What if Mo Farah had gone for a WR 1500m

Fast Dude Runner wrote:

XFIT BRO THE REAL ONE 1 wrote:

I know Meb Farah won Boston and TATA New York Marathon

Mo Farah

Meb Keflezighi

Those are 2 different runners

Sounds the same to me

XFIT BRO THE REAL ONE 1 wrote:

Fast Dude Runner wrote:

Mo Farah

Meb Keflezighi

Those are 2 different runners

Sounds the same to me

That's not even "ha, runners are scrawny, I'm so funny, they're all little "Kenyan" shrimps." That's just racist. Your mimicry of a good letsrun troll is fine, but drop the Meb Farah thing. It's offensive on levels I don't think you intend it to be.

wishful wrote:

Are you guys saying that it is completely absurd that he could have gone ANY faster than his 3:28 at ANY point in his career? Even with a hard core taper?

He could go have gone faster. But not sub 3:26. Whole different level to 3:28.8. Farah might run around 3:27.5 with some more 1500m training. Problem is that nobody really knows what training he did leading up to that. So to say 'he ran that off 10k training' is false and misleading. Nobody knows. He could have been doing hardcore speed for 4 months, lifting weights and tapered for 2 weeks.

Metric Miler wrote:

wishful wrote:

Are you guys saying that it is completely absurd that he could have gone ANY faster than his 3:28 at ANY point in his career? Even with a hard core taper?

He could go have gone faster. But not sub 3:26. Whole different level to 3:28.8. Farah might run around 3:27.5 with some more 1500m training. Problem is that nobody really knows what training he did leading up to that. So to say 'he ran that off 10k training' is false and misleading. Nobody knows. He could have been doing hardcore speed for 4 months, lifting weights and tapered for 2 weeks.

We "sort of" know because he ran 59:30 half in March and 3:28 in July. Then 59:59 the following March in a championship race in terrible conditions.

Of course he could have "worked on speed" between the 59:30 and the 3:28, but is that the same as "training for the 1500?"

oh please wrote:

Metric Miler wrote:

He could go have gone faster. But not sub 3:26. Whole different level to 3:28.8. Farah might run around 3:27.5 with some more 1500m training. Problem is that nobody really knows what training he did leading up to that. So to say 'he ran that off 10k training' is false and misleading. Nobody knows. He could have been doing hardcore speed for 4 months, lifting weights and tapered for 2 weeks.

We "sort of" know because he ran 59:30 half in March and 3:28 in July. Then 59:59 the following March in a championship race in terrible conditions.

Of course he could have "worked on speed" between the 59:30 and the 3:28, but is that the same as "training for the 1500?"

I was actually referring to when he ran 3:28.8. He ran a half in 60:59 in February, then ran some sit and kick 5ks before popping 3:28.81 in mid July.

wishful wrote:If he trained for it, and raced it consistently, does anybody have a doubt that he would have beat El Geurrouj's old record.

his 3'28.9 last year had virtually no drafting as Asbel too far ahead with his pacers

mo effectively ran that 3'28.9 solo off too fast a 1st lap

if there had been 2nd set of pacers paid for by sal, then i expect he wouda run in a perfect run

~ 3'27-flat

this off 5k/10k training !!!

i have to say, if when he joined sal nearly 6y ago & had concentrated on 1500 full time, if he has 3'27-ability off 5k/10k training, then it is inconceivable he woudn't have broken the 1500wr

my feeling is that 6y of concentrating on 1500 he wouda gone about

3'25-mid

i'll stick to easy-to-fathom numbers for estimates

imo, mo's shape last year was 49-mid/1'45-flat

49.50 / 1'45.00 ->

2'13.66

3'27.08

near enough to the stated 3'27-flat

if when joining sal more than 1/2 decade ago & concentrating on 1500, meaning huge improvement in speed, much more so than the speed he has off 5k/10k training, i reckon his 400 wouda got down to 48-mid, a 1s improvement over where he is today

his concomitant 800 is key :

at worst it shouda improved to 1'44-flat & top end of 1'43-mid

some estimates with 48.5 :

48.50 with

1'44.00 ->

2'12.82

3'26.90

1'43.90 ->

2'12.65

3'26.55

1'43.80 ->

2'12.49

3'26.19

1'43.75 ->

2'12.40

3'26.01

1'43.70 ->

2'12.32

3'25.83

1'43.60 ->

2'12.16

3'25.47

1'43.50 ->

2'11.99

3'25.12

everyone has to make up their own mind on what to pick

my experienced eye goes for 3'25-mid in an absolutely perfect race

( 48.5 / 1'43.6 line )

1 thing i 100% believe is that he wouda broken the 1500wr if he had trained for it fully this past 1/2-decade+

Fast Dude Runner wrote:

XFIT BRO THE REAL ONE 1 wrote:

I know Meb Farah won Boston and TATA New York Marathon

Mo Farah

Meb Keflezighi

Those are 2 different runners

How is anyone still falling for this guy? You're getting trolled. Just don't even respond! He created Meb Farah a long time ago so there is really no need to explain anything to anyone. Old over used joke at this point.

I wonder what mo thinks? If he regrets not focusing on the 1500 and being able to get the record? Probably would have been cool but I think he's happy with all the golds. Continuous golds are probably more profitable than 1 world record, right?

He's not even able to run 3:28 flat. I don't understand why people keep repeating he ran 3:28 when he actually just dipped a bit under 3:29. By proper rounding his time I would rather call him a 3:29 runner.

Haha. "Inconceivable" that he wouldn't have run 3:25. The mind cannot fathom it. It's as far fetched as saying that Rupp isn't really a 12:45 5000 meter runner.

But all this hypothetical conjecture depend upon whether he could improve his basic 400 speed by 1 sec while maintaining the same level of endurance he has. By working on his speed to such an extent would be to the detriment of his endurance, which wouldn't have been as good as it was. Therefore all of those projections you suggest would be skewed and his 1500 times would slow.

I suspect long use of EPO micro dosing would also affect those figures too.

No, he wouldn't need to keep same level of endurance. You think Kiprop or El G needed to run 59:30, 26:46, or 12:53 to run their 1500 times? I believe it was stated if Mo focused on the 1500 and therefore would not need to prepare for anything above that distance making it much easier to improve basic speed.

Double Top wrote:But all this hypothetical conjecture depend upon whether he could improve his basic 400 speed by 1 sec while maintaining the same level of endurance he has. By working on his speed to such an extent would be to the detriment of his endurance, which wouldn't have been as good as it was. Therefore all of those projections you suggest would be skewed and his 1500 times would slow.

no

you haven't analysed the numbers properly

i said i reckon his shape last year was

~ 49.5 / 1'45.0

i said if he had concentrated on speed from 6y ago & only the 1500, his 400 speed wouda been inevitably lot faster

i said i reckon a solid number he wouda looked to get his speed to woud be 1s quicker at

~ 48.5

you then fail to see that his endurance has got worse with this faster speed

if his 400 had speeded up by 1s, then a very good estimate for 800 improvement with unchanged endurance wouda been a 2s improvement, dropping his 1'45.0 to 1'43.0

the estimates used show much inferior endurance at suggested 1'43.6 not 1'43.0

keep it simple for you :

endurance is 400/800 ratio : the higher the number the better the endurance

do the numbers for

49.5 / 1'45.0

&

48.5 / 1'43.6

ventolin^3 wrote:

...

if you can offer nothing then don't waste my time

How did anyone waste your time?

mako wrote:

He's not even able to run 3:28 flat. I don't understand why people keep repeating he ran 3:28

Because he did.

for those actually interested in answers, we need to estimate mo's shape prior to joining sal

it is obvious his 3'33.9pb from '09 was nonsense by '11 as 3'28.8 in '13 showed ( & i'd bet my bottom $ he was close/at 3'28.8 shape in '12 - games year ), so even before joining him a ~ 3'32-flat woud be reasonable

as for 10k, he ran 27'28 in mid-'10 before joining sal

i hadn't looked at race report & assumed flat-out

a tv commentator after his break-thru eugene 26'46 said that 27'28 was in windy conditions & virtually solo & mo was likely to have been much more like 27-flat shape at the time

therefore, mo's shape before joining sal was ~ 3'32.0 / 27'00

the closest "round numbers" for 400 / 800 which yeild those are

50.75 & 1'47.50 ->

3'31.8

26'57.1

his 400 / 800 times between then & my estimate for last year are virtually exact multiples at

1.25s faster for 400

2.5s faster for 400

this tells us a lot

it tells us that sal has not likely tinkered with mo's training apart from more consistent ( which he lacked before ) but added speed thru likely weight-training as main factor

the main improvement in mo has come from much more power/strength = speed fom weight-training

the take home message for any alreday/near elites is that the next step to get to challenge mo needs to be a serious weight-training programme to increase strength/power with little mass increase providing you do consistent road/track work

a good weight-training coach can provide the workouts

There's not a chance that Mo Farah could have run 3:27 flat with pacers last year, because that would have put him within pacing distance (just .31 behind) of Kiprop. But if he was capable of drafting to a 3:27, why didn't he use Kiprop the entire race? Far better than hired pacers, Kiprop went the full distance. Anyone capable of drafting behind Kiprop the whole way would have gone 3:27 flat or at most a few tenths faster. Lagat, for instance, was about a quarter second behind El G in Lagat's 3:26.34, drafting all the way. Ngeny was about the same back of El G in the world record mile of 3:43.12. Farah did not have a 3:27 flat in him on that day. But he might have been able to run 3:27 flat if training more as a miler and peaking. Since he seems to have quite a bit more speed than Centro in the kick and has run 2 seconds faster almost in the 1500m, maybe that's not all endurance but he could run as fast or faster than Centro in the 800m (1:44 mid).

[quote]jjjjj wrote:

There's not a chance that Mo Farah could have run 3:27 flat with pacers last year, because that would have put him within pacing distance (just .31 behind) of Kiprop. But if he was capable of drafting to a 3:27, why didn't he use Kiprop the entire race? Far better than hired pacers, Kiprop went the full distance. Anyone capable of drafting behind Kiprop the whole way would have gone 3:27 flat or at most a few tenths faster. Lagat, for instance, was about a quarter second behind El G in Lagat's 3:26.34, drafting all the way. Ngeny was about the same back of El G in the world record mile of 3:43.12. Farah did not have a 3:27 flat in him on that day. [quote]

Exactly what I said to him back when Farah ran this race. Why didn't Farah move up right behind Kiprop?

Ventolin not only believed Farah had 3:27.0 in him and was only hanging back off Kiprop for some tactical purpose or something, he also seemed to ignore the runners passing Farah in the home straight. If Mo had the ability to run 3:27.0 with a pacer right in front then he should have held on for sub/low 3:28 to beat those other guys.