Why don't we just go back to the 1970s-early 80s for the running part of our training methods for marathon?

So you're saying there were short courses.

There were short and long. I ran before and after certification. In fact, I'm friends with Alan Jones who developed the Jones Counter.

Courses we ran were later certified. I remember one 6 miler (pre metric days) that was 5.8x, another was 6.35.

Needless to say, I ran a PR on the 5.8. LOL

Marathon course were accurate with a very few exceptions by the 70s London was originally called The Highgate Marathon and it was 28 miles long in its first running but that was in the 60s.. The major ones were with the major exception being New York in the year that Salazar "set" the WR there. Runner's World used to identify short courses.

runn wrote:

Bdshjk wrote:

I'm a teacher too. 30 years younger than you. And there's no way I can run after school but I teach phys ed.

I teach Social Studies and I'm the only teacher who runs in the morning. One of our PE teachers doesn't coach in the fall or winter and she runs after school.

I don't understand why you can't run after school unless you teach night school.

I don’t know about the PE teacher at your school but I actually exercise with my kids. I’m essentially working out all day which flies in the face of what the public perception of a PE teacher is ( someone who is out of shape, blowing a whistle, and barking orders). Anyway, the times I do go out for a run in the afternoon my legs are shot.

This is what I'm saying about the blue line.

Today, from Berlin, we were told that the blue line was the shortest route, or they'll say the blue line is 26.2, and deviating beyond ADDS distance. At NYC 81, the blue line WAS the 26.2, but it did NOT follow the tangents like today's Berlin course.

There's the difference.

And the difference I see, from the probably 500 times I've watched NYC 81 from start to finish on video, now on YouTube, I see FAR more times Salazar was outside the blue, than inside, on any relevant corner. And I saw that the blue line was, to most watching the race, where they were supposed to stand, pushing the top runners further outside the course. I believe Salazar ran 26.2 in NYC 1981, becoming the first to run 2:08 (Clayton's Antwerp course was short, I have no doubt.)

Just saying.

No one has ever been able to measure the course Clayton ran in Antwerp so nothing definitive can be said. What's your basis for having no doubt that it was?

HRE wrote:

No one has ever been able to measure the course Clayton ran in Antwerp so nothing definitive can be said. What's your basis for having no doubt that it was?

+1

Beautiful Day wrote:

Rodgers also won NYC 76, 77, 78 and 79, and the only reason we don't talk about 10K or marathon medals at Moscow is because we weren't there. Early 80s Salazar was tough on the track at 10K, unbeatable at the marathon 80-82, and Mark Nenow was popping fast ones for a few years even though you hardly ever saw him here.

Craig Virgin won world XC, and Pat Porter wasn't too shabby there, either.

Missing out on 1980 was huge loss for American distance running. Potentially Americans could have swept every distance race from 1500m through to the marathon and put up one of the most dominant displays in distance running by any nation at the Olympics.

There was:

Scott for the 1500m - possible winner, lock for a medal.

Centrowitz, and Buerkle for the 5000m- two contendors for the crown.

Salazaar and Virgin for the 10000m - again two contendors for the title, Virgin was world cross champion that season.

Rodgers for the marathon - pretty much a lock for the title given the way he was running at the time.

Marsh for the Steeple - he may have had his work cut out against Malinowski but he could have won it as he won the US trials so comforably and was in fine form.

The IAAF or whatever they were called back then wanted to measure the course, and were somehow not allowed. Construction has supposedly altered the route so much since, it would be impossible. There was apparently zero effort to measure the course in any way, shape, or form after the race. I've never even found an accurate map of the Antwerp course. You might as well call Rodgers running the 2:08 in the mid-80s the world record, given Clayton's run.

For NYC, we can see exactly how Salazar ran it. But really no matter. The record went from Nijboer to DeCastella, Salazar really only would have had it for 6 weeks anyway.

robbed by Carter wrote:

Missing out on 1980 was huge loss for American distance running. Potentially Americans could have swept every distance race from 1500m through to the marathon and put up one of the most dominant displays in distance running by any nation at the Olympics.

There was:

Scott for the 1500m - possible winner, lock for a medal.

Centrowitz, and Buerkle for the 5000m- two contendors for the crown.

Salazaar and Virgin for the 10000m - again two contendors for the title, Virgin was world cross champion that season.

Umm... ever heard of a guy called Yifter the Shifter? How about Coe and Ovett?

Cierpinski was not going to lose the marathon. Doped, too.

The race between Nijboer and Rodgers would have been something, though, and really a spectacle if Sandoval had been there (the trials would have been drastically different if we hadn't boycotted).

Scott would have probably won bronze. Marsh gold. Decker golds. McChesney possibly bronze. Salazar bronze. He might have skipped NYC that fall, given. It would have been The Butterfly Effect.

After Clayton ran the time there immediately were questions about the accuracy of the course because the time was just so much faster than anything anyone else had run and because there had been a marathon course in Antwerp that was known to be 600 meters or so short. I recall a letter in Runner's World shortly afterward from Track&Field News' European correspondent saying that the course was not the one known to be short, that Clayton's course had been remeasured, and that the time was valid.

After that the questions went away and no one doubted the validity of the time until the 70s were ending and no one else had even managed to get under 2:09 let alone 2:08:33 even though there had been many runners whose track times suggested that they were better runners than Clayton running marathons. So you started hearing people say, "Maybe it was short after all."

But those comments were based on nothing more than the record's longevity. Road construction, as you note, made a remeasurement impossible so the questions have been unanswered and likely always will be. There will likely always be some doubt. But when someone posts that they "have no doubt" that the course was short I wondered if maybe some new factual stuff relating to the topic has turned up that the poster might want to tell us about.

I recall two things from back in the day:

There was a media person or photographer who drove the Antwerp course immediately following or the next day. Having covered the race he knew the exact route. With his car, and adding the lap or two of a track on both ends, plus enough distance to get onto the track, the course came up about 1km short. Yes, a car. But still. Does EVERY car measure short? Make that 400m short, and there's Clayton's mid-2:09 at Fukuoka, totally believable.

Bill Rogers ran a 2:08.50 something in the late-70s, against a Japanese (?) relay team somewhere in or near Japan, but that event was ignored because it was a Sub-2 type of effort. A 2:08 was clearly in Rodgers' wheelhouse, given his 2:09.27 in the rain in 79 (see: Berlin), so at least someone went under 2:09 in the 70s!

Just Another LRC Idiot wrote:

Umm... ever heard of a guy called Yifter the Shifter? How about Coe and Ovett?

Scott had a faster mile PR than either Coe or Ovett. He also finished ahead of Ovett in the 1983 world Champs, so he had to be medal threat in Moscow, could he have won? Difficult to say but he did have his share of wins over Coe and Ovett at 1500m/mile. But Scott would have been less competitive in the 800m and I don't know which American could have won that event.

Centrowitz would have had the sprint finish to match Yifter and he had a faster PR over 5000m so I am not sure that Yifter could have done anything.

In the 10000m Craig Virgin had the run the 2nd fastest 10000m of all time so I don't think that Yifter would have been able to hold onto his pace, especially if Salazaar was in there to do some work.

Again, we'll never really know so I don't know how someone can have no doubt. Personally, I have some doubt but I think the time is probably legit. Some years back I saw results, maybe complete, maybe the first ten or twenty, can't recall. In a short course road race you don't have one guy with a spectacular time and everyone else running times that are pretty normal for them. Loads of people are getting big PRs.

That didn't happen in Clayton's race. I believe Akio Usami, a 2:10 guy, was second in something like 2:13, Bob Moore and Wayne Yetman were mid to upper two teen guys and ran a bit over 2:20. There were one or two more names that I recognized whose times were less than their best. Add to that, Clayton's insistence on having an accurate course because he knew he was going to run a record and I'm fairly convinced it was accurate.

It doesn't matter, but it is tragic that in the 70s and early 80s the whole thing was misread.

Clayton had the world record either way after Fukuoka, but then Hill, Thompson, So and Nijboer each held it for a couple years, until DeCastella ran the first real 2:08 few weeks after Salazar's disallowed record. According to Runner's World, ABC Sports, and the AP, though, Salazar bested Clayton in Oct. 81 and that was that. They called it a 14-year-old record, Salazar met with Clayton after he ran 2:08, the whole bit.

And IF you believe Clayton's 2:08 wasn't valid, Salazar STILL likely held the record with a sub-2:09 until DeCastella.

HRE wrote:

That didn't happen in Clayton's race. I believe Akio Usami, a 2:10 guy, was second in something like 2:13.

2:11:27, which was a 2 min PB at the time. His marathons immediately before and after Antwerp were 2:19:02 and 2:20:18.

He later ran 2:10:37 in Fukuoka.

HRE wrote:

That didn't happen in Clayton's race. I believe Akio Usami, a 2:10 guy, was second in something like 2:13.

2:11:27, which was a 2 min PB at the time. His marathons immediately before and after Antwerp were 2:19:02 and 2:20:18.

He later ran 2:10:37 in Fukuoka.[/quote]

Thanks.

Bump

Oh, what the heck, I'll bump this again and be the 300th post. Let's see how the 'Murcans do this fall in Chicago and NY!