Why was Ritz so wrong with his prediction for Joe Klecker's 13.1?

People always bagging on Morgan McDonald like he's too slow to be part of the group. To me, he's the only one that goes about training with the proper mindset. It's training. You do it every day. It's not a big deal. It's no wonder he seems to get more out of himself in races than people anticipate. He's practically injured twice a year yet he's the fastest 1/2 guy on the team. Expect him to make big waves this year.

Ok Morgan

I couldn't agree more. The number of days where "flying" and "race" coincided were annoyingly few. Days where "flying" came a week or two before the race were frustratingly frequent.

It has to been even harder when you are coaching someone else and can't actually feel what's going on.

Yeah, Ritz has no scientific background for the old school training he is continuing with his team. Quite the mix of ideas in his background.

I can’t find the source, but at the time, the detailed results showed Ritz ran 59.59.9.

Perhaps a photo finish timing. I don’t know if you can count that, but he did get across under 60 minutes.

You can see he is on the shallow end of the second on the video.

ppl forget that he would’ve made the olympic 5k final if he leaned at the line (find the prelim and watch it)

He was really just ~1min off of what they wanted. Just seems like a "B" day versus an "A" day. That's really not a ton of time in a half. He was through 10k on 60:24 pace. Actually seems like a somewhat even effort to run ~61-flat with some of the back half miles into the wind. Klecker's longest race up until now was the 10k right? & he's coming off of a big injury? A lot to ask to have a perfect race off of your first half marathon cycle. He'll see the fruits of this build in the spring & the next time he tries a half.

I know they're running mega mileage & have some of the best runners on the planet but their taper workouts looked a bit aggressive to me. 6 days out: 3k/2k/3x1k/5x400. 3 days out: 6x1k + 4x200. The half marathon is such a tough race I'd rather see 1 mid-week workout. Not gonna get stale because you didn't knock out some k's 3 days before the race.

Ritz's efforts have paid off bigly when his athletes are healthy, but he's not kept them healthy much. Who would have expected Klecker, a guy with no NCAA championships to run 12:54? He'll figure out the half as well. Monson ran 14:20. Hoare ran 3:29 and was Commonwealth Champion. Nuguse has run 3:27 for bronze and 3:43, as well as 7:28i. He's had a lot of people run unbelievable times. He's just got to work on keeping them healthy.

You can see from the video that Ritz is decisively across the painted line with 59:59 still there on the clock but they rounded up to give him 60:00. However, this was a tactical race and he very much had sub-60 in the tank with a more even pace. And he only got the latter half of 59:59 because of the left turn the guys were taking at the finish line. They judged there not to be enough room on the right so they all shifted a few steps to the left to cross. Had Ritz run straight ahead instead (and he did have room to do so), he would have had a sub 60 official time.

Klecker just wasn't well prepared for this race. 6 months off or first time racing the distance, whatever. He should have at least been able to ride Mantz's heels through 10 miles. Of course, the coach doesn't execute race strategy, just like in training it's squarely up to the athlete.

Would be funny if he breaks the AR in Atlanta in early March, he did say he is running there.
Will give him the benefit of the doubt here, even Mantz the first time he ran Houston thought an AR was in the cards only to run worse than Klecker’s debut. It was clod, windy, and first race on the roads, first race over 10k, first race in over six months.

True, and Eyestone is certainly the better coach.

It’s Atlanta though so won’t it be quite hilly? I bet he does much better 2nd time out

Agreed. Kicker hadn’t raced in 10 months and Ritz was cautious in his buildup—all the long fartleks on dirt roads and marathon pace training. He really one did like two race specific workouts in his buildup

Meanwhile Mantz was on the roads and track doing killer workouts, had raced more recently, and had previously raced a couple half marathons.

that doesn’t mean that Klecker was necessarily in the wrong to not do that—he needed to stay healthy and get to the start line. Now that he has done that, I imagine and like to see more specific training from him in the buildup to Atlanta, meaning lots of track and road work.

i don’t think the AR is in play in Atlanta tho, not if the course is anything like the Olympic marathon trials course, which was hilly

*sorry for typos

Not sure but how is this relevant? Who in that field/this discussion was over 150-155?? NOBODY. No way kleck is over like 140

That's the thing about having a great day - when you feel great, it's *really* great. That race is yours. Mantz described feeling that low 4:20-mile splits didn't feel hard that day (perhaps due to a tailwind).

Mantz's injury scare brought him to an inadvertent peak. See: 'Zatopek Effect".

It will be interesting to see how Eyestone integrates this in preparation going forward