Women's 800, Men's Steeple, Men's Marathon

men's steeple. hands down

The men's steeple. We may as well cancel that event and not even field a national team. Henry Marsh is probably about 50 now. Hopefully he can come out of retirement and bring some life to the event.

Steeple guys ran faster than your average top local guy.

Nate Justin and Ed didn't. Go to your local highschool track on a Tuesday or Thursday evening and ask the runners for their marathon PRs and you will find guys who could beat 60% of our team today.

Nate was a joke. His workouts (3x5k in 16:30 -16:50, progression 10k in 33:30) suggested this time, I thought he might go alitte slower 2:35ish. He is a complete narcissistic fraud. How does Ed have time for Flotrack but doesn't start?

If Anna Willard ran the 800, she probably would have been in the finals. Medal? who knows, but final yes. that could have saved some US face. Hazel ran pretty well, but had the unfortunate circumstance of having to race a man in her semi. If it were an all-female race, she was in the final. The others showed their inexperience. Actuall Vessey, as much as I've been rooting for her this year, crapped teh bed. No other way to think about it.

The men's steeple was terrible. It seemed like they were all either sick, scared, or didn't care. It was pretty bad considering those are our best (minus Fam of course).

The US has never sent its strongest team to worlds for the marathon. All our best guys would much rather focus on the marathon majors than run worlds. They'll run Olympics, but not worlds. When you send a B team, you get B team results.

However, the women's and men's 1500 have performed very well in these champs. The men's 5000 guys have excelled. The men in the 10,000 excelled. AlSal's girl in the 10,000 ran well (shit, what's her name?). We'll see what happens in the women's marathon, but I think Kara can contend. Nick Symmonds is running ver very well right now.

So, while, yes we've had some poor showings, we've had a lot of great ones too.

My vote goes to the marathon. The steeple was ugly but they finished the race.

mighty porn stache wrote:

The US has never sent its strongest team to worlds for the marathon. All our best guys would much rather focus on the marathon majors than run worlds. They'll run Olympics, but not worlds. When you send a B team, you get B team results.

Do you really think that our "A" team could have done a lot better? Hall and Ritz may have cracked the top 10, but that is it.

Keep in mind we sent the BEST steeplers in the country, sans Fam (don't forget that McAdams did beat Fam 2 years ago at the US championships). We certainly did NOT send the best marathoners.

Marathon: We had 1 "decent," 1 "so-so," one "shit," a DNF, and a DNS (which, IMO, was totally legitimate given Torres' family situation).

Steeple: 1 "wouldn't qualify for USATFs," 1 "wouldn't win D3 nationals," and 1 DNF.

Which is worse? I dunno, you make the call.