How counterintuitive that the athlete most closely associated with orchestrating fast rabbited races could end his career with only one sub-13 performance nearly four years ago.
Terrible news. The sport is better when Jakob is at his best. Worried for Jakob. An Achilles injury can be an existential threat to his career, especially in the 1500. He needs to shut things down for as long as needed to get healthy, really healthy.
No. Do whatever he can to get through this season and then he needs to have surgery immediately after the season is over. Once my achilles started hurting, it kept hurting until I had it operated on.
But the guy who did my Achilles has helped Jakob with his. And he doesn't do surgery lightly. He wouldn't operate on mine unless I'd take 3 months totally off to try to heal it first.
So he'll get good advice. But if there is a chance this comes back, I'd just operate. Next year is the year you want to miss. He doesn't want this being an issue for years like it was with Chris Derrick.
I can relate. Once I had achilles tendonitis and had to take off 3 months from running. I could never get over 70 miles per week ever again after that or it would start hurting again.
Terrible news. The sport is better when Jakob is at his best. Worried for Jakob. An Achilles injury can be an existential threat to his career, especially in the 1500. He needs to shut things down for as long as needed to get healthy, really healthy.
No. Do whatever he can to get through this season and then he needs to have surgery immediately after the season is over. Once my achilles started hurting, it kept hurting until I had it operated on.
But the guy who did my Achilles has helped Jakob with his. And he doesn't do surgery lightly. He wouldn't operate on mine unless I'd take 3 months totally off to try to heal it first.
So he'll get good advice. But if there is a chance this comes back, I'd just operate. Next year is the year you want to miss. He doesn't want this being an issue for years like it was with Chris Derrick.
Injuries plague the lives of elite and professional sportsmen. Look at the wreck Tiger Woods has become. No athlete can be guaranteed to be free from them, no matter how wisely they train and compete, and injuries can end careers at any time - and often do. As in all things, luck - or its lack - will play a part. The curse of Achilles injuries is that once they occur they can often recur, and without a full recovery, which can take a lot of time because rest is crucial, a runner will never be at their best, because the sport requires maximum capacity of that tendon and while imposing tremendous strain on it. Recreational athletes may experience this but it is so much more debilitating for the world-class athlete.
According to meet director Steinar Hoen, there will be a world record attempt even without Jakob at Bislett. Apparently, Kejelcha reached out to them back in January, requesting a 5000m race targeting 12:30. Aregawi also running.
This was mentioned in a Norwegian podcast released today on Breaking Marathon Limits (Patreon only).
I really hope Gebrhiwet is a part of the 5000m field. He's been my favorite among the Ethiopian guys for over a decade. His 12:36.73 race at Bislett last year, with a 54.9 final lap was insane.
" Most likely, Jakob Ingebrigtsen will have to postpone the planned season opening, which was supposed to take place at Bislett in mid-June. – Jakob has suffered a slight injury to his Achilles. He has therefore postponed the planned trip to the mountains, and there is uncertainty as to whether he will make it to Bislett. He will most likely have to postpone the start of the season, says Ingebrigtsen's press spokesman, Espen Skoland. He continues: – Work is now underway to make it happen, but he is not taking any risks."
This is all we have so far, right? It doesn't sound terrible. Is Camp Jingy in the habit of downplaying things?
According to meet director Steinar Hoen, there will be a world record attempt even without Jakob at Bislett. Apparently, Kejelcha reached out to them back in January, requesting a 5000m race targeting 12:30. Aregawi also running.
This was mentioned in a Norwegian podcast released today on Breaking Marathon Limits (Patreon only).
Damn, this was the dream race we had hoped for. it would also have meant that Jingy could have sat on the Ethiopians and draft to the WR
According to meet director Steinar Hoen, there will be a world record attempt even without Jakob at Bislett. Apparently, Kejelcha reached out to them back in January, requesting a 5000m race targeting 12:30. Aregawi also running.
This was mentioned in a Norwegian podcast released today on Breaking Marathon Limits (Patreon only).
Ughhhhh, would have been the perfect race. We would’ve seen a 5000m in sub 12:30.
What is really interesting me there is that bottom right graph - the age curve of sub 13's by age. Because I would make a strong guess/hypothesis that this distribution would also correlate very closely with when athletes set their PR's. You can clearly see that the sweet spot are ages 21-25. You can still run well at 20 and 26/27, but the drop off really starts happening at 26.
When you map this against the ages of the last 5 WR holders it holds up - (not counting multiple record breaking by the same athlete)
Cheptegei - 23
Bekele - 21
Geb - 25
Komen - 21
Kiptanui - 24
Of course there are outliers - Aouita was 28 when he set the WR at 12.58, but this time doesn't really hold up that well now with the record way under 12.40, and of course there is Gebrhiwet at age 30 (^^, yeah), but of the top 10 fastest performers ever, only him and Kejelcha (age 26) are not in that 21-25 career "sweet" spot.