coach d wrote:
For the record:
There were 41 people in NCAA D1 that ran 10.30 or faster last season.
The were 4 people in high school that ran that fast wind-legal.
There were 151 people in D1 that ran 10.50 or faster.
I think it's likely that those people ran faster in college than they did in high school, and so many of them that very few have any chance of a pro contract.
And a bunch of people above like Lease running their "mouths" off have no idea what they're talking about.
I was going to say coach d's stat ends the thread, most of them improve. But consider this made-up scenario:
Let's say 50 incoming freshman have run under 10.50 and 1000 of them have run under 11.00. Now, let's say only 40% of all runners actually improve regardless of ability, and lets say of those 10.50-11.00 20% of them improve to the point where they're under 10.50
Thus, even though 60% of runners got worse, we now have at least 220 who are sub-10.50, despite only 50 coming in.
If you look at the top HS milers in the USA of all time, many of them didn't improve their PBs - Danielson didn't, Verzbicas didn't, Lindgren didn't, Hall didn't (some went to longer distances obviously)...
So in conclusion:
1. I could believe that most runners get worse despite that there are more runners under any certain benchmark
2. Most of the "reasons" are still shit. No, the reason has nothing to do with sprinters suddenly liking football and partying. The reason seems pretty simple - the faster you've already run, the harder it is to improve.
If you suck, you can improve with very little effort. But if you've already achieved a high level (as most college sprinters have), it takes a lot of work just to stay at that level, let alone improve, and even the slightest setback can halt your improvement.