Mu and Kersee until last Saturday purposefully had not run any serious races to set her up for a championship 800. Now they suddenly need a second 800 race one week later. The decision not to race indoor and not to race in the spring has caught up with her. Mu has a great deal of talent so somehow maybe she pulls this off. The odds don’t favor it.
Mu simply does not display any of the aggressiveness that made her successful. Watch the following two races, the 2023 Diamond League Final (her last good race) and this past week's Prefontaine Classic. In the DL Final, she hits 200m in 2nd place, just off the shoulder of the leader Hodgkinson. This past weekend, she hit 200m in dead last place out of 11 runners. She simply does not go for the win anymore.
He is a sprint coach. I´m a distance coach. If I started to coach sprinters they would soon run like crap.
Doing some research online and talking to other coaches, wouldn’t assist you in training Mu?
the problem with Kersee's approach is that it's too much based on theory with zero experience. So just looking things up and talking to distance coaches isn't gonna help.
His ego is too big, and he thinks he knows something that nobody else has ever discovered. He's looking at a chart and reading that if Mu is 49.x and 3:5x she can run 1:52. Great theory. Experience would tell him you can't change a tiger's stripes.
You can improve Mu's endurance to back up her speed and very specific talent in the 800. Turning it into a focal point is the mistake.
And she 100% needs the team training atmosphere. Not everybody does. But that person who is digging deep to try to find the love and joy in running does.