Great insight from Jos Hermens on Kenenisa Bekele

I think Jos deals in drugs with his athletes ...

LetsRun.com wrote:

Hermens tell us he sat down with Bekele yesterday and was honest with him about what he thinks are the keys to Bekele being successful at the 26.2 distance.

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2017/09/jos-hermens-kenenisa-bekele-must-become-professional-realize-marathon-potential/

It's clearly a problem with motivation - and who wouldn't have this problem after his career?

Training at full commitment for distance running is hard and uncomfortable, most of the time. It does tend to dominate your life. It is only natural that after a long period of this the athletes begins, gradually, to lose some of that intensity of focus. Bekele is now at that stage and it must be open to doubt as to whether he will ever be truly world class again. Maybe better if he retired gracefully? His reputation as one of the greatest of all time is assured.

grox wrote:

Also, why did the organisers pay little? Did they know he was not in shape? How can you get Kenenisa, who also happens to be last year's winner to come back for peanuts? Do they just tell runners they offer them an opportunity to break the WR and that should be enough?

Yeah, was wondering about that too.

I read that Kipchoge was getting 300,000 euros to run Berlin, that'sdefinitely not peanuts, but maybe that was the total fee based on finishing/winning the race ?

I think that Berlin in 2016 shows that he has everything he needs, mentally & physically to run the marathon as well as anyone ever has.

scorpion_runner wrote:

...the marathon is a different beast, and I just don't think he has the mental ability to become a great marathoner. He has the physical assets, but not the mental ones, and that is the difference.

LetsRun.com wrote:

Hermens tell us he sat down with Bekele yesterday and was honest with him about what he thinks are the keys to Bekele being successful at the 26.2 distance.

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2017/09/jos-hermens-kenenisa-bekele-must-become-professional-realize-marathon-potential/

Hopefully a few American athletes might take something from this article.

You have to be 100% committed, its not just about getting a shoe deal or accepted into an elite running club. You have to race outside the US and not be just content with being the top American.

How do you get to running sub 2:09, clearly the American approach is not working now.

grox wrote:

Also, why did the organisers pay little? Did they know he was not in shape? How can you get Kenenisa, who also happens to be last year's winner to come back for peanuts? Do they just tell runners they offer them an opportunity to break the WR and that should be enough?

The organizers pay big money for the big names to perform. The problem with Bekele is he is just as likely to drop out as run a good time. There is a big risk with him. Guys like Kipchoge consistently perform.

The thing is one thing Kipchoge says is a must when preparing for a marathon is a good training group. I think Bekele lacks this. I think he does a lot of training by himself. If he has a group they are not anywhere close to his level so they can't keep up. The Kenyans have a lot more depth than the Ethiopians do so there are always guys who can keep up, if only for one workout.

it goes beyond that....

kipchoge has patrick sang as his coach, who seems very strict, old school and professional about it.

then you have the training group, where kipchoge acts like the "team leader" there. with this structure it makes it hard to pull a "ehh i dont really feel like doing that hard workout today" when you have 15 guys looking up to you as the "boss", and also im sure with sang being strict if someone flakes off they are kicked from the training group.

so kb has no one to train with and no strict coach. he can flake on his runs all he wants or hit slower times then he is supposed to etc.

kb needs a coach, its fine if he still gets his workouts from retardo, but he needs someone there holding him accountable with the stopwatch for proper rest, proper pace etc. then he needs 10-15 guys that will show up every day to run with him no matter what.

Related: When Kipchoge left the track for the roads, he said how much he likes marathon training. When Bekele did the same, he said he missed 5K/10K training, didn't enjoy the longer runs. After all he's accomplished, it's got to be really hard for Bekele to be motivated for the marathon if he doesn't like the process of preparing for it.

I think that's the key....he wants the Marathon WR for the prestige and having all 3 records simultaneously. He obviously has the talent to do so but he just doesn't enjoy the training he needs to do for Marathon

The thing is, there is a personality difference between Kipchoge and Bekele. Kipchoge is humble and responsible. I get the feeling Bekele is not. When people call you the GOAT distance runner and you can beat everybody without training that hard, it's not surprising. So he's his own coach, and his race results are inconsistent because his own motivation comes and goes. As Hermens implies, Bekele had it easy when he was on the track, now that he is older and has to work hard/consistently to get results, it's not so easy and not so much fun for him. I doubt Bekele will change this late in the game.

The guy is lazy, likely due to little motivation from already winning so much

I doubt he'll ever run faster than 2:05 again

Wouldn't be surprised if he hangs up his shoes next year after failing to finish a Spring marathon

Let's just move on and remember the good ol' days

"professional" = time to get back on the sauce

mark b wrote:

It's clearly a problem with motivation - and who wouldn't have this problem after his career?

Training at full commitment for distance running is hard and uncomfortable, most of the time. It does tend to dominate your life. It is only natural that after a long period of this the athletes begins, gradually, to lose some of that intensity of focus. Bekele is now at that stage and it must be open to doubt as to whether he will ever be truly world class again. Maybe better if he retired gracefully? His reputation as one of the greatest of all time is assured.

Let me add that Its a real drag to motivation when you think you might get injured at any moment. That might have something to do with it. I do hope he focuses for a year and wins at least one more race so that he can go out on a good note. But for the first time, I'm starting to think we will never see Kenny's brilliance again. I hope I'm wrong.

I think it's god that he working on his fall back career in business.

His running legend is cemented.

But he has the majority of his fault life still to live.

Herman's just ante his paycheck.

HA! Stop their armchair Kenya analytics? That’s asking a bit much from this board. They just can’t help themselves. When I first started posting here, I thought this was an esoteric bunch that had spent time in the Rift (they’d wax lyrical about joints in Iten, Eldoret, Nairobi and places I’d never been. Even small time Iten crook Freddy has name recognition here) only to discover many, like most Americans, don’t own passports and have never left their home states. Do you think that stopped them from lecturing me and NativeSon about the Kenyan psyche, life and culture? Not a chance. It wouldn’t be LetsRun if it did.

Interestingly, Ethiopia remains somewhat of an unknown quantity here about which they can only speculate from a respectful distance. You’d think most Ethiopian athletes being based in their biggest city Addis Ababa would attract more ‘experts’ than rural Kenya, but that would be too much common sense.

El Keniano wrote:

Interestingly, Ethiopia remains somewhat of an unknown quantity here about which they can only speculate from a respectful distance. You’d think most Ethiopian athletes being based in their biggest city Addis Ababa would attract more ‘experts’ than rural Kenya, but that would be too much common sense.

I think that has to do with the language.

Americans get a lot of information from Kenya (and not from Ethiopia) because so much of it is in English.

Star wrote:

I think it's god that he working on his fall back career in business.

His running legend is cemented.

But he has the majority of his fault life still to live.

Herman's just ante his paycheck.

You drunk?

On second thought, it's one thing for an agent to tell an athlete what he needs to be told, and another to call him out publicly in such a manner. Jos might get dropped.