Has Nick Symmonds lost his mind?

Chet Manly wrote:

Ralph Wiggum wrote:

Seriously? A race at near American Record effort ain't a tempo bro.

waka waka

Why are so many people having such a hard time understanding what coach d wrote? He's not saying run a half-marathon in one hour. He's saying that whatever your tempo pace is for one hour, you can likely run that same pace for a half-marathon without much more effort (obviously doesn't work with slower times). If you can do a 10 mile tempo in one hour it won't take much more out of you to finish the half in 1:18. If you do the hour tempo run at 5:30 pace then you can probably do the half in 1:12.

Was that so hard to figure out?

Why are you having such a hard tune figuring out that waka waka means joking.

Or it's one of the top times in the world......

coach d wrote:

13.1 miles at a pace you can maintain for 1 hour is a long tempo run.

Any questions?

Yes, he seems to be off the rails. First he said he was going to focus on the 1500. Then he changes his coach. Then he performs badly in his spring 800s and follows that by saying he is going to focus on the 800. The 800 is loaded with talent now and what little edge separated him from others now seems lost. Contrast this lack of focus and steadiness with

Aman who is killing it on the track now. Symmonds looks to have fallen into a Jeremy Wariner type mistake, where his thinking leads him astray and his performance drops off.

Peter Snell raced a marathon a few months before his 1:44 WR.

Nick doesn't like indoors and never runs well. He also starts outdoors slowly every year and improves steadily throughout the season. He'll be back when it matters, even if that's not till World's next year. But I hope he takes his AR goal seriously and aims for a peak in the late summer this year.