Nobody in history with his world class sprint speed (Prs of 10.03, 19.99, and 44.21) has ever run a 1:44 800m
We have an unnaturally low talent pool, 800m, at least in U.S.
1) Read the aggregate posts on this site from self-identified T&F coaches. It is unlikely for 400m athletes who express desire to move up to 800m to be granted a cross-country exemption.
2) Would 400m athletes moving up to 800m be allowed to log very low mileage?
3) Four-hundred meters and 400mH are raced in lane the entire race. If 800m were raced with a four turn stagger, more 400m athletes would move up.
4) In middle school, high school and college D-3, 800m has a bad reputation. Often the worst T&F athletes on the team are placed in 800m races.
The fact that proven f.a.t. sub-20 200m men have not raced sub-1:45 does not mean sub-20 200m men are incapable of sub-1:45 800m. It simply means sub-20 200m men can make a living racing other events.
agree with this so much. I have a 49 second kid right now with a natural proclivity for distance. Ran an 18:30 hilly 5k with no training/no mileage. I told him i think he is definitely capable of a 1:52 after some time, and one of the first things he said was that he was afraid his college coach would make him run cross. I couldn't even tell him it's not true. All I could say to him is that a good coach would have him as part of the team, AT MOST, but with sensible base training for his event, without expectations for cross results. But I have seen so many high school coaches abuse 400 runners during cross, trying to squeeze every last second out of them for an event far out of their range.
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
Dobek spent a year training with the best polish middle distance coach in history (former coach of Czapiewski and Kszczot). After that year he lost his speed and went back to running just 1:46. He is trying to go back to 400m right now. He showed great aerobic capacity in the last years - after just a year he was able to run tempo run of 3:20-3:10/km with very low lactate level of 2-3 mmol. That is unusual.
But Dobek never was a world class sprinter and never would be.
But for me it's just the 800… if I really wanted to… I think if I seriously ran it I could probably run 1:44. But I mean, that's not going to win anything today.,,
Yeah, I mean there's no 800 in my future. It's just the training. I've seen the training for it and it's just not fun. So I popped in with Isaiah [Jewett] on a couple of workouts and it's a different level of lactate threshold.
Based on your title, are you asking if it's fact that "he said it" or fiction that "you made it up that he said it?"
Otherwise are you asking whether we agree or disagree with his opinion?
Also, he's not even saying he could run 1:44. He's just saying he thinks he probably could but acknowledges he'll never try because it wouldn't even be a great time, and from the context it seems he's implying a 1:44.9 would be in the "1:44 range he implied"
So yeah, I have no idea and don't care about that, but I'd like a better thought out question.
Britton Wilson ran a 2:02 800m indoors, which was competitive but not on the same level as her 400/400mh. I think the speed endurance core 400mh training wouldn't be too dissimilar to 800m training for the more 400/800 types (Mu, Hodgkinson).
Dobek spent a year training with the best polish middle distance coach in history (former coach of Czapiewski and Kszczot). After that year he lost his speed and went back to running just 1:46. He is trying to go back to 400m right now. He showed great aerobic capacity in the last years - after just a year he was able to run tempo run of 3:20-3:10/km with very low lactate level of 2-3 mmol. That is unusual.
But Dobek never was a world class sprinter and never would be.
Most athletes that step up to the 800 run their PR/PB in the first year and then go backwards, for exactly the reasons outline above. They spent too much time working on their weakness and forget their main asset, their speed.
But for me it's just the 800… if I really wanted to… I think if I seriously ran it I could probably run 1:44. But I mean, that's not going to win anything today.,,
Yeah, I mean there's no 800 in my future. It's just the training. I've seen the training for it and it's just not fun. So I popped in with Isaiah [Jewett] on a couple of workouts and it's a different level of lactate threshold.
It's hard not to laugh - it's 2004 again and we are all talking about how smooth Wariner is and how easy it should be for him to run an opening lap 7 seconds slower than his PR and then how easy it should then be for him to "just" run one more lap in 53 seconds.
Dobek spent a year training with the best polish middle distance coach in history (former coach of Czapiewski and Kszczot). After that year he lost his speed and went back to running just 1:46. He is trying to go back to 400m right now. He showed great aerobic capacity in the last years - after just a year he was able to run tempo run of 3:20-3:10/km with very low lactate level of 2-3 mmol. That is unusual.
But Dobek never was a world class sprinter and never would be.
Most athletes that step up to the 800 run their PR/PB in the first year and then go backwards, for exactly the reasons outline above. They spent too much time working on their weakness and forget their main asset, their speed.
Seems like this happened to Brandon Johnson as well, since he popped a 1:43 in 2013 and then returned to type running 1:46 in subsequent seasons. I do wonder how much of this is also just injury because I'm sure that's an issue for someone used to sprinting volume stepping up. Don't know enough about Dobek to say if he's been plagued with injuries but a similar thing ended Fiasconaro's career, since he just couldn't stay healthy but I believe he also had issues even when training for 400.
These are all reasons why I think 1:44 would be tough for Rai because he'd be coming up against all of these challenges but probably even more so because he seems like more of a pure sprinter.
But for me it's just the 800… if I really wanted to… I think if I seriously ran it I could probably run 1:44. But I mean, that's not going to win anything today.,,
Yeah, I mean there's no 800 in my future. It's just the training. I've seen the training for it and it's just not fun. So I popped in with Isaiah [Jewett] on a couple of workouts and it's a different level of lactate threshold.
It's hard not to laugh - it's 2004 again and we are all talking about how smooth Wariner is and how easy it should be for him to run an opening lap 7 seconds slower than his PR and then how easy it should then be for him to "just" run one more lap in 53 seconds.
Wariner is a sample of one. All sub-20.25 men are not the same. J Wariner's 800m effort was in 2015. J Wariner was 31 years old in 2015. J Wariner set his 200m p.b. at age 22 and his 400m p.b. at age 23. To say J Wariner was on the back 9 of his track & field career by 2015 would be an understatement. Let's say you're a 37.5 200m sprinter today. I cannot make generalizations about men your age because you may sprint 200m in 37.5.
He’s being modest. He could go 1:41 under the right conditions
I mean even Nick Symmonds ran a 1:42.9. I don’t think it’s unreasonable that Rai MF Benjamin could do better
Really? So you think RB could join the 5 men in history who have broken 1:42? This seems to be a stretch but you can say anything, however outrageous, because he says he is not going to try.
Don't think so. Edwin Moses thought he could be competitive at 800, too. He actually ran 1:48.98. Olympic champion Jeremy Wariner gave the 800 a try and struggled to win a 1:53 race against weak competition. Track and field events require specific training for each event.
I say no way, his 200 time says he is a sprinter and there is just a physical difference between a middle distance runner. If he was only a 21x 200m sprinter that would suggest better 800 potential.