How come a “slow twitch” man like Kipchoge can run sub 12 100m

you probably think that Kipchoge 100m time is 17 seconds and he can hold it for 42.2 k because of his great efficiency and great mechanics

This explains why Usain Bolt upstaged Kipchoge and ran 1:42:00 for the marathon (5sec/100m slower than sprinting). He obviously is fast and has great power relative to his body weight.

Exactly ...! wrote:

SDSU Aztec wrote:

I'm not quite sure what the point of this thread is. Kipchoge has better top-end speed than 99% of world class marathoners. What that equates to as a 100 time is irrelevant.

When O.P. stated sub-12 100m, some posters got distracted. Sub-3:35 1500m men with sub-2:05 Marathon is an interesting discussion. Many posters are jumping on O.P. since O.P. cannot prove Kipchoge ever had sub-12 100m speed.

But 3:35 is not indicative of a performer with a high percentage of fast twitch fibres either.

Maybe Letsrun needs a biology lesson:

Type I fibres: Slow twitch. Low peak force output but excellent endurance performance. Can work for almost infinite time before fatigue if given enough fuel and oxygen

Type 2a fibres: Aerobic fast twitch: higher peak force but exhaust quickly. Good for high force output for up to 60s or so, or 8-12 reps of moderately heavy weights.

Type 2b fibres: Glycolytic fast twitch: Anaerobic fibres. Extremely high force output but fatigues in seconds. Maybe 10 seconds at best. After that you switch to Type 2a.

Please explain to me how one can think that Kipchoge, the worlds best marathoner, can have a significant proportion of fast twitch fibres if his event lasts 2 hours?

Usain Bolt sucks at 5k because 90% of his muscle fibres fatigue in under 1 minute.

Sprinting is neurological, your brain sends signals and the muscles contract, if you have good coordination, these fibers all contract at once producing the force needed to sprint. You can run sub 12 if you have good neurological coordination and can recruit all your slow twitch fibers to contract together and produce enough force to go 12 seconds. That might even be enough to beat an uncoordinated fast twitch fiber effort.

Kipchoge is one of the greatest distance runner ever lived , some say the GOAT, ok but if it comes to 100 or 200 his times are not good even for high school meet.

12 seconds doesnt mean anything. Just because a world class sprinter has 9"70/ 10" and Kipchoge is " only " 2 sec slower

doesnt mean that he is fast. He s far away from the speed of a world class sprinter, He's a world class marathoner.

Is just an illusion, cos you think that Kipchoge is fast. Look things in the different direction. I mean , you can think if Kipchoge can run a 100 in 12 seconds why Bolt cannot run a marathon in 2:30'.

Simply because the phisiological system needed to run a sprint are already there you produce energy without oxigen , everybody ( a good athete) have that system more or less. But the phisiological system to run at your maximum for 42 km is something a lot more difficult that have to do with how your body is good and economical to produce energy using oxigen, VO2max,your weight, BMI,your mental power,the ability of using acid fat to produce energy, so all these things make a lot more complicated to run 42 km than a 100 m sprint. So we cant compare the two things

Ggggg Kipchoge can hold a pace of 2'53/2'54 /km for 42km simply because at that speed he produces a very low lactate between 2mmol and 3 mmol. This is the first reason. Many athlete can run at that speed but after a 1k their lactate can be around

4 mmol , other after 1k can be at 6 mmol , other 7 mmol, other 8 mmol of course all these cannot keep that pace for 42km.But also Kipchoge has great efficiency and great mechanics. Then to complete a marathon you need calories for

body weigth x km. Kipchoge is 52 kg. So 52 x 42= 2184 calories needed by Kipchoge to finish a marathon. At the start of a marathon we have about 500 gr of glycogen in our muscles and liver 1gr of glycogen gives 4 calories so we have about 2000 calories from glycogen. So we can say that Kipchoge can run a marathon only with glycogen stored with a little help from integration during the race and just a little help from acid fat.

.... But an athlete of 70 kg to complete a marathon needs about 3000 calories cos 70x42=2.940 calories

If at the start we have "only" 2000 calories stored , it means that he needs an extra 1000 calories from acid fat

but we know that this is not easy, and if he s not very good to burn a mixed fuel of acid fat and sugar at the 30 km he will need to reduce his speed.

I remember in the Seb Coe documentary a coach he'd trained with stating that "he PROBABLY COULD'VE been a top-class sprinter IF HE HAD TRAINED FOR IT". And this comment is in regards to an individual who shattered the 800m world record.

The top 800m guys aren't even that fast over 100m because it's not what they're specifically training for. With Kipchoge a 5000m runner who peaked in the marathon- I don't think he'd break 12 at this point in time BUT the 2003 Eliud sneaks under 12 secs for 100m....and if he was focused on sprinting he probably is in the low 11 range.

You are stating science without stating your science resume. If your science knowledge is based on more than Barnes & Noble running books, feel free to state.

You do know that humans shed and grow cells all the time. Do you know Bolt's twitch ratio or are you guessing. Bolt cannot race a 5000m well because he never trained to race 5000m well and Bolt is heavy. When an athlete is over 200lbs., we know that athlete does not have great VO2 numbers.

I stated what I stated regarding 1500m because that is the shortest event when have results for Kipchoge. There have been sub-3:35 guys with 45 or 46 400m person best while most are in the 47 to 50 range for 400m. You cannot guess an athlete's twitch ratio by their performance. Twitch ratio is an overly simplistic answer. The truth for sprinting speed is more complicated. Sprinting speed is mainly a combination of physical strength and coordination.

I don’t need to state my science resume. This is known science, it’s not revolutionary. Humans replace cells with replicas (mitosis) not random cells btw.

The science of muscle fibre types is understood and accepted in scientific circles. What you have stated is your own interpretation of biological facts.

Biopsies have been performed on top athletes.

Top sprinter with 110m hurdle best of 12.91 (C.J) had a leg muscle fibre distribution of 71% fast twitch. A huge 24% was type IIb meaning good for 10-15s of max output before fatigue.

This person would struggle very much to run a good 5k time regardless of body weight.

Their legs fatigue extremely quickly, far quicker than yours. But they can achieve power outputs and speed you cannot dream of.

Further:

Muscle fiber composition among healthy individuals is heterogeneous (50/50) with pure MHC I and IIa muscle fibers as the predominant fiber type, while the pure MHC IIx muscle fiber is generally less than 2% of the muscle fiber population. Additionally, the MHC IIx fibers were highly responsive to intense exercise at the transcriptional level for genes involved with muscle growth and remodeling. Further, the power output of the MHC IIa and MHC IIx muscle fibers was greater than any human values reported to date.

Elite sprinters are quite literally a different breed.

Ggggg wrote:

You can see plenty of fit people amateur runners with low body fat at your local track. 99% of them can’t run 12.98 for 100m. So how come? They are even more slow twitch than Farah?

You're arguing with your own straw man, i.e. the bizarre belief (which no one in the world actually holds) that running performance at all distances is determined exclusively by your relative percentage of fast twitch and slow twitch muscles. If your point is that simply knowing someone's fast/slow twitch ratio doesn't really tell you how fast they'll be, then congratulations: you're right and everyone agrees with you. There are many, many other factors that influence running ability, including structural and anatomical factors, metabolic factors, neuromuscular factors, and so on.

If your point is that Kipchoge MUST have a lot of fast-twitch fibers (more than that average recreational musclehead, say) because he can run a 3:50 mile (and, according to your imaginary facts, a sub-12 100m), then you're simply wrong. None of us knows exactly what Kipchoge's muscle composition is, but there's plenty of evidence that elite distance runners (even ones with fast middle-distance times) tend to have high proportions of slow-twitch fibers.

mcvred wrote:

Kipchoge never necessarily demonstrated potential to run sub 50 for 400m

You don’t think he demonstrated sub 50 potential when outkicking bekele and el gourrouj? Your thinker must not be working correctly.

Like Really Bro wrote:

mcvred wrote:

Kipchoge never necessarily demonstrated potential to run sub 50 for 400m

You don’t think he demonstrated sub 50 potential when outkicking bekele and el gourrouj? Your thinker must not be working correctly.

I agree that he probably could've broken 50, but you don't need that much speed to win a kick in a 12:52 race. This year Jakob--the fastest 1500 man in the Doha 5k--was destroyed in a kick because he didn't have the stamina.

In a fast race kicking is 90% endurance.

the gist of O.P.'s question wrote:

If a U.S. high school coach would have had Eliud Kipchoge from ages 14 to 18, Kipchoge at many U.S. high schools would have been one of 4 fastest 400m males in the school. The high school team would count on Kipchoge for 4 x400m relay. In U.S., Kipchoge would never have raced 3200m since 3200m in U.S. high school meets is immediately prior to 4 x 400m relay.

??? Youre retarded. First, I ran the 4x400 and the 3000 in the same meet, the five to ten minutes is honestly plenty of time to recover. And second, they can run him in the 4x400 in some meets and in the 3200 (or equivalent) in others.

Yes. He MUST quite literally have FAR FEWER fast twitch muscle fibres than the average recreational muscle head.

As the study above states, an average person has a 50/50 distribution of fast and slow twitch fibres with 2% type 11b.

Kipchoge has maybe 50x better endurance than the average man and MUST have a very very high proportion of slow twitch muscle fibres.

Mo Farah lost in a 100m to a 120kg boxer.

Elite marathon runners slow twitch muscle fibre distribution in excess of 80% with some individuals having over 95% slow twitch.

You're right that fast/slow twitch is nonsense.

Of course your elite short sprinters when biopsied will be configured for explosive power, but that's because they lift weights, not because they were born like that. And if you lift to build up that much strength, it will invariably have that kind of composition, because there is no other use for that much strength than short-term explosive power. The extra muscle mass by itself is unfeasible for longer-term exercise. So getting into the details of what "type" of fiber is involved is a moot point.

And then there's your sprinters who aren't so bulky, who get more power-to-weight ratio simply by being quick. They still lift, but what makes them quick is a well-functioning nervous system and good mechanics that they spend lots of time developing. Among the most basic things is the ability to hold high cadence, over 4 and up to 5 steps per second. More footstrikes beats harder footstrikes.

What you have written is completely self-contradicting.

Elite sprinters have fast twitch fibres when biopsied. You acknowledged this fact. The fact that this is or isn’t due to training is absolutely irrelevant.

The high proportion of fast twitch fibres (which are not a made up thing, they are real btw), is exactly why they are quick and can achieve high cadence.

Nobody said anything about sprinters having a lot of muscle mass to produce more force. I’ve literally said (as you said and then changed your mind) that the ability of a sprinter to run fast is down to the type of fibres.

It literally says in the paper about Colin Jackson that when they tested his biopsied muscle they found that his fast twitch fibres produced more force PER FIBRE than any human fibres ever studied.

Do you understand what that means?

Ggggg wrote:

you probably think that Kipchoge 100m time is 17 seconds and he can hold it for 42.2 k because of his great efficiency and great mechanics

Nope but that proved you are moran.