In the last 3897 days, only one man has gone sub 3:47.00

Industree wrote:

Which makes Alan Webb's 3:46 even more impressive due to the limited opportunities to race the Mile. Just like in the 1980's, you have Bislett, London, Ostrava, and now Prefontaine as the big Mile races.

Absolutely brilliant run by Webb.

And I maintain it could have been a second faster in a major meet with a few high caliber performers at hand. He basically ran this all by himself.

aweome that he ran faster than Coe, Ovett and Scott. They must have run more times at the distance than Alan

Low key meet.

Several rabbits, one led for 800m, one led to 1200m and one chased him from behind until almost 1200m.

I kind of like the idea of a "footsteps" rabbit that is chasing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aTRTvo2ouo

The mile is a slightly different event than the 1500. If someone runs an equivalent 1600, then sure they could run under 3:47. For a 1500 only if they are distance orientated.

Good video above. Note he wasn't as fast at 800 as Scott. It's that third lap that got him the record, funny how even at that level it's so crucial not to lag at that point in the race.

Twitched wrote:

Plenty of people can run that fast, but everyone just wants to sit and kick nowadays

Bullshit. Everyone wants to run the 1500m, that is the reason.

Never Neverland wrote:

El G was the GREATEST OF ALL TIME!!!

Someone get ventolin to run his nifty little calculator. I bet it'll say he could've run 7:15 / 12:32

Actually, he makes a website to the calculations for him.

hold the phone wrote:

Here's a scatter-plot of top 1500 times (not just records) over the past 50 years. You can see the depth of performances building to a peak in about 2001 and then receding. It's not just mile times that have gotten slower since 2001:

http://sweatscience.runnersworld.com/2012/02/visualizing-the-progression-of-running-times/

Interesting. Maybe this is related to the fact that marathoning seems to have improved a fair bit recently. Perhaps promising young runners are not bothering with 10 years of track before moving up to the marathon (as used to be the case)?

pr100 wrote:

hold the phone wrote:

Here's a scatter-plot of top 1500 times (not just records) over the past 50 years. You can see the depth of performances building to a peak in about 2001 and then receding. It's not just mile times that have gotten slower since 2001:

http://sweatscience.runnersworld.com/2012/02/visualizing-the-progression-of-running-times/

Interesting. Maybe this is related to the fact that marathoning seems to have improved a fair bit recently. Perhaps promising young runners are not bothering with 10 years of track before moving up to the marathon (as used to be the case)?

That is exactly what is happening.

Webbs a wonder wrote:

aweome that he ran faster than Coe, Ovett and Scott. They must have run more times at the distance than Alan

I doubt it. Scott and Ovett would have run a fair few, but Coe only ran half a dozen miles between 77 and 85.

Webb had pretty economical pacing, certainly better than Coe's 3:47, and was taken to 1200m by a rabbit. In both Coe and Ovett's last record runs at the distance they were alone from about the 900m mark. Ovett from 1000m I think.

Coe's 3:29.7 is also superior to Webb's mile time.

I think it is a very pertinent point that the OP makes. Yes, the Mile isn't run as often these days as opposed to 10 years ago, but the fact that only 1 man has broken 3:47 in over 10 years, which in itself is almost 4 secs than the WR, just underlines what a "bizarre" period EL G ran in. For me it is pretty damning evidence that 3:43 was clearly enhanced through doping.

How the hell long is a 1500?

remember when bernard lagat ran 3:26.34 in the same race as El G (3:26.13) in 2001? lagat is the second fastest 1500m runner ever. was he using PED too? I doubt it. if he was it'd be sad because he is such a classy athlete. i think it's just a matter of what races people are focusing on right now pre-olympics. it'll come back in the next few years

Webb's Hcrit was high; all traces of epo gone; they hurried him into that bs meet while positive effects could be taken advantage of. He now runs with a guilty mind...

la-gotcha wrote:

remember when bernard lagat ran 3:26.34 in the same race as El G (3:26.13) in 2001? lagat is the second fastest 1500m runner ever. was he using PED too? I doubt it. if he was it'd be sad because he is such a classy athlete. i think it's just a matter of what races people are focusing on right now pre-olympics. it'll come back in the next few years

HAHAHAHAHAHAA

webb ran it in 2007, and 2007 WAS NOT 3897 days ago.

3897 days would be almost 11 years

douglas burke wrote:

webb ran it in 2007, and 2007 WAS NOT 3897 days ago.

3897 days would be almost 11 years

What the OP meant, was that in the last 11 years, no one, aside from Webb, has broken 3:47 in the mile.

to american d: "How the hell long is a 1500?" = 1500 meters. A full mile is 1609 meters.

Neither El G or Lagat were using drugs/EPO. They were simply naturally gifted athletes, with crazy endurance, great speed, and great running form.

hold the phone wrote:

Here's a scatter-plot of top 1500 times (not just records) over the past 50 years. You can see the depth of performances building to a peak in about 2001 and then receding. It's not just mile times that have gotten slower since 2001:

http://sweatscience.runnersworld.com/2012/02/visualizing-the-progression-of-running-times/

That is an interesting plot, but you need to consider the possible explanations. There is a cluster of sub 3:30 times and then they become less common -- that's true. But there are not really many points in the transient cluster of sub 3:30 times; only about 15 or 20 performances. Those were ALL run by ElG or someone right in his slipstream when he hit the gas with 600 to go (as he often did).

So the graph is just revealing what we already knew -- ElG ran the 1500 faster than anyone before or since, and he did it about 15 times, occasionally pulling Lagat or Ngeny along with him.

electron1661 wrote:

douglas burke wrote:

webb ran it in 2007, and 2007 WAS NOT 3897 days ago.

3897 days would be almost 11 years

What the OP meant, was that in the last 11 years, no one, aside from Webb, has broken 3:47 in the mile.

to american d: "How the hell long is a 1500?" = 1500 meters. A full mile is 1609 meters.

Neither El G or Lagat were using drugs/EPO. They were simply naturally gifted athletes, with crazy endurance, great speed, and great running form.

It is highly unlikely that a moroccan at the height of the epo era when there was no chance of being caught, and lagat, who had a positive test, were over 3 seconds better than the most recent generation of milers or those that came before them. The difference between 3:26 and 3:29 isn't talent, its epo.

How long has it been since someone has run sub 12:50 for 5,000?

Traveler wrote:

Bottom line is the mile is not an obscure distance.

Bottom line, yes it is.

These days how are sub-3:32/3:50 races run? They're rabbited. There are generally two purposes behind these races:

(1) To place high in a Diamond League race to win money. But out of the 14 Diamond League meets in 2011, 6 featured 1500's and 3 featured miles. So it's a 2:1 ratio there.

(2) Or people are chasing qualifying times to the WC or Olympic Games. These are ONLY 1500's. Can't qualify for London with a mile time.

So the vast majority of fast, rabbited type races that could be 1500 or mile are 1500. That much is easy to see based on the stat someone up above provided - 12 or 13 men have run the sub-3:47 equivalent since Webb. Face it, the mile is not important. You're citing a statistic for a seldom-run distance. Why don't you give us some stats about the 3k while you're at it?