Monday, August 18, 2008

Which track distance attracts the most valuable all-around all-around runners?

Put another way: if you had to build a track team around a few athletes, whom would you want?
Many might say the Jesse Owens-type sprinter/jumper. At an elite level the Jessie Owens, Heike Dreschler, Carl Lewis-type athlete will be a fast-twitch machine: 100m great; 200m great; long jump, good-great; triple jump, fair-great; high jump, fair-good; 400m, good-great, 800, poor-good, 1500 bad-fair; weight events, poor-fair (if they are better than that, you've got a decathlete). 5000-marathon...good luck.
Jumpers might be fast...or not. They are fast-twitch and might be OK in weights, but will stink past the 400 meters in general.
Distance runners 1500- marathon will be OK on the 400, 800 and great from 1500 to 10,000m, and maybe the marathon. But jumps, throws, relays are out of the picture.

So here we are....as a former coach, I'll take the 800m runners and/or the 400hurdlers. They have good fast-twitch AND endurance. A half-mile specialist who can run 2:00 in the half can go 51-53 on the 400, and 23-24 on the 200. They can go 4:35 or faster on the mile and probably around 16:00 on the 5K. A woman who can hit these marks, will make most olympic trials in every running event from the 200-5000. A male HS runner will be a high varsity runner in nearly every event. I was a 2:01 runner in HS and ran the 4X100 relay in CIF finals as well as Cross Country on a powerhouse team.

Today, a Kenyon 18 year-old ran to gold in the women's 800 in 1:54. She would be a USA HS runner still. I have no doubt she could run a conference record in girl's track in everything from the 200m up.

I was an 800 runner who could also do field events in HS. 20'7" LJ, 41'8" Triple, and 5'10 high jump. None great, but I ran varsity in every flat event in my four HS years (never did hurdles). Remember, this is for 800 runners. We had a 4:09 mile who could smoke me in the 800 (1:53), but he was short on fast-twitch muscles and I could nip him in the 200 and torch him in the 100m.

My point: 800 runners can run any distance!!!

2 comments:

Bert said...

Ron,

You're probably right there with the 800M athletes being the best all-rounders, it is a killer distance because you really have to have speed and endurance. Same for the mile. I wonder how Emil Zatopek (who of course won the 5k, 10k and marathon in the same Olympics) would have done in the shorter distances, probably not a lot of fast-twitch muscles. But I'd sure like to have him on my team...

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