Sub 13:00 on U.S. Soil By An American - Will it happen this Summer???

american distance running is going to take a smashing this summer, by the end i think chris's mark will by just as overshadowed as galens was last night. that's how good they are. let's just hope they all can get healhty and let's hope this motivates ritz to do a 10K because he can murder chris.

i think out of the major talents of teg, solinsky, hall, rupp, ritz and webb, solinsky is the weakest of them and that's saying A LOT.

on the other hand, why do so many letsrunners make 27:00 out to be such a barrier, the barrier here has to be 26:50 and it has to be 12:55 (at least) in the 5K.

for real wrote:

on the other hand, why do so many letsrunners make 27:00 out to be such a barrier, the barrier here has to be 26:50 and it has to be 12:55 (at least) in the 5K.

1) Because no non-African has come close to breaking it before.

2) Because before last night the closest an American-born athlete has gotten to it is 27:20, a quarter-century ago.

3) Because it puts an athlete within range of getting an Olympic/WC medal, especially if they show good finishing strength.

When an athlete does this in a debut in a "glorified tempo run", while "dabbling" at the distance, we can only view it as a breakthrough on many levels.

yes! at the Prefontaine Classic we will!!

Chris Solinsky

Tim Nelson

Jager

Tegenkamp

will all be in it.... that is the race they will all be aiming for this season.

and im going to go out on the limb and say ritz and rupp might be in there too.

Teg might not be in it. Where is Tegenkamp? There's been no mention of him. It seems like he's hurt.

inclined towards leniency wrote:

for real wrote:

on the other hand, why do so many letsrunners make 27:00 out to be such a barrier, the barrier here has to be 26:50 and it has to be 12:55 (at least) in the 5K.

1) Because no non-African has come close to breaking it before.

2) Because before last night the closest an American-born athlete has gotten to it is 27:20, a quarter-century ago.

3) Because it puts an athlete within range of getting an Olympic/WC medal, especially if they show good finishing strength.

When an athlete does this in a debut in a "glorified tempo run", while "dabbling" at the distance, we can only view it as a breakthrough on many levels.

obviously it was a breakthru, not saying that it wasn't, just wonder why so many before acted like it couldn't be done by ritz or rupp ever, (let alone solinsky) while they were obviously progessing to it. the fact that solinsky does it under the circumstances you mentioned only supports my point, the barriers need be thought of as 26:50 and 12:55 which actually rupp and ritz both eluded to last summer. hopefully solinsky doing this will allow more americans to change their paradigm.

perhaps the very reason solinsky was able to do this and yet hasn't brushed up at 13:00 is the very fact that he made 13 a barrier in his own mind and had no barriers going into the race last night. i've often thought solinsky fights himself in the 5K, trying too hard to prove something. now he has 2 options, run the with the approach he had last night and break thru or go try to prove himself in the 5K again and struggle. lets hope for the former.