.

Altitude Is Overrated wrote:

Wow...I lost count of all the DNF's.

Idiot. They DNFd due to the terrorist attack.

It has nothing to do with training in those conditions its the fact that if you should be trained enough (this is only attributed to ELITE athletes of course) to handle all conditions. This goes beyond doing the proper workouts but also being having the proper diet that will allow yout o handle those conditions. Its apparent there were some things many of the athletes didnt pay attention to in their training that caused them to DNF, while those like Tadesse came prepared to handle it.

I wrote about the 75 degree dewpoint. I guess I was somewhat myopically looking at the near-at-hand cases of Atlanta, Athens, Mombasa (the worst case), and potentially, Beijing. Technically, yes, most championships are held at more moderate conditions.

However my initial point stands that Boulder is MODERATE altitude at best (as regards effect on human peformance). As one who has been to 14,000, I can attest to this personally. 5000' is runable, at 14,000' running is an anathema, even for the acclimated (Matt Carpenter notwithstanding). Off the cuff, I think Mombasa was about the equivalent of running a championships at say,

10000+' elevation. There would be plenty of DNFs. Also plenty of other championships trump the negative altitude effects of Boulder with their heat index.

My second point at least holds that altitude and heat have different effects, but terms such as "high" and "hot" are largely subjective, and are best defined by the effect on human performance (i.e. % of DNFs, risk of edema vs. heat stroke, etc.).

As an addendum I think it fair to say that Tadesse is the man to beat in the Beijing 10000 if the conditions are at all similar to Mombasa, even if Bekele makes a major acclimatization effort. That guy looked unfazed.

I hate it when people say altitude doesn't really make that big of difference. It makes a big difference. So does weather. You can't compare the two because they are different factors and some do better than others in the two.

wow you are brilliant...look how UK did at worlds...they were prepared and ready to compete unlike US!

62358 wrote:

I wrote about the 75 degree dewpoint. I guess I was somewhat myopically looking at the near-at-hand cases of Atlanta, Athens, Mombasa (the worst case), and potentially, Beijing. Technically, yes, most championships are held at more moderate conditions.

Not even a technicality. It is

Don't include Athens or Atlanta in there at all. The dew points during the 2004 events in Athens were all low 50-55, which is quite pleasant.

M 10k 8/20/04 10:30pm 77 degrees, 39% RH, Dew Point 55 degrees

W mar 8/22/04 6:00pm 86 degrees, 58% RH, Dew Point 56 degrees

M 5k 8/28/04 9:00pm 75 degrees, 38% RH, Dew Point 50 degrees

M mar 8/29/04 6:00pm 80 degrees, 51% RH, Dew point 54 degrees

Furthermore, the dewpoint during the Atlanta 10k was 69, coupled with the actual temperature being 80 degrees and the fact that track races where run at night, it was nowhere near the oppressive conditions of Mombasa 2007.

You're right about Beijing, expect dewpoints to be in the low to mid 70s, although it varies. The track events will be August 15-23 in 2008. 2006 and 2003 were very hot years with dew points in the low to mid 70s and temperatures in the upper 80s/lower 90s. In 2006 the dew points actually got up into the 80s!!!!

2004 and 2005 were much nicer in Beijing with DP in the 66-70 range. Still very humid, but not like 2006 and 2003.

2005 (a "good" weather year in Beijing)

Living in DC, I follow the dew point every day and I can tell you without a doubt that a dew point of 75 is EXTREMELY rare. A typical nasty morning will have a dew point of 70-71 and a really bad day will be 73. 75 is a once a summer type event, if that.

If you want to see consistent dew points of 75 or higher, you would need to go to some place like Montego Bay Jamaica.

malmo- anyone that can refer to 86*/58% as "quite pleasant" conditions for a marathon must be from the east coast! As a left-coast pussy, and proud of it, I'll take Boulder in March any day...

track dude wrote:

Living in DC, I follow the dew point every day and I can tell you without a doubt that a dew point of 75 is EXTREMELY rare. A typical nasty morning will have a dew point of 70-71 and a really bad day will be 73. 75 is a once a summer type event, if that. .

Exactly. Not only that, dew points tend to be higher in DC than in Atlanta, which most would not presume to be the case. Atlanta, because it is at 1100' altitude is above the thick humidity. Not so with DC, which is hemmed in by the Appalachian Mountains to the West and the Allegheny Mountains to the north, making it particularly nasty, especially in August.

While doing some research about the 1980 Herndon 10-miler in which two men died of heat stroke after wandering off the course to find shade, I uncovered some data that is pertinent here. From August 1-15 that year a heat wave gripped the East Coast. In DC the high temperature for the day was from 95-100 for those weeks, with many days in the 98-99 range. The dew point got up to 75 just once. Of course there were many uncomfortable days in the 70-73 range, but only once did it get above 75 during a 15 day heat wave.

In Atlanta during the same two weeks, the humidity was consistently lower.

62358 wrote:

malmo- anyone that can refer to 86*/58% as "quite pleasant" conditions for a marathon must be from the east coast! As a left-coast pussy, and proud of it, I'll take Boulder in March any day...

Sorry to mislead you.

Quite pleasant is referential to short athletic activities and non-athletic activities. It's still very problematic for marathon racing. It was very hot for the start of the womens marathon, but there was a catch: with the low angle of the late August Sun due to the late evening start it's not near as bad as a 10am or noon start at 70-75 degrees. As a runner, you should know this already, on hot days you wait (or should wait) later in the evening to get in that run.

From reading the responses in these threads, I'm very shocked that so many "runners" aren't aware of the conditions that surround them in the natural world, nor aware what actually drives those conditions. Weather is everything in running, it determines when you'll run your best and when you won't. To me, part of being a real runner is that awareness. I can tell you the weather of dates decades ago by memory if I can reference the date to a workout or race. I've always assumed everyone paid attention to such things.

malmo wrote:

I've always assumed everyone paid attention to such things.

During the summer, the only thing I pay attention to is dew point. I pretty much know that I can run a fast tempo run if it's 69 or lower. If it's 73, I forget about the pace and just run hard for X minutes....there's no point in fighting it.

Derderian's theory about heat or humidity

I think there is a continuum in runner's body characteristics that determine weather a person is good in hot, dry weather or not so hot humid weather.

The extremely good hot dry weather runner has lots of sweat glands or big ones or very productive ones. They also do not have very visible leg veins. They are thicker and more muscular, but can keep going as long as the water holds out. When it is humid and not hot enough for the sweat to evaporate the runner below beats him.

The extremely good humid weather runner is thinner with road maps of superficial veins that carry heat out of working muscles and lose it directly on the surface. But doesn't have the copious sweating ability.

So if on an average day these runners may finish together but on the extreme days the race goes to one or another.

My theory is that one can see who is better suited for which conditions.

Lacking a grant to study this idea I have to ask if any of you have noticed these characteristics? Can you pick the runner with the greater humidity potential?

Tom

I mean to ask the plural you, you'all,not just Malmo.