There's been plenty of talk about why Ryan DNF'd (again) last weekend. But reading the LRC Weekly Recap got me thinking about Sara: why did she run so poorly? She has a coach, she has been racing well this past year, and isn't known to be a total headcase.
She came through 25km at 2:33 pace, which is totally reasonable based on her 1:10:50 half marathon at the US champs. She didn't go out too fast either, with all of her first few 5ks around 18:00. Even if you factor in the heat, McMillan's calculator says that her HM converts to a 2:29. So granting four minutes for weather seems reasonable. But she blew the %^&* up and staggered home with 19:57, 23:32, and 23:43 for her last complete 5k segments.
What happened? Does Magness just not know how to coach the marathon? Is she just not a marathoner?