Solinksy's Stupid Quote

Sitting and kicking bothers me so much too guys. These NFL teams who just wait until the end of the 4th quarter and kick a field goal to win the game are just so much less manly and tough and honest than the guys who compete for the entire game. LOL OMG!

How is anyone arguing that sit and kick is fun to watch? Watching elite runners do a light jog for 12 or 26 minutes just so you can see who is the fastest 400m sprinter? HUH? How is that exciting?

titsmcgee wrote:

How is anyone arguing that sit and kick is fun to watch? Watching elite runners do a light jog for 12 or 26 minutes just so you can see who is the fastest 400m sprinter? HUH? How is that exciting?

It's a lot more exciting than knowing who is going to win with a mile to go and watching him run by himself.

Watching a 10,000 where a half dozen guys are still in the mix at the bell lap? Yes, please.

Its easy to sit and bitch that someone else can outsprint you, but in reality, that's how most (nearly all) races are won and lost (please see Olympic 2012 10000m and 5000m men's finals for confirmation).

Complaining that someone winning a running race because they can run faster at the end than you is... words escape me...

Best kick of all time??? Steve Ovett 1977 World Cup:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W7GogWlv7Q

Steve Prefontaine felt the exact same way as Chris.

And thousands of runners get injured every day around the world.

Finally, everyone is different. Get over it.

Not being an elite runner myself, I just don't understand the thinking of a lot of the elites in the top level races. If several runners in a 5000 have PB's in the 12:53 range and the pace goes slower than that and gets won in say 12:57, why wouldn't more runners take chances and push the pace, instead of everyone waiting for the final lap? For the average fan like myself, these races are frustrating to watch.

It is precisely this mentality that has killed many an American's chances in the big meets. News for you, racing is about winning. And to win you have to be smart. Most everyone who lines up is talented. If you want brownie points for sacrificing yourself to others then petition IOC or IAAF for brown participation ribbons.

By drafting, and biding your time, you are saving your energy for when it matters. It is called racing smarts. If you don't have it, don't cry about those who do.

The truth is that some people simply don't have enough raw speed to win regardless of style, so their only option is to run from the front and hope.

Tell me its not gutsy for a guy like Mo Farah to run a final mile of a 5k or 10k near 4 minutes, a final 800 in 1:53 and a final lap in 52. That is guts and brawn!

I don't get it... wrote:

Not being an elite runner myself, I just don't understand the thinking of a lot of the elites in the top level races. If several runners in a 5000 have PB's in the 12:53 range and the pace goes slower than that and gets won in say 12:57, why wouldn't more runners take chances and push the pace, instead of everyone waiting for the final lap? For the average fan like myself, these races are frustrating to watch.

Because in a field including the best runners on earth, you aren't going to "run away" from anyone by taking the lead early.

I'm sure Mo Farrah is just devestated that you found his gold medal performance "frustrating to watch".

To watch Farrah (and Rupp in the 10,000) run to medals in the Olympics was great to watch, especially since I was rooting for both. But there are guys with faster PR's that got outkicked by Farrah or Rupp. I would just think it would be frustrating to lose a race by a time that you know you could have run faster than. Isn't it possible to burn off someone's kick by running harder earlier in the race? I know people point to Pre losing the Olympics by being a frontrunner, but he also won a lot of races that way.

Frank Reynolds wrote:

Sitting and kicking bothers me so much too guys. These NFL teams who just wait until the end of the 4th quarter and kick a field goal to win the game are just so much less manly and tough and honest than the guys who compete for the entire game. LOL OMG!

Frank, people have been calling for kickers to be removed from football for years. Why have these magnificent modern day gladiators battle for 59 minutes and 59 seconds then lose thanks to a guy who looks more like a pre-pubescent teenage girl?

I don't get it... wrote:

To watch Farrah (and Rupp in the 10,000) run to medals in the Olympics was great to watch, especially since I was rooting for both. But there are guys with faster PR's that got outkicked by Farrah or Rupp. I would just think it would be frustrating to lose a race by a time that you know you could have run faster than. Isn't it possible to burn off someone's kick by running harder earlier in the race? I know people point to Pre losing the Olympics by being a frontrunner, but he also won a lot of races that way.

You seem to be quite unfamiliar with the activity of racing and how it differentiates from the activity of time trialing.

If you're running the local joggerville 5k and you can run a minute faster than anyone else in the field, sure you can "burn off someone's kick." If you're in the Olympic final where every competitor is world class, it doesn't work that way. The other competitors are simply too good to "burn off their kick", whatever that means.

Amen brother...as a high school coach is is incalculable the damage this "pure guts" mentality has caused in running. The idea that one has to punish the body is uniquely american (is not seen in kenya or ethiopia). The rest of the world looks at what develops the body the most...Rupp gets crushed for this all the time, but it was pretty successful this summer--patience and intelligence beats blockheaded machismo every time.

As a side note...

don;t you just hate those baseball games that are won with a walk off home run?

I'm a tad baffled by people who refer to our recent Olympic final 5k as a sit and kick affair. Yes, it went out slow for the first 3k, but actually it was really fast the last 2k. The splits I calculated were 2:33 and 2:26, an average of 2:30 per km the last 2k and increasing in speed at that.

That's not guts and brawn. That's just a finishing kick. It doesn't take any guts to have a finishing kick.

You are right, most of my races are the "local joggerville 5K's". But if I am running with a pack of people in my age group that I am slightly faster than, I don't hang at that pace and try to beat them at the end, I try to pull away enough so that my lack of a strong kick does not play a role. Or if I make those runners work harder than they want to early on, they might be too tired out to have much of a finishing kick.

Look, I know I am a hobby jogger. But to most of us hobby joggers, a race is a time trial. I want to run my best time and if I get beaten, then my hats off to that runner. So it is confusing to watch a race where a 12:53 guy gets beaten by a 12:57 guy because he didn't want to push the pace and take the lead.

A win is a win is a win.

Solinsky acts as if the "lazy" kicker simply steps onto the track fresh with 100 meters to go and outsprints the field. You still have to be good enough to make it through the race to the point where you actually start kicking.

Either way, if you think kickers are lazy, go out there and front-run them into the ground and win. Quit bitching.

As for the Prefontaine comments, he didn't finish out of the medals because of front running. He lost because of unnecessary surges late in the race that left him without enough gas to hold off Stewart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFty7To8oQk

- At 2:25, he gets off the rail and surges from 4th back into the lead and presses with 600m to go. At 3:15 he tries to go from third to first, but Gammoudi picks it up, Pre backs off slightly. A few seconds later Pre surges again trying to overtake Gammoudi but can only pull up on his shoulder. Viren passes Pre into second, then Pre starts yet another surge at 3:32, this one the final kick home.

Way too many moves going on during the last two laps. I'd argue that if he doesn't make the two moves down the backstretch of the bell lap, he has enough in the tank to medal and possibly challenge Gammoudi for the silver. Nobody was beating Viren that day.

Still, it's probably the ballsiest-ever American distance running performance, on the biggest stage possible...not many would have the guts to do what he did. Too bad he came up short.

I'm a hobby jogger, too. Yet when I watch an elite race, I understand that they are different from me. The purpose of a championship race is not to run a PR. It is to get to the finish line before anyone else. That sometimes requires tactics that may not result in a PR.

A tactic that works against Joe from accounting may not work against Galan Rupp.

Front runners are exciting but they often lose the big ones. I love Ron Clarke, but he was ultimately a show runner, what with his one Olympic bronze.

I once read an interview with him where he claimed he outkicked Kip Keino in a 3000. Huh? Never heard of this race.

I loved too watching Al Salazar lead a fast 5,000 in Eugene in '82, screamed my head off for him, but Centro Sr. got the win and the American record. They may have worked it out ahead of time, who knows.

kskspo wrote:

It doesn't take any guts to have a finishing kick.

That's the dumbest thing that's been posted on letsrun in a long time, and that's saying a lot.