What will it take for a new mile WR?

Whoever breaks it will need 47 second 400 meter speed. EOT

was cram clean? wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

It isn't obvious he was capable of 3.44. You might as well say everyone is capable of running way faster than their best, and the El G was equally capable of 3.41. There is a very big difference between 3.46xx and 3.43.

It's very obvious. Your point about everyone being capable of faster is irrelevant. Anyone with a brain can see his splits were far from optimal that night. Cram said he was disappointed with a slow third lap:

“The record would have been at least a second better if we’d have been faster in that lap. This is not at all a final limit. It’s possible to run much faster than this.”

But then you know better than Cram of course.

A second better is 3.45.3, not 3.44. A slower third lap allowed for a stronger finish; a harder lap could have taken at least a second off his final lap. So, still much the same time - the fastest he ever ran.

Armstronglivs wrote:

was cram clean? wrote:

It's very obvious. Your point about everyone being capable of faster is irrelevant. Anyone with a brain can see his splits were far from optimal that night. Cram said he was disappointed with a slow third lap:

“The record would have been at least a second better if we’d have been faster in that lap. This is not at all a final limit. It’s possible to run much faster than this.”

But then you know better than Cram of course.

A second better is 3.45.3, not 3.44. A slower third lap allowed for a stronger finish; a harder lap could have taken at least a second off his final lap. So, still much the same time - the fastest he ever ran.

“The record would have been at least a second better if we’d have been faster in that lap. This is not at all a final limit. It’s possible to run much faster than this.”

In an interview before the race, Cram said that "if Seb wasn't in the race, I'd probably be more inclined to just really go out for the record and go out and try to run as hard as I could right from the start...but this race is about winning it." He stated he believed 3:44 or 3:45 was possible in the right race, and made a similar comment in another interview where he claimed he felt both he and Aouita could run 3:44.

Again though, you clearly know better than Cram what he was capable of.

hauwei wrote:

It would take a boat-load of EPO

sadly, this

Faster than 3.46 was possible, and I suspect 3.45xx would still likely be the clean wr - if Cram and anyone else at that level was clean. I don't buy that his 3.46.3 run suggested he should have run 3.44 - that is too big a jump. Why not argue El G could have run 3.41 (or 3.24 for the 1500)?

Cram's opinion - however expert - is still an opinion. It remains conjecture - the same as for us.

I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest Cram was capable of at least 3:44.99 based on his performance in Oslo. Surely better pacing could cut 1.33 seconds off his mark.

The reason I'm not arguing that El G was capable of 3:41 (I think he was) is because the conditions under which he ran his 3:43.13 were nearly perfect.

Armstronglivs wrote:

RamboWarrior wrote:

Marathon is an olympic distance.

The Mile is nothing. It's not even an event contested in 95% of the countries in the world. It's only a thing in US schools meet.

It's a minor world record of a minor event and top athletes are not focused on it.

You were born yesterday. For most of the 20th century the mile was the glamour event that most captured the public imagination. Track today is a sport that no one outside the running fraternity actually cares about. The marathon is a geek event. Non-runners know who Bannister was; most wouldn't have a clue who Kipchoge is.

Well if you believe that then you truly are a lost soul. The public's imagination was never (NEVER) 'captured' by the mile. The general public was never walking around mesmerised in imagination fixated on the mile. It's just not the case. Come back when you have something intelligent to say.

I guess you mean the men outdoors, because currently two women today are capable: Siffan Hissan and Genzebe Dibaba, and for the men's indoors, Kejelcha might improve on his recent record, or maybe Cheserek will have another great race.

If history is any guide, the answer for the mile is a very low probability. Looking strictly at the men's outdoor mile, and the performances in the last 35 years, only 3 men have run faster in the outdoor mile than Cram's 3:46.32 in 1985: El Guerrouj, Ngeny, and Morceli. The mile is simply run too infrequently since the transition to metric distances. But then again, all it would take is someone with the potential to make one attempt.

If you want to ask who could do it, better to look at the more frequently run 1500m at those who have demonstrated proven fast performances. According to Purdy, El G's mile (1096.96 Purdy points) is virtually equivalent to his 1500m (1096.26), making the comparison of the records between the two events apt.

Again, using a 1985 performance from Cram, in the last 35 years, only 25 men have run the 1500m faster a total of 80 times. Amazingly, El G ran 26 of those 80 performances, about 1/3rd, leaving 54 performances to the rest of the world. Next best is Morcelli, with 7, and Lagat, Kiprop, and Ngeny with 6. Of these 25 men, 18 of them were less than 1 second faster than Cram, leaving only 6 men within 2.5 seconds of El G's 3:26.00. The only current one is Timothy Cheryiout, who recently joined this club of 7 men more than 1 second faster than Cram, with a 3:28.41, still 2.4 seconds slower than El G's record.

NOTE: Cram's mile, as weak as others have suggested it might be, is stronger than his 3:29.67, with Purdy equating the mile to nearly 1 second faster at 3:28.86. Using that reference, only 12 athletes were faster in the 1500m. If we suggest his mile was unoptimal and about 1 second slow, only 5 athletes in history were faster than 3:28.

NOTE: when I counted all time elite performances, the number of elite performers (sub 3:38) has doubled since Cram's era from about 100 to about 200 (counting total performers in 4-year Olympic cycles).

NOTE: Only 2 of the aforementioned runners were of non-African descent: Cacho of Spain and Nick Willis of New Zealand. 23 of them were of African descent (16 East Africans - 13 Kenya, 1 Burundi, 1 Somali, 1 Djibouti; and 8 North Africans - 4 Morocco and 4 Algeria). No non-Africans were faster than Cram's converted mile of 3:28.86.

What would it take?

1) Talent, nurtured by effective training and coaching to reach its full potential. As we see, very few in history have demonstrated a talent greater than Cram's performances in the last 35 years.

2) An opportunity to attempt it at a runner's peak fitness

3) Incentive to attempt it

4) Rivalry among two or more talents will increase the chance

Redonculous Maximus wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

You were born yesterday. For most of the 20th century the mile was the glamour event that most captured the public imagination. Track today is a sport that no one outside the running fraternity actually cares about. The marathon is a geek event. Non-runners know who Bannister was; most wouldn't have a clue who Kipchoge is.

Well if you believe that then you truly are a lost soul. The public's imagination was never (NEVER) 'captured' by the mile. The general public was never walking around mesmerised in imagination fixated on the mile. It's just not the case. Come back when you have something intelligent to say.

I did not suggest the public was "walking around mesmerised" and "fixated in their imagination" when I said the mile captured the public imagination - metaphor is clearly beyond you. But for years the mile and its metric equivalent was regarded as the blue riband event in track and field, when its champions were often household names - unlike today. But you clearly have no experience of that time or of anything much outside your little world.

You got it wrong - the 8 N. Africans are "Berbers." Many southern Europeans, particularly in Spain, Portugal and other parts of Iberia, share genetic traits of northwestern Africans found in that region. So the Berbers are genetically similar to Southern Europeans. They may reside on the continent of Africa but grouping them as Africans for these purposes appears to be grouping them with the East Africans, who are genetically completely diifferent from the Berbers. It's analogous to classifying all Americans as American when you have European-Americans, African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Slavic-Americans, etc. The true Americans would be the Native-Americans who were the indigenous people of the continent. The continent of Africa messes everything up because it's so big and has so many different ethnic groups. Look at the Egypt, which is technically part of E. Africa. But the Egyptians no way resemble the Kenyans or Ugandans of E. Africans. So, you should group the Moroccans & Algerians as Berbers when comparing times & performances with other ethnic groups. 8 Berbers ran faster than Cram's time.

The mile and 1500 records have endured so long they are taking on the dimensions of the East German women's world records, as well as Flojo's records. Only a convicted doper - Kiprop - has come close to any one of those times in recent years. The records won't be beaten by clean athletes, as in all likelihood they weren't set by clean athletes.

I know it will have been said but...lots of drugs! That's the only way to break the record. And, that is so obvious!

I do have one correction: Astute readers will have seen that 16+8+2 is not 25. I should have said 15 East Africans and 12 Kenyans. Are you saying North Africa is not in Africa, but is in fact Europe? Genetics is a red-herring. I don't make any arguments or conclusions based on genetics. Contrary to grouping Africans together, I explicitly singled out North and East Africans separately from each other, and from the remaining non-Africans.

portsea57 wrote:

I know it will have been said but...lots of drugs! That's the only way to break the record. And, that is so obvious!

If it is so obvious -- shouldn't it go without saying?

rekrunner wrote:

portsea57 wrote:

I know it will have been said but...lots of drugs! That's the only way to break the record. And, that is so obvious!

If it is so obvious -- shouldn't it go without saying?

Well, we know that you would prefer that it wasn't said. But many fail to grasp the obvious - yourself included (unless you've had a recent epiphany).

I was always able to grasp "the obvious".

I simply categorize it as faith.

rekrunner wrote:

I was always able to grasp "the obvious".

I simply categorize it as faith.

In your lexicon, "faith" equates with superstition and not fact; you choose not to believe it. Yet, despite that it is "obvious" that the sun will rise tomorrow and that night follows day, or even that the earth is not flat, your definition of the obvious requires you to categorize these as matters of "faith". The one thing you have difficulty grasping is the obvious.

So, in your lexicon, "faith" equates to "fact" and not "superstition"? That is interesting and does seem to explain a great deal.

There are non-religious ways to reduce ambiguity and uncertainty, to help us avoid being in this intellectually helpless position to have to choose to believe.

Some of these techniques have been used to help us understand why the sun appears to rise, from the viewpoint of an observer on earth, and the cycles between night and day, and the contour of the surface of the earth.