Nuguse says Jakob won’t try the same strategy at Worlds this year

rappatic wrote:

old skool wrote:

Kicker vs strength runner problem has been around forever, even in hs dual meets.

Kicker sits and waits, strength runner leads and tries to run kick out of the kicker...or pull away. Jakob's best chance to win is to lead early.

If he waits to lead and pace crawls, he's dead already early in race. He wants it to be a full 1500m of racing, not a 700 jog, followed by hard 800. He's not the fastest 800 runner in field either.

He can win this way, he just has to run the perfect race.

Concerns of drafting, lane 2 in a 1500 etc are overrated. Look at Hocker's gold. In a kicker's race he did the impossible...actually kicking twice against world class competitors!

Simple, on that particular day, at that particular moment, he had the best fitness. Could have been as simple as the perfect squirt of adrenaline, but in crunch time be had the wherewithal to kick twice! (not a usual effective plan)

I don't think this is true. I think Jakob is probably the fittest guy in every race he contests. There's a reason he's essentially unbeatable in rabbited races.

I think he has better individual odds than anyone else, but he's certainly not favored to beat the field. At the end of the race there's a good chance that someone has the wheels left to outkick him. The 2nd-4th best in the world are far better than they've ever been.

The problem with running from the front is that you waste probably 0.5s per lap having to draft, which means you need a fitness gap of ~2s over the entire field even if you execute the race perfectly. Since Hocker ran 3:27.65, it means Jakob needed to be in 3:25.65 shape at minimum. Frankly, he probably wasn't far off, but his splits weren't ideal (54.9-56.6-55.8-40.9) which complicated things further. He also made tactical mistakes like wasting energy by surging with 700 to go. In comparison, Hocker's splits were much more even with 55.6-56.4-55.8-39.6. Tim in 2019 is the only guy in history who's been able to win from the front and that's because he did have that fitness gap and people were too afraid to go with him. Not anymore.

So how can Jakob win this year? I think El G's strategy in 2004 is the way to go, just sit on the rail for 700m and just started grinding everyone's wheels off with 800m to go. In Eugene he didn't really commit enough. Alternatively, I think doing nothing special and just sitting in the pack like everyone else would give him surprisingly decent odds. His kick is very underrated, we just never get to see it because he always burns himself out too early (which of course is a risk he'll have to take with the El G strategy).

Salvitore Stitchmo wrote:

wejo wrote:

I think Jakob will adjust slightly.

He'll need to be more cautious on first lap. He may really try to blast them for 1000.

But his instinct essentially is always to try and run as fast as he can. That works a lot easier when you have a rabbit in the DL.

The question is if you coached Jakob how would you tell him to race it?

Exactly how he ran that mile in Lievin :D

Start at 56.0, run your second lap 0.30 seconds faster, your third lap 0.30 faster than that, run as hard as you can for the final 300. The one thing you absolutely must avoid at all costs, is a second or third lap that is over 56 seconds. Because at this pace your biggest adversaries (Hocker, Kerr, Nuguse, Kessler and now add Laros) move back nicely under their threshold "red lines" more than you will factoring in the efficiency cost of leading the race.

In Eugene 56.14 and 56.24 for laps 2 and 3 sealed his fate. In Budapest the second lap of 58.10 (even though he didn't lead it) sealed his fate. In Paris the 56.6 second lap sealed his fate.

And if I was coaching him right now I would be getting him to practice ingraining the feel of these paces without any aids. I know he does work with guys on bikes in front of him perfectly regulating his pace - get them out of there.

One other thing I would be doing (and Ritz if you are reading this you should do this with Yared too), is some kind of longer rep work where I was actively crossing my threshold pace, backing off it and trying to come back again within reps. Run some 800/1000m reps where you run a 300m segment in the middle of it in 40.5-41.0 seconds. Or alternate 200's where you step the pace down to the high 26's and then come back out of it to your 27.5's and then back down under it again. High speed "fartlek" work on the tartan. (You did ask what I would do if I was coaching him - this is what I would be doing once a week from March to June).

Zero wrote:

rappatic wrote:

I don't think this is true. I think Jakob is probably the fittest guy in every race he contests. There's a reason he's essentially unbeatable in rabbited races.

I think he has better individual odds than anyone else, but he's certainly not favored to beat the field. At the end of the race there's a good chance that someone has the wheels left to outkick him. The 2nd-4th best in the world are far better than they've ever been.

The problem with running from the front is that you waste probably 0.5s per lap having to draft, which means you need a fitness gap of ~2s over the entire field even if you execute the race perfectly. Since Hocker ran 3:27.65, it means Jakob needed to be in 3:25.65 shape at minimum. Frankly, he probably wasn't far off, but his splits weren't ideal (54.9-56.6-55.8-40.9) which complicated things further. He also made tactical mistakes like wasting energy by surging with 700 to go. In comparison, Hocker's splits were much more even with 55.6-56.4-55.8-39.6. Tim in 2019 is the only guy in history who's been able to win from the front and that's because he did have that fitness gap and people were too afraid to go with him. Not anymore.

So how can Jakob win this year? I think El G's strategy in 2004 is the way to go, just sit on the rail for 700m and just started grinding everyone's wheels off with 800m to go. In Eugene he didn't really commit enough. Alternatively, I think doing nothing special and just sitting in the pack like everyone else would give him surprisingly decent odds. His kick is very underrated, we just never get to see it because he always burns himself out too early (which of course is a risk he'll have to take with the El G strategy).

The problem is, Hocker did double kick and still won. If you watch the race closely, Hocker had to wait 10 seconds before Jakob finally slid out and gave him another opening.

Now, I’m playing the estimation game, but to me, Hocker lost at least 0.3 seconds during those 10 seconds.

If we are talking about Jakob having a 0.6 margin of error in terms of absolute fitness last year, I just don’t know what Jakob can do.

I think Hocker may finish the season with a faster PR in a time trial than Jakob given his trajectory.

Salvitore Stitchmo wrote:

wejo wrote:

I think Jakob will adjust slightly.

He'll need to be more cautious on first lap. He may really try to blast them for 1000.

But his instinct essentially is always to try and run as fast as he can. That works a lot easier when you have a rabbit in the DL.

The question is if you coached Jakob how would you tell him to race it?

Exactly how he ran that mile in Lievin :D

Start at 56.0, run your second lap 0.30 seconds faster, your third lap 0.30 faster than that, run as hard as you can for the final 300. The one thing you absolutely must avoid at all costs, is a second or third lap that is over 56 seconds. Because at this pace your biggest adversaries (Hocker, Kerr, Nuguse, Kessler and now add Laros) move back nicely under their threshold "red lines" more than you will factoring in the efficiency cost of leading the race.

In Eugene 56.14 and 56.24 for laps 2 and 3 sealed his fate. In Budapest the second lap of 58.10 (even though he didn't lead it) sealed his fate. In Paris the 56.6 second lap sealed his fate.

And if I was coaching him right now I would be getting him to practice ingraining the feel of these paces without any aids. I know he does work with guys on bikes in front of him perfectly regulating his pace - get them out of there.

One other thing I would be doing (and Ritz if you are reading this you should do this with Yared too), is some kind of longer rep work where I was actively crossing my threshold pace, backing off it and trying to come back again within reps. Run some 800/1000m reps where you run a 300m segment in the middle of it in 40.5-41.0 seconds. Or alternate 200's where you step the pace down to the high 26's and then come back out of it to your 27.5's and then back down under it again. High speed "fartlek" work on the tartan. (You did ask what I would do if I was coaching him - this is what I would be doing once a week from March to June).

Salvitore Stitchmo wrote:

wejo wrote:

I think Jakob will adjust slightly.

He'll need to be more cautious on first lap. He may really try to blast them for 1000.

But his instinct essentially is always to try and run as fast as he can. That works a lot easier when you have a rabbit in the DL.

The question is if you coached Jakob how would you tell him to race it?

Exactly how he ran that mile in Lievin :D

Start at 56.0, run your second lap 0.30 seconds faster, your third lap 0.30 faster than that, run as hard as you can for the final 300. The one thing you absolutely must avoid at all costs, is a second or third lap that is over 56 seconds. Because at this pace your biggest adversaries (Hocker, Kerr, Nuguse, Kessler and now add Laros) move back nicely under their threshold "red lines" more than you will factoring in the efficiency cost of leading the race.

In Eugene 56.14 and 56.24 for laps 2 and 3 sealed his fate. In Budapest the second lap of 58.10 (even though he didn't lead it) sealed his fate. In Paris the 56.6 second lap sealed his fate.

And if I was coaching him right now I would be getting him to practice ingraining the feel of these paces without any aids. I know he does work with guys on bikes in front of him perfectly regulating his pace - get them out of there.

One other thing I would be doing (and Ritz if you are reading this you should do this with Yared too), is some kind of longer rep work where I was actively crossing my threshold pace, backing off it and trying to come back again within reps. Run some 800/1000m reps where you run a 300m segment in the middle of it in 40.5-41.0 seconds. Or alternate 200's where you step the pace down to the high 26's and then come back out of it to your 27.5's and then back down under it again. High speed "fartlek" work on the tartan. (You did ask what I would do if I was coaching him - this is what I would be doing once a week from March to June).

Salvitore Stitchmo wrote:

He hasnt done this wrote:

Good point as this is how he outruns everybody in diamond leagues, but this is too hard. Running 3:30 pace and cutting down to 3:27-3:28 is extremely hard. Backing off the pace and not being the leader is safer.

It absolutely is. It's why in 3 straight global finals he's been bumped into silver twice and didn't even make the plywood (the dias) in the other. It's why he is arguably the most mercurial and interesting 1500m runner in history because never before have we seen a guy that dominates the circuit with such authority, be unable to convert it to major success (fully aware he won in Tokyo but at his real peak - these last 3 years - he hasn't got the job done).

I agree with you that backing off the pace and not leading is a somewhat okay strategy for him but that strategy definitely has a shelf-life and I mean it's a shelf life of about a lap. Because he needs to drag that field into the twilight zone (past their thresholds) early enough that the guys with better acceleration (Kerr and Hocker specifically and even Nuguse) can't use it in the final 120m against him and I think this needs at least 1000m of consistent pressure to do that.

Prior to Paris my position with him was clear and it hasn't changed looking ahead to Tokyo. He needs to be prepared to run 2.18/2.18.5 for the final 1000m. If that comes off a 75 second opening 500m (60 second pace), a 72 sec opener (a 58 second pace) or a 70 sec opener (56) is up to him and his fitness. But whatever that pace is when he wants to drop the hammer it simply can't ever relent. If at any point he's carting the field around and the guys behind him are running in the 56 points, they are all good enough to be recharging their batteries and at least one of them is going to roll him in the final straight.