I've always wondered about this, but have never seen a thread on here about it.
Did different runners succeed in different eras because they were better suited to that era's training?
The big example everyone always cites is Roger Bannister and his low mileage and intervals; they say that if he ran today with today's training methods he would 3:4x or whatever. But what if he just thrived off of that type of training? And if he ran today he would only be a 3:55 miler? Maybe his body was best suited to less mileage and hard intervals?
What about someone like Chris Solinsky? One of the major reasons he is successful is because he can handle and adapt to training better than others - would he have succeeded in the 1950s or 60s where people trained differently and he didn't have the knowledge to put in the large amounts of training.
Or maybe talent is just talent, and some people are just faster than others.