Breaking the Wall

Its a slippery argument.

Sasha, the same reason you are relatively strong over the marathon is the same reason you are relatively weaker at the middle distance. They are two sides of the same coin and causally linked.

No doubt 800/mile speed is a tremendous asset, and with a high training volume can be capitalized on in the marathon, but it has its limitations.

Eric:

The way I see it - to run well in any distance from 100 meters to the marathon you need to have what I call Quality X or in other words be a good runner. Predisposition to a distance is not nearly as important as Quality X. If you have wrong predisposition you just change the distance. Lack of Quality X is a much more serious problem.

Quality X even in distance runners manifests itself in distances as short as 100 meters. Your most marathon-predisposed 2:06 marathoners can still run 12.5 100 meters.

So I get a lot more excited when I find somebody with already existing speed that is adequate to reach a world-class time in the marathon. There is roughly (in my estimate) a 30% chance that he might be suited for the marathon and will run world-class times if he does the work. If he does not have the speed, we already know his limits off traditional marathon training. The only way to make him go past those limits is to discover a new training method that raises Quality X, which currently does not exist, or at least I've seen no reports of any training that has successfully improved Quality X by a significant margin. I define success as "without increases in aerobic capacity, improve the performance on every distance from 100 meters to 5000 meters by at least 10%". Perhaps "without increases in aerobic capacity" is redundant since we are asking for improvement in sprints, not just distance events, but I like that for emphasis - we are looking to improve sustainable yet non-aerobic resources of running speed.

Interesting take and well said.

I suspect Quality X is neurological in origin. In the long-term, it all boils down to increasing your running economy. I think that is the biggest benefit of high mileage over years. Big miles in the short term produce some nice cardiovascular and muscle metabolic adaptation, but that tops off pretty soon--6 months to 2 years. Yet, improvement can and does continue for some. In every longitudinal study I know of, long-term improvement was due to increased economy.

(I would like to see Baldini try to run a 12.5).

According to

http://www.iaaf.org/athletes/biographies/letter=B/athcode=9827/index.html

Baldini has run 3000 in 7:43, 5000 in 13:23, and 10000 in 27:43. Unfortunately for anything shorter we would have to extrapolate. But I would highly doubt he is that much different from Ryan Hall. Assuming Ryan Hall speed drop profile from 800 to 5000, this would give Baldini about 1:52 800 (Hall has run 1:51). Which is 8x100 in 14.0 strung together. I've heard claims of people being able to sprint 800 meters at their 100 meter speed without a bear on their back, but have never seen a hard proof, and I highly doubt it is possible.

Based on my experience - I've never been out-PRed in any longer race by anybody who I out-PRed in 100 meters. I am sure it is possible to lose speed from 100 to 800 less than I do, but I would expect only marginally. Assuming Baldini loses speed from 100 to 800 like I do, that would give him 11.8. So he would have to retain speed a whole lot better than me, to the degree I've never seen in anybody, from 100 to 800 to not be able to run 12.5.

Sound logic.

My only counter is how were they tuned at the times of their respective performances? What could Ryan Hall run the 800m in now? What about on marathon day? The same for Baldini.

I have repeatedly beat people over 800 meters who had both better 400 and 5,000 speed. Meaning, Runner Y (since we've already used X for the day) beats me at 100m, 200m, meters, I get closer at 400 meters, I win at 800m, I split 1500m 50/50 depending on the day, and then lose at 3000m and even more at 5k.

At some ultra marathon distance would you lose to someone with inferior speed?

We assume being tuned for the distance.