Why don’t Non-Africans train like they used to?

can't post as HRE wrote:

Do you know that those eight guys did not train like Seko and Nakayama, who by the way did not train idnetically, used to? Seriously, what do you know about those eight guys?

Here is Yuta Shitara's training. He is running a lot of volume. But no single run over 25km. Even for the marathon build up, he doesn't run more than 30km (@ 3:30km pacce.)

He never did a 40km run, which is a staple of marathon training in Japan. Instead, he did a lot of shorter races, like Kawauchi does.

If you just look at the overall volume, then most top runners today are running like those in 1980s. And maybe the OP is interested in only the overall volume and nothing else. (I question his premise that today's top "non-African runners" run less volume. Does any of us remember Ryan Vail and his 150mpw training? What volume do Hawkins, Moen, or Roberton twins run, for example? Do we know? )

But training is just more than volume. The top two runners (Osako and Shitara) don't train like Seko used to do. They certainly don't run crazy over-distance (60-80km) like Seko and Soh brohters used to do. (Those runs are not useful unless you are training for ultra.) For that matter, I don't think any top runner does any run over 50km or even 45km. Seko might be grumbling on why today's runners don't run more mileage. But they are training better, and racing faster. (Even accounting for the effect of shoes.)

trying to be HRE again wrote:

all eyez on me wrote:

you should e-mail the brojos and ask them to see why you can't post as you normally do. Someone probably hijacked your name and registered it.

It seems that now if you post from one computer with a name and then try to post on the same thread with that same name it won't let you. I've got three computers in different parts of the house so if I'm on a different one that my first post was on I have to change names.

Also if you clear your cookies, LRC won’t recognize you even if using the same machine, and will think you’re trying to use someone else’s name

Back in the day, American runners could compete on the world stage. There were great competitors from everywhere: North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Middle East, New Zealand, Australia etc. Now we have a monoculture where East Africans dominate across the board. American teens don't have the role models I did (Shorter, Rodgers, etc.). Money is just not enough incentive to train at the level it would take to compete with Kenyans and Ethiopians. Sure, the top runners make good money, but second and third tier runners in the pros don't make good money and their careers rarely last more than 4 to 5 years. Meanwhile an American kid can coast through school, be satisfied to run a sub-5 mile, maybe get a BS degree and make a whole lot more money over that same time period with a whole lot less effort. We're not as hungry (often literally) as the Africans are.

This time I just say; It`s not mainly a question about how much you train ! Nowadays It`s more a question about who can train smartest.To beat the world record at marathon you have to run just over 2 hours 1 min for a man and just sub 2:14 for a woman. Your aerobic power doesn`t have to hold for more time than that at race speed. You got to find the right balance , the right mix of factors that counts for the result. That`s it!

Hassan Mead was born in Somalia, which, correct me if I'm wrong, is in Africa.

I've seen samples of Shitara's training and the absence of runs beyond 25k was maybe the first thing that jumped out at me. Let's get semantic. What do we mean by "training like So and So (Soh and Soh?) or Seko? If we mean doing the identical things then essentially no one trains like anyone else. You look for differences and commonalities. A difference I see between Shitara and really every other Japanese runner I know of is that absence of really long runs. But when you look at that in more detail you can find that some Japanese long runs are longer than other Japanese long runs. A commonality that I see is that he runs an awful lot of miles. yet still more than some and fewer than others,

When I asked my Japanese source about what's changed in the past thirty years with Japanese running he was well aware that Shitara didn't do the kinds of long runs that Seko did, that Osaka does more sprinting than any other top Japanese runners do, etc. There will always be variations from one athlete to another regardless of whether you're comparing over the years or between people who are contemporaries. What he meant was that the corporate system that was in place then is still in effect, that the reverence for Lydiard remains, that people mostly avoid the built up, supportive, shoes that much of the rest of the world wears, that you run lots and lots of miles, etc. If I pointed out to him that Shitara doesn't do everything the Sohs or Seko did he'd have wondered why I'd even make such an obvious comment.

Hey, yeah, the original 'running boom' was just like the top guys from the early '70s to mid '80s probably talk about. Everyone raced at fairly random road races more often than Jerry's kids do today (that is not saying much since BTC isn't likely to even show up at USATF in a non championship year). That included us kids. A poster just maybe 3 posts above this one now points out the role models for my generation - the usual suspects mentioned by the OP, for example - and the lack thereof today.

Because that's who we wanted to be, we ran 10k and up. We didn't feel we were doing anything wrong and neither did our parents. They thought it was cool and drove us to races. Contrast that with my generation's kids who feel that if you run, you must do so for the school. That is all well and good if you're fast-twitch enough for the 1500 or sprints but if you're almost pure slow-twitch and not that great at anything 5k and down or can't handle a weekly racing schedule (even Kipchoge entered a total of 1 race last year) then you may just get disappointed and not pursue the sport.

So yeah, we went to the big local and regional races as well as more obscure events where I could win 17-and-under. Our metro area didn't have a real iconic marathon until about the time I graduated, but there was a 20 mile race that pretty much everyone around showed up for. Now, traveling pros didn't seem to do that one but the guys 13 older than us who won the half dozen locally well-known 10ks did. I've been back to that one a few times recently and noticed one year that my best teenage time would have been 2nd place overall. At the time I didn't crack top-3 in my division and overall who knows? 40th if I was lucky! So even the ones without Rodgers were very deep compared to now. But I went to one race where Billy spoke pre-race then easily won against a solid national class local hero.

I believe this kind of thing - an army of 14-28 year olds who focus on long distance races and whatever is high mileage for themselves set us up for the situation that the OP is reminiscent about. Most of us didn't become Herb Lindsey or Greg Meyer but if you have an entire country who remembers Shorter coming into the stadium (this would include our parents who understood why we were pursuing this) then stars will develop out of that culture. Acceptance of training on your own, without the school in your way, tolerance of reasonably high mileage, seeing the older guys who won local races and being motivated to do the same, following the national stars, seeing them occasionally and being further inspired - that was the perfect setup.

As far as school-sanctioned cross, it must have been shallower and weaker than today. There were so many kids at random road races that I suppose could have otherwise been on their school's team that the talent pool for State meets and Invitationals and such had to have been shallower. Our large State didn't even have a State Meet. Kinney (Foot Locker) started my Senior year, I think, and the State created a championship meet (with qualifying events, presumably) a few years later, so yeah, I believe HS XC prior to the late '80s was sort of a joke compared to now, at least in my area.

So let’s say that Ward, Fauble, Riley, Stinson, etc. all trained like the guys BITD. They U.K. their mileage. I imagine they’d get hurt as many of the top marathoners in the US are quite injury prone. This part also confuses me. The current crop of pros all seem very injury prone despite doing strength work and having a plethora of resources to keep them healthy.

They may have been better at taking off days and trained more by time than distance. That way they could reduce og increase stress by feeling

Old School Cool wrote:

So let’s say that Ward, Fauble, Riley, Stinson, etc. all trained like the guys BITD. They U.K. their mileage. I imagine they’d get hurt as many of the top marathoners in the US are quite injury prone. This part also confuses me. The current crop of pros all seem very injury prone despite doing strength work and having a plethora of resources to keep them healthy.

This has puzzled me too for a long time. I have three theories, maybe none correct, maybe at least partially all correct. One is that as kids we might have been more active than recent generations are. Basically we played baseball, wiffle ball, touch football, and basketball, the real versions, not video ones. We were always on pour feet and moving when we played even if we weren't Kenyans running to school and back. Maybe our connective tissues got more developed that way. Another is that in the absence of so much science telling us what the "correct" pace to run was on any given run we ran at whatever paces felt okay. Maybe modern runners force themselves to those "correct" paces when they shouldn't and overdo things. And maybe the wave of information about injuries and how to prevent them has over sensitized people to the possibility of being injured so they back off from things that the older generation ran through. I remember a story about Shorter having an injured hip and taping an ice bag to it when he ran rather than miss a run. Maybe someone still does stuff like that but if you do they seem to keep the stories to themselves.

I don't mean to say you are wrong but apparently your experience from that time was completely different than mine.

We all ran on our school XC & track teams, That was the important thing for us.... make varsity and win our section meet. We ran a lot of miles... excessive really because in high school our races were only 2 miles back then in XC... and nothing more than 2 miles in track. We did run road races in the off season but there was absolutely no one in our league or section that was any good who didn't run for their school. It sounds like your city or county was much different.

btw, the excessive miles worked for me as over the years I was able to handle high mileage and improved a great deal each year through and past college. I will say this though, I don't think the high mileage worked for everyone... it takes lots of dedication and some folks just aren't built for that type of pounding. Many people can excel at lower mileage... gotta find what works best for you.

HRE that story about Shorter is among the many reasons that he is a legend. The guys and gals BITD were just tougher than the current crop.

I don't know if this is correct but it's what I think as well. As kids we played outside all the time... played all the sports... always outside doing something active. Even when we started running lots of miles we continued playing all the other sports too. I do think that really helped us avoid developing the muscle imbalances which lead to many injuries.... but it's just a theory I suppose.

I'll just say this... wrote:

I don't know if this is correct but it's what I think as well. As kids we played outside all the time... played all the sports... always outside doing something active. Even when we started running lots of miles we continued playing all the other sports too. I do think that really helped us avoid developing the muscle imbalances which lead to many injuries.... but it's just a theory I suppose.

Lydiard thought a big reason was that people don't drink as much milk now as they did a generation ago and didn't have bones that were as strong. Of course he made his living delivering milk for a while. He also thought that modern shoes were a real problem. But we're all mostly theorizing.

HRE wrote:

I'll just say this... wrote:

I don't know if this is correct but it's what I think as well. As kids we played outside all the time... played all the sports... always outside doing something active. Even when we started running lots of miles we continued playing all the other sports too. I do think that really helped us avoid developing the muscle imbalances which lead to many injuries.... but it's just a theory I suppose.

Lydiard thought a big reason was that people don't drink as much milk now as they did a generation ago and didn't have bones that were as strong. Of course he made his living delivering milk for a while. He also thought that modern shoes were a real problem. But we're all mostly theorizing.

Hi HRE! That theory we was told as children about milk gives strong bones is completely wrong!)) It`s the opposite way. We learn new things as long as we live. But It`s correct that we moved alot more than the kids nowadays except the kids in poorer countries.Take care man! :)

Old School Cool wrote:

HRE that story about Shorter is among the many reasons that he is a legend. The guys and gals BITD were just tougher than the current crop.

I don't know how serious Shorter's hip injury was. But if running with an ice pack did not aggravate it, maybe it wasn't that serious.

Rupp ran a 2:06 marathon on a foot that required surgery right after the race. And he didn't say a single word about his injury in the post-race interview. (All he said was praise for Mo and Osako.) And of course, we all know how soft he is, don't we?

As I said, Arthur was a milkman. You take care too.

You see less today because the cheating East Africans have set the bar so high that it appears unreachable. Why train 120 miles a week, run 2:08 and finish behind 15 of them? At least you can take solace in that probably at least 10 of them will get busted in future years.

As seen with Desi Linden’s victory, the press would like to cover an American victory. Same with Europeans in Europe. Same with Japanese in Japan. Absolutely no one in Europe or the US care to see any East African win a race.

So if this is the case, and it appears that almost everyone of them are cheating, why do race directors continue to PAY them to race? It makes no sense. Why pay a probable cheater to run your race when the people watching and covering it have zero affinity for the runner?

For example, the first 5 finishers in Honolulu were Kenyan. Does anybody care? Did anybody read about that race and get excited? Of course not. How many do you think were clean?