Your God was PRE.
Your God was PRE.
Discuss Pre wrote:
Your God was PRE.
Brilliant.
Seriously this has been discussed on here many many times. (And from reading the board many ignorant fans think it still sucks.)
In brief:
- emergence of the east africans
- lack of post collegiate support & training groups
- the move towards professionalism, people started chasing checks, not championships. (Granted I want the money in the sport.)
- the collective move away from big mileage.
- the emergence of the east africans. It's such a huge dominating factor that it needs to be listed twice.
- lack of PED testing in the early 90's. There were a lot of dirty athletes turning in crazy times dominating the international scene, and virtually no testing for EPO.
I think the coaching is better now and the post collegiate athletes have gotten into good systems.
Salazar, Schumaker an Cook have been responsible for a lot of this.
And with that, Nike has been the engine that has dedicated more resources than ever before.
Gags and Centro1 had something going with Reebok in the 90's but the current system is better.
And the best Enclave runners weren't the Reebok guys.
I fear a downslide coming soon as all of these colleges keep cutting their track programs.
Which is why it's just one of the factors and not THE factor like people used to think.
BTW, look what happened with the 800/1500 m after 2005, when the fight against blood doping was temporarily successful. The times were worse than in mid-80's! It seems that the today's army of kipcheaters can't even train properly. They rely on drugs. Without them, they are pitiful poor fellows.
Renato it's ok you can use your real name. I'd recognize your broken English anywhere.
I am not Renato, but if you correct my "broken English", I will be glad that I can learn something new.
coe
You're right, few East Africans have success in the distance events. What a silly idea.
I think a good football scout or coach would spot a good runner a mile away. Say something like. Hey son, why you wasting you time and talent. Come lift weights and play football.
folks did not want to put the time in to become really good
Brilliant.
Seriously this has been discussed on here many many times. (And from reading the board many ignorant fans think it still sucks.)
In brief:
- emergence of the east africans
- lack of post collegiate support & training groups
- the move towards professionalism, people started chasing checks, not championships. (Granted I want the money in the sport.)
- the collective move away from big mileage.
- the emergence of the east africans. It's such a huge dominating factor that it needs to be listed twice.
- lack of PED testing in the early 90's. There were a lot of dirty athletes turning in crazy times dominating the international scene, and virtually no testing for EPO.
This- the guy who made the Pre quote is an idiot. What was that for? If that were true guys would be training like crazy and we would have had great distance runners all that time.
- the emergence of the east africans. It's such a huge dominating factor that it needs to be listed twice.
It is such a silly myth that it must be debunked X-times.
In reality, the times of white runners started to decline before East Africans achieved any remarkable feats on track.
From 1986 until 1995, the 800/1500 m distances STAGNATED, despite growing numbers of Africans in annual lists. Africans were actually running almost the same times like before, only their competition started to disappear. In other words, their "emergence" in these distances was a mere optical illusion. They remained on track alone.
Only in the 3000-10 000 m, the times started to improve after 1990, but it was not an unusual development different from previous decades. The real big change came as late as with the advance of EPO in 1995.
Web links are not allowed?
old coach man wrote:
folks did not want to put the time in to become really good
dog s#$t
hard work is the easy part
if it was simple as hard work everyone great at something
They needed Alan Webb to start getting people to believe.
runn wrote:
- the move towards professionalism, people started chasing checks, not championships. (Granted I want the money in the sport.)
- the collective move away from big mileage.
I want to touch on and highlight these 2 points.
1st- Professional didn't hurt as much in that regard. It helped internationally but hurt nationally.
Internationally, it gave financial incentive for East Africans to run. The median income there is less than $1 a day by some accounts. So why wouldn't a talented kid train hard for either track or marathon, depending on his talent to make money? If you win a major city marathon its $75,000 correct? Plus appearance fee, course record bonuses, sponsor bonuses, it makes a big pay day. And its much more money than they could have made in their entire lifetime if they had an honest job. Plus, jobs in Kenya are very hard to get.
Nationally, it hurt because now less athletes continued after college. If you didn't get a shoe sponsor you didn't have the support to train at a high enough level to reach your potential, so you got a job instead and ran enough to stay in shape but nowhere near your potential. In addition to this, those that went pro didn't have large training groups.
In Kenya you can have as many as 100 athletes in a training group all working very hard, some will make it, some will not. But by having those numbers, it makes everyone better. You can ALWAYS run better with teammates than without. With professionalism in the USA, most elites trained on their own, and very few had teammates. Sometimes you need teammates who aren't professional to help you. This is what helped Bill Rodgers in his prime, because he had his GBTC teammates.
2nd- big mileage is the optimal program for some, and is mandatory for reaching potential in the marathon(Wilson Kipsang and Geoffrey Mutai are considered low mileage and do 110 mpw and 115-125 mpw respectively). But that said, if you can run 100+ mpw and stay healthy while doing 2 hard workouts a week, you will no doubt run very VERY close to your maximum potential. Maybe you don't reach all of your potential, but you get pretty close.
Therefore, it can be rationalized that if you take a bunch of guys and have them run 120-140 mpw you'll have a lot more depth than if you had them do 80-100 mpw. With proper coaching, the 80-100 mpw group will produce a better top athlete (probably not in the marathon though, need more mileage).
So lets say you have 80 sub 212 guys(in USA) as opposed to the low figures we churn out now, is that better? Depends on how you look at it. I think it is, because you have more depth, and then you'll have a genetic freak who is a higher responder to high mileage than any science or logic can rationalize (Bill Rodgers) and he'll be your front runner(think Frank, Bill, AlSal from 71-82; Ryan, Meb, Ritz 2004-present).
This is a very interesting topic(both points) and they really deserve their own threads. What do you guys think? Throw everyone to the wolves with mega mileage and have depth and hope for a Bill Rodgers type genetic freak? or keep doing what we're doing?
My personal take is that what we're doing is not working, our depth is laughable and our top athletes are complete non-factors (talking marathon here). Worth adding, I think someone like Frank Shorter or Bill Rodgers would run much faster today, because we have better shoes, better apparel, the mental barrier is adjusted(when Banniser broke 4, lots of guys then broke 4; when the world record is 2:03, 2:10 doesn't seem fast; but when the world record is 2:08 on a questionable course, 2:10 is top notch), and faster courses(Berlin) today. Only thing that would worry me about Bill, is that he wouldn't have his GBTC teammates in today's era.
Exactly PRE was GOD and for some reason the nation became content with those types of guys instead of the best in the world.
Well, the first running boom got ignited when Shorter won gold in Munich '72. The movement's recoil seemed to coincide with the Decker and Salazar flameouts in the '84 Oly's.
I don't recall a golden era of American distance running. So its basically sucked forever?
boomtown rascals wrote:
Well, the first running boom got ignited when Shorter won gold in Munich '72. The movement's recoil seemed to coincide with the Decker and Salazar flameouts in the '84 Oly's.
partly yes. I think also, it was cheaper to live back then. So you could run 20 miles a day without much in the way of a job and get by on food stamps alright.
And yes, our golden era was 1970s and early 1980s. Shorter ignited the running boom, Rodgers rode it to the top and at its peak, Salazar got it in its twilight years. Let's call this golden era 1972-1982. Shorter was king in 1972-1976, Rodgers came on the scene in 1975 and validated himself in 1976 NYC then stayed king until mid 1980 then Salazar until 1982.