Does Brandon Mcbride run a stupid race every time?

I’ve actually been thinking the same thing for a while now. He’s a multi time NCAA finalist and was in contention for the title for years. He also has some serious sprint credentials from when he was young and set some solid distance PRs in his senior year, and because of that ended up being a consistent 1:44 guy and a peak 1:43 guy that year. That narrative, plus the added fact that he’s about 6’4”(193cm) tall would lead anyone to believe he would be the next all time great by now.

It seems like ever since he lost to Brazier he’s been adamant about leading races. The problem is, he’s terrible at it. He goes out 50 point, or 51 and just fades immediately, which is terrible for a world class athlete. Every time I watch, I begin to the think the issue is either psychological or pace related, because going out at those paces should be difficult, but not overwhelming. We’ve seen runners like Charles Jock and Duane Soloman pull off the front running style for years and McBride has already shown he is an equal if not greater talent than the two. He shouldn’t have lost any fitness over the years, if anything, he should be in better shape now, given he’s a pro. I’m not sure what’s going on with him.

Once you've tasted success, in this case 1:43, it's hard to aim for anything less. he probably thinks he can go run 1:44 every time. It's like Ryan Hall after he ran 2:04 at Boston 2011. He started thinking he was a legit 2:04 guy, when he was really a 2:06 guy

McBride has run 3:41, he could be a 1500m guy in the future

I think part of the problem is that he seems like he holds his breath for the first lap in an effort to appear effortless.

reed wrote:

Once you've tasted success, in this case 1:43, it's hard to aim for anything less. he probably thinks he can go run 1:44 every time. It's like Ryan Hall after he ran 2:04 at Boston 2011. He started thinking he was a legit 2:04 guy, when he was really a 2:06 guy

Come on Reed, admit it. Rupp is a 2:04 guy now, right? Because of ...

reed wrote:

Once you've tasted success, in this case 1:43, it's hard to aim for anything less. he probably thinks he can go run 1:44 every time. It's like Ryan Hall after he ran 2:04 at Boston 2011. He started thinking he was a legit 2:04 guy, when he was really a 2:06 guy

That’s one thing that’s always confused me about athletics. PRs have such a toxic nature on athletes and we watch the best athletes constantly fall because of that false pursuit. Doing the same thing years later will never yield the same result, because that’s mimicry, and a copy is never exact. Runners need to take more time to step back and observe themselves before rushing into every season. If McBride is struggling with strength, why doesn’t he just focus on his strength and see where that takes him, whether it’s 1:42 or 1:47 it doesn’t hurt to try.

For a 45.xx 400m person, 50 or 51 seconds for first 400m isn't extremely painful for the first 400m. When guys go out in sub-52 for first 400m and fall apart, it's easy to say it was bad tactics. People said bad tactics also for guys whom raced even pace. People criticized James Robinson for years for starting too slowly. It just looked slow due to the other 7 800m runners going out sub-25.50 for first 200m in the case of James Robinson.

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