i am serious, and don't call me shirley. since we are dealing with speculation (i assume neither of us has had conversations with the current crop of elites mentioned), i am open to the possibility that i'm wrong; however, i'm curious as to your strange generalization that today's athletes are different because of "their strength." what gives you that idea? outside of jakob, the mileage of the others seems pretty much in line with mileage/volume of generations of world record milers going back to the 60s, and even before. some of them considerably less. maybe you think double thresholds are the secret to everything, but even with that, jakob still doesn't have an olympic distance event world record yet (barely cracking the top 20 overall in his "strength" event, the 5k).
but, yeah, i guess it's not the end of the story; still, i know which side of the argument i'd bet large sums of money...
that's still my story, and i'm still sticking to it,
cush