Subway, here there are my answers :
1 a)- How you well know, middle and long distances are strongly influenced by tactical developments. The fact Bosse won in 1'44"67 means the race was tactically slow, not that the value of the athletes in the final is represented by their times.
What is it possible to say about the Olympic Final in Rio of 1500m, with the first 800m in 2'17" ?
1 b)- I don't know how many times I have to explain that Monaco is, in the last 5 years, THE ONLY MEETING OF DL ORGANIZING A FAST RACE AND PAYING THE PACERS WITH DIFFERENT AMOUNT OF MONEY. Why Monaco ? Because, for the data of the meeting (it's the last BEFORE the main Championship in Summer), the athletes are at the peak of their shape, and have interest in running fast for testing themselves before the main seasonal appointment.
1 c)- Maybe you don't read what I write. There are no more races of 5000m organized with pacers, and there is currently a very limited number of 5000m in DL (next year, 2 only, the other are 3000m). For running in 12'50" athletes need not only talent, but also organization of the race with right rabbits, and possibly a competitive group. This, currently, doesn't happen, because there is no more interest in this situation (nothing to do with doping).
2 - I don't forget Longo. At that time I was the Technical Scientific Director of Italian Federation. We had the notification from IAAF that Andrea Longo was positive for Nandrolone few days before WCh of Edmonton. We spoke with the athlete, and he told us NEVER took something different from the supplement of an American Company which whom he had an official contract. That Company was considered the number one in the World at the moment, and the products were guaranteed as absolutely legal.
The Italian Federation, believing Andrea had said the truth, invested more than 30,000 Euros for buying the same supplement (Ultimate Nutrition) in several European Countries, and sent all the samples to the lab of Koln, to the doctor Manfred Donike (at that time, responsible of antidoping for the IAAF). Donike and his staff made a deep and long investigation, and at the end the result was that 22% of all the samples were contaminated.
We sent all the dossier to the IAAF, that confirmed the sanction, but accepted the "bona fide", and authorized Longo to have two weeks at disposal after the deadline for achieving the standard for WCh 2003, something he was able to do.
Longo made an allegation against the Company, that had to pay him the money he lost for the ban. At the same time, the Company made an allegation for sabotage against unknown people, for cleaning its reputation.
3- Cycling is too much different from running. In cycling, you can go faster because you have more strength, and are able to use the same rhytm while pedaling, pushing one or two teeth more (a longer gear). In this case, we can't speak of EXTRA TRAINING (because the volume was the same), but of SAME TRAINING WITH MORE POWER, and EPO was only the support for the main doping, that was GH or Testosterone or some other steroid. So, it's not they used Nandrolone for supporting EPO, but EPO for supporting Nandrolone or other steroids, that were the main source of doping.
This is something we don't need in athletics, especially in long distances (while in 800m some more strength can be useful, mainly for women). So, please, don't continue to mix different disciplines, that have big differences in the requested qualities.
4- The best Marathon runners had from 4 to 8 tests per year. They have contracts with the organizers of the Major Marathons, signed already several months before (for example, we already know where Geoffrey Kirui, who is the World Champion, goes to run next year), and the pool of Majors have a budget for testing the athletes under contract 2-4 times BEFORE their marathon, in order to avoid the possibility of a victory by a doped athlete (what happened in the past with Shobukhova and Rita Jeptoo in Chicago), with all the effects we can understand (wrong distribution of prizes, points for the jackpot that are not valid, loss of image for the activity).
Going again to the Rita Jeptoo case : she was not DQ for doping BEFORE Chicago, but for BEHAVIOR AGAINST THE ETHIC OF ATHLETICS. This was the only way for avoiding the fact she had already won the jackpot (she won Boston and Chicago in 2013, and Boston again in 2014), and the Majors didn't want that an "official" doped athlete could win 500,000 USD. The final result is that Rita, when doped in 2014, won Chicago with the slower time of her career (excluding the first year of activity as marathon runner). And Jemima Sumgong was caught during an OOC test paid by the Majors.
5- There are no many half marathoners under 59' in the world. However, athletes like Cheroben, Kamworor, Karoki are in the pool for whereabouts, while I think that Okombo and Oloitiptit are still not in the list.