Take me Back to the 2000 Olympic Marathon Trials - What was Running Culture Like?

Nancy Ditz

1960- 4.3 million live births

1975- 3.1 million live births

1990- 4.2 million live births

Has anyone broken Todd Williams 15k time from gate river run? Anyone know if that is still a record? I don't think Hall came near it. I remember reading Williams training blog online in the early 2000s from some article, maybe from this site, or elite running.

Interesting question.

I think there is a lot of good insight so far on this thread, but I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the increase in foreign talent in the NCAA ranks. I have to think that had an effect (there were years there where you would have 1 American in the top 10, and All-American would go down to 60's).

I've always wondered what effect this had, as it seemed to decrease into the 2000s (or maybe the Americans just got better).

I could see less American men going pro/elite if they didn't experience a lot of success in college.

I recall after the early 1990's the top American talent saw that they could no longer support themselves strictly by roadracing for prize money,

It was a lowpoint for sure in American marathoning. But most of the top guys were working jobs and trying to compete, 2:15 runners were considered contenders for the Olympic team,

There were very few training groups through most of the 90s.....and the ones that were around did not have enough funding to allow 20-something elite runners forego traditional jobs. By the early 2000s there were many more elite training groups with better funding. Good coaching, improved knowledge through the internet, elite runners to train with, and the ability to train without holding a traditional job was a good formula for success that still seems to hold today.

How does a 2:24 guy improve so much????

few clubs wrote:

There were very few training groups through most of the 90s.....and the ones that were around did not have enough funding to allow 20-something elite runners forego traditional jobs. By the early 2000s there were many more elite training groups with better funding. Good coaching, improved knowledge through the internet, elite runners to train with, and the ability to train without holding a traditional job was a good formula for success that still seems to hold today.

BINGO

As someone who coached through that period and was involved as the head of distance development, I have to take exception with the suggestion that coaching or philosophy had all that much to do with it. Are we supposed to believe that the coaching suddenly got bad for a period of 10 years? Coaches didn't plug tempo runs into workouts for a ten year period? Nothing has really changed in reference to training in the last 50 years. Perhaps one can point to Canovas extreme work with a few of his athletes. But, I think Zatopek, Pirie Kuts and few others would argue that.

What we saw in the late 80's and through the 90's was the result of the shoe companies pulling most of their sponsorships. A lot of money went to a select few rather than decent support for large numbers. We saw appearance money and under the table cash prizes disappear. We saw races catering to the joggers who paid the entry fees. This was combined with the incentives of higher starting salaries for all professions right out of college. We saw the athletes adapt a new philosophy that was already embraced by that generation of young adults...instant gratification. I saw dozens of top athletes, who could have run much faster, looking for the magic pill (some literally). Failing to realize that secret was hard work. The sense of cooperation between athletes and training groups had disappeared and did not re-emerge until Vigil and Larsen, the Hansons, Andy and Zika and a handful of others brought them back together.

There was a mistaken belief by a few of the good old boys (and girls) of USATF high performance that good marathoners would come from those 5k and 10k elites who had "lost a step" and would move up.

Yes, the internet made it a little easier to garner information, but we had all that info, it just took a few weeks or months longer to get it to us. Technical journals and serious Running tabloids had all the needed info. They didn't cater to the gallowalkers. Just my .02

Lived through it wrote:

few clubs wrote:

There were very few training groups through most of the 90s.....and the ones that were around did not have enough funding to allow 20-something elite runners forego traditional jobs. By the early 2000s there were many more elite training groups with better funding. Good coaching, improved knowledge through the internet, elite runners to train with, and the ability to train without holding a traditional job was a good formula for success that still seems to hold today.

BINGO

But it's not like Jerry Schumacher started reading letsrun and decided that his runners should do higher mileage, so this kind of explanation is way too simplistic.

So I'm assuming your guys have medalled at the recent Olympics given the improvement in standards driven along by fantastic music on shows like the X factor

In 2000, I ran the public marathon in Pittsburgh, which kicked off about half an hour following the Olympic Trials start (& following same course). A lot of us were upset that they did not move the starts earlier - rumors among our crowd included that they wanted full daylight for TV coverage of the Olympians; who knows?

It was hot and really humid (84% humidity at 8 a.m. from what I read).

The newspaper the next day gave the high temp on race day as 87, but a medic at the finish told me that they had a reading of 93; and yes, it was really humid as well.

Of the 99 trials runners, 21 dropped out before finishing. Fortunately, the Univ. Pittsburgh Medical Center was a prime sponsor and had LOTS of medical staff on the course, and a huge medic tent at the finish; the gurneys were full of runners getting saline drips to rehydrate, and waiting lines for the gurneys.

Everybody felt bad for Pete de la Cerda and Mark Coogan, who finished #2 and 3, who didn't make the time cut to go to Sydney even though physiologically, their races would have given them significantly better times in either cooler or less humid conditions.