USA vs Great Britain - Distance Running

Maybe the US is attracting a lot of Britain's top running prospects. We've got Lemoncello, Lancashire, and Overall all running NCAA's over here.

UK=60 million, USA= 300 million... this is the biggest reason for the discrepency

I agree with David that the big name coaches I know or have spoken to (can't say I know/have spoken to them all) do know their stuff. If you speak to people like Storey/Baldaro/Bideau/Kim McD before... often it could almost be the same person speaking.

(But then there do seem to be some coaches who are legends in their own lunchtimes.)

I agree that coaching needs to be looked at though. I don't think some of the training is even as 'reasoned' as quality over quantity.

The club issue I mentioned before is a major issue in this. I don't think the two can be separated. There are more than a dozen clubs on my doorstep. There aren't enough good coaches to go around. I'm not setting a high standard of 'good' here. I've seen and heard things that make me wince.

Due to the number of clubs and the divisions between them there is no sharing of good practice between clubs or sometimes even within clubs. Plus there is more resentment than respect for better coaches/athletes these days. A couple of local coaches have told me to my face Bud is just 'glory hunting' by coaching me. (I'm sure he basks in all the reflected glory I have brought upon him!) One proceeded to tell me all the flaws in what Bud had set me for that evening... without knowing what it was. That resentment is there on smaller scales too between coaches in a small club and in a slightly less small club.

UK runner wrote:

The typical student lifestyle doesnt suit athletics, To much of a drinking culture. Yes they may stay in the sport but most not as fully dedicated athletes.

I wonder if the higher drinking age in america has anything to do with there higher standars in athletics...

Having been on an athletics tour to the USA, the binge drinking student experience is alive and well over there. Living the student lifestyle you describe is a choice, those that want to do it will do so, others won't.

At what point is someone defined as a "fully dedicated athlete"?

I agree with Simon on this one - the risks involved in committing your entire life to athletics are very high in the UK. Very few people can take that step and not end up struggling to live.

totally agree

we need a complete revamp of the existing club structure

ghost wrote:

Remember Bernie Ford, Dave Black, Foster, Simmons, Rose et.al - most of those guys were working full time and commuting (like Ford commuting from Surrey near Tolworth into Central London for his job at the Inland Revenue).

With the greatest of respect, civil servants were not exactly renouned workaholics in those days.

the point being made is that they were doing a full day

and not all were civil servants

Hackney was a surgeon who often did long shifts

Stewart worked in a gun factory

Foster worked on a building site between terms

Stewert (peter) worked in a power station etc etc

Stewart(peter)spell check failed me

"With the greatest of respect, civil servants were not exactly renouned workaholics in those days"

Precisely - in the 70's (before "work" and "wars" sapped their resources respectively), the Civil Service and armed forces provided the core of UK distance running strength.

So...Bush and Bliar are to blame

I think Peter Elliott's working days taking the prize for being the toughest. Coe, Cram and Ovett were full time athletes. That is talking individuals.

But talking general trends the existing circumstances from work to clubs to social expectation to the race calendar to awareness of the sport are less conducive to bringing people into distance running and seeing them train and race in a way that is likley to bring success.

There will always be those who will succeed anyway. You could argue the most driven people will find a way to succeed. But the front end of the National is not going to look the same as it did 20 years ago. Many guys with great potential are probably playing Sunday League Football and won't have the Paul Evans experience.

Top runners in the world now run sub. '27' and sub. '13' for 10.000 and 5000, and no British runner is close to those times now. That can be demotivating to see the top runners so far ahead in chronological times.

The top runners in the UK do well to run under '14' mins in the 5000 these days, with maybe a couple of guys around 13:25-13:30 (Thompson and the 'flying postman' chap). In the days when dozens of UK runners could run in the 13:20 range, they were competitive on a world level - and that, conversely, was a great motivator. Foster, Ford, Simmons, Black, Rose, and others knew that they could duke it out with the best in the world, and they did....

When Ford ran 2:10 in Fukuoka, he had only increased his training from his usual 70-80 per week to 100 per week for a 2 month buildup. Same goes with Steve Jones, who never gave up, and went from strength to strengh.

Also, you will notice that all the top British runners perfected their skills on a variety of surfaces, and track races were not neglected. The standards were so high in the mid. 70's to 80's that you had to run fast in Britain to get any recognition.

British runners can now obtain GB vests for running around 2:20 in the marathon - a very respectable time for sure, but nowhere on the world stage these days.

There is also a belief, in some running circles, that no matter how hard they try, British runners have little chance of making at the top in distance running, because of the belief (largely erroneous, unless proved with irrefutable evidence) that most of the top performances in the world are the result of illicit performance enhancing substances.

When you see an athlete like Mottram, who is undoubtedly clean (based on the number of times he's been tested - and yes, he is a 'target' for the testers) - then it shows it can be done.

Paula Radcliffe is a good example of a British athlete making it to the top - thanks to her belief that she can do it. A kind of self fulfilling prophecy that fuels itself, as long as her career provides her with good results.

Paula would be the first to admit that she was never the most talented of athletes. There were dozens of girls who possessed more native talent than Paula, but her strength (Paula's) was her ability (in conjunction with her coach) to develop a very gradual and intelligent training system, which progressively upped the ante from year to year. She has suffered few injuries thanks to her ability to fine monitor her body, and to incorporate periods of 'down training' time to lessen the chance of injury and burnout.

For a woman like Paula to run a 2:15 marathon, is a testament to her willpower and belief in herself. If a 30:00 10.000 runner like Paula can run 2:15, then you should have dozens of male runners in Britain running similar times or faster.

Whether doping exists on a large scale or not is open to discussion, but even if British runners attain standards such as 13:20/27:40 as quite a few yanks have done this year, they would still be in a kind of 'no man's land' in which they are neither world class nor quite good enough to make a viable financial deal, to make it worth their while to continue the lifestyle of the distance runner.

ghost

coach:

christophe_moulton@yahoo.ca

too many sessions........not enough miles. Needs to be a couple of periods of no racing and very high volume. Brits are doing sessions and racing all year long, backing off for too many regional type races

respect. your talking alot of sense. Now these herbal remedies alot of people are on.. I see Mr Conte is back in a 'straight business'......

-obviously there are many exceptions, though on a general sense the coaching standards in the UK are abysmal. Caoches seem obsessed with gaining all the coaching badges and attending stupid seminars +not enough time thinking for themselves about how to train athletes (both mentally and physically).

- the UK club structure needs a serious re-organisation. At my local track I can think of at least 5 clubs who train and compete there under different names. The result being that any talent is diluted even further by the bulls**t politics that goes on between which club an athlete trains/competes for. The standard of Regional league athletics matches has become almost embarrassing. Clubs regularly turn up to events with inadequete numbers of athletes, the result being that jimmy saville jogs round the 5000m in 25 mins, upholding the 'every point counts' motto that is so prominent.

to be fair not every 30:00 10k male has 24 hrs a day like Paula to get in 140 miles a week.

the standard of regular open graded meetings used to be pretty solid- now the only non championship meetings with any quality are the BMC races and the British League matches

road run wrote:

to be fair not every 30:00 10k male has 24 hrs a day like Paula to get in 140 miles a week.

Exactly, Paula can make a living from being a 30:00 10k runner. A male 30:00 runner can't devote his life to training as he will need to work too.

One good example is Huw Lobb - he's on or about the 30:00 10k mark, has organised his life well (although still works) and runs a 2:14:33 marathon. It's taken him years of work and (as far as I know) with very little official support. So it can be done, but it isn't easy.

ghost wrote:

There is also a belief, in some running circles, that no matter how hard they try, British runners have little chance of making at the top in distance running, because of the belief (largely erroneous, unless proved with irrefutable evidence) that most of the top performances in the world are the result of illicit performance enhancing substances.

I think you've been reading these boards too much. Most people I know don't really spend too much time thinking about drugs.

ghost wrote:

Paula would be the first to admit that she was never the most talented of athletes.

While I agree that her dedicated approach is the primary driver for her success, you don't win the world junior XC without freakish talent.