Can american distance runners ever be the best?

[williamwindhamjr]

Americans up to this point have always been known for the sprinters,but will our distance troops ever do the same.We have had some sucess wih Ryun,Shorter,Mills,Mary.I think we will dominate one day.When that day will come is like a formula.Once you find out a cure for something,it is no longer a problem.

[ed gee]

Immigration is the key, eg Salazar, Meb, Abdi, Lagat, Lomong, Manzano...

[williamwindhamjr]

I dont think so.Ryun,Shorter,Mills.Marys double at the worlds.

[ed gee]

It's 2009, not 1983.

[williamwindhamjr]

I dont care if its 3000.It can be done is the point.

[odelltrclan]

I dont care if its 3000.It can be done is the point.

It will always be difficult when its not a mainstream sport like the NBA, MLB or NFL.

In Africa running is a way of life and therefore, more potentials with the talent are discovered and developed.

There is always hope and always a few bright spots. It will be interesting to see where German Fernandez takes his talent. Maybe he and Galen Rupp can take American middle distance running up a notch.

[jhc68]

Nah, to answer you question , Americans (of the native born variety) will not be the best distance runners in the world any time soon. Certainly the current generation will not be dominant. Fernandez holds the most hope, but he is the only real candidate. American kids are not active enough as children, by the time they start competitive running they are way too soft physically as compared to kids who have been on foot (rather than being driven everywhere) in Africa or elsewhere.

[kamikaze7]

Re: Can american distance runners ever be the best?

I think we will dominate one day.When that day will come is like a formula.Once you find out a cure for something,it is no longer a problem.

Stop dreaming

[kamikaze7]

In Africa running is a way of life and therefore, more potentials with the talent are discovered and developed.

Now theres a joke :lol:

[doug091463]

i dont see it happening any time soon.
1. americans are always looking for an easy way to do things, shortcuts.
example when i see commercials on tv on getting in shape, they always say things like get the results you want on 20 minutes a day 3x a week, i dont see any commercials saying get the results you want by sweating puddles 3-5 hours a day every day (probably 15-20 miles or 90 minutes to 2 hours is an adequate daily dosage for running, but weights stretching and other things would bring it 3-5 hours.

2. i go to a bookstore and see all these books and magazines constantly saying dont overtrain, it is better to be undertrained than overtrained etc. i have yet to read dont worry too much about overtraining if you do you put yourself at risk of undertraining. how many people really overtrain, it is very hard to overtrain as the body adopts to increased workloads, take the marathon, there is an elite field who are for the most part training just right, then the runners behind them lets say 2:15-2:30 marathoners who are probably either a little under trained and/or just dont have genetics to be world class no matter what they do. after that everyone is pretty much undertrained, at 4 hours they dont even look like runners, and a study on the london marathon i read in a frank horwill article said the average runner ran just 30 miles per week and ran just under 5 hours, on average a very under trained group.
i have a hard time thinking of the very top people as people always looking for the easiest way, they should be always trying to work harder and getting better and the coaches main job should be to keep his runners who are all super motivated from doing to much, but also making sure the athltes are not undertraining finding the redline between ultimate performance and getting injured.
i would rather have an athlete overtrain that way if the athlete does not reach the goal he can at least look himself in the mirror and say i gave it everything i had.
rather than i did not train hard enough and therefore did not reach my goals. if one does not give their all they will wish they had and they would wonder how good they could have been had they went all out and when they look themself in the mirror (if they can look at themself in the mirror they would feel regret and shame.

and then there is american only prize money, and giving americans much more in appearance fees than a african of similar or even far more ability would get.

the american only prize money is great for a america runners wallet , but a horrible thing for the athletes development. what in fact happens is americans for the most part with some exceptions almost always go to a
american only race where they will face a far inferior level of competition rather than a big international event, an example is runners who have qualified for the world xc championships very often run a american only race like a 15k in florida or a 5 miler in new york instead. in 2007 they used the excuse their may be terrorists in kenya, in edinburgh the excuse was it would interfere with olympic preparations (k. bekele did fine in the olympics even with the so called interference of preparations,) in 2008 the excuse was jordan is unfriendly, has terrorist's etc. next years world xc is poland i wonder what the excuse will be for missing it.
also with the american only prize money the athlete will look at that and think at least subliminally that the reason they are getting this charity is because they are inferior.

[lovetorun]

Nah, to answer you question , Americans (of the native born variety) will not be the best distance runners in the world any time soon. Certainly the current generation will not be dominant. Fernandez holds the most hope, but he is the only real candidate. American kids are not active enough as children, by the time they start competitive running they are way too soft physically as compared to kids who have been on foot (rather than being driven everywhere) in Africa or elsewhere.

Yeah, and not only are American kids not active enough, they also eat wrong....fast food and very short on fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grain carbo's (like brown rice and wheat) and water as the primary drink.

[jhc68]

Great minds think alike, eh?

[BillVol]

Great post, doug! Are you a former runner, by any chance?

[doug091463]

yes not too good, but when i went out for a team at orange coast, i was the absolute worst of about 30 runners, by the 2nd year i had improved to 3rd - 4th on the team. everyone told me i was overtraining, but i kept improving then i went to oklahoma state and did cross country and wrestling and was still improving, coach dick weiss was always saying you cant burn the candle at both ends, but i ran with the team while they had practice at 5am then they switched training time so i just did wrestling, the philosophy of ok state wrestling (my former teamate is the head coach there) is to train hard and face the best competition possible.
its the same thing in sports, take boxing, a mediocre fighter in shape can often beat a much more credentialed fighter who has loafed on training, also lets say you take 2 boxers and give them 20 fights each, fighter 1 faces tough competition, and he learns something each fight, the 2nd fighter the management practically digs up graveyards to find stiffs there fighter can blow out and the 2nd fighter has a 20-0 record, then when the 2nd fighter has to fight someone legitimate they dont know what to do, if the first fighter with the 12-8 record fights someone legit he has learned something in all his fights and he will give most fighters fits.
if they fight each other the 12-8 guy might win, but the management team of the 20-0 guy will try to avoid someone like that and try to get him a fight with a star fighter knowing he will probably lose, but he will make lots of money, so basically, the management is sacrificing the development of their fighter for money.

same thing applies in running, the top runners sometimes will have to decide do they want to maximize their potential or maximize their money, usually with usa/european runners its maximize the money, if they maximized their potential, the money COULD follow, but it would be a huge risk.

[richxx87]

An interesting thing that this post reminded of was a conversation years ago with some college coaches.

Just having some beers in the backyard, we talked about this whole fascination with overtraining/undertraining. But the consensus was that for the guys writing such books and How-To manuals, they are not geared toward or marketed toward super-elite world-class athletes. No publisher in his right mind would tailor a book to a group of people that might number less than 1,000 in the entire world.

The point is that recreational athletes/fitness fanatics need to temper their training or there will be negative consequences.

The very thing that makes world-class athletes so special is that their bodies are not like others, they are such incredible outliers, that the "normal" rules/wisdom don't apply.

If you take a guy whose talent allowed him to win a state HS mile and put him through the rigors of 130-mile/week training with all manner of hills, fartlek, speedwork, and his body breaks down, well.. quite simply, his body was never going to take him to the international medal podium.

He wasn't one of the incredible outliers.

So the coaches gotta move on and find one that is. In the case of America, that outlier person may have hung up his cross-country shoes in 10th grade because he failed a history test and his parents said "...enough with these sports, time for you to hit the books, full time."

So maybe that guy is now 28 years old and a dentist or an accountant who seems to have 100 times more endurance and never gets nagging injuries like the other guys at the country club when playing tennis or hoops, but doesn't think much of it.

In Kenya or Ethiopia, that guy is going to be discovered as a runner for dozens of reasons that I'm sure are quite logical if you think about it.

Bottom line: the super-elite outliers' bodies will handle what everyone else considers overtraining. The key now is finding those outliers ... and they may not be running cc/track, or any sport for that matter.