#FreeRiley - LetsRun.com nails it - perfect 1500 solution

lol'd at "Your Welcome" at the end of that article. But it's a good solution.

The letsrun solution is not good. A two heat timed final in a national championship is a joke. The common sense solution is to have heats. You want at most 12 guys in the final, so heats would be justified for eliminating 7-9 runners.

Perfect solution:

Have a Letsrun poll to decide the fast section and abide by the results.

might be wejo wrote:

The letsrun solution is not good. A two heat timed final in a national championship is a joke. The common sense solution is to have heats. You want at most 12 guys in the final, so heats would be justified for eliminating 7-9 runners.

That's probably right, but it's a 2-day event for all but the multi athletes and the 3000 is run on Saturday with lots of people wanting to double in the 1500/3000. Two hard 1500s within 2 or 3 days at altitude probably would make the races even more tactical - i.e., slow.

There are tradeoffs either way. On balance I like the LRC way - you have one heat to select the team and 1 heat for those who can't make the team in any event.

might be wejo wrote:

The letsrun solution is not good. A two heat timed final in a national championship is a joke. The common sense solution is to have heats. You want at most 12 guys in the final, so heats would be justified for eliminating 7-9 runners.

They aren't adding in heats at this point. The other solution is for them to stick to their heat limits which leaves more guys out.

I do think it's sort of absurd to have a fast and slow heat but we are talking about what can be done now. If you don't do that, even fewer guys get to race.

This could be interesting. Guys in heat 1 run fast. They can win the US title but the guys in heat 2 don't care as they race and the top 2 go to Worlds.

In the future, i think they should get rid of qualifying times, say they are going to take the top ** entrants (explain what they'll do with last year's times).

Part of the problem is the IAAF. I have no idea why someone who ran 3:57 last indoors would be given an qualifier for this year. If you hit the 'A' outdoor standard, give it to them but 357?

A better alternative is to get rid of the auto qualifying entirely, randomize the accepted entries into two more or less equal heats and let the winner of each heat go to worlds.

You win, you go.

The races will be more exciting, the corruption minimized.

The national champion is the one finishing highest at the world championships.

rojo wrote:

[quote]might be wejo wrote:

This could be interesting. Guys in heat 1 run fast. They can win the US title but the guys in heat 2 don't care as they race and the top 2 go to Worlds.

They'll have to beat Riley...

dsrunner wrote:

A better alternative is to get rid of the auto qualifying entirely, randomize the accepted entries into two more or less equal heats and let the winner of each heat go to worlds.

You win, you go.

The races will be more exciting, the corruption minimized.

The national champion is the one finishing highest at the world championships.

more or fewer equal heats! Use "fewer" not less here.

okay, but consider this:

there are two 3:30 guys, and everyone else has run 3:35 or slower. the two 3;30 guys get randomly put in the same heat. if you only let the heat winners go to worlds, then we don't have the two best guys going to worlds.

this isnt the case, but it shows the issue

Or

They could have every individual run a time trial and just go by time.

* wrote:

Have a Letsrun poll to decide the fast section and abide by the results.

I thought they were going to do a clean or dirty poll and the clean runners got in the fast heat with the dirty runners in the slow heat.

Swimming does this all the time and does it quite well.

I see no issue with having the overall fastest times qualify for worlds from the heats, and feel this should be done ALL of the time for all qualifying, whether it is qualifying for semis and finals, or having multiple final heats.

There's no such thing as a "tactical" race in swimming. Every race in swimming is a time trial because they can't clearly see where the other swimmers are. In running people are normally racing other people, not the clock.

Splitting races into sections may be necessary sometimes because you have too many runners and not enough days in the meet, but it's not ideal because you don't have people racing each other head-to-head, having to react to what the other runners are doing, and taking race tactics into consideration.

Ideally, if you can't put everyone in the same race at the same time you have preliminary heats and one final.

I really hope we end up sending two randoms from the "slow heat" to the World Championships.

Running ain't swimming wrote:

There's no such thing as a "tactical" race in swimming. Every race in swimming is a time trial because they can't clearly see where the other swimmers are. In running people are normally racing other people, not the clock.

That's why swimming is better, they are racing each other AND racing the clock.

If running did this too then the races wouldn't suck so much.

I think the biggest problem with people who complain about tactical races is that they, in general, are just looking at results after the race. Most people aren't able to stream all races and obviously fast results are exciting while slow results are not. Slow RACES can be exciting, but only if you are watching them (and usually not off a grainy, shaky feed).

Riley Masters has been put in the fast section.

Burn and Raze. I'll get my pitchfork.