Is the defining line really just 29 sec for a 200m to know if you have speed or not?

Eliud wrote:

There are no limits.

Horwill's 4 second rule is definitely not any kind of human performance limit. He didn't even believe that himself. He always refers to it as a good way to ESTIMATE 800m performance in a well trained middle distance runner.

https://www.serpentine.org.uk/pages/advice_frank13.html

Here, in Horwill's own hand he states that Coe had slightly better endurance than his 4 second rule.

You are a fool. I suppose you will now tell us that Horwill was wrong and 4 seconds is some kind of limit?

46.87 + 4 x 2 = 1:41.74 Wow, yes a whole .01 faster

I had a message from someone over the weekend actually who was the official timer on one of Coes relays and he had him at 45.4

You are also missing the point of the 4 second rule . This is the optimun all the other runners are doing a conversion more like 6 seconds

Rudisha 45.5 + 4 x 2 = 1:39

Even Cram who was coming from the endurance side 48 + 4 x 2 = 1:42

As for the other person who mentioned running best times at end of workouts. So you are saying Johnson set his 200m word record off 4 x 400m just before. What utter nonsense

It just show that most long distance runners barely race the sprints and when they do they are often knackered from having run their main race

Even slower runners produce lactate.

See if you can spot the error above

Order of operations makes your math wrong?

Arguing about small differences is useless. Pretty much zero distance runners have accurate 200 or 400m times. Nobody takes 2 days off to peak for some random sprint race. The middle distance guys are a bit better but even then we are doing a ton of guessing. Guys like Salazer were slow even if his PR would have been something like a 53. Maybe he is the outlier of outliers that can run his mile at +3 seconds off his 400m PR but I sort of doubt it. Make it +6, and yeah I would say yep thats a 1 in a billion guy.

no wrote:

no one ever ran 4:40 off of 29 sec 200 speed

I never ran 4:40 off 29 speed, but I did run 4:30

Fjjhc wrote:

Order of operations makes your math wrong?

Something like that well if you are well trained as Cram perhaps you can manage s 3 second difference.

It's usually the opposite in here with people saying they've run 53 and looking for advice to break 2:10!

There are different types of runners. Some have great speed, less ability to hold it. Some have great ability to hold their slower top speed. My PRs from HS

200: 32 (relay race)

400: 64 (relay race)

800: 2:17

1600:4:48

3200: 10:20

5k XC: 16:16

PRs College

200: ? probably 28-9

400: 58.5 (workout time trial, all out)

800i: 2:05

mile indoor: 4:31

3000i: 9:03

5000: 15:31

8k XC: 26:20

10k road: 33:10 (ran one 10k/year, never on the track)

ukathleticscoach wrote:

RejectJogger wrote:

Sage Canaday replied and even told me that he only had 27 high speed. He ran a 3:55 1500. He didnt break 57 in a 400..

No way could you run 3:55 if you fastest is 57

57+ 4 x 2 gives best at 800m of 2:02

So 61 seconds per lap.

No way can you hold almost double the distance at 62.7 pace

No way? You just have to consider the endurance needed to do so. My guess is this would imply the ability to run somewhere around 59-62 for half marathon to be able to run that.

Remember, most of your 400 power comes from anaerobic capacity, although there is still a sizable aerobic contribution. If you took a hypothetical runner with more or less no anaerobic capacity, then there times across all distances would be the same. Their 400 would improve directly in line with their half marathon.

That obviously doesn't happen, but it illustrates the picture. There are, however, runners with very small anaerobic capacities, and these are the types of runners you'll see that might do something like that. Sage is a good example. His best 5k was 14:29, which is roughly 4:40 pace...yet he runs half marathon at 4:52 pace for his 64' PR, with his 10k sandwiched in there at 29:42, or about 4:45 pace. Sage BARELY decays. Why? Because he has an exceptionally small anaerobic capacity, which has a finite amount. If you're anaerobic capacity is 20kJ you can leverage those 20kJ over 2' for 10kJ a minute, over 5' for 4kJ/min, or over an hour for .33kJ/min. If you're anaerobic capacity is incredibly tiny, relative to your aerobic capacity, there is very little drop between distances.

Of course a guy like Rudisha won't be anywhere near the "4s" rule. He's an FRC monster. I don't think many people expect to see Rudisha cracking 30' in the 10k anytime soon. He's got a MASSIVE anaerobic tank that allows him to be quick over 400, it decays significantly to 800, but is still sufficient for greatness.

Cram comes from the endurance side, but the 800 is a very short event. No aerobic monster is ever going to succeed at 800...or if they could the implication would be asinine elsewhere, like a sub 12:00 5k and 54:00 half or something. You see the 4s rule at elite level because even guys like Cram who are "aerobic" 800 runners still have monster anaerobic capacity. Certainly 20kJ or more.

Start taking guys like Bekele, or more extreme examples like a Chris Derrick or Sage Canady and you'll start to expect a drop less than 4s for guys like them. In extreme cases the drop might be as little as 1s-2s, or perhaps even less in an older, low FRC female that literally might have a capacity of just 2-3kJ.

So how come El G and Lagat only ran 1:46. 1-2 seconds complete nonsese. So say Bekele can run 50 seconds off your ridiculous reckoning he can run 1:42-4 or perhaps you think he wasn't developed enough aerobically.

Complete garbage.

And women have worse conversion rates than men.

52+4 x 2 = 1:52

Hundreds of women have run 52.0 or faster but not one has come close to 1:52.0 even crammed full of steroids.

I never thought I'd welcome a post by Ventolin

ukathleticscoach wrote:

So how come El G and Lagat only ran 1:46. 1-2 seconds complete nonsese. So say Bekele can run 50 seconds off your ridiculous reckoning he can run 1:42-4 or perhaps you think he wasn't developed enough aerobically.

Complete garbage.

El G ran a 3:26 1500m, so by the 4 second rule his 800m cannot be slower than 1:41.87. I think it's doubtful he could run close to this otherwise, so his conversion is likely closer to 3-3.5 seconds.

I think it should be clear that if a very aerobically developed middle distance runner can match the 4 second rule, a long distance runner ought to be able to improve upon the 4 second rule. Otherwise you would have the absurd situation where middle and long distance runners with the same sprinting speed would have the same time at longer distances.

Albie Thomas from Australia was an outstanding runner who ran 3:58.6 as he paced Herb Elliott to Elliott's mile world record of 3:54. Albie also set a number of world records at longer distances.

My best friend in the world was Alex Henderson (4:03 mile, 8:46 2-miles) who knew Albie well and raced against him in Australia. Alex told me that the fastest 440 Albie ever ran was 58 seconds. I can't verify that is what Albie told Alex but Alex was adamant that Albie told him that.

Probably the reason Albie (being a miler - 10,000 meter man) never ran faster than 58 seconds is he never took the time to run a 440 for time. It is a meaningless little story but interesting that the conversation ever came up.

I suspect almost young man can run a 30 - 32 sec 200 meters (unless they are handicapped) if they train long enough to do it. I have helped many youth in high school and even the most spastic were eventually able to get enough coordination and strength to do it.

ukathleticscoach wrote:

So how come El G and Lagat only ran 1:46. 1-2 seconds complete nonsese. So say Bekele can run 50 seconds off your ridiculous reckoning he can run 1:42-4 or perhaps you think he wasn't developed enough aerobically.

Complete garbage.

Come on...I don't want to be obnoxious but it feels pretty likely that you read a few words of my post, dismissed it, then wrote a response.

-I said 1-2 seconds for "extreme cases". Bekele is not an extreme case. He had great endurance, but he's also the WR holder at 5000m. No pure aerobic monster could ever hold the WR at 5000 without some ridiculous situation like being able to run 54:00 for half. Bekele was just more of an aerobic monster and less FRC oriented than a guy like Geb or Komen, who in turn are much less FRC oriented than a Hicham or a Lagat. A KB might have been the kind of guy you'd consider for a 3-3.5s differential.

-A guy like Symmonds is certainly faster than Bekele, and we know Symmonds was good for 48 400, so for Bekele you'd have to be thinking 49-51s for an extreme spread on either side. Give Bekele his claimed 50 speed and you have something like 53.5 pace or 1:47 800 ability. That seems in the realm of plausibility to me.

-The 1-2 seconds, again needs to be stressed: extreme cases. Extreme cases are not going to occur at the elite levels of competitive 1500/3000/5000 and probably not even 10,000...again unless we are suddenly seeing guys who can crank out half marathons in the 4:10-4:20 pace range. So who are these "extreme" guys that could be closer to 2s? Guys that are nowhere to be found at 5000, but are decent sub elite HM/M guys. Canaday would be an example, perhaps someone like Yuki Kawuchi. A good starting point would be any sub elite that is notoriously known for having no speed. Perhaps, perhaps somebody like Tadesse could be in this range as well, but he was still had an okay 5000. I'd bet huge money though that Tadesse would fall between 2.5 and 3.5 seconds.

-1s is the ultimate extreme case, that might not even exist, but I said could be close in older, already low FRC women. That's the only potential population I could imagine potentially having a low enough FRC to show a very minimal difference in times between distances...and even there we don't have enough data to know for sure. There is becoming more running power data, and some now from fairly good runners, such as Joe Gray, but the data size is still VERY small compared to cycling power data.

-El G and Lagat are both excellent, excellent milers. They are definitely towards the high end of FRC, and the type we'd expect to see somewhere around 4s differential for. Lagat, likely, underperformed in 800, especially when you consider guys like Kiprop have done 1:43, and in many ways Lagat is similar to Kiprop. Although in either case, do we know Kiprop or Lagat's 400 speed? Probably 47-48 for both if I had to guess, so you're looking at around 4s for Kiprop, and 5s for Lagat using their best times. Given Lagat ran 12:53, and as fast in the 1500 as Kiprop, but seems to be way behind in 800 is very likely Lagat just never ran a great 800m race.

-El G, from what I understand, was generally considered not as quick as Lagat, and more of a longer kicker, suggesting perhaps a marginally slower 400 than Lagat. If El G. was say 48.5, then El G.'s 800 was 53 pace, or 4.5s differential, which is roughly where we'd expect, and gives the slight possibility El G also didn't execute his best 800m race.

I think in many ways we are on the same page, the 4s is a good approximation for most elite runners. For pure "speed", aka FRC oriented 800 guys that gets bigger, sometimes much bigger. For super endurance oriented guys, i.e. not 800m runners bit still elite runners at 5000/10000 we might expect to occasionally see a little under 4. For 2-3s range, you have to look at non elites, because anyone with that low of an FRC to have a potential 2.xx differential is NOT going to have sufficient FRC to be great at 5000 or even 10000 on the track.

I'm perfectly happy to have a discussion about this with you, but if you want to, it would be great if you'd ask for clarification about what I meant rather than respond to a caricature of what I'm actually saying.

ukathleticscoach wrote:

And women have worse conversion rates than men.

52+4 x 2 = 1:52

Hundreds of women have run 52.0 or faster but not one has come close to 1:52.0 even crammed full of steroids.

I never thought I'd welcome a post by Ventolin

Can someone like Genzebe run 52? That's the kind of female runner you'd need doing 52 to be looking anywhere near 1:52. My hunch is that the women running 50 or 51 are more of the Semenya type, and isn't Semenya a mid 50.x gal? Seems unlikely that someone like a Genzebe or similar runner is going to be close to Semenya in a 400 race.

Semenya is more your protypical pure 800 runner, where you'd expect something like 5-6+ seconds decay, putting her at a best case of perhaps 1:52 (which I'd say mayyybe could be possible is Semenya was looking at sub 4:00 1500 and sub 15:00 5000), but more likely 1:54-1:55 if she is more like a Rudisha or Coe like I suspect she is.

29 pretty slow for an all out 200 if your target distance is the mile. You will need to close the last 200 around 29 in slow mile races and if you can barely crack it without the 1409 meters that came before, there is cause for concern. As I've repeatedly stated on these boards: the mile is a speed based event.

ukathleticscoach wrote:

Fjjhc wrote:

Order of operations makes your math wrong?

Something like that well if you are well trained as Cram perhaps you can manage s 3 second difference.

It's usually the opposite in here with people saying they've run 53 and looking for advice to break 2:10!

That is actually quite common. In high school we had heavily muscled (i.e. heavy body weight) guys who could run 51 - 53 seconds for 400 who couldn't break 2:10 or even 2:15. They were fast twitch guys who were too stocky to make great track athletes but were pretty good at high school football.

29 is slow, but if you're a freshman you'll get faster. I ran 55. As a frosh and 50 flat in the open as a senior. I was doing 6-8 x 200m in practice at 26 seconds

My high school coach had some of the middle distance runners compete in meets out of the blocks with the sprinters. That's how I know some if these times.

Here's my pb's - I'm obviously lacking endurance

100m -11.8

200m-23.6

400m-49.8 open, 49.1 split

800m-1:52

1500m-3:52

Mile- 4:11

5k-15:17

Hm-1:12:51

Marathon-2:33

Sorry I was s bit dismissive of you post but I really can't agree with it. I'll concede an athlete might shade 4 seconds differential but 1-2 seconds is just not happening.

I prefer to deal in real times not speculation. Surely out of 100's on sub 52 women 1 void at least do a 4 second differential. They have not and so 1-2 seconds is not happening. It's just physiology the same as you get in a drop off from 200m to 400m. It doent matter if 30 is you best 200m hold that pace or too close too it & lactate is building up + you cannot operate anaerobically without s performance drop off.

I'm usually on the optimistic side as I've seen 53 second guys run 1:53xx when a lot think you need faster 400m speed but they are approaching the limit. Even there you are looking at guys who have done less than a handful of 400m races mostly having doubled before.

I'll embarrass myself but my pb fresh 400m was 59. Well how come I split 58 in an 800m mostly run in lane 2? Obviously I didn't pace the 400m properly plus am used to racing on someone's shoulder. They don't do the timing accurately if you are at the back in a none electronic 400m either. A friend clocked me in 58 in my pb race of 59.

Plus I'd been doing a lot of Circuit training & it finally paid off albeit slightly. If I'd run 400m that day I'd probably have done about 57.

These people with smaller differentials have usually run the 400m years before their 800m pb. They've no idea what they can run for for 400m on the day they pb'd at 800m

Check out the times here of guys around 2 mins when they have run a 400m the same year.

http://www.thepowerof10.info/rankings/rankinglist.aspx?event=800&agegroup=ALL&sex=M&year=2017