We all know what we believe, what our gut tells us, and what we hope will be. But before we get too comfortable with even consensus reality – much less the highly suspect “my truth” – just remember how many previous claims of truth or innocence have fallen in the face of fresh evidence.

We are forever perched on the threshold of discovery. Thus, belief is no more truth than hypothesis is verifiable theory. 

Today, the Grand Biocentric Design posits consciousness itself as the creator of everything rather than just its observer. Like with Schrödinger’s famous cat, the act of observation is said to create, or at least alter, the reality of that which is being observed. 

Belief and understanding, therefore, skew according to one’s POV, the age-old “standing – or, in our case, running – in another man’s shoes”.

These last two weeks of marathon magic in Berlin and Chicago set me off on a bit of a ponder, as our English friends might say. What I wonder is whether the current tectonic changes in performance and fatigue and endurance evidenced by middle distance runners in the marathon will eventually trickle down all the way to the sprint crowd?

I know that may sound crazy, but a year or two ago, I pondered whether middle distance speed would become the determining factor in the best marathon runners, as Eliud Kipchoge (3:33.20), Kenenisa Bekele (3:32.35), and Haile Gebrselassie (3:33.73) were all low 3:30s men at 1500 meters before moving up successfully to the longer roads.

Well, now we know there was a kernel of truth to that supposition, as two sub-2:00 800m runners, Sifan Hassan (PB 1:56.81) and Tigst Assefa (PB 1:59.24) reside atop the women’s all-time marathon performance list, due in part to the quasi devices they strapped to their feet.

It’s all a matter of energy stores and the distance those stores will cover in drawing down. And keep in mind, Sifan Hassan didn’t wait for her track career to end before she took on the marathon like past track athletes did. 

The marathon was once the province of people who didn’t have the finishing speed to get it done on the track. The roads were where you went when your speed left you and only strength remained, or you only had strength to begin with. Today, that supposition rests red-faced in the ashbin of history.

So, given advances in spiked shoe technology, how far could the predominantly fast-twitch fiber athletes carry their speed based on the energy savings provided by some Dr. Moreau-designed booties? If it works at one end of the running spectrum, why wouldn’t work at the other? Where’s the line? Could the next 400m killer already be racing the 100m, the new 1500m star still getting into the blocks at 400m?

Think that’s off the rails? Remember when FloJo abruptly retired in February 1989 following her still-standing records setting 1988 campaign? In an interview, she told Runners World she wanted to be the first woman to go under 2:20 in the marathon as her next challenge. And everyone just shook their head and laughed, thinking, “That’s not how energy systems and muscle fiber makeup work.”

Well, how nuts is that thinking in these days of shoe company lab wars, considering how many other previously accepted truths are no longer with us? (Still, pretty nuts, TBH.)

Everyone works under a series of assumptions, whether recognized or not, verifiable or not. After all, each of us is born with situational awareness, as point-of-view defines both centers and peripheries for us all. Much as one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, so too, is one man’s center, another man’s periphery, or one athlete’s PED, another athlete’s TUE. 

Jeez, it used to be so simple, didn’t it? Everyone in their own lane, an event for every body type and muscle fiber make up. Now it’s all jumbled up and not likely to turn back around anytime soon, if ever. 

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