Freddaryl Smith wrote:
There were 350 Kenyan men that broke 2:20 for a marathon in 2007. Those are just Kenyan stats and say nothing about how many raced on American shores. 350 is a startling, heavy number of men from one country to run so fast in one year. You want more American heroes? You want more space in the print media? Run faster America. You want a hero- become one.
not that startling number when you consider 295 americans were sub 2:20 in 1983. Only 2 of them had debut under 2:14. What toni is pointing out is that we need to find a way to keep americans in the sport long enough that they develop to compete with the africans. We aren't doing that, its better then 10 or 15 years ago, but guys like me, middle of the road performances making enough to scrape by, are rare. they were everywhere in the early 80's. Look at meb and todd williams and bob kennedy's college PR's if they graduated this year they wouldn't get a shoe deal. we need more solutions. there are 40 or 50 training camps with 20 to 100 guys each in kenya until we come up with a means of keeping 100 american men training near full time we will get our asses handed to us by the africans end of story.