How Records Are Broken

Is there really an upper limit to how fast people can run?

Friday, October 24, 2008, 12:00 am

In 2005, a pair of English researchers published an attention-grabbing scientific paper that presented a mathematical model predicting an imminent end to distance running world records. "What it demonstrates is something that I think is sensible, which is that people simply cannot continue to improve indefinitely," says Alan Neville, professor of healthcare science at the University of Wolverhampton, who coauthored the paper. "There is an upper limit to how fast people can run."

Yet records have continued their downward march even since the publication of this paper. The men's half marathon record has been lowered three times, the women's once. The men's marathon world record also has gone down, and the women's 5,000m standard has been revised no fewer than three times.  What's more, the men and women setting these new marks see no end to it.  "I strongly believe that future generations will run faster because, as you can see, we are running much better than our predecessors," says Ethiopia's Tirunesh Dibaba, who now holds the world record for 5,000m.

Why, despite learned predictions to the contrary, do world distance-running records, and major national records, keep improving? And more importantly, is there anything in the answer to this question that can help you improve your own personal records? I put this question to several top sports scientists and coaches, and here's what they came back with.

First the Bad News

Everyone knows that a runner must first "win the genetic lottery" to have any hope of breaking records later through proper training and long-term development. Researchers have already isolated a number of genes that support endurance performance, each of which exists in only a minority of the population. For example, a gene variant called R577X, which exists in just 18 percent of the population, alters metabolism in fast-twitch muscle fibers in a way that enhances their endurance capacity.

As of last year, scientists had found 23 such genetic variants that tend to favor endurance performance. The odds of any single person having all of them are 0.0005 percent, according to Alun Williams of Manchester Metropolitan University in England, who published a paper on this topic. And it is widely agreed that other performance genes are yet to be discovered, bringing the chances of the perfect runner being born even lower.

"However," Williams notes, "with population turnover, the chance of such genetically gifted individuals existing increases." In other words, as the world population grows, genetic lottery winners with increasing numbers of endurance performance genes are born. "Consequently," Williams concludes, "with population turnover, world and Olympic records should improve even without further enhancement of environmental factors," such as better training and nutrition.

This is not what everyday runners like us want to hear. If better genes are the source of faster times, then there's nothing we can borrow from the record setters to improve our own times. Now the Good News

It's one thing to say that world records could be broken even without the help of "environmental factors" that any runner, regardless of his or her genetic makeup, can take advantage of. It's quite another to suggest that environmental factors do not also play an important role, and none of the experts I consulted made any such suggestion. To the contrary, according to the experts there are four categories of environmental factors that world-class runners use to break world and national records that serve as lessons you can use to shatter personal barriers.

Every Little Thing Matters

"There are a lot of things that go into a world record," says Nic Bideau, who coaches multiple Australian-record holder Craig Mottram. The significant improvement in world running standards that has occurred over the past 40 years is not the result of any single major factor, Bideau suggests, but is rather the result of a whole host of small factors such as better shoes and track surfaces, the use of pacemakers, refinements in training methods and the advent of sports drinks to fuel long-distance racing.

Elite runners who wish to break records must try to control as many of these small factors as possible. Terrence Mahon, who coaches half marathon American-record holder Ryan Hall, understands this challenge well. Mahon plans to coach Hall toward an assault on the American and world marathon records in the future.

"In a race like the marathon there are so few attempts that can be made and so many factors involved that a little luck definitely has to be with you to get the job done," he says. "All it takes is a little wind, pacing that is a little aggressive or any small factor like that to spoil the months of fitness and mental preparations."

To minimize the likelihood of such a disappointment, Mahon and Hall will carefully select the time and place of the record attempts, work closely with pacemakers and work especially hard on Hall's feel for his goal pace. But before any of that happens, they will devote at least a couple of years to developing Hall as a runner and learning his optimal training recipe, so that every lesson learned and every step of progress can be applied to that record attempt.

"I believe I do have room to increase my training load when my body is ready for it," says Hall. "We are already trying some new things that I haven't been able to do before in my training." Mahon suggests that other runners take a similar approach toward attacking their personal records. Patiently develop your body's ability to handle more work, year by year, but don't just train harder -- give equal attention to all of the small factors that have the potential to shave a second or two off the clock.

One of the most overlooked small factors, according to Ross Tucker, Ph.D., of the University of Cape Town, South Africa, is pacing. Tucker has closely studied running world records of the past five decades and has concluded that improvements in pacing account for much of the overall progress in times.

"Before about 1970, world records were always set with a faster start, then a slow middle period and a ferocious finish," he says. "That is changing, and the requirement for a world record now is that the start must be fast, but the slow middle period is a luxury that can't be afforded."

Tucker adds that most runners could improve their personal best times simply by working to eliminate the "sagging middle" from their race execution. But again, better pacing is just one of many sources of spared seconds, and your objective should be to fully exploit every last one of them.

Training Is A Science -- Grab Your Lab Coat

From a distance of 10 paces, the training of yesterday's elite runners looks indistinguishable from that of today's. But a microscopic comparison reveals specific improvements that surely contribute to the faster times of the 21st century.

"Heart rate training, lactate training, alactate training and even strength training and movement skills have made a huge improvement from the past," says Mahon. "Our top-level runners are more all-around athletes than others in the past. The coaches now have a better understanding through scientific research about how stress affects the body and how to cycle that in ways that not only allows athletes to train harder and faster, but also put it together so that it is easier to time with their goal events."

According to Mahon, the runners of the present generation do a better job of channeling their hard work into the specific types of efforts that will do the most to push them closer to their specific goals, whereas runners of the past were a bit more inclined to view any hard effort as time well spent.

Bideau sees this greater degree of precision as the one key difference between the way Craig Mottram trains and the way past great Oceanic runners such as John Walker and Ron Clarke trained in the 1960s and '70s. "Instead of just going out and running how he feels or how he wants to all the time, he sometimes runs to a heart rate monitor," Bideau says. "At the track he doesn't just run intervals as hard as he can. The workouts are designed to develop his ability to run at a certain rhythm and pace that he wants to maintain in certain race distances."

Asked for a specific example of how training has become more precise, Mahon states that all of his marathon runners, including American-record holder Deena Kastor, perform a marathon-specific test workout every two weeks to measure their progress toward their race goal and make sure that all of their training is serving the specific purpose of making them better marathon runners. By contrast, in the past, runners were more likely to do big blocks of endurance training, speed training or VO2 max training that made them really good at those types of training, but did not necessarily leave them as well prepared for their races as a more focused approach would have done.

One Seldom Runs Faster Than One Tries To

In a 2006 paper, a Spanish researcher named Juan Garcia-Manso explained the progression of running world records through complexity theory -- the same theory that is used to mathematically explain the behavior of large, dynamic systems such as market economies and climate systems. In complexity theory, each system is understood to have one or more "attractors" that pull the elements of the system toward it, thereby serving to create a dynamic order and stability. Garcia-Manso argued that world records function as attractors in the sport of running.

"The sporadic appearance of [runners] able to deliver times that are clearly better than those existing would define new goals or targets that would act as attractors or reference points for other athletes," he writes. In other words, records beget records. In ways both direct and indirect, the establishment of a new record time alters the behavior of coaches, runners and other influencers in ways that raise the general performance level in the elite ranks and thereby increase the likelihood of even faster times being run. They don't necessarily have to know what they are doing. They just need to accept the force of the attractor -- that is, to take aim at the new, higher time standard -- and stumble along half blindly wherever it takes them.

Record-setting runners understand this force very well. Walker, the first to break 3:50 for the mile, shared his take on it with Nic Bideau in a conversation that took place in 1986, when Steve Cram held the mile world record at 3:46.42 and Walker was still running sub-4 miles at age 34. "I remarked that it was amazing he was still running so well at that age," Bideau recalls. "He said, 'Well, back in 1975, when I was 22 years old, if the world record had been 3:47, I would have run 3:46. But the world record was 3:51, so I just ran 3:49.'"

The lesson here is that time standards are powerful influencers of our running. They can make us run faster, and they can also limit us. If you want to realize your full potential as a runner, you must first be consumed by the desire to beat your PRs. "It was my dream to break a high-quality world record," said Tirunesh Dibaba after running 14:11.15 for 5,000m earlier this year.

Breaking PRs should be no less a dream for you. Think about your goal times often in planning and executing your training. Feel their force and let it pull you along. This is precisely what Mahon plans to do with Hall in their pursuit of the American and world records for the marathon. "The excitement of chasing a record will keep his motivation going for many years to come," he says.

To avoid being limited by time standards you must view each new PR as the next target. How many times have we heard runners say, "I think I can run faster," in interviews conducted immediately after they've set a new record? (That's what Haile Gebrselassie did in proclaiming his potential to run a 2:03 marathon while still sweaty from having run 2:04:26 in Berlin.) These men and women are your role models. When you set a PR, take a little time to congratulate yourself on your fine performance and then turn against it by aiming one step higher. "You can always compete against the clock," Mahon says.

You Have To Believe

Another thing you'll notice in the talk of record-setting runners is that they almost always express great confidence of success before making their record attempts. "I think one reason why records continue to be broken is because our actions always follow our beliefs," Hall says. "More and more people believe that it is possible for them to set world records, so some are bound to succeed." Hall himself is one of them. "I have always believed that God gave me the ability to run with the best runners in the world," he states. "So naturally, my actions reflect that belief when I race against them. The mind is perhaps the most powerful tool we have as runners."

According to Ross Tucker, such confidence is not manufactured but instead comes directly from specific training experiences that demonstrate the runner's readiness to achieve his or her goal time. Or, as Tirunesh Dibaba puts it, "When I attempt a world record it is not something I decide when I enter the track on the race day. I see how my shape is and confirm as much as possible beforehand how fit I am in my training and see my times, and I believe that is where my confidence comes from." Indeed, Tucker argues that developing true belief in the ability to achieve one's goal is the single most important possible outcome of any runner's training, because the brain is the ultimate regulator of running performance, and it is next to impossible to fool the brain regarding what the body can and cannot do.

Tucker is a leading proponent of the notion that the brain's main job during maximal running efforts is to prevent the runner from causing serious self-harm through overexertion by producing feelings of discomfort and by reducing electrical output to the muscles in response to feedback signals from the body. Through a mechanism called anticipatory regulation, the brain continuously calculates the fastest pace the runner can safely sustain through the end of a race based on these feedback signals, as well as physiological "set points" such as the maximum acceptable core body temperature, objective time and distance information, and past training and racing experiences. The overriding goal of training, then, is to subject yourself to workout experiences that teach the brain that the body is capable of sustaining your goal pace through the full race distance without suffering major damage.

"Any athlete going for a personal best is running at a pace that is faster than they have run before," Tucker explains. "In the absence of proper training, and teaching the brain how that feels and what can or cannot be tolerated, the runner will be forced, by the brain, to slow down in the middle of the event. But with enough training and practice, the interpretation and regulation of the signals coming into the brain will be altered to allow the athlete to reach the next level of performance."

Tucker advises runners to consciously design training plans and key workouts that serve above all to build confidence in their ability to achieve a specific race goal. Instead of simply following a training formula or strictly doing what others do, put some imagination into the types of training experiences that will do the most to make you feel ready to PR, even if they are a bit unusual. According to Tucker, this is the approach coach Franz Stampfl took with Roger Bannister before Bannister set the most famous world record in running history. "Stampfl recognized that if he wanted to run a 4-minute mile, he needed to be able to run 10 x 400m in 59 to 60 seconds," says Tucker. "So the fulcrum session in his training was that interval set, and all he did was practice it until he managed to get those times down. I'm not sure where he began--perhaps he was capable of doing 10 x 400m in 63 seconds. But over time, that came down, and because he understood the purpose of the session, he successfully translated it into the first sub-4-minute mile."

How The Best Make Us Better

Spectator sports such as football and participatory sports such as running are different. Most football fans are not football players, but nearly every running fan is a runner. Consequently, we don't just admire the world's greatest runners--we also want to learn from them. Understanding the controllable factors that enable a few great runners to break records can help you establish new personal best race times.

"The great thing about running is that anyone can get excited about improving," says Hall. "It is easy to measure and you pretty much reap in the race what you sowed in training. Running personal records is something to be proud of and to celebrate. My dad used to take me out for ice cream whenever I ran a PR in high school. He said it was important to celebrate every PR along the way. I couldn't agree more."

Matt Fitzgerald is the co-author (with Brad Hudson) of Run Faster from 5K to the Marathon (2008, Broadway Books), which was excerpted in the October issue of Running Times.

For an audio interview with American-record holder Bob Kennedy about making breakthroughs, go to