there are three physiologies out there. sprint, IM, and kona. it’s possible that macca doesn’t have kona physiology. i’m pretty sure that leder doesn’t.
but kona’s just one race, and had those dozen guys 25 years ago lived in san francisco or seattle, and if that’s where the IM took place every year, mark allen would have 10 wins, erin baker would have a few more than she does, and macca might’ve won the thing by now.
in this one sense, it’s too bad that the IM is where it is. i’m glad the world’s most important marathon doesn’t start at 1pm in kona, or we’d have a vastly different idea of who the world’s best marathoners are.
this is why mark allen is the best there ever was, because he could win in kona, long and short, cold and hot, dry and humid. likewise once must acknowledge erin, welchy, skid, and those all-rounders who came close like barel, pigg, mouton, kirsten hansen, and the great short coursers that keep trying kona, like spencer.
as an all-rounder if macca ever wins kona he’ll have really done something.
That’s why I’d love to see Ian Thorpe have a go at the 1500 metre up against Grant Hackett. People talk about him being the greatest of all time. IMHO to be one of the “greats” like Zatopek I personally like them to be able to win across all the distances.
I hate to admit but I don’t know much about Mark Allen & Dave Scott’s achievements, as I’m a relative newcomer to triathlon (3 years of insanity to be precise). I do know that Mark, has had an awesome amount of wins at Kona (10, I think?) and that these guys pushed eachother on and on. Incredible! So I’m curious as to whether these guys also did short course successfully? Wouldn’t the best athlete be good at all distances? I respect your opinion.
Mark Allen won the very first ‘short course’ worlds at Avignon in 1989 and both he and Dave Scott (along with Molina and Tinley) made up the Big 4 who, together, won just about every short and long course race of significance for nearly ten years.
In those early days of the sport the best racers did short and long races (there was no ITU back then and no Olympics) and so their pedigree was established over all distances.
I think today’s athletes are as good as those guys were (and girls too when you think of the likes of Erin Baker et al) but I don’t think they are any better.
15 years ago even the women were running faster than that. welchy won Oly distance worlds aganst many of the same who’re racing today, some of whom were faster then than now. and welchy rarely if ever outran mark.
the guys today would have a very hard time beating the mark of '89, and even a 1985 vintage molina would be hard to beat in short course, equipment being equal.
I was in my late 20’s in the late 80’s & I would run in the 37-39 min range as an AG’er. I could not touch the pros. I did many of the Bud Light USTS series races and the pros regularly smoked me on the run. I was swimming sub 20 and riding 1:00 to 1:03 depending on the course (pre-aerobars).
Quite true, Slowman. I think a key issue for consistent Kona success is “Body Temperature Management.” I did a bunch of reading about the Badwater 100 race last summer. Death Valley, August, 120 in the shade…etc.
One thing runners have learned there is that trying to cool the whole body all at once doesn’t work. Put cold water or air all over your skin and your surface capillaries close down, pushing even more heat down into your core. This is why some heatstruck people go downhill fast if they are brought into an air conditioned room.
The people that are successful at Badwater have an unexplainable natural ability to both shed body heat and to continue moving at high body temperatures that waylay other runners. Small body size helps, but isn’t always the case.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is that woman who sets all the long distance cold water swimming records (like Alaska to Russia, and a full mile in Antartica in 30 degree water). She’s got a weird ability to stay warm and keep going when other people would be dead.
Skid won his Kona after spending a couple weeks out in the Coachella Vally flogging himself in 110 degree weather.
I’m wondering whether there are specific temperature management techniques that could be tried at Kona.
TDB ran 33:00 this year at Boulder Peak. That is at altitude, on dirt, after a hilly bike. Lessing smoked everyone with a 32:05 - it will be interesting to see what he does at the IM distance next year.
TDB still has his speed for sure.
BTW F, I hope you are doing well? Any races coming up?
“Mark Allen won in Avignon in 1h58’
second was glenn cook in 2h00”
sub-1:50 was not uncommon on those days. mark was a sub 30 minute 10k runner in a straight 10k, as was welchy. 32s were common for the men off the bike in that era. colleen cannon regularly ran in the 35s at the end of her triathlons, and she was not the fastest. erin was a 2:34 marathoner, few of the women of today had erin’s footspeed.
the difference today is not that they’re faster, but that there are more of them. yes, lessing was and is fast, but he didn’t have mark’s run. it’s too bad mark didn’t take more of an opportunity to prove it over the short course later in his career.
This whole discussion seems to assume that times should get relentlessly faster.
Compare our sport to other endurance sports and realize how little times really change over a decade. Ten, fifteen seconds here and there in 5k, 10k. A couple of minutes in a marathon. A second or three in swimming. I think the 40k bike record is decades old, despite modern equipment.
There’s no reason to expect times to change dramatically going forward. Within a few years of triathlon’s maturity (ie, by the early 90’s?), times were world-class and remain so.
Triathlon splits and overall times need to be taken with a grain of salt – just as road race times are in running. Only times taken on the track are deemed “genuine” and beyond reproach. Does anyone really think Deena Drossin was tops in the world in the 5k when she set the road 5k “world record” last year? She can’t even finish on the same lap as the top runners on the track. Since triathlon doesn’t have a track, we will always have to put comparitive times in the proper context.
For example – Luc’s “world record” set at Roth. Roth’s bike course is 3 miles short! That’s 9 minutes. Still fast, but not 7:50. Reid’s best, when corrected for a 400-meter-short run course, was faster, but Luc gets credit for a “world record”.
I put Kona/Macca in perspective, but the athletes are still slacking. They swim hard and run hard. I saw the race. I saw the pack of 12. I used to think that Macca would not do something as dishonorable as sit in the pack after he made such a baig deal of the ITU racing style and drafters in general. I am big supporter of Macca and wish him well, but he was as big a Drafter at Kona as the rest of the people he bad mouthed.
The materials and technologies that we have today on the bikes far exceed what Mark Allen and Dave Scott rode on. Yet the pros are not pushing the bike, or maybe they are just made of weaker stuff. When 12 guys all ride within 30 seconds of each other, that is called taking it easy, or draft happy, take your pick.
francois…Peter is a consistent 32 minute 10 km runner and I think has gone as low as 31 minutes…I’ve seen him go 15 flat for a 5km…now that’s not stinky fast, but still pretty darn fast. That being said he is definitely a better long course athlete than short course, but you still need some speed.
Does anyone really think Deena Drossin was tops in the world in the 5k when she set the road 5k “world record” last year? She can’t even finish on the same lap as the top runners on the track.
Now she set that record at the Carlsbad 5K - do you think the race was short? Isn’t one of the nice things about road races is that they are certified? And its not like thats a small race. Adere Berhane won it this year and tied Deena’s record - is she slow too? Berhane happened to win the 10K at Track World’s this August - time 30:04.18. Deena took 12th with a 31:17 so at that race she was almost exactly one lap behind the winner but she wasn’t particulary happy with that performance. Deena took silver at World Cross Country Championships 8K - 2002. Maybe she is a better road and x-country runner than a track runner?
I think she ran the 2nd fastest road 5K in history (Paula recently beat it) when she won the Carlsbad 5000 in 2002. Lots of other really fast runners have ran that particular race and no woman faster…and it is touted as the world’s fastest 5K. So at that race she was probably as fast as any woman in the world.
<< Now she set that record at the Carlsbad 5K - do you think the race was short? Isn’t one of the nice things about road races is that they are certified?
I’ll let you in on a little local secret. Even though the course is certified, there are certain tangents that you can run that will in fact cut a couple of seconds off your time. Not that a couple of seconds make a big deal to most of us, but for those at the very front of the Elite field, it does make a huge difference.
I do not mean to denigrate Deena in any way. I’m a fan, actually, and root for her whenever she races.
My point is that road race times are notoriously fickle. I just believe that the “gold standard” for comparing performances across the years and across continents is the track. And, some athletes perform well in the road racing/x-country environment, but the rigor of the track works against them. Deena is clearly one of those.
Since triathlon does not have the equivalent of a track, we need to take performance times with a relatively wide “sample error” around them. We simply cannot say for sure that a 31:00 10k split on one course is “better” than a 31:30 split on another course.
There is an saying in my trade (that I coined):
“Just because two numbers are different doesn’t mean they’re not the same.”
Simon Whitfield, who I think most people classify as a fast short course dude has never gone low 29’s on the track or otherwise. Those times I was talking about with Peter were fresh straight runs…yes off the bike he is around 32-33 minutes, and yes compared to the top short course guys he’s not competitive…why do you think he switched from itu racing to ironman? Also his swim isn’t up there with the top guys…it’s good, but not as fast as the top guys. Also Peter was the first person to say the run in Austria where he went well under 8 was at least 2km short.
