Sunday September 6, 2020
This weekend saw two events on the continent result in an American record in the polevault, or did it?
As well the one hour run World Records for women and men were surpassed.
Our first report comes from Bill Schnier and Bruce Kritzler who witnessed the polevault from Lausanne on their computer or tv screens.
I watched the Lausanne meet which was a street vault next to a viaduct in downtown Lausanne. It was very cool with Angele Bengston from Sweden winning the women's and Mondo Duplantis edging out Sam Kendricks at 6.07 (19' 11") to 6.02 (19' 9"), the latter being a US record. Duplantis is a US citizen from Louisiana but his mother is Swedish so he has opted to compete for Sweden. With that in mind I guess he does not qualify as the US record holder.
It was nice to see the entire PV competition rather than the usual final miss by Kendricks and the winning vault by Duplantis, sandwiched between lap 12 and 13 of the 10K.
Bill Schnier
Yeah, 2 hrs. of pole vaulting. Till the sun went down.
I was expecting a whole track meet, but most meets are focusing on a few
events.
Brussels (Van Damme) had the m/w 1hr. record attempts. Think they
showed 30:00 of each, which was surprising. But Seb Coe says no one
wants to watch a 5k/10/3ksteeple?
Bruce Kritzler
Lausanne Polevault 2020 Here is the link to an hour and 8 minutes of that
polevaulting competition, produced by Deportesplus.
Now on those 1 hour records.
Mo Farah and Sifan Hassan both displayed their talent for track running and pacing.
To go after a World Record for a given time, you have to be very aware of
your pace. Sean Ingle of The Guardian reported on the timing lights that moved
around the track with the runners to clue them in on what they needed to be doing.
Farah had some pacers with him including one who was also racing and stayed with
him for the duration. Haile Gebrselassie's old record was 21.285 Kilometers. So to
break that record Farah would need to be knocking of 67 second laps as steadily as he
could for 60 minutes. He was up to the task covering 21.330 Kilometers, thus covering
45 meters more than Gebrselassie did in his race.
If you like doing the math, Farah ran 21,330 meters in 3600 seconds averaging 5.925 meters
per second. That is 67.51 seconds per 400 meters. Another way of saying it is 53 laps and
some change back to back, no recovery interval averaging 67.51 seconds.
Remember too that Farah is now 37 years old, a time when the legs start calling into
question the rantings of the mind.
Unfortunately for Farah, he will always be carrying the stigma of his close association to Alberto
Salazar who operated as close to the edge of legality as is humanly possible. Despite all those
years, this is his first world record. With four olympic golds and six world golds he has more
than proven himself as a racer and now he is on the list as one of the best pacers of all time,
joining Nurmi, Zatopek, Clarke and Gebrselassie in that very, very elite club.
Sifan Hassan, the Hollandaise, who also has a link to the Oregon Project showed her
versatility as she holds the world 1500 and 10,000 meter gold medals, the indoor and
outdoor mile records and now has the one hour record as well.
Hassan's distance of 18.93 Kilometers gives her an average of 5.25 meters/sec. and 76.19
seconds per lap, approximately a 5:05 mile pace. This also equates to 47 laps and some
change. She broke Dire Tune's record by almost 500 meters. The old record was 18.517
kilometers. Brigit Kosgei stayed with Hassan until the last 30 seconds of the one hour.
Farah's Race on Youtube This youtube is produced by Total Running Productions
and gives anexcellent account of the run and explanation of the technology that went into
the performance. It must also be remembered that Gebrselassie's recored run was more
of a solo performance.
Hassan's Race on Youtube This youtube is produced by Start Run Stop. Noted is the
absence of pacing lights for the women's race.
George Brose
I had read about the great pole vault events and found the one hour race story at the same time. That brought back some memories of one hour races at the White City track in the 1950s. I know I saw a couple of them and if memory serves correctly Gordon Pirie may well have been one of the runners. I am unable to find any record of it-so maybe the old memory aint what it used to be. This led to another One Hour run that I remember clearly and have looked up and verified the details. It was in 1953 probably August or early September and I was preparing to enlist in the RAF to fulfil my National Service obligations which started in mid September of that year. My family decided it would be a good idea to go on a holiday in Scotland as we had never been there before. The main part was a visit to the Cowal Games at Dunoon . By that time I was very interested in track and had been to watch a few meets at the White City. As a result I was delighted to find that the renowned Scottish distance runner Ian Binnie was attempting a National One Hour record run. He duly completed it in just under 12 miles and I recall he did not have much opposition. There are some good articles on him online and you may wish to have a look and do an article on him sometime.
It was a time of other oddities in track- I remember many of the standard ones would incorporate short distance ( 2 or 5 mile) walking races largely because Uk had some of the worlds best at those distances ( Roland Hardy particularly). Also from time to time they held ( spelling?) Parlauf runs wherein teams of two runners would alternate on the track changing ( I think) at will. Another area for research.
Best wishes. Hope you are keeping well.
Geoff
Those two man relays or par laufs worked best with each guy running a 330 and handing off, then
jogging back 110 yards to take the baton back from his teammate. Made for a good workout
too. George