Lagat wins in a rediculous time......

"and even a ridiculous time. learn how to spell asshole. dont bump your own stupid threads asshole."

-are you really serious? your sentence formulation is as above, an you're giving literary lessons?

race to PR or go home

Ok, goddamn. I'm gonna throw in my two cents now. When you're a pro who competes at an elite level, you don't race to PR at every single meet. Why? Money, that's why.

Lagat just ran 12:54 a couple weeks ago. What do you think would happen if he raced all out at every 5k this year up to this point? With at least two months of racing left on the international circuit, he would surely start running out of gas later in the season against the big ballers. And there is more money on the line at those meets. So why blow your load against weak competition in brutal weather in JUNE when you need to be throwin' down overseas in July, August, and September?

Lagat did exactly what Rupp did. He did what needed to be done to get the goddamn WIN. If Lagat wanted to appease the fans and Letsrun douchebags by going out hard and going for a PR, the weather and lack of competition would have prevented him from running anything close to 12:54, so he basically would have wrecked himself while putting 20 seconds on the field, running a 13:10 or so, and possibly jeopardizing his ability to hang with the big dogs overseas all the way through September. Lagat is one of the best runners ever and he's been a pro for many years. I think he knows what he's doing. To think that he's just punkin' out is ludicrous and ignorant.

sweet......they took Lagat's "winning moment" away! I love it!....any other time I would be pissssed!

Snakedoctor09 wrote:

race to PR AND go home

Fixed.

Dude..Kidding..But really it's more exciting when they at least hold decent paces, it's just surprising that nobody in these slow tactical races goes out hard because he planned to peak and PR and win Nats. There has to be somebody who wants to do that, not Lagat of course but maybe a 13:40 PR guy would hold something a little faster hoping to PR.

And PRing AND THEN going home works too. Even better if you just drop a WR and go home forever.

Lagat and Rupp did the right thing , they ran. It helps the cause to bring visibility to the meet and hopefully inspires the young runners. The "elites" that didnt show I hope got a deduction from any type of stipend USATF may be giving them. Running through this meet would not hurt any racing plans later in the summer.

LAGAT SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO OWN THE AMERICAN RECORD.

HE IS KENYAN.

"Dude..Kidding.." --Snakedoctor09

Oh. Ummm...ok. Sorry.

Michael Scott wrote:

Not to be a Pre-hater, but I'd also like to point out that Pre's running got him 4th place when it mattered.

So Rupp's done better with his only tactic?

And thus ESPN will be justified in cutting away from a boring mail-it-in race to show baseball instead. Without athletes willing to go for it and run hard and risk failure then our sport rightfully will roundly be considered boring and unwatchable. So much for that whole alleged revival.

And I wouldn't excuse Rupp or Lagat from my comments. They're supposed to be leaders in the sport. They don't need to run away from everyone or even lead the field to their own detriment, but they could still take turns leading the race to inject some honest competitiveness into the affair. Hell, even turn it into a surge workout for all I care, something other than only jogging behind others that everyone knows you can beat handily. I expect more than pure self-service out of the stars of the sport, especially if we are going to credit them for helping to revive the fortunes of the sport.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who shares this view. But apparently, it seems the norm on this board is that you're an idiot if you think athletes should ever go for a win without doing it from 200m to go. Or, *gasp*, taking turns leading.

I can understand how I might sound like a restless child here, but this is part of the reason why T&F gets such little support. If our athletes don't try and compete with each other, letting lesser athletes lead because they fear burning out and then letting all hell break loose at the end, well, why should anyone be interested in watching?

Last time I checked, Usain Bolt buries his competitors. No matter what. Same thing with David Rudisha, etc. Even Hicham El Guerrouj, who loved to wait to go, always made the race interesting. I just don't get it.

Why were the 10k and 5k so weak this year? Where are all the big names? Pre next week?

Wondering why wrote:

Last time I checked, Usain Bolt buries his competitors. No matter what. Same thing with David Rudisha, etc. Even Hicham El Guerrouj, who loved to wait to go, always made the race interesting. I just don't get it.

Yeah, that Usain Bolt... got to give him a lot of him credit for not running a TACTICAL 100 meters.

Has Rupp hit puberty yet? His voice is like Michael Jackson's.

This is why the marathon is the toughest event in America.

It is sad that everyone else in the field ran slower than 13:55 at a National Championships. I would assume that they had more talent than 13:55. Damn, what was the qualifying time to get into the meet?

Maybe they should not award any trophies, titles, or cash if the winning time is slower than the meet qualifying time.