Galen Rupp undergoes foot surgery, will miss 2019 spring marathon season

Our best marathon talent isn’t running the marathon. They’re running the 1500, maybe longer. Rupp is also a 3:50 miler. Anyone else that fast would have stayed in the 1500. The potential marathoners are getting run into the ground with intervals in high school and college. Most think 70 miles per week is high mileage and they’ll get hurt running more.

US marathoners have poor training. We should have a whole gang of sub 2:10 marathoners. Something isn’t working.

You can't criticize a 2:06 marathon runners form!

can someone tell me why if Galen is a forefoot striker does he run in shoes shaped like a foam wedge, humans ran for thousands of years without foam wedges under their feet. i know we run on asphalt and concrete now but really a foam wedge lifting your heel up at the back by 3 cm surely this would create problems. interested what you people have to say

Many blame the shoes for Rupp and Hasay’s injuries. Sounds like the coaching. Shalane, Amy, Kipchoge, Kamworor, many other BTC train in the 4% frequently and don’t have problems.

ok fair enough. what are the benefits of having a huge amount of foam under your feet especially at the cadence they are running at and the impact is low. the point of a forefoot strike is to use your ankle/calf muscles as springs from my experience foam shoes hinder a forefoot striker since it is stopping the spring like action of your foot

There is a problem with US long distance running, specifically, Marathon. If you remove Rupp, US Marathon is roughly on the same level as US Marathon fifty years ago. When you take away Rupp, US top twenty Marathoners, 2018 range from 2:12 to 2:20, top twenty-five 2:12 to 2:20 if we include Boston Marathon results, 2018. In other events, especially 100m to 800m, US is NEXT MAN UP as are Kenyans 800m to Marathon.

hurtee wrote:

ironside wrote:

Add 1500m & 3000m.

Never!

1500m is so stupid. 3 and 3/4 laps around a track? It's so dumb.

One mile race, either a tear drop start on curve or one turn stagger. As you must know, mile is a silly imperial measurement. US most likely races one mile more than the Brits race one mile. If Brits can move on and join the rest of the world so can US. Embrace 1500m run. 1600m make zero sense.

Ihsjjajsaj wrote:

Many blame the shoes for Rupp and Hasay’s injuries. Sounds like the coaching. Shalane, Amy, Kipchoge, Kamworor, many other BTC train in the 4% frequently and don’t have problems.

What?

Shalane had a major back injury in early 2017, Hastings and Bumbi both have had injuries that made them pull out of Chicago and Derrick has had an injury in late 2015 and 2016

I'm not saying it is the shoes, but don't act like BTC marathoners haven't had injuries

dunes runner wrote:

The same thing has happened to both Hasay and Rupp.

The Nike shoes are terrible and cause injuries. Stay way from Nike shoes if you don't want to be injured.

What about all the other Nike athletes wearing the exact same shoes? Jake Robertson and Mo Farah to name a few. But wait 2 people had a problem so it must be the shoes.

brett.stanners wrote:

ok fair enough. what are the benefits of having a huge amount of foam under your feet especially at the cadence they are running at and the impact is low. the point of a forefoot strike is to use your ankle/calf muscles as springs from my experience foam shoes hinder a forefoot striker since it is stopping the spring like action of your foot

Interestingly I live near an inner city park with a 5 mile loop, once a week I would run the last 400m on the nice grass next to the track in barefeet. Then they closed this segment for 12 months to dig it up because some of the city's key pipes ran underneath it and needed repairs. During this time I developed pretty terrible achilles problems. So there is actually alot to what you are saying above but complete barefoot is ridiculous.

Pump Bump wrote:

A fun side note that I have learned is that the slang term for haglunds is "Pump Bump" because it is most common in people who extensively wear high heels...read into that what you will.

Intuitively, it makes some sense that a muscle will become shorter and tighter if the joint it moves cannot go through its full range of motion.

That would seem to be the case when you run in shoes with elevated heels: the gastrocs/soleus etc. become tighter and shorter because the range of motion of the ankle is limited by the elevated heel.

And having chronically tight calf muscles tug on the calcaneus via the achilles causes bone to form at the back of calcaneus, resulting in the Haglund's problem. Or at least that's one theory.

For several years, I've have Haglund's on both heels and a nasty-looking (on x-ray) bone spur on one. For the last 3-4 months, I've been running in Xeroshoes sandals (5 to 6 days/week, 5 to 8 miles/day) to see if near-barefoot running would help. It has. The heel pain has been alleviated and continues to improve, although I still feel some pain in the morning and after sitting for long periods. More importantly, though, I feel almost no heel pain while running, even when running up steep hills on the roads.

Other benefits:

--I feel much more balanced when running. I tried running in an old pair of Nike Free 3.0s the other day, and I felt like I was drunk. The raised heels and relative lack of sensory feedback from the ground completely threw off my balance. I returned home after about 5 minutes and changed into my sandals.

--My feet are much, much stronger than when I was running in conventional shoes. I plantar flex with much greater force than before, a benefit I really notice when I run fast strides barefoot on the grass.

--Xeroshoes come with a 5,000-mile warranty. The kits cost ~$20 and the ready-made sandals about $50.

Disclaimer: I have xero financial interest in Xeroshoes.

ironside wrote:

There is a problem with US long distance running . . .

The problem isn't limited to the U.S. Performance has deteriorated in the whole Western world.

Moorcroft (3:49, 13:00), Coe (1:41, 3:29), Ovett (3:30), Cram (1:42, 3:29), and Scott (3:31, 3:47) all would have been able to compete with -- and even beat -- today's top Africans.

Today the only bright spot outside of Africa is Japan, and then only in the marathon.

So what's the cause of the Great Western Decline of the last 30 years?

Taro wrote:

ironside wrote:

There is a problem with US long distance running . . .

The problem isn't limited to the U.S. Performance has deteriorated in the whole Western world.

Moorcroft (3:49, 13:00), Coe (1:41, 3:29), Ovett (3:30), Cram (1:42, 3:29), and Scott (3:31, 3:47) all would have been able to compete with -- and even beat -- today's top Africans.

Today the only bright spot outside of Africa is Japan, and then only in the marathon.

So what's the cause of the Great Western Decline of the last 30 years?

What about the 2016 Olympics? US distance runners did really well there. Marathon times in the West are pretty slow though, no doubt.

Could it possibly be due to Americans being bigger than they used to be? I don't mean fatter, I mean taller and correspondingly heavier.

Or is just because of the prominence of the white collar desk job?

Is it Football's fault?

yes sadly nowadays western society does not lend itself to barefoot running with concrete, asphalt, glass and other things. and we put our kids in elevated foam heel shoes creating generations of heel strikers. whereas kids in poorer countries are running in bare feet from a young age developing a more natural and efficient footstrike i believe this has direct correlation with the comparatively poor performance of western countries over the distance of the marathon. a race in which consistency and efficiency means everything.

Competitive running messes everyone up sometimes. It’s more a question of how often and how severely than what shoes.

ironside wrote:

One mile race, either a tear drop start on curve or one turn stagger. As you must know, mile is a silly imperial measurement. US most likely races one mile more than the Brits race one mile. If Brits can move on and join the rest of the world so can US. Embrace 1500m run. 1600m make zero sense.

The random American kid and parent of said kid get more excited about the mile than the 1500 or 1600. On a related note, most kids would rather run the half mile as oppsed to the 800.

If that's what it takes to get more kids on to track teams it seems that state level athletic associations should do it. You can be a purist in college - if you're good enough. By that point you know your meters and you don't care about 1500, 1600 or 1609.

"If high arches are involved the answer is foot strength maintenance and soft, flexible , slightly over-fat orthotics(inserts) and flexible shoes, . Stopping pushing is not the answer, going to a flat footed strike will kill someone with high arches. not to mention slow them down tremendously."

All these theories I used to believe in got me and many people nowhere. The more you focus on those foot theories, the more you will hurt them. Your feet should barely touch the ground ... relaxed and flat (if the ground is flat) and quickly get pulled by your hip movement.

Taro wrote:

--Xeroshoes come with a 5,000-mile warranty. The kits cost ~$20 and the ready-made sandals about $50.

"If you wear your FeelTrue® outsoles (or FeelTrue® section of Z-Trail) down to less than 1mm thick at the ball or heel of the foot (not an edge), "

There are a number of elite runners who supinate and would destroy the edge of the shoe, thus that 5000 mile warranty is worthless for them.

ncrecuvuer wrote:

Ihsjjajsaj wrote:

Many blame the shoes for Rupp and Hasay’s injuries. Sounds like the coaching. Shalane, Amy, Kipchoge, Kamworor, many other BTC train in the 4% frequently and don’t have problems.

What?

Shalane had a major back injury in early 2017, Hastings and Bumbi both have had injuries that made them pull out of Chicago and Derrick has had an injury in late 2015 and 2016

I'm not saying it is the shoes, but don't act like BTC marathoners haven't had injuries

Fractures back running on treadmill and snowy trails. There's no way in any hell she was wearing vaporflys on snowy trails.

And then goes on to win the 2017 NYC marathon.