How good COULD Peru and Bolivia be at long distance running?

Pisco Sour

I've spent the last 3 weeks at high altitude (mostly between 3000m and 4000m) in Peru and Bolivia and have been doing a good bit of hiking and that sort of thing. It got me wondering when I saw the porters in the Inca Trail about the fitness of these people. Here we were doing steep altitude trekking and most were struggling badly with just a light backpack on their backs (I felt fine because I was acclimatised but I was only carrying 5kg on my back). These proters were carrying 30kg each, were almost running up and down the steep slopes. It was simply amazing (and they are grossly underpaid for it). I was told that the record for the Inca Trail marathon (45km) is a staggering 3 hours 45 minutes. How anybody could run up and down such steep slopes on narrow pathways overlooking cliff edges is beyond me.

So clearly these people are insanely strong and fit. This has made me wonder that if funding was put into distance running in these countries how good could they be? I have heard that 3000m and above is too high for altitude training. However if you were living at such crazy heights all your life and were running properly at such altitude you would imagine that when coming down to sea level that people from the Andes would be incredible?

Considering these countries seem to be awful at sport is this a missed opportunity for these countries to find something to excel in? (football being so big here but neither country has achieved anything of note in the recent times, Peru not qualifying for a world cup since 1982 and Bolivia qualifying for 1 in the last 60 years!)

nerraw1111

Did your porter claim to hold the record? Mine did. The porters are pretty incredible.

Presume they're just used to it given Peru and Bolivia are pretty much over 3,000 metres.

Pherekydes

04072511 wrote: »

However if you were living at such crazy heights all your life and were running properly at such altitude you would imagine that when coming down to sea level that people from the Andes would be incredible?

Would they be allowed chew their coca leaves?

heavyballs

http://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307266303

this is well worth a read but i'm not even sure if these guys are at altitude,

Pisco Sour

Good to see this thread gain some serious momentum :rolleyes:

nerraw1111 wrote: »

Did your porter claim to hold the record? Mine did. The porters are pretty incredible.

Haha, nah none of our porters spoke english and my Spanish is quite basic so I wasnt aware of any of them claiming the record.

Anybody who has done the Inca Trail will appreciate how amazing 3.45 is for those 45km.

Brianderunner

04072511 wrote: »

Good to see this thread gain some serious momentum :rolleyes:



Haha, nah none of our porters spoke english and my Spanish is quite basic so I wasnt aware of any of them claiming the record.

Anybody who has done the Inca Trail will appreciate how amazing 3.45 is for those 45km.

Thats probably 3'45 for the way back down, i'd fancy myself to win that

myflipflops

I would guess not very good at all.

If these guys could be world class runners, economics would mean probably would be. Obviously we know all of the stories of Kenyans and Ethiopians starting to run to earn money but more recently the trend has included much more Ugandans, Tanzanians and Eritreans. Poverty is a great motivator.

To put it in context, the Chilean (population 17 million) male NR's at 1500/5k/10k are 3.39/13.23/28.05. For Peru (29.5 million), they are 3.43/13.55/28.56.

Compare those to our own NR's when we have no altitude, a much smaller population and athletics is also a minority sport. If there was any real latent athletic talent in these countries, they would be seen in better NR's than this, especially with the size of the population.

I think the difference here is incredible aerobic fitness versus athletic talent. Lot's of the first thing and none of the second. These guys could be great ultra runners but they are not going to run 64 seconds per lap for 5k of the track.

floyd333

Weird I was there 3 weeks ago and thinking the same thing.These guys were phenomenally fit. Some of them were wearing flip flops and carrying 30kg!

myflipflops wrote: »

I would guess not very good at all.

If these guys could be world class runners, economics would mean probably would be. Obviously we know all of the stories of Kenyans and Ethiopians starting to run to earn money but more recently the trend has included much more Ugandans, Tanzanians and Eritreans. Poverty is a great motivator.

To put it in context, the Chilean (population 17 million) male NR's at 1500/5k/10k are 3.39/13.23/28.05. For Peru (29.5 million), they are 3.43/13.55/28.56.

Peru and Bolivia especially are piss poor.

On a side note there was a guy in my group who won some famous Ultra marathon in Namíbia this year. He ran some of the Inca Trail with his backpack for fun!