In the women's 800 in London today, Australia's Catriona Bisset took one full second of her pb and ran 1:58.78 for runner-up honors, which broke Charlene Rendina's long-standing Aussie national record of 1:59.0 which had stood since February 28, 1976.
Quick Take: Catriona Bisset has had an amazing journey to the NR
If you look up Bisset on the results database tilastopaja, it looks as if the 25-year old just recently picked up the sport as it only lists results starting in 2016. Take a look at this progression.
2016: 2:11.85 sb
2017: 2:09.45 sb (56.65 400)
2018: 2:03.48 (57.01 400)
2019: 1:58.78 NR (56.52 400)
(The IAAF site also lists a 2:29.58 800 for her in 2012 and a 59.67 400 for her in 2011)
In reality, Bissett competed at her first national meet at age 12 but then took 4 years away from the sport as she dealt with an “eating disorder, anxiety and depression in her late teens and early 20s” according to a fantastic profile of her on abc.net.au.
Bisset is coached by Peter Fortune, who famously guided Cathy Freeman to Olympic gold at the 2000 Sydney Olympics in the 400. and Fortune thinks Bisett’s talk about her past struggles really helps.
"I'm really happy she embraces that and talks about it (her past),” said Fortune in the abc.net.au article.
"I think she will be excellent [for] … a lot of young athletes that maybe haven't had that type of role model."
Rendina’s previous NR from 1976, a year during which she made the Olympic semis, was the longest standing women’s national record in Australia and second longest overall. Peter Norman's 200m national record of 20.06 from the 1968 Olympics is the oldest record for Australia.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-01/catriona-bisset-reveals-mental-health-battle/11163494
https://twitter.com/AthsAust/status/1152937495534788610
Mega props to Catriona Bisset who overcame an eating disorder, anxiety and depression to break Australia's 43-yr old 800 NR
Report Thread
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An update from her agent:
Bisset’s agent Sean Whipp also told us that Bisset doesn’t own a car, so will often ride 50 minutes to and from training on her bike. She’s also studying a double masters and working four days a week in a consulting firm. -
Wow, Tamsyn Lewis-Manou ran 1:59 five years out of eight, best of 1:59.21 without getting this record. She ran 53.51 age 17 and never competed the 1500.
https://www.iaaf.org/athletes/australia/tamsyn-manou-131181 -
BTW Tamsyn's performance record IMO reflects a lack of PED use, in an era when it was a matter of course at the top level. Gotta respect that.
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Bisset is an amazing person as well as she is as an athlete.
She's intelligent and has strong work ethics. Her university would be Harvard/ Stanford equivalent in straya -
rojo wrote:
Bisset doesn’t own a car, so will often ride 50 minutes to and from training on her bike. She’s also studying a double masters and working four days a week in a consulting firm.
I'm going start biking more. -
I think she will go faster soon and is rounding to look like a medal favourite at worlds.
This is really the first race she has ever been challenged in. Her first race ever outside Australia was at world unis, where she won comfortably, and another easy win in Sweden last week. Before that she had been unbeaten for 12 (?) races, including a front run win at nationals and her first sub 2 in a Sydney race where she won without a pace maker by about 10 seconds. -
Big upside for her. Definite medal chance
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So in March she turned 26 and couldn't break 2:03 and is now running 1:58. Come on mate, if she was Kenyan we'd be all hyperventilating.
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So Cathy ran 48 during an era of poor testing, super human times that present runners can't touch and this girl has the same coach and suddenly makes massive gains. Goes from flabby middle class white girl to world class runner in a month. Not a year goes by without a Rugby League or Aussie Rules team being involved in a doping scandal.
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Fantastic effort. Less surprising than her rising to the occasion is the poison, non sequiturs and errors that emerge from the woodwork.
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1:58 high isn't that fast. If she started running 1:55 six months after being a 2:10 runner, then we should all be suspicious.
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rojo wrote:
An update from her agent:
Bisset’s agent Sean Whipp also told us that Bisset doesn’t own a car, so will often ride 50 minutes to and from training on her bike. She’s also studying a double masters and working four days a week in a consulting firm.
So what to do with all these information, be suspicious or amazed by this sheer amount of talent and dedication?
My take: Working 4 days a week, doing a double masters degree, commuting nearly 2 hours without having done any training is just not possible. At least something has to be overstated or neglected. Either the work is not really 4 full work days a week, the biking-to-workout- thing is more of a rare occasion or at least the standard period of her studies is 'extended' by several semesters.
You have to be careful, young people read this stuff and believe that anything is possible but ultimately run themselves into the ground trying to do too many things in parallel. -
MrGambinus wrote:
rojo wrote:
An update from her agent:
Bisset’s agent Sean Whipp also told us that Bisset doesn’t own a car, so will often ride 50 minutes to and from training on her bike. She’s also studying a double masters and working four days a week in a consulting firm.
So what to do with all these information, be suspicious or amazed by this sheer amount of talent and dedication?
My take: Working 4 days a week, doing a double masters degree, commuting nearly 2 hours without having done any training is just not possible. At least something has to be overstated or neglected. Either the work is not really 4 full work days a week, the biking-to-workout- thing is more of a rare occasion or at least the standard period of her studies is 'extended' by several semesters.
You have to be careful, young people read this stuff and believe that anything is possible but ultimately run themselves into the ground trying to do too many things in parallel.
This does seem a bit much. However, training for the 800 can be very time efficient, running say 35 miles/week without the many hours in the weight room spent by sprinters. Some people are very good at multi-tasking, and she may be an outlier in this regard. -
YMMV wrote:
MrGambinus wrote:
rojo wrote:
An update from her agent:
Bisset’s agent Sean Whipp also told us that Bisset doesn’t own a car, so will often ride 50 minutes to and from training on her bike. She’s also studying a double masters and working four days a week in a consulting firm.
So what to do with all these information, be suspicious or amazed by this sheer amount of talent and dedication?
My take: Working 4 days a week, doing a double masters degree, commuting nearly 2 hours without having done any training is just not possible. At least something has to be overstated or neglected. Either the work is not really 4 full work days a week, the biking-to-workout- thing is more of a rare occasion or at least the standard period of her studies is 'extended' by several semesters.
You have to be careful, young people read this stuff and believe that anything is possible but ultimately run themselves into the ground trying to do too many things in parallel.
This does seem a bit much. However, training for the 800 can be very time efficient, running say 35 miles/week without the many hours in the weight room spent by sprinters. Some people are very good at multi-tasking, and she may be an outlier in this regard.
FYI, Whipp clarified with me that it's not a double masters -- it's a masters in architecture and a diploma of languages. He also said he didn't know specifics of her work hours -- she might not be doing a full 8-hour shift four days a week. I'm not sure exactly how her time management works, but it does seem like she has a fair amount on her plate. -
Here is Bisset at the FISU University Games in a good contest (start 13:20)
https://youtu.be/jLKMO44Arok?t=800 -
Cathy ha? wrote:
So Cathy ran 48 during an era of poor testing, super human times that present runners can't touch and this girl has the same coach and suddenly makes massive gains. Goes from flabby middle class white girl to world class runner in a month. Not a year goes by without a Rugby League or Aussie Rules team being involved in a doping scandal.
Mate, take it from me as gospel, if in the last 30 years or more you were a competitive athlete/sports person of any kind who wanted to dope the last place on earth you would want to do it is Australia. Why?, because small pond with the most rigorous testing in the world. -
Very impressed.
Anyone remember Georgie Clarke? She's your antidote.
Huge props to her for even returning to track, and more impressively at such a high level.
Or as Brojos say, Talent doesn't really go away. Happy to see she was able to find it again. -
I watched her run her 2:03 point at the end of our last summer (March 2018) very closely - she ran very aggressively and won by 3+ seconds in windy conditions. I knew then that if she lost a bit of weight and added some gym work to her program, that she could run 2:00 the following season without changing much else.
She is still only very raw and her training age is a lot different to a 25 year old coming of on College.
JR -
So my take after reading ROJO's original post: first NO woman runs 158.xx WITHOUT talent. Tons of guys don't run 1;58, an VERY few women ever do. Second, NO woman runs 1:58.xx WITHOUT real work - she has a coach who knows track and ever event, so she is doing real workouts, combo that with several days a week of the biking as cross-training endurance work and probably some gym time - makes for a solid well-rounded program ( I have either coached or seen college guys coached in a similar way and and they ran 1:51-1:53). given her history with disordered eating, she is obviously self- disciplined. Her current live style (track, work and school) may just be her more positive out for those issues for this aspects of her personality. All of that having been said, I do believe that there are A LOT of PEDs bing used some legal( or as yet not illegal) and others that are illegal, still being used and just not being found via testing.
