John MF Trautmann - 4:18 mile @ age 46!!!

Trautfish wrote:

To put just how incredible he was yesterday into a frame of reference, the world record for age 45+ (outdoors!) is 4:16.

wow, this is really fantastic. and more to come.

actually brad barton holds the indoors record, 4:16 as well.

masters running should catch more attention.

trautmann is an animal.

not fair to compare to tony young's outdoor 4:16--it's tough to find many mile races outdoors. tony's indoor time (at age 46 also) of 3:57 for 1500m would be a pretty impressive target for trautmann, as would barton's recent indoor marks. great to see this sub-4 dude back at it...

Fish is a force on the track.

what does his training look like these days? crushing lots of shorter intervals?

So both Bob K and Trautmann got fat by 40, and have mounted comebacks, in which John can clearly smoke BK right now.

I doubt BK will get serious though, he pretty much did it all, whereas for JT there is unfinished business.

tellusnow wrote:

what does his training look like these days? crushing lots of shorter intervals?

It would be great if someone in the know posted up some of his training for all us old and overweight runners to help inspire us.

Now if I could just figure out how to get rid of the "Calf Heart Attacks" maybe I could get back at it too!

He was a beast. Awesome to see him back at it. He was running in the days before everyone was on EPO . Back then a 13:15-20 would get you something. Now people run the back half of a 10k at that pace.

Anyway, great performance at that age.

Trautfish wrote:

Amazing.... 6 second improvement from last year.

I remember when Trautmann ran 8:05 at PENN for 3000 when kids werent running that fast. I was like who is the guy!!!

Total legend! Great run fish.

Gary Oldman wrote:

Second edition of Better Training for Distance Runners features Trautman on the cover right next to Aouita.

Yeah, he was good. Maybe didn't pan out like his High school results indicated but he still did pretty well.

That's awesome!

Lagat will have to stay on top of his game to top this. Impressive.

A quote from last year's thread:

"Using an age grade calculator (but not necessarily accounting for indoors), Trautmann seems to have maintained approximately 93% going back to his 8:44 2 mile in h.s., his 3:58i at around 23yo, and his 4:24 at 45yo."

With his improvement this year, his age-grade performance should be some higher than when he was younger. But, practically speaking, he's about where one would expect for a person of his talent.

That said, time and injuries take their toll, so congratulations are in order to him for maintaining his level of fitness after so many years!!

How many other folks maintain their age-grade performances into their 40s or 50s? Is this level of fitness common or rare?

curious to his training which keeps him healty

socal cush wrote:

trautmann is an animal.

not fair to compare to tony young's outdoor 4:16--it's tough to find many mile races outdoors. tony's indoor time (at age 46 also) of 3:57 for 1500m would be a pretty impressive target for trautmann, as would barton's recent indoor marks. great to see this sub-4 dude back at it...

Would sure be great to have Trautmann and Barton in the same race.

JT ran for Adidas right out of college. Unfortunately his career was cut short by an injury to a joint in one of his toes. In the 1992 Olympics he did not advance out of his heat in the 5000. Back then I had the Triple Cast from NBC so I was able to watch and record all of the races. If you look closely at his race you can see very early that he was never in it and when he lost contact with the pack and was in last place he was limping noticeably. He never did regain nor reach his full potential as an elite runner. It's nice to see him run well now as a master.

Age grading has its flaws. One thing going for JT is he took a lot of time off and his legs aren't shot from all of the mileage. This is the advantage of guys like Pete Magill, Brian Pilcher and John Trautmann. It makes a difference to give the legs a break to raise a family or "hang 'em up" for awhile.

Also, JT probably could have crept very close to 13-flat if he had stayed healthy. He was a monster but always hurt.

Sammy Ngatia can maintain a 4:18 mile pace for 2 miles, and he is 55. Break 4 minutes and I'll be impressed!

If I remember correctly from back in the day he had some age group records in the mile or 1500m when he was 13 or 14.

UTEP 5 wrote:

Sammy Ngatia can maintain a 4:18 mile pace for 2 miles, and he is 55. Break 4 minutes and I'll be impressed!

Care to provide an actual race result documenting that? Ngatia only ran 1:00:12 for the Army 10 mile in 2012. Excellent for a 53 year old, but nowhere near converting to even a sub-10 2 mile.