So maybe Bob Kennedy wasn't so great after all.

is a registered login wrote:

E. Africans clean since nice wrote:

Time to wake up. People have been running on or around 13:00 for over 30 years but only during a few periods from a few camps have people buried 13 minutes.

Time to wake up. Americans have been running around 13:20 for over 30 years but, excluding Kennedy, only during the last year and only from Oregon based runners have American's buried 13 minutes and 27 minutes. And all 3 dudes were pretty mature average runners until last year. Hmmmm.

You didn't do your research.

Let me help you out:

Fam, Goucher, Meb, Abdi, Broe, Solinsky, Teg, Webb and thats just off the top of my head. These guys all ran 13:12 or faster and all in years before the last year. Rupp ran 13:14 this year but the guy just graduated college and it's pretty typical for NCAA (foreign or domestic) guys to make time jumps after college.

Also, Lincoln ran an 8:10 two mile and never ran the 5 but that's pretty clearly at 13:05-13:10 effort since the Kenyans he nearly beat were well under 13 runners.

Ritz had already run a 13:16 if you want to round that up 4 seconds to 13:20 so be it but how does a marathoner run faster 5K's when he's not running 5ks because he's running marathons?

The E. Africans mentioned were track guys racing the european circuit.

And lastly, none of our guys have "crushed" 13 minutes yet, they have snuck under it. 12:37, 12:39, 12:40 etc. etc. up to 12:50 would be crushing it.

Malmo, be interesting to see one of your graphs depicting sub 13 performance by year since 1990. I think it would be a telling story. Do it myself but I'm not a wizard like you.

is a registered login wrote:

Time to wake up. Americans have been running around 13:20 for over 30 years but, excluding Kennedy, only during the last year and only from Oregon based runners have American's buried 13 minutes and 27 minutes. And all 3 dudes were pretty mature average runners until last year. Hmmmm.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then opportunity is the mother of athletic performance.

How different do you think those 30 years would look if those runners were competing at night, under the lights, in perfect conditions, and on Stanford's hyper-fast track?

In the day, NCAAs and AAUs were afternoon events. Are there any afternoon events any more?

How fast do you think that Pre would have run last weekend under the lights? 27:43? That sandpaper track at Hayward Field in the early 70s was one of the better tracks of the day -- yet compared to Stanfords track, a POS.

What about Craig Virgins wire-to-wire 27:39 at Nationals, nearly lapping the field, in the heat, in 1979? Forget the pacers, just imagine how different that race plays out in perfect conditions. Check out the splits:

65.1

2:09.5

2:41.9 1000 (26:59.0 pace)...

5:26.4 2000 (2:44.5, 27:12.0)

8:11.4 3000 (2:45.0, 27:18.0)

10:57.7 4000 (2:46.3, 27:24.3)

13:44.9 5000 (2:47.2, 27:29.8)

16:31.4 6000 (2:46.4, 27:32.3)

19:20.3 7000 (2:48.9, 27:37.6)

22:09.5 8000 (2:49.2, 27:41.9)

24:58.3 9000 (2:48.8, 27:44.8)

27:39.4 10000 (2:41.1)

13:44.9/13:54.5

I am pretty sure that kennedy was a low mileage guy in college and was still running 13:20. Yeah he ran 20 some seconds faster when he went from 65 to 100 but some of that is maturity in addition to the mileage. And it helps to have a crap load of talent so that you can run a 4:10 mile on 40mpw

12345 wrote:

The mystique with Kennedy was that he was doing it ALONE. While the rest of America was grinding away at low-volume, high-intensity garbage (and getting garbage results), Kennedy was going toe to toe with the Kenyans. His domination of the national running scene and his tenacity at the international level are a testament to how great he was. Rupp (as we saw on Saturday) has plenty of friends to play with in the US.

Where is YOUR name on that list?

Just asking.

Abdi, Meb are of African descent, I don't have to explain why that is significant. 13:12 is fast, and again, excluding Kennedy who displays the normal bell curve of performances for a sub 13:00 guy, the fast outlier performances by Americans have been around 13:05-13:12. And the distribution of these performances has been pretty normal. But then again, the fast outlier performances from European runners and Mexicans has also been in this range. Baumann has since got caught and that leaves only Mottram as the exception. Now, if three of those outliers, all from the same country, all from the same two neighboring training groups, all in the same 12 month period, broke 13:00(I'm calling 26:59 an equivalent to sub 13), than you have something like what has only been seen from Morroco and Spain in the early nineties, or perhaps Finland. How did those turn out?

The jump in performance from American runners is equivalent to that of Jamaincan sprinters over the last year. I am not talking about breaking world records since obviously no American distance runner has broken any world record. But I'm talking in terms of a country's percent improvement by its top performers. If you believe US is clean then Jamaica must also be clean. I personally would like to believe they are. But I know that history has shown that they are probably not, as much as I admire some of these runners.

E. Africans clean since nice wrote:

Malmo, be interesting to see one of your graphs depicting sub 13 performance by year since 1990.

More purdy pictures.

Sub 13

Year # leader

1990 0 13:05.59 Antibo

1991 0 13:01.82 Ondieki

1992 0 13:00.93 Kiptanui

1993 0 13:02.75 Kirui

1994 1 12:56.96 Gebrselassie

1995 4 12:44.39 Gebrselassie

1996 10 12:45.09 Komen

1997 8 12:39.74 Komen

1998 7 12:39.36 Gebrselassie

1999 10 12:49.64 Gebrselassie

2000 12 23:49.28 Lahlafi

2001 6 12:56.72 Limo

2002 7 12:55.85 Hissou

2003 13 12:48.81 Shaheen

2004 11 12:37.35 Bekele

2005 17 12:40.18 Bekele

2006 19 12:48.09 Bekele

2007 8 12:49.53 Bekele

2008 6 12:50.18 Bekele

2009 15 12:52.32 Bekele

I just talked to my brother Tim, who was #16 in the race and not only was it hot and humid, the track was built for sprinters. It was rock solid and not a normal long distance running surface. Bob deserved a lot of credit for winning in those conditions.

And if you think 90s racing was so poor, Tim's best road time was 13:27 and track time 13:39. Still not in the 12s but better than the times in this trial.

Mark

I'll second this. brilliant 5yr old find. thanks George, I really mean it. best letsrun post ever. bravo mr Kennedy as well. one of the greatest memories of my life is running behind Mr Kennedy at a race for 2mi once. Was an amazing memory then, even moreso today. (suffice to say he won and I don't think I was in the top 10).

I live in Columbus and Kennedy still holds the course records for tons of local XC courses, especially areas like Worthington and Westerville (XC powerhouses).

He ran Worthington in 14:53 IIRC.

MIT runs workouts in Worthington/Riverlea/Worthington Hills and Kennedy's name is on the course map sign. He was a legend here in the '80s.

Kennedy won ncaa cross as a freshman. He didn’t need super shoes and he consistently ran against the greatest runners ever (Geb, Komen, Tergat, Bekele). Kennedy is, hands down, the best 5ker America ever had. He is 10x the competitor of anyone on the current team. I can’t believe we’re even debating this.

bcun g wrote:

I can’t believe we’re even debating this.

No has been debating this for 5 years at least.

johnny5 wrote:

bcun g wrote:

I can’t believe we’re even debating this.

No has been debating this for 5 years at least.

Futhermore the result of the debate is Kennedy was a bad man. I wore out a VHS of the 91 NCAA championships back when I was in high school.

asdffdsa wrote:

Kennedy ran roughly 14 years ago. That fact that only 4 white guys ran faster is a testament to his greatness.

Bob retired 16 years ago and his best times were 25 years ago. Shows you how great he was

BK:

14x ranked in the top 10 US 5000m

9x #1 ranked US 5000m

2x ranked in top 10 world 5000m (4, 6)

Olympic 6th place 1996.

Former American Record 5000m (12:58 when 12:58 meant something)

Alan

Runningart2004 wrote:

BK:

14x ranked in the top 10 US 5000m

9x #1 ranked US 5000m

2x ranked in top 10 world 5000m (4, 6)

Olympic 6th place 1996.

Former American Record 5000m (12:58 when 12:58 meant something)

Alan

Yeah, im nostalgic after a few drinks and id have to agree. Watched him win XC Nats as a fresman (along with his female barefoot counterpart) in DesMoines. NAU pulled kut the runnerup trophy on the mens side. It was great to see a young up and coming talent moving toward world class.

Bob = Legend.

Case closed.

logs upon logs wrote:

Now that we have at least 4 white guys currently running who could beat his old record.

Letsrun: Where anyone that's successful has to be dumped on.

It's pretty pathetic that someone feels the need to make a take like this or needs to be discussed about an AMERICAN RECORD HOLDER. Sorry the guy was only the best american runner in history when distance running in this country was NOTHING on the world stage.

this tread is a shame to the sport.