Tim noakes says as much, that you only have a limited number of fast marathons in you, and that most, including most previous olympic winners, run their best marathons when inexperienced. He says ''if you had to pick winners of the olympic marathon, you would be wisest to back fast 10k runners who have run no prevois marathons or only one. same applies for world record.'' Baldini is an obvious exception, but few seem to churn out top class marthons for years in a row.
So does hall go for it in 2008, or wait until 2012? IMHO, he could go WXC, 10k track at Stanford, race a few 3-5k in europe (poss a 10k brussels). Then based on this decide whether to do olympic trials. Then what to do in olympics, as 10k is incredibly difficult to medal in but conditions in Beijing are not good for marathon running either. But could this play to the advantage of the caucasian as it further increases the unpredictabliity?(see Athens). If he does go marathon, he could then leave that and concentrate on track for a 2-3 years, before going back to marathon for 2012.