1:01:06 at Houston today. People been hyping Klecker’s potential in the half and full marathon for years. Clearly he’s too tall to be successful. Has no kick on the track to compete in championship races. Is it time for him to retire and start his next career?
He is in similar situation to Parker Stinson. A bit faster but I just don't think he has what it takes to run with the best. His muscle mass won't help him in longer races. The track races are extremely competitive.
As a wise man once said, "If I had just ran a 61:06 half, I'd still be running victory laps" especially if a team is willing to pay me a bunch of money to keep running. I don't know why there's this obsession with wanting athletes to retire after a bad (61 isn't even that bad) race. Have you never worked a real job and have no idea what a 9-5 grind looks like? Why would you be telling someone to stop RUNNING for their job and go do that?
Thanks. That's what people on this board seem to forget... it isn't like he's running for free. He is a sponsored professional.
I know his fans wanted him to do better (and he probably did too) but he debuts in the event with a 1:01 flat and is getting paid to do it. The fact that he did it in a race where so much talent came together is the only reason it looks "bad."
1:01 for your debut is great if you are building and uninjured. If his sponsors will pay him to run, there is zero reason to "move on" and get a real job.
This post was edited 28 seconds after it was posted.
“Monson and Klecker were injured, but they've been two of the best in the US since they turned pro” THIS SAYS IT ALL. You’ve got two Olympians in the repair shop. Rookie coach.
Look at Monson and Klecker from 20ft back. They are the most awkwardly built athletes I have seen.
Klecker is fighting his physiology trying to stay uber-light for running. He's wide and has a frame for muscle. Stop fighting it or injuries will remain.
Monson has wide hips with low gluteal density- let the hip injuries abound.
Those two are outliers for ON and injury. Ritz's training is...odd at times, but their builds probably have more to do with it than the training. Genetics suck
For those of you who were around, is this true, or an exaggeration?:
That’s not to suggest that tall teens shouldn’t aspire to be great marathoners. The last two men to hold the world record, Dennis Kimetto and Wilson Kipsang, are reported to stand exactly 6 feet tall, and the first person to break 2:05, Paul Tergat, is listed at being just under 6 feet tall.
Also, Kejelcha is thin but he's a giant. Not sure how he'll do in a full, but he's obviously magnificent in the half.
Look at Monson and Klecker from 20ft back. They are the most awkwardly built athletes I have seen.
Klecker is fighting his physiology trying to stay uber-light for running. He's wide and has a frame for muscle. Stop fighting it or injuries will remain.
Monson has wide hips with low gluteal density- let the hip injuries abound.
Those two are outliers for ON and injury. Ritz's training is...odd at times, but their builds probably have more to do with it than the training. Genetics suck
For those of you who were around, is this true, or an exaggeration?:
That’s not to suggest that tall teens shouldn’t aspire to be great marathoners. The last two men to hold the world record, Dennis Kimetto and Wilson Kipsang, are reported to stand exactly 6 feet tall, and the first person to break 2:05, Paul Tergat, is listed at being just under 6 feet tall.
Also, Kejelcha is thin but he's a giant. Not sure how he'll do in a full, but he's obviously magnificent in the half.
Kejelcha and Kimetto are narrow through the shoulders, Yomif especially. Rupp was tall, but narrow.
I'm not saying there's one true body type for running, but when you are actively fighting your physiology instead of working with it, you set yourself up for injury.
He was coming back from injury and this is his half marathon debut. Ritz got too cute with his training.
Klecked should have at least done some longer tempos (8-12 miles) on the roads at faster than marathon pace in order to prep his body and mind for such a race
also, Klecker was doing way too many threshold efforts and fartleks and very very little specific long grinding half marathon work (4 x 2 miles for example).
yes he did that 4 x 3 miles workout but again that was on the dirt (I think) and only two of those efforts were hard while the other 2 were at marathon pace
ritz gets too cute about training
Does OAC post all of their workotus? Or does Klecker? Where do you see them all?
Dathan has done well with the talent he has to work with. Klecker is not Grant Fisher. God didn't give that to him.
He did win the US 10000 title from Fisher in 2023. Not that long ago.
less talented people beat more talented people all the time. but the fact is, we all know how much better Grant ultimately is. It is a feat that Dathan trained Klecker to beat even a less than 100% Fisher.
First race after being sidelined with injury since The TEN in 2024.
Also his first half marathon.
If anything I think it arguably shows how he does have marathon potential, was only about 12 seconds behind Young, one of the best American marathoners ATM.
Mantz is just on a different level.
I agree with giving Klecker more time. A 61min debut at the half looks pretty good at 99% of HM races, it just happened to be in arguably the most competitive HM on American soil ever.
However, I disagree with comparing Klecker to Young. As I mentioned on another thread, Clayton Young is a marathoner full stop. He doesn't have the wheels at the shorter distances. Clayton even mentions on one of his docuseries videos that Stryd told him that his biggest strength is his resiliency. That's what you expect for marathoners. If Klecker wants to beat Young at the marathon, he's going need to beat Young at the half marathon by a pretty decent margin.
He did win the US 10000 title from Fisher in 2023. Not that long ago.
Wasn't that the year when Fisher was extremely banged up and not himself all year?
The year Klecker won the US 10000m title was 2022. He beat Grant 28:28.71 to 28:28.81. Grant was not banged up - he placed 4th in the 10000m and 6th in the 5000m at Worlds later that summer. In 2023, Grant had an off year, missing both 5000 and 10000 teams, while Klecker made the 10000 team again (but did not win the title - he placed 2nd to Woody Kincaid, while Grant was 4th).
"I was happy with the result for Clayton Young too. I think he did enough to hold his head up high. Clayton's elite attribute isn't that he's fast, his times are generally not very fast, it's that he's sticky. Distances shorter than the marathon are tough for him because there isn't enough distance for other runners to come back to him. But he kept up a good pace, and the key is that he negative split the last 4 miles, 4:42, 4:40, 4:39, 4:33, albeit the tailwind. He ran almost the entire race with Morgan Pearson and Joe Klecker, and they really began to fade in miles 11 and 12. So much so that he was running slightly behind them and ended up dropping them by 9 and 14 seconds. History shows that if this race had gone on over the distance of a marathon, not only would he have caught everyone in the field other than the top 4, he probably would have cut into their lead and finished ~30 seconds behind Mantz."
So I think I agree with you fully. That isn't to say Joe doesn't have talent. He said afterwards that he is in the "G League" of marathon training, which I think is pretty fair. But if they were to go in the near future, he would lose on a scale of minutes.