One thing to keep in mind is that the primary goal of racing is place, and not record times, so we should not expect every year to be as fast or faster than the previous one. For several reasons, year on year fastest performances may fluctuate. (When I looked at fastest performances, I was less concerned about year on year fluctuation, because my timespan was nearly three decades). We have seen historically, that fast times often come from rivalries between highly talented runners, when the tactic is to run fast from the gun, because that is what it takes for one to beat the other. We saw that with Coe/Cram/Ovett, and in the 1990s with Geb/Komen/Tergat. Probably the biggest reason for the drop in 2000, 2001 was the lack of Komen pushing the pace. Dieter Baumann's 12:54.7 in 1997 was more likely a result of hanging on in a fast paced race (behind Geb, Komen, Tergat and Khalid Boulami), than the steroids in his toothpaste two years later. When your opponent is a 13:00 runner, the 12:45 runner will run 12:55 and preserve himself for the next race. Or, if runners have great kicks, and is able to control the pace, like Mo, the tactic will be a slow "sit and kick" producing slow times. There was less interest in running fast times in the marathon, until Tergat and Geb "retired" from the track. When the money dried up on the track, and the best runners skipped the track going directly to the roads, a critical mass developed in the marathon, where races like London had as many as 8-10 guys pacing each other to fast times on flat fast courses.
Aragon wrote:
rekrunner wrote:
Another overlooked non-genetic factor is the important role of pacing in fast races.
It would be interesting to know how significant factor this in explaining the fast times of 1995-2005 as well as the importance of where exactly the running talent navigates.
I've never found a good explanation why there was a significant fall in top speed 2000-2001 in some disciplines (5000,10000) when these presumably Hct 60-65 % guys were running barely faster than their counterparts of the late 1980s. It is equally unexplained why these Hct 60-65 % guys of the 1990s were barely faster than the marathon runners of the 1980s and male marathoners have become faster almost linearly independent of any anti-doping innovations.