jtupper & others with knowledlge why does the USA suck

too much inbreeding with other slow americans.

Missing the will to push and make sure we develop talent, and make sure that talent doesn't have to put up with off season spot testing, just to be fair, while Africans and Arabs can hide and avoid off season pitfalls.

Develope your statement a bit more.

Simple. Race more. Go to Europe, get your ass kicked, learn like BK did. That's been the rallying cry since 2000, "We need to race more".

Alan

runningart2004 wrote:

Simple. Race more. Go to Europe, get your ass kicked, learn like BK did. That's been the rallying cry since 2000, "We need to race more".

Alan

Regina Jacobs is by far the most successful US distance runner on the world championship/olympics stage in the past ten years. How often has she raced in Europe?

-Mark

I must refer to my usual 4 ingredients of success -- inherent ability (what you are born with), motivation (intrinsic, not what your coach, mother, father, boy or girl friend want, but what you want to do), opportunity (what facilities, equipment, money for travel, etc. is available) and direction (coach, teacher, program to follow). Where do we need to improve? Hard to say whether or not we get interest from the most talented athletes, especially at the high school level. The question is why should a high school boy or girl go out for the track or cross country team? To get the talented people there must be some reason to want to do this. I don't question the enthusiasm of may of the youngsters who do run, and more power to them that they may reach high levels of achievement, but we must get more talent to give it a go in the first place. Younsters must see something good about being a runner. At the school level opportunity is not so bad, especially for distance runners -- for pole vaulters it isn't always so great. Not very many places is it cool to be a runner at your school. To play lacrosse, yes, but not to run. So the runners need more out-of school opportunities, especially during those early years. And of course there is always the direction factor; how are we doing there? There are lots of qualified coaches, but are they able to work with the better runners? Not necessarily. Our system rewards those who win, even if that winning is a function of nothing more than recruiting, so it is hard to identify who can and who can't coach. Then we have the copy-the-current-champ syndrome, where how to train is determined by how the current record holder trains, with little concern for any training principles or allowing time for improvement. This seems somewhat justifiable but also not very stable. We must know more now than we did 30 years ago, but it seems we keep side-tracking ourselves by questioning our methods, or each other's methods. It's a combination of factors and we can't keep placing the blame on someone else. Those of you who love running, keep at it and work for a little improvement each year -- you are never going to be wasting your time training. Those who coach need to consider what every workout you ask a runner to do, is doing for that runner, and must accept the fact that all runners are not the same nor do they all respond the same to any particular type of training. Lets' set about beating all our own records and building some confidence in our ability. The talent is out there; getting it to be matched with the proper motivation, opportunity and direction is the key.

jtupper wrote:

and must accept the fact that all runners are not the same nor do they all respond the same to any particular type of training.

Most do respond similarly to the basic training principles we have known for years.

I read a pretty interesting article a while back by Scott Douglas. I think his basic premise was that there were many more qualifiers for the Oly Marathon Trials in the 70's and 80's due to the baby boomers being a very large "generation".

I think Scott Douglas was right as far as pointing out that the key factor is how large are the demographics for a particular generation.

Right now the guys and gals who are in their prime are mostly generation x'ers. It was a pretty small generation when compared with the boomers or the generation that is now moving into their teens.

With a smaller population base in the x'er generation, you have fewer people who are going to compete and increase the level of performance.

I haven't looked at the numbers myself, but it would be interesting to look at this demographic data. It might give you some idea of how things will look in the future.

Nitendo, Soda Pop, Cell Phones, TV, Too little aerobic mileage, Too much interval training, Not enough racing, drugs...blah blah blah

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

I am sick of people saying that Americans run too little mielage. I think that it is not true for many...and not the only problem. Anyone ever here of long intervals, long hills, long fast continous runs, and consistency. We have got too many people running just miles for half the year and then hoping that they will improve over last year's race times. Try keeping your miles moderately high, whatever that is for you, and doing the longer sport specific strength work (not weight training either which, for the most part, makes you look impressive, but doesn't make you a faster runner) like fast mile repeats. Take a look at a lot of the guys 20-30 years ago and how they trained and you will see that they ran intervals combined with mileage the whole year round and ran as fast as guys now...but they ran on slower tracks and had heavy training shoes. Heck, Jim Peters ran a 2:14 marathon in shoes that weighed just over a pound each. Billy Mills, Bob Schul, Bill Dellinger, Jim Ryun, Marty Liquouri, Shorter, Bacheler, Tracy Smith, on and on and on would smuther our current top runners (not because of talent) if they ran on todays tracks because they worked it solid all year and ignored the "I just need to get my miles up and get my base going b.s. that ignores the key to racing is combining endurance with sustained power). Keep the miles, keep the longer intervals for strength, add a small amount of speed and race faster. Get to it and stop bitching about what everybody else is doing around the world (which is the training I just mentioned).

A fair amount of blame must go to the Western impatient mindset. You ever see an African train? Afterwards he can go sit in the shade for the rest of the day and be perfectly happy doing zip. Just watching the world go by.

Not the western dude. He wants to run badass sessions too often. If the morning run was poor, he can't sit still for the rest of the day and then hammers the afternoon run because his ego is so fragile and needs constant reinforcement.

If last week's intervals were x pace, this week he wants them faster. At any cost. If they're not, he's inconsolable and will hammer the next run. He's like a farmer wants to pull up his potatoes every week to see if they're growing ok. Can't let nature (natural physical adaptation) do its job.

If the western guy does 3 weeks at 80mpw, he ups the mileage, cause he read on the web that so-and-so the HS runner was doing 150mpw minimum. Like that old adage about getting promoted to a level of incompetency, the western guy keeps increasing his weekly mileage till he breaks down. And, of course, the more he gets injured, the more he rushes to come back... and so gets more injured.

The western guy also tries to double-think his coach, trawling the web to see what others are doing. You know anybody does that academically at college? Goes there wondering if they are good enough to teach him engineering or medicine? No way.

Yet so many of them (you) do it with their coach. I see it on here all the time. Just average and slightly above average dudes all thinking they need the best coach in the world to coach them.

Coaches who've been around for some time will tell you, sometimes it is not what the coach is telling you that counts, it is just that the two of you click. Funnily enough, if that click happens, the athlete tends to improve. You know the names of any world class coaches from Ethiopia or Kenya? Me neither.

So, it's really just that. Find a coach that knows his basic shit (and he doesn't need to be world famous, neither). Figure out if you can work with the guy and see eye to eye on the main concepts. Then shut your mouth, watch yourself daily for signs of over-impatience and just put in the miles. Whatever talent you have will come out. If you come to learn that you ain't no Geb, nor El G, that's too bad. There's many others in the same boat.

And drop this nationalism shit. If there was only one country in the world, and none of this nation-state nonsense, you wouldn't be thinking, "we suck!". You would then see that Geb and El G are just two supremely talented individuals who could've come from anywhere.

You don't believe me? Imagine that Coe and Cram and Ovett did not all appear in the same epoch, but 10-15 years apart. Many folks would be saying, damn... why wasn't I born in Britain! What do the British coaches know more than anyone? And the rest of it...

jtupper:

>We must know more now than we did 30 years ago, but it seems we keep side-tracking ourselves by questioning our methods, or each other's methods.<

What do we know now (concerning running/training methods) that we did not know 30 years ago?

I have looked at many of the best mid/distance-distance runners methods over tha past 50 years and there are many more similarities than there are differences.

There are too few athletes in the U.S. following the well known paradigim for success.

What is the "well known paradigim for success", Bob Hodge?

The paradigm is:

"Blame everyone else for our own failures"

"failure is the mother of success"

I think the talent pool has been shrinking the past 20 years or so... Too many very good collegiate runners just hang 'em up too soon. The pressure to get a "career" and the fact that there are so many options for someone with a Bachelor's degree and almost all of them pay better than running. I believe that's a reason why US distance running is worse now than it was 20+ years ago. It's not the only reason, but an often overlooked one.

Good answers from all that have posted. I think, The truth, might have presented the best answer thus far. In a nut shell it comes down to FAITH & PRACTICE.

I thought we would do better with the athletes we sent into the 10,000 given their PRs (27:13, 27:33 & 27:47?), but came away from the event with Culp running 28:14 & the others... What would our best three need to do to make a top 5 place next year?

Seems like if you read these boards long enough you see the conversation go back & forth from high miles (150+), back to hammering 4 works per week, plus drills, & 90mi/wk. Someone was also saying we need to work on our sprinting ability, I doubt that will help if we won't try to keep up the pace till the last 3 laps. This back & forth talk shows a real lack in FAITH in any type of plan.

jzs

Belief & hunger. (a strong desire)

http://www.atafa.com/catalog/top_distance_runners_of_the_century_motivation__pain__success__world-class_athle_1498356.htm

EVERYONE ELSE IS DOPING!