Mo Greene Mile

If you think he can't break 6, you must think him incapable of breaking 2:05 in the 800 also. If he ran 2:05, he would then have to run 3:54 to break 6 for the next half mile. If he could break 2 he could run 8 minute pace. 50, 1:30, 1:40, 1:55 would also put him under 6. Maybe he doesn't get 5:00, but fast twitch muscles are not useless in a mile race.

runnin4tay wrote:

AMy friend thought he could run under 4:20 becuase he's an awesome athlete and he was still doing at least 4-5 miles a day in sprints, then lifting weights, plyometrics, ect...

Four to five miles a day? Are you serious? No f***ing way. You think he does 40x50m repeats or something?

I put him right around 5:00 flat. He's certainly fit enough to hold an amateur pace like that.

No question that he or any other athlete capable of running a 45 second quarter would be well under 6:00

I think 4:30 is way too generous. Sure he'd be under 2:00 for 800m, but he doesn't have much more distance in him than that.

I know it's not optimal or anything, but working out as much as he did had to give him SOME degree of aerobic capacity.

To 10th grader: You act as if Mo Greene's fast twitch muscles would completely shut down after 25 seconds. Believe it or not, sprinters do, in fact, have some aerobic capacity. Between their warm up, stretching, workout, and cool down, they do have the ability to go for more than 25 seconds. At 4:40 pace, (17.5 per 100) his dreaded fast twitch muscles would hardly be taxed, ergo, he could continue that pace for 4 minutes and 40 seconds.

I agree that Greene would be a disaster over a mile, even if you could convince him to seriously try it.

But, I came in here to say that I recall a rumor that Butch Reynolds ran sub-4:20 as a warmup sometime when he was in WR shape for the 400. Not that he intended to, he just started out jogging and finished flying. Probably BS, but that was the rumor anyway - and if any 400m runner could do it, it was probably him.

there is no reason in the world mo greene would run a mile. If his life depended on it he'd kill first before runnig a mile

Mo Greene can't outrace JV Girls at my HS?

PLEASE.

xcrunner5 wrote:

Below are the 1500M Decathlon results from the 2004 Olympics. You do the math...

Actually, you only posted one heat. I've posted both below. In addition, just to test to see if there's any correlation, I've posted their 100 times from the day before. My theory is that the faster you are at 100, the worse you will be at 1500 (due to muscle fiber types, as someone else already pointed out).

Heat 1

1. Santiago Lorenzo, Argentina 4:23.08 -- 11.10

2. Vitaliy Smirnov, Uzbekistan 4:23.31 -- 10.89

3. Victor Covalenko, Moldova 4:23.81 -- 11.28

4. David Gomez, Spain 4:29.70 -- 11.08

5. Nikolay Averyanov, Russia 4:31.02 -- 10.55

6. Eugene Martineau, Netherlands 4:31.79 -- 10.99

7. Haifeng Qi, China 4:32.63 -- 11.06

8. Stefan Drews, Germany 4:34.21 -- 10.87

9. Aleksandr Parkhomenko, Belarus 4:37.94 -- 11.14

10. Janis Karlivans, Latvia 4:38.67 -- 11.33

11. Hans Olav Uldal, Norway 4:41.70 -- 11.23

12. Indrek Turi, Estonia 4:50.01 -- 11.08

13. Paul Terek, United States 4:50.36 -- 10.92

14. Paolo Casarsa, Italy 4:56.12 -- 11.36

15. Prodromos Korkizoglou, Greece 5:17.00 -- 10.86

Heat 2

1. Laurent Hernu, France 4:24.35 -- 10.97

2. Dean Macey, Great Britain 4:25.42 -- 10.89

3. Romain Barras, France 4:27.09 -- 11.14

4. Attila Zsivoczky, Hungary 4:29.54 -- 10.91

5. Maurice Smith, Jamaica 4:32.74 -- 10.85

6. Roland Schwarzl, Austria 4:33.56 -- 10.98

7. Jaakko Ojaniemi, Finland 4:35.71 -- 10.86

8. Claston Bernard, Jamaica 4:36.31 -- 10.69

9. Erki Nool, Estonia 4:36.33 -- 10.80

10. Chiel Warners, Netherlands 4:38.05 -- 10.62

11. Dmitriy Karpov, Kazakhstan 4:38.11 -- 10.50

12. Florian Schoenbeck, Germany 4:38.82 -- 10.90

13. Roman Šebrle, Czech Republic 4:40.01 -- 10.85

14. Bryan Clay, United States 4:41.65 -- 10.44

15. Aleksandr Pogorelov, Russia 4:47.63 -- 10.95

It's tough to draw big conclusions from this, but just by glancing, I see that the 5 guys with the fastest 100 times were Clay (14th out of 15 in his 1500 heat), Karpov (11th in his heat), Averyanov (5th), Warners (10th), and Ojaniemi (7th). As a group, the fastest sprinters were average to below average in their 1500 ability.

I would put him at 4:30-4:35 for the mile.

As indicated by the above post with the decathaletes 1500 times - it is a matter of common sense. All of the arguments about Greene running 4:30 miles are based on the idea that he is a "great athlete." "Great" like all those decathaletes??? They are all very fit athletes - who do more training than Greene. They all have "aerobic capacity" to some degree. What's more, they actually do some additional training for a mile, have additional experience running a mile and have a hell of a lot more at stake when competing at the distance. And, yet, few - if any - can break 4:30 in the mile. There is absolutely no reason what-so-ever to assume that a great sprinter can run a fast mile. Short of him actually doing it, there is no reason to ever think that he could. There are 100's of examples of great athletes who TRY to run fast miles in a decathalon, yet can't.

I like the decathalon corelation, but I think we are forgetting one thing about the actual times. The 1500 meters is the final event of the whole thing, so there has to be (I have never done one myself) a HUGE factor of fatigue in there, probobly in the range of 15-20 seconds. I do agree that the decathaletes do more training than Greene, but they dont do as much running, and even sprinting will help you build up some measure of endurance over a longer distance. I dont buy the fact that if you have really developed fast twitch muscles your slow twitch get totally horrible.

The theory about fast-twitch muscle fibers being a disadvantage in distance races is patently false.

How do you think Alan Webb's fast-twitch count compares to that of an average person? This is a guy who can run a 47 second 400m- he is WELL faster than average.

Having lots of fast-twitch fibers is an advantage because you can recruit them on a rotating basis- firing some while resting others, thus maintaining a high speed with more in the tank. It's the concept of "speed reserve". Of course, it takes training to develop the needed aerobic capacity, but having FT fibers won't stop you from doing that.

runnin4tay wrote:

I like the decathalon corelation, but I think we are forgetting one thing about the actual times. The 1500 meters is the final event of the whole thing, so there has to be (I have never done one myself) a HUGE factor of fatigue in there, probobly in the range of 15-20 seconds. I do agree that the decathaletes do more training than Greene, but they dont do as much running, and even sprinting will help you build up some measure of endurance over a longer distance. I dont buy the fact that if you have really developed fast twitch muscles your slow twitch get totally horrible.

OK, I hear you. Just for the sake of argument, let's now have all the 1500 times now be their mile times. We still have the issue where the fastest 100 guys are among the weakest milers. And 9.80 is so much faster than these 10.5 - 10.9 times that if our correlation is correct, Mo Greene should be the slowest miler by a lot.

marijuologist wrote:

The theory about fast-twitch muscle fibers being a disadvantage in distance races is patently false.

How do you think Alan Webb's fast-twitch count compares to that of an average person? This is a guy who can run a 47 second 400m- he is WELL faster than average.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but hasn't it been shown that middle distance have a good mix of fast and slow fibers? That's why they excel where they do. I don't think you're proving anything by saying that Webb is fast. Of course he's fast. But he's not Mo Greene fast. He's not even as fast as some high school guys.

I'd give him about 4:40, maybe 4:45. Those of you who are saying he can't even do 6:00 don't realize how lame 6:00 is, even if he is musclebound. He could probably jog 6:00. Can't you?

Yeah, there are a ton of people who can run 6 minute pace for a whole marathon, men and women. To think that the fastest man on earth in his prime and fresh couldn't break 6 is beyond belief. Whoever thinks that must be horrible at running.

A number of people here seem seriously misinformed about what pure sprinters (60-200) actually do in training.

4-5 miles a day of sprints? Forget it. Whether you're talking about Mo, Carl Lewis, Gatlin, or Ben Johnson for that matter, the high intensity volume is about 2 miles PER WEEK. For Mo and the other HSI guys, each day's workout might be something like 3X300 in ~35 sec, 400-300-200, 6X150 (in 15 sec), or something along those lines. And the warmup--basically a bunch of progressively faster strides, drills and some starts--is about 1/2 mile of actual running, although for a race (with rest periods) the warmup might require 2 hours in time for world class sprinters.

Mo did (and the HSI guys still do) weight lifting 4 days/wk and track work 4-5 days per week. Nothing at all longer than 300-400 meters is done without stopping (Carl and the other SMTC guys went up to 600). Aeobic work for pure sprinters (extensive tempo) is 8-9 X 200 @ 70% speed with 90 sec or so of rest.

The extensive tempo allows people to run a decent but not fast by college distance stardards mile. Times would be in the 5-6 min range, but not sub-5. Remember Flojo's 5K?

Wariner or Sanya Richards, who do 2X800 in training in the fall, would be more interesting...but since you know Wariner's response about an 800, you don't need to ask about a mile.

He could break 6. He could not break 5. All you 29min 10k guys need to remember the time when you were between 5-6 minutes in the mile, you probably didn't break 5 on ZERO training. Mo Has lots of spring training but NO distance. Take a 10.5 guy tell him to run a mile he will be between 5:30-7:00. Mo, who trains harder than them still could not break 5, too musclebound and not enough distance training.