Just 6 Of The Reasons Why The U.S. System Doesn’t Produce More World Class Marathoners

We dont have Nike, Adidas and Reebok training centers for school age children.

There are about 101 million kids in the US

12.5 million are obese

22.5 million are overweight

50 million play baseball at some point

18 million play soccer

7.5 million play high-school football

1 million play basketball

A few hundred thousand play hockey

The rest play Nintendo, Sony and X-Box.

Instead of donating running shoes to Kenya and Ethiopia, we should be donating flat screen TVs, game consoles and fast food franchises. We'd soon be competitive.

Randy Oldman wrote:

There are about 101 million kids in the US

12.5 million are obese

22.5 million are overweight

50 million play baseball at some point

18 million play soccer

7.5 million play high-school football

1 million play basketball

A few hundred thousand play hockey

The rest play Nintendo, Sony and X-Box.

Instead of donating running shoes to Kenya and Ethiopia, we should be donating flat screen TVs, game consoles and fast food franchises. We'd soon be competitive.

This.

Plus, we have transportation to bring us to school and back. HG ran 10k to school carrying his books. Uphill. Both ways.

rolo wrote:

Plus, we have transportation to bring us to school and back. HG ran 10k to school carrying his books. Uphill. Both ways.

at altitude.

Push Alt F4 wrote:

rolo wrote:

Plus, we have transportation to bring us to school and back. HG ran 10k to school carrying his books. Uphill. Both ways.

at altitude.

Through 3 foot high snow drifts, in 112 degree temperatures and against the wind. Both ways.

What is it about this place wrote:

Push Alt F4 wrote:

at altitude.

Through 3 foot high snow drifts, in 112 degree temperatures and against the wind. Both ways.

Running back to his house for lunch.

:|} wrote:

What is it about this place wrote:

Through 3 foot high snow drifts, in 112 degree temperatures and against the wind. Both ways.

Running back to his house for lunch.

in trainers

Its much simpler than all this. The average American who is a good distance runner in HS has one goal (maybe) an thats to get a scholarship to run in college.

For all the right reasons, he/she runs in college and drops it after that for a real job. A few of the more talented ones who want to keep at it, get sponsored and risk a short career as a runner, before realizing that they may be good in the US but cant compete against the Africans. What good are the Hansons, Steve Jones group, Terrance Mahons group etc? They produce nothing of note.

In Africa however, the mentality is 180 degrees the opposite. For them running hard and winning is the ONLY way to survive, and their only concern is to develop to be world class. A college runner or an elite US pro can't compete against this mentality because the commitment is so different. Mosop had far more to lose than Hall, so who would fight harder?

They also have the depth that we don't. We have maybe one good individual at any given distance event at a time, while the other 2-3 are injured or having a bad yr. We had Hall in the race, how many Kenyans were there?

The reality is we get by on luck, they get by on sheer numbers.

Tommy2Nuttz wrote:

They also have the depth that we don't. We have maybe one good individual at any given distance event at a time, while the other 2-3 are injured or having a bad yr. We had Hall in the race, how many Kenyans were there?

The reality is we get by on luck, they get by on sheer numbers.

I hope that you are aware that all of this ^ is effect, not cause. The OP was talking about causes.

I think it's a mind set and it leaves me confused. As the world has gotten faster the standard for marathon excellence in the US has actually gotten slower. There are several decent training groups and yet our depth in the marathon is not even close to what it was 30 years ago. 2:10 is still considered a really good time in the US and 2:14 is considered elite, why? The talent is there and the training is there but the confidence to go out and compete seems to have been lost. When we get that back times will begin to fall like they have in the 5 and 10k on the track.

JB800/1500 wrote:

:|} wrote:

Running back to his house for lunch.

in trainers

while carrying a Kenyan on his back

on the plus side between andrews, loxom, jock and centrowitz we show that our middle distance runners are starting to catch up to african countries

No money in it

Most of this was true 30-40 years ago when we were producing a fair number of world class marathoners. European countries, where the sport is centered around clubs rather than schools meaning that athletes can stay with a coach throughout their careers allowing the coach to focus on long term development, are producing no more world class marathoners than we are.

I really think the problem is simple. Correctly or not, westerners have decided that they cannot compete with East Africans in distance running so relatively few of them try.

fact of the matter is that elite runners really don't care about the marathon.

i feel like the marathon is sort of a secondary event. you don't get bekele talents / gebrsellasie running the marathon until they are in the twilight of their career.

i'd surely believe that anything that Hall accomplishes in the marathon, Rupp can solidly beat.

I think I saw you standing on the subway platform this morning? I threw some loose change into your can.

Exactly NONE of those points are reasons why the US doesn't produce more world class marathoners.

'the fact of the matter is that elite runners really don't care about the marathon.

i feel like the marathon is sort of a secondary event. you don't get bekele talents / gebrsellasie running the marathon until they are in the twilight of their career.'

No longer true

Copy & paste Geb's name like the rest of us

E. Africans are skipping track to go to the marathon. As a direct result, there are more of them running faster marathon times. Sub 2:08 is the new sub 2:10 for E. Africans. Thus, the comment about the college system is valid.

I think the gulf between the US and E. African runners is mostly mental and a product of economics. Very, very few in the US can afford to dedicate themselves to the marathon. There is very limited opportunities to get sponsorship and very few races that have accessible prize money or decent appearance fees. By contrast, in Iten, hundreds of runners are all camping out with training groups fighting like hell for the chance to race a marathon internationally. A win or good showing at a few marathons could mean enough money to buy a small farm in Kenya. The alternative is poverty. So, in Iten, everyone is pushing each other and no one has anything to lose.

Interesting take and discussion. Here is what my take is:

One of the leading reasons we don't produce as many world class marathoners anymore is that gradually our focus on the total capacity of work our athletes can handle has diminished and it's this total capacity of work that is paramount in the world of marathon running.

I think much of what the OP said are contributing factors in this.

Look back at the great runner marathoners we produced in the 1970's and early 80's and look at their mileage levels. Most were in the 120-140 mile range week in and week out for most of the year, year after year. And they did that while getting in a good mixture of workouts - speed work, tempos, long runs, "to the barn" runs. To do this took many years of build-up. You don't see that much anymore.

The muscular-skelatal and aerobic systems of the body has to be slowly developed over time to handle a good workload of both volume and intensity. This takes a long time to accomplish as changes need to be made in small increments with sufficient time at each new level for the body to adapt in order to be sustainable. To the OP's point, the current high racing focus of the US school system does not allow the athletes as much time to build up their volume base but rather encourages them to focus on the intensity and racing side.

If you talk and listen to guys like Joe Vigil, Terrance Mahon, Greg McMillan, Keith and Kevin Hanson, Brad Hudson and others you hear them talk time and time again about starting to work with a runner fresh out of college and having to spend the first several years playing catch-up mileage and capacity wise (and thus aerobic development and muscularskeltal wise as well) with the East Africans. The capacity for work we build in our athletes just isn't up to the standards of the countries producing many high level marathoners. And we are often trying to build it when they are adults and their habits and mind-set are already in place and hard to change.

Look at Coach Vigil and Deena Kastor as an one of the few positive examples that worked. He took her post college and had to slowly over many years add volume/capacity to her schedule. And after many years of doing this she finally got it up to a world class marathoning level and was one of the best marathoners in the world. But it took many many post collegiate training cycles of adding 5 miles per week this cycle, then another 5 miles next cycle to get there. This is a long time for post collegiate athletes to have to do this in the hopes of being world class. Instead what if their capacity was increased slowly and steadily from the begining of their careers (as young teens) then they would leave college in a much better position to move up to the marathon (if desired).

Arthur Lydiard laid it pretty clearly for us in a great open letter he wrote to U.S. Track and Field nearly 15 years ago. He said we had as much or more taleneted individuals for distance running in this country as compared to any other country. He said we just had to develop them properly and take a long term view. That we could not be afraid of building up mileage slowly over time and he warned us of over racing and an over focus on intensity for our kids. Largely we have ignored his recommendations and our drought of top marathoners is a consequence of that.