Andreas MF Almgren European record 58:41

@Curious_Cat
I agree with you in general, but in Almgren's case he also had an injury in the navicular bone if i recall correctly, that made him pretty much permanently lose a bit of speed and acceleration.

Better testing has unleashed the power of the white distance runner.

what do you mean by all the time? They only raced twice over 5000m..

abdi's 2:03 will be very very tough i think. he'll have to get the national record first, which rn is at 2:05 high, but the guy who owns the record (suldan hassan) is still young (younger than Almgren anyway) and new to the marathon, so it'll probably be lower by the time Almgren gets to the full marathon anyway.

it's definitely achievable for someone with 58 min HM, but the marathon is just a different beast and so as you said, it's hard to tell how an athlete will do in the marathon even if they're fast in the HM.

Suldan Hassan is also a former 1500-5000 guy who actually started focusing on the marathon because he's training with Abdi and Abdi could tell he would be well suited for the marathon.

It's not impossible for Almgren to become a good marathon runner, but it's going to be difficult.

Good post overall, but I disagree that Brazier is not known for finishing well in the 800. He tends to measure himself well in the opening lap and doesn't overextend himself until the last 200.

He's significantly better than Conner Mantz at every distance up to HM, so given he has run 2:04-high, you'd think something in the 2:03 range should be achievable for Almgren. That said, he could end as another Kamworor, Tadese, Farah type. He's a guy who handles the mileage well, and his pacing is among the best in the world, so I'd back him to sun 2:03-something

he had already run 28:03 or something like that at the end of 2024 before training with Gjert. the race was not on the WA calendar so it doesn't count as an official PB but he still ran it way before joining Gjert

It's largely because of how much threshold he does, which I believe he said is about 5 sessions per week (two double T days then a third day with a faster workout in the morning and thresh in the evening). No matter how much of a speedster you are, if you pump your legs full of that much threshold it'll affect your kick and top-end speed.

OK. -But my point was that for some athletes, e.g Pinto, double threshold seems to give good results over a magnitude of distances, and also a short and speedy event like the 800m.

The short sprints on Mondays after the main track session are done in Scotland too, but are not really considered pure speed sessions as the recovery isn't long enough and the athlete is too fatigued. 20 x 200m is not a speed session, its a strength/endurance type session.

The main advantage I see of the Norwegians is that you have so many senior athletes willing to put in this kind of hard training in order to get results.

He posts some of his sessions on instagram. One caught my eye in particular:

20x400m in 61-62s with only 30s rest (!)

Brutal.

Could be the next Zatopek or Hassan. Imagine doing the 5000, 10000 and marathon in 2028. He can set PB's before then and just go for the experience. Or not. What a range!

He's the only runner in history to run sub 1:46 in the 800 and sub 28 in the 10000, and now he smashed the sub 59 barrier for white guys by almost 20 seconds. The all time half marathon leaderboards has Almgren as the only white guy in the top 90 or so times.

God, imagine what a career he would've had if he had gotten started with lower intensity, higher volume training earlier in his career and would've avoided all those injuries.

Hold your horses! I think we all expect Jakob to take down that 5000m record. The 10,000m track one will be tricky to find the right race, but if Jakob moved up he'd be likely to beat whatever mark is set. Similarly, the 10K road one is easy pickings. As of now, the only "safe one" ahead of 2029-30 (when I could see Jakob getting out of the 1500) is the HM. Jakob would need a lot of injuries in my estimation to not own everything but the HM by then (or a lack of interest in honing in on the 10K for long like Kipchoge).

Almgren also looks fat compared to others. Too much weight to carey

He could drop a lot of weight if he decides to focus on the marathon in the future. He's practically got the build of an east African distance runner, 5'8 with very long legs.

Too much weight would be more of a concern for someone like Jakob if he moves up to the marathon, he's about 6'1. I wonder what the fastest marathon ran by a runner 6 feet or taller is?

If you actually believe this is a clean race then that is hilarious

Half marathon time

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