Hobbs Kessler: “I don’t think anything over 7:30 (for 3k) is fast”

He's only been training at a high level for like 4 years, and most of that was pretty low volume. He'll get there. His best event for the foreseeable future is the 1500m anyway. His 5,000m days if they ever happen will be beyond 2028.

Totally agree. Could've cut another half second off easily if he'd just run through the line, and presumably he'll be in better shape a month from now for USAs and Worlds. Might be he's ready then, might be it takes till outdoors, but he's definitely not far off.

what a dumb thing to say. thinking you have something to add to this discussion when you haven't even watched the interview.

if you watch the interview (it's like 90s) he specifically says that the standards for fast are different now than they were even a few years ago.

He ran a 5s pb in his season opener in an off distance, and immediately after the race he looked like someone just shot his dog right in front of him John Wick style. I don't remember the last time I saw someone run such a great performance and look so distraught over it. Normally they'd chalk it up to it being a season opener, or being an off distance, or say they're focusing peaking in August, or say "at least it's a pb", but Hobbs didn't give any excuses. He's holding himself to a "world class" standard, which he believes is sub-7:30. That's what I'm really complimenting, not just wanting to run faster.

I know I'm against the vast majority of you here, but I actually strongly disagree with the bolded portion (emphasis mine). I think the causation goes the other way. Every kid starts out with this mindset, they expect to win Olympic gold or win the World Series or whatever. But it's only the talented athletes who get to keep this mentality. If you set high goals and hit them, you keep setting high goals. If you keep falling short, you'll adjust your expectations. So the best athletes end up with this mentality, but it plays no more role in their success that it does for the cocky kid who wins his sectional championship and thinks he's the next big thing.

At least that's my opinion, but I know it's a minority one.

its a 4 sec PR from 7:39, I did not think they would go by so evenly and quick. I thought he would run almost 7:30 off that and so did he. I think that is the dissapointment, not that he cannot "get" the distance, I still think he can, hey, last 200's count..lol, but I thought he looked really good and ready to go, and the stalled, walked across line probably cost himself ,75

Possibly suffering from depression won’t help him run any faster and what someone thinks, doesn’t override talent and fitness. If Ingebrigtsen looked like someone just shot his dog after his 7:17.55, would you have admired him and thought he could run even faster as a result?

wow, I did not quite see the same level of outright despair, some here are referring to. I saw a guy, who didn't even have his sweats on yet, pretty disappointed, most likely because of some pretty hard work at Altitude and thought this would go a bit better, that's all. I think when he rolled up into the gap, he thought, okay shift now and away we go. And it was not there, nothing more. When you tweak training style a bit, you like to see validation, if this was not such a fast race by front three guys, I would have thought that winning a tactical, very well set up 7:35 would have been very good, I had said, I did not think he was going to crank out a 7:30 in his first outing. I just thought he would handle this field even at 3K, and obviously he did as well. Thats all.

People are really reading into this I guess. He’s seen Cole Hocker run 8:05, Josh Kerr 8:01, Yared 7:27, and Jakob 7:17. Those are the 4 guys that beat him in Paris. He’s on the high of 5th at Paris, running 3:29 and running well after Paris. So he wanted to show he’d closed the endurance gap after strong base training. He wanted to win, and as the race happened he lost to some guys he’d like to have a gap on in all races in Coscoran, Habz and Myers. I don’t really think the time was of utmost performance, but not hitting a time he’s hunting and losing had him down when he thought at worst he’d get 1 of 2 or be mighty close on winning.
He’s always been an honest guy post-races and I appreciate it. No excuses and honesty. After NY Grand Prix last year, which others might’ve thought was worse than this, he was cool with it and unbothered. But it’s OK he wanted more out of this one.

NY Grand Prix? Last year? What one was that?

Hocker wasn’t thrilled not winning but wasn’t as upset either when he ran 8:05. Kessler has to take something positive like Hocker did. But I get it, Hobbs feels he is better than the guys in front of him and wants to start his season well like most world champions do.

I know Hobbs has been tweaking his training regimen throughout the years. Started with traditional Ron Warhurst training, the next year double threshold, then he got rid of the long run Olympic year. I know in recent podcasts he said he wanted to run sub 7:30/13:00 for that next step to be right there in the 1500 with the big 4. Imo opinion this is a good start for him and he can build from here. A lot of work ahead of him before USA outdoors and Tokyo.

I found it, losing to Wightman? Not the end of the world..Holt....ehh, I get it now.

What makes you say that? He basically just does a version of Jakob’s training on slightly less mileage and (possibly) slightly more sprints.

The funny thing is that Jakob does the same thing and people smash him here because of it.

Can we please stop making excuses you guys? He had a bad race and lost to guys he shouldn’t be losing to. End of story. He should move on and focus on improving. We don’t need any hand holding or obsessive sympathy here.

I would go with meh, and not bad. He’s only 21, and it’s not improbable that being a year older could put him in the medals in the WC 1500m. What he’s doing in February doesn’t matter all that much.

7:35.06 official

Not a race that Kessler would be happy with. A PR but a poor finish against guys one would expect him to beat. He will lick his wounds and come back better next time.

Not a great idea to make the comment that he did, but there was no malice there. Fact is 7:30 is an excellent mark. I'm sure he realizes that now.

Expecting big things from HK over the next six months.

Easy, there Tiger.

I love the confidence, but he needs to check himself a bit. He's a great talent that is running great at the moment, but he will experience some setbacks, and at some point, running as fast as he is now won't come easy. He's set a high standard, and anything less will be heavily scrutinized. Respect the sport!

I think it was probably tough knowing that Strand (only 5 mos older than Kessler) has run 7:30.1 and 3:48.3 (Both CRs).

It certainly must have added to Kessler's disappointment. He seems like a good kid.