Track, road, grass? Way back as a junior? Ever?
Track, road, grass? Way back as a junior? Ever?
It's his lowest since his first race as a youngster - he placed 99th at the Addis Ababa marathon in June '88. He has only two other races where he has finished lower than 6th:
'93 World Cross Champs he finished 7th (but didn't he trip on a log when he was with the lead pack and lost a lot of ground?) and he had an 8th place in the 1991 World Cross junior champs in Antwerp.
btw, these are all from the appendix of the HaileG bio "The Greatest"
I think that the only explanation for Geb's "failure" is the that he did not time his training properly to be in the best fitness on April 23. Look, he was running 58 minutes for a half marathon in JANUARY, and then 1:11 for 25km six weeks ago.
Even when he was running his world records on the track they were never more than a couple of months apart. He was asking his body to remain at the highest level possible for 3 MONTHS.
Look at the Tergat/Korir 2:04's: Both those guys did not have any significant races in the 2-3 months leading up to that.
Geb just shot his wad too early in the season. I think that he will be back in September or October and give it another shot at Chicago, Berlin or Amsterdam, albeit with no other world record attempts.
Jason
you know sometimes people just have bad races, even the greatest runners in history. Maybe he just had a bad day, i mean it does happen. He still didnt run horribly, i fully expect him to drop the record sometime.
he still ran 2:09!! Are you kidding me? That is still a killer time
OK, I haven't kept count, but I'd say we've seen about four times as many threads on Gebreselassie's 9th place as on Limo's fantastic win.
I'm just saying.
Hornissimo wrote:
OK, I haven't kept count, but I'd say we've seen about four times as many threads on Gebreselassie's 9th place as on Limo's fantastic win.
I'm just saying.
I think you're saying that letsrun posters are not as running savvy as they think they are. I would agree.
Hornissimo wrote:
OK, I haven't kept count, but I'd say we've seen about four times as many threads on Gebreselassie's 9th place as on Limo's fantastic win.
I'm just saying.
Yes, and you'll find more boxing articles on Ali than Leon Spinks, even though Spinks beat him. Geb is the greatest distance runner who ever lived. When he gets soundly beaten, it's news. People on a running board want to talk about it. Why does that surprise you?
prunner wrote:
you know sometimes people just have bad races, even the greatest runners in history. Maybe he just had a bad day, i mean it does happen. He still didnt run horribly, i fully expect him to drop the record sometime.
Sums it up well, especially when you're talking about the marathon where u don't need to have much go wrong to lose a few minute. He's also starting to get older too. In a way it shows where he is as a runner when he has a "bad" day running 2.09
I love Vermonsters.
What the hell is a vermonster?
yep...he left his race Arizona.
a vermont monster?
Like MAYEROFF said...
I appreciate his grace in defeat, though. You take the loss, and the crappy day, and the training missteps, and you go for a run.
i was just glad to see that he finished instead of dropping out and giving some lame excuse