why americans suck at distance running

GBnothingWithoutFarah wrote:

Why they suck? They just do, they are now poaching Kenyans to strengthen their team.

No they are not, They come to the USA for a better way of life, (And an easier Country to make Global teams Distance wise)

USA is on the upswing we keep developing and in some cases get through the luck of Immigration better and better runners.

cotton shirt wrote:

in the UK there are 1400 athletic clubs up and down the country so that no one lives more than 20 miles from a club with it's own track, coach, and a series of league and all-comer meets.

Great thread but the above doesn't apply to Scotland.

Some countries suck way more at distance running. Look at the national athletics records in SE / South Asia, some Muslim countries, and Oceania (excluding Australia and NZ). Yeah, they are totally abysmal.

Whenever Canadians go to the US to compete, they are reminded about how tough American elite running can be. Third-tier Kenyans won't even stand a chance here.

So we're sub-elite but not noobs either.

How about the fact, in high school every one thinks they are a sprinter. When the coach tries to move them up, they quit or their parents get involved.

Also, genetics plays an important part.

Hey, we ain't THAT bad said: Some countries suck way more at distance running.

everything you said is true, but irrelevant.

1. many posters on LRC don't care, or know, anything at all about the rest of the world. for them, the United States is not just the centre of the universe, it is the entirety of their universe. read any thread on, say, the Commonwealth Games to get a feel for how this goes down. therefore, a thread called, "why Vietnam sucks at distance running would get zero reads, and who could blame them?

2. many of the countries you mention, SE Asia, Muslim countries, etc, do not have thriving athletic communities and generally suck at sports, across the board. largely because they don't really care about competing with each other. when was the last time you saw a SE Asia team in an international tournament in anything other than the "generous gesture of inclusivity," role? talking about why they suck at one particular activity would be pointless.

3. the United States, when they put their mind to it, excel at a wide variety of activities. they are world leaders in technology, space ships, film sequels, arms manufacture, incredibly short haircuts, tv sitcoms and junk food consumption. they also do better than average at a number of sports and have practically owned the world record for the 400m continuously since 1955. any list of the world's best 100m sprinters in any year since listing performances began would have 6 - 8 Americans on it, at least. but, they (or rather their men) do generally suck at distance running. it is a distinct and obvious anomaly in their sporting lexicon. it is also a question that comes up here on LRC reasonably often and I have often felt that it requires a properly researched and well-reasoned answer. I think that is what I have provided and no one has so far been able to construct any reasonable argument against my thesis.

4. an earlier poster, AmericanWomen made the entirely reasonable point that it is American men who suck at distance running, the women do not. and I forgot to agree with them. the women are way more competitive, earn way more podiums in WMM and other major marathons, earn more medals in international tournaments and just generally do not suck at marathon running at all. congratulations American women. it was wrong of me to have written the thread title as though my thesis applied to all Americans.

it is, however, worth thinking about why the women do not suck at marathon running. they do, after all, go through the same four-year college programme as the men. I don't have data on women's track so cannot compute the age at which they earn their medals, become national champion or set records. I suspect that their numbers will be very similar to the men's, and that it takes a very similar two years longer for a woman to become a world class 10,000m runner than it does to become a world class 400m runner. I can't think of any logical reason why that would not be the case.

if my thesis on the men is correct, that would mean that American women do not suck at the marathon because the standard of the marathon is not as high for the women as it is for the men. in other words, it doesn't take a world class women's 10,000m runner to be a world class women's marathon runner. Shalane Flanagan is an Olympic silver medalist at 10,000m, Kara Goucher was 8th at the same games in both 5000m and 10,000m, but how many of the other US women that don't suck at the marathon have a similar pedigree. Jordan Hasay, for example, has already podiumed (is that even a word) at the marathon, twice, but the ink on her college degree is barely dry. in 2013 she was 12th in the World Championship 10,000m, she has twice finished 2nd in US Championship 10,000m but her last competitive track 10,000m race was 9th in the US Olympic trials in 2016, in a time that would have ranked her 133 in the world that year. and yet she is considered among the best female marathon runners in the country, certainly among those who "do not suck." I'm not knocking her, I wish her a speedy recovery and look forward to seeing her at Boston in the Spring, but she can not be considered world class at 10,000m and this, I think, applies generally to US women marathon runners. but like I said, I don't have the data, I don't study women's track and I look forward to someone proving me wrong on this.

and, interestingly, 3rd fastest US woman over 10,000m in 2018 was LRC's favourite female marathon runner Gwen Jorgensen. she was 26th in the world over 10,000m (and 39th over 5000m) but is generally considered to "suck" at the marathon. go figure.

cheers.

Cotton Shirt: thanks for the data and intelligent and patient replies. I largely agree with you.

However, hasn't the argument been made that the reason for recent advances in marathon times internationally is that athletes are moving to the marathon distance at a younger age instead of in their late 20s/30s? No, I can't remember who argued this, but it was in reference to the times of African runners dropping recently. Wouldn't that seem to undercut your argument that athletes need time to develop as 5/10,000 meter runners before moving to the marathon? Or do you see even the current crop of younger African elite marathoners as already well prepared at the longer track distances before they switch to the road?

my 2c said: do you see even the current crop of younger African elite marathoners as already well prepared at the longer track distances before they switch to the road?

sweeping generalisations generally sweep a lot of nuance under the carpet, so comments like, " the reason for recent advances in marathon times internationally is that athletes are moving to the marathon distance at a younger age instead of in their late 20s/30s?" seems to be completely overwhelmed by the point that I made in an earlier post in this thread that Eliud Kipchoge did not run a marathon until he had been consistently racing track at world class level for eleven years.

we also need to be alert to the fact that dates of birth offered up by athletes from sub-Saharan Africa are not necessarily completely reliable. they have no use for date of birth within their own culture and only make them up to meld into our ideas of how things work. applying to college, "what's your date of birth?", need a passport, "what's your date of birth?" enter this race, "what's your date of birth?" they have to reply with something and give an answer that gets them into college or whatever. relying on this as data seems shaky and unreliable, at best.

I would also be very interested to know what is meant by, "recent advances in marathon times internationally." which countries have seen these advances and what time frame does that "recent" refer to? if all you're talking about is Kenya and Ethiopia then you're just referring to genetic freaks in the first place and the idea that they do not fit into western models of how athletes develop should be accepted a priori. the following ten countries revised their national marathon records in 2018:

country / time / athlete / date / venue / (age)

Kenya 2:01:39 Eliud Kipchoge 16 Sep 2018 Berlin (34)

Paraguay 2:13:41 Derlis Ramón Ayala 23 Sep 2018 Buenos Aires (28)

England 2:05:11 Mo Farah 7 Oct 2018 Chicago age (35)

Japan 2:05:50 Suguru Osako 7 Oct 2018 Chicago (27)

Canada 2:09:25 Cam Levins 21 Oct 2018 Toronto (29)

Tanzania 2:07:46 Augustino Sulle 21 Oct 2018 Toronto (21)

Burundi 2:09:48 Olivier Irabaruta 4 Nov 2018 Porto (28)

Bahrain 2:04:43 El Hassan El-Abbassi 2 Dec 2018 Valencia (34)

Israel 2:12:35 Girma Amara 2 Dec 2018 Valencia (31)

I don't see in this a trend towards younger athletes performing better. the youngest is, by a long way, the sub-Saharan African. the next youngest is a 27-year-old Japanese runner who was 8th in the World Junior 10,000m championship in 2010, won the Asian University Championships in 2011, 2nd in Japanese Championships in 2012, in 2013 he was 2nd in the Japanese version of NCAA's, 2014 he was again 2nd in Japanese Championship. in 2015 he ran 27:45.24 at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, OR, a time that was beaten that year by only four US athletes, Galen Rupp (27:08.91), Diego Estrada (27:30.53), Hassan Mead (27:33.04) and Ben True (27:43.79). in 2016 he won the Japanese Championship and was 17th in the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, then in 2017 he debuted at the marathon in Boston running 2:10:28 and at Fukuoka in December he improved to 2:07:19. that's a 7-year development programme to acquire pr's of 3:40.99 1500m, 7:40.09 3000m, 13:08.40 5000m, 27:38.31 10,000m before he ran a marathon.

cheers.