Times Are Getting Faster: What's Changing?

Timing mechanisms have improved through better technology. Digital timers are on average 0.02% more efficient (i.e. faster) than the old analog timepieces. The implications are obvious.

0/10

Oops...meant 10/10

setmefree wrote:

Over the last century, times (both world records and numbers of people under a certain mark) in distance running have come down steadily (not necessarily linearly)--I don't have the math or the numbers, but we're definitely getting faster. Lydiard Proponents, including John Kellog, will argue that from a coaching / training standpoint, the principles of the 70s are still the most valid, while others will argue that modern periodization schemes and speed / strength training have taken hold. What do you think has been the impetus behind the steady improvement of runners? (lets not have too much lydiard or coe bashing here)

1) Times have come down because the Internet got invented and took off.

2) Smart coaches like JK got on the Internet and told people how to train.

3) PEople started training better and the depth of times is now staggering.

Think about it. People across the globe now know how to train properly. Back in the day when Lydiard told dellinger that jogging was good for you, that was a big secret. Now the latest training is known everywhere pretty much instantly.

I'm 40. A friend of mine went to grad school at a major D1 school in about 1997 or 1998. He said the team didn't do tempo runs. Didn't do them. Can you imagine that?

So with everyone training at least ok, the depth of times in the HS and college ranks is monumentally better now than it was 15 years ago. And what happened 15 years ago, the browser took off. Netscape was acquired by AOL.

As for marathon times, it's simple. Money = more people running it. The world records at 5k/10k and marathon are all pretty much equivalent.

Much of the drop in times over the last three decades or so is attributable to the emergence of East Africans on the running scene.

Simply put, you have a wider and deeper talent pool to draw from (larger sample size). Even if natural running talent were distributed evenly across the globe, this would likely result in faster times. But the fact is that East Africans are much more likely than other populations to have a high baseline running ability and a high responsiveness to training.

Human evolution has continued and slow runners have been selected out.