HRE wrote:
What are you defining as the "old days" and who are you thinking of that could go under 1:02 in a half marathon but not 2:10 for the marathon? I ask because in what I'd call the old days the half marathon was rarely run and not done all that seriously when it was. I cannot think what guys like Rodgers, Kempanen, etc. did in half marathons so if you had some examples I'd be interested.
Malmo. Mark Curp.
rojo wrote:
Take a look at the list of tallest marathoners ever over 6'0. It's not pretty:
http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=5434685Now go read sports gene.
Not really the height, it's the distal weight of ankles/wrists and weight to height ratio. East and North Africans typically have very thin and light lower limbs with extremely low weight to height ratio.
Guys like Teg and Solinsky are monsters compared to the bird boned Africans, their power got them through 10k, but not much beyond. Sorry if this is from Sports Gene, haven't read it.
rojo wrote:
Yes, whites run pretty fast for 5k/10k but not the marathon. My argument would be most white Americans are too large for the marathon. It's better to be small. 2:06 is about the best we can really hope for.
Take a look at the list of tallest marathoners ever over 6'0. It's not pretty:
http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=5434685Now go read sports gene.
This. Ryan Hall is the outlier, and he grew up at very high altitude and ran a lot of volume from a young age. Now he is cooked. Culpepper was another outlier who only popped one 2:09, and he was sub 27:30 for 10,000 I believe.
Little guys with low body mass have far greater upside in the marathon. What is the fastest marathon ever run by someone taller than 6'2"?
HRE wrote:
One to two marathons a year is significantly more than most US runners do now for any consistent length of time. Also, we don't know if Bill would have been faster, slower, or the same had he run only one or two marathons a year. As it was, he generally ran one or two "serious" ones a year and was likely doing the others for money. Today as a 2:08-2:10 guy he'd make enough from those efforts and from shorter races that he wouldn't need the third or fourth marathons.
I bet Rodgers knows more about himself than anyone on this board knows about him. But I might be wrong on that.
It would be great if he'd chime in. But even he wouldn't know for sure what he'd have run if he'd done fewer marathons. I think I'd have been faster if I'd run more of them but I don't know that. No matter, one or two marathons a year is still significantly more than most of our current guys are doing consistently.
Gene Autry wrote:
East and North Africans typically have very thin and light lower limbs with extremely low weight to height ratio.
I understand this theory but I think it might be more complicated. The North Africans seem to be quite a lot more muscular in the lower limbs compared with the East Africans. And then you have the Japanese who are definitely fairly stocky in the lower limbs compared with even the Europeans yet they keep churning out Sub 2h 10 min marathoners year in year out. There is obviously something quite complex about the biomechanics of running eficiency and it is not only related to lower limb sizes.
"back in the day" the Brits Ron Hill (1970) and Ian Thompson (1974) broke 2 hours 10 minutes. Without illegal aids, without ever being full time professional runners, without running in paced races on courses specifically designed for fast times. Can't think how they did it! Possibly, consistent hard work over a period of many years had something to do with it?
somebloke wrote:
marilson dos santos - multiple marathons under 2:10s
the current list of americans just don't have the talent.
He's not white, he's Hispanic.
Elder of Zion wrote:
somebloke wrote:marilson dos santos - multiple marathons under 2:10s
the current list of americans just don't have the talent.
He's not white, he's Hispanic.
Brazilians are mostly of Portuguese ancestry, and so is Marilson. Dos Santos is the 2nd most common surname in the country IIRC. Hispanic is, therefore, not correct. Latino is also not correct, before you even try to go there.
This guy is white caucasian, period.
Have you heard of geography, son?
updside don wrote:
ɟɹÇppÄ±Ç wrote:ı É¥Ép É pɹÇÉɯ ןÉsʇ uıƃɥʇ ÊÉ¥ÇÉ¹Ç ÇÊŒÇɹʎouÇ ÊÉs ndsıpÇ-poÊu ÇxÉ”Çdʇ ÉŸoɹ ɯÇ.
How'd you do this?
Use an old typewriter with a ribbon and a copy and paste facility, type your sentence, turn the ribbon upside down ( that's the tricky part) copy and paste and there you go.
HRE wrote:
It would be great if he'd chime in. But even he wouldn't know for sure what he'd have run if he'd done fewer marathons. I think I'd have been faster if I'd run more of them but I don't know that. No matter, one or two marathons a year is still significantly more than most of our current guys are doing consistently.
Agree (as usual) with HRE. To run a fast marathon, you have to be lucky in a way that you don't have to be in shorter distances. The weather has to be good, you need to have the right level of competition in the race, you have to be 'on' with all that entails; going into a marathon even a little dehydrated or coming off a cold or coming down with one can make a huge difference in your performance. Your training has to have gone well. And, sometimes, even when all the factors you know of seem to be pointing to a big PR, you blow up at 20 miles after feeling great before that. Given that, it's probably necessary to run more than 3 or 4 in a career if you want to come close to your potential.
I would certainly not presume to tell Bill Rodgers what he should or shouldn't have done - there's probably few people on Earth who know more about the marathon than he does - but I would guess he had some great races in marathons he might have chosen not to run if the money in the ones he wanted to run had been better. I also think if he had been choosier, the running boom, the whole sport would have been lessened. I'm old enough to remember that his mere presence at a race would increase the attention it received by several fold.
I'm gonna throw out a theory here that really hasn't been discussed before.
I can't speak for non-American white runners, but in the U.S., our lifestyle is not at all conducive to producing fast distance runners. There are 15-year-old kids living in U.S. suburbs who have more pressure on them than CEOs of large companies. Our current system is to have teenagers work around the clock to pad their high school credentials, just so their families can pay $200,000 to get an undergraduate degree at a respectable school. It's a system that breeds stress, which is incredibly unhealthy and thus bad for running.
Let's compare two equally talented teenage runners, one from the U.S. and one from a less wealthy part of the world:
U.S. Teen - Wakes up at 6am to go to school after staying up late to finish a paper. Dad has already left for work because he's working extra hours to afford his son's future college tuition. Mom is stressed because she's barely seen dad all week, so she scolds teen for getting a 'B' on a quiz. 'B's aren't going to get her son into a top school.
Teen, already stressed, heads off to seven hours of classes based on memorization and regurgitation of material. He has a test and quiz today, on top of the paper that was due. He spends the entire day seated at a desk, wracking his brain to remember names, dates, and terms. His only fuel for the day has been a bowl of Frosted Flakes with factory-farmed milk and chicken nuggets/fries from his school cafeteria.
At 4:00, his cross-country team has a duel meet. He finishes first overall, but his time has not improved at all from last year. He and his coach can't figure out why. He goes home to his stressed parents, who continue to fight as they crunch numbers to afford their son's $49,000 tuition the next year.
Teen from a Less Wealthy Country - Wakes up at 4am to help his family with the farm. Is on his feet working until 7am, at which time he runs two miles to school. Classes are based on real-world skills, and the teen is grateful to have the opportunity to learn.
Teen runs home at noon to do more chores. Around 2pm, he's allowed to train. His dream is to be an elite runner one day, so on this day he puts in 10 miles across rolling dirt roads, with pick ups every few minutes.
He comes home at 4pm, does homework for two hours, then spends the rest of the night relaxing. His family eats dinner together, grateful for the meal and each other. He is in bed at 8pm to read for an hour, then asleep by 9pm to be charged up for the next day.
Which lifestyle sounds like it would be better at breeding talent?
One flaw is that I bet that Japanese kids have even more stress, yet they are much deeper in depth at the marathon.
One difference I see is the collegiate system has different goals. Ekidens and road racing are big deals there. Their best runners are doing super fast 10 milers, half marathons, etc instead of strictly worrying about track.
Link wrote:
HRE wrote:It would be great if he'd chime in. But even he wouldn't know for sure what he'd have run if he'd done fewer marathons. I think I'd have been faster if I'd run more of them but I don't know that. No matter, one or two marathons a year is still significantly more than most of our current guys are doing consistently.
Agree (as usual) with HRE. To run a fast marathon, you have to be lucky in a way that you don't have to be in shorter distances. The weather has to be good, you need to have the right level of competition in the race, you have to be 'on' with all that entails; going into a marathon even a little dehydrated or coming off a cold or coming down with one can make a huge difference in your performance. Your training has to have gone well. And, sometimes, even when all the factors you know of seem to be pointing to a big PR, you blow up at 20 miles after feeling great before that. Given that, it's probably necessary to run more than 3 or 4 in a career if you want to come close to your potential.
So the only alternatives are either running 3 or 4 in a career or running more than 2 per year?
If you keep running two marathons a year for 5-6 years, you will have 10-12 in your prime. Or even 3 in 2 years for 6 years will give you 9. Isn't that a sufficient number for most people? With a few exceptions, most runners ran their lifetime best marathon within their first 10. (I think Noakes had an extended discussion of this in his Lore of Running.) And even Meb, who ran his PB at age 38, mostly ran 1 or 2 marathons a year.
DHruns wrote:
I'm gonna throw out a theory here that really hasn't been discussed before.
I can't speak for non-American white runners, but in the U.S., our lifestyle is not at all conducive to producing fast distance runners. There are 15-year-old kids living in U.S. suburbs who have more pressure on them than CEOs of large companies. Our current system is to have teenagers work around the clock to pad their high school credentials, just so their families can pay $200,000 to get an undergraduate degree at a respectable school. It's a system that breeds stress, which is incredibly unhealthy and thus bad for running.
Let's compare two equally talented teenage runners, one from the U.S. and one from a less wealthy part of the world:
U.S. Teen - Wakes up at 6am to go to school after staying up late to finish a paper. Dad has already left for work because he's working extra hours to afford his son's future college tuition. Mom is stressed because she's barely seen dad all week, so she scolds teen for getting a 'B' on a quiz. 'B's aren't going to get her son into a top school.
Teen, already stressed, heads off to seven hours of classes based on memorization and regurgitation of material. He has a test and quiz today, on top of the paper that was due. He spends the entire day seated at a desk, wracking his brain to remember names, dates, and terms. His only fuel for the day has been a bowl of Frosted Flakes with factory-farmed milk and chicken nuggets/fries from his school cafeteria.
At 4:00, his cross-country team has a duel meet. He finishes first overall, but his time has not improved at all from last year. He and his coach can't figure out why. He goes home to his stressed parents, who continue to fight as they crunch numbers to afford their son's $49,000 tuition the next year.
Teen from a Less Wealthy Country - Wakes up at 4am to help his family with the farm. Is on his feet working until 7am, at which time he runs two miles to school. Classes are based on real-world skills, and the teen is grateful to have the opportunity to learn.
Teen runs home at noon to do more chores. Around 2pm, he's allowed to train. His dream is to be an elite runner one day, so on this day he puts in 10 miles across rolling dirt roads, with pick ups every few minutes.
He comes home at 4pm, does homework for two hours, then spends the rest of the night relaxing. His family eats dinner together, grateful for the meal and each other. He is in bed at 8pm to read for an hour, then asleep by 9pm to be charged up for the next day.
Which lifestyle sounds like it would be better at breeding talent?
The flaw in this story is that it doesn't actually happen like that. Besides breeding talent is only about conception not developing it beyond that.
Most people now get their best marathons in their first ten tries because they don't run many more than ten and run them so infrequently that by the time they've gotten to 10 they're late in their careers. Jack Foster got his best after eight years of running and he frequently ran 5 to 7 marathons a year. Ron Hill needed nine years to go from 2:24 to 2:09 and was running at least 2 marathons a year and often more during that time. The friend I mentioned earlier got his best time in his 97th or 98th marathon fourteen years after his previous PR. There are few things in life that you get better at doing by not doing them.
oh please wrote:
One flaw is that I bet that Japanese kids have even more stress, yet they are much deeper in depth at the marathon.
One difference I see is the collegiate system has different goals. Ekidens and road racing are big deals there. Their best runners are doing super fast 10 milers, half marathons, etc instead of strictly worrying about track.
There's a HUGE difference between the American and Japanese models of developing athletic talent. For young Japanese runners, the stress stems from having to run fast. For young American runners, the stress comes from a number of angles.
In Japan, they take athletics (and thus, the health of their athletes) very seriously. In America, we just wait for a genetic freak to come along and run fast times in spite of our unhealthy diets and lifestyle.
Just Another LRC Idiot wrote:
Link wrote:Agree (as usual) with HRE. To run a fast marathon, you have to be lucky in a way that you don't have to be in shorter distances. The weather has to be good, you need to have the right level of competition in the race, you have to be 'on' with all that entails; going into a marathon even a little dehydrated or coming off a cold or coming down with one can make a huge difference in your performance. Your training has to have gone well. And, sometimes, even when all the factors you know of seem to be pointing to a big PR, you blow up at 20 miles after feeling great before that. Given that, it's probably necessary to run more than 3 or 4 in a career if you want to come close to your potential.
So the only alternatives are either running 3 or 4 in a career or running more than 2 per year?
If you keep running two marathons a year for 5-6 years, you will have 10-12 in your prime. Or even 3 in 2 years for 6 years will give you 9. Isn't that a sufficient number for most people? With a few exceptions, most runners ran their lifetime best marathon within their first 10. (I think Noakes had an extended discussion of this in his Lore of Running.) And even Meb, who ran his PB at age 38, mostly ran 1 or 2 marathons a year.
You are mis-characterizing my point. I think that, except in rare cases, people get 6 or 7 years to maximize their performance in the marathon. If you run 2 per year that's 12 to 14 marathons. Is that enough to get that one great performance? I think that, more than likely, it is. Is it for everyone? No. I know that in my own 'career' I averaged about 3 per year for 10 years, my best time coming in my 18th.
Anyway, I did not claim to have nor do I believe that there exists some magic number of marathons everyone should run. That said, I don't think that 2 to 3 per year is too many for someone who is properly trained for the event. I also don't think that most top guys are running that many these days. Finally, I think that, running too few marathons decreases the chances that you will run very close to your best possible marathon. Thus, most top guys should run the marathon more often.
Perfect! Absolutely spot on. One could also second that with the helicopter parents who've been hoodwinked by the travel / club/ "elite" soccer coach who they are paying $10k a year for their little star or starlett, when in fact their kid is a far better runner. Dropping $100k for $1,600.00 scholarship makes a lot of sense, instead of allowing the kid to make their own decision.
rojo wrote:
I just looked it up. The fastest non-AFrican born time in history not counting dos Santos of Brazil is 2:06:17 Toshinari Takaoka of Japan.
Takaoka ran 2:06:16. Faster than Hall.