On Mon, 7 May 2001, Elliott Oti wrote:
> Haile Gebreselassie has run the 1500m in 3.32 and the 10km in 26.31. I
> recall reading an interview three or four years ago with a local Dutch rag
> in which he said his best 100m time was around 11.2 or 11.3 seconds. This
> would be a very decent sprint time for the world's top female sprinters. As
> far as total muscle mass goes, Gebreselassie weighs about 55kg, which means
> that he is roughly about the same size as a top female sprinter. If his
> muscles are slow-twitch then they're pretty competitive in terms of
> power/weight against fast-twitch.
This is a good point which is that we cannot peg an event to a specific
fast to slow twitch muscle ratio. Said Auoita ranked #1 in the world at
both 800m and at 10,000m.
Late in his career Coe had planned on moving up to the 5,000 where he
thought he could run between 13:00 and 13:15 (injuries forced him back to
the 1500).
I don't know about Gebresellasie but both Coe and Aouita (who says he
based a lot of his trainging on Coe's) were distance guys (Coe was a
1500-3000m guy in high school) who worked out heavily with weights (aouita
is reportedly said to have lifted every day) to increase their speed.
There is certainly a lot we don't know about the mix of speed an
endurance. Given the relatively little improvement in the 800 over the
last 20 years it doesn't seem too many people are figuring it out.
Regards,
Paul
