Thanks dc.
That makes more sense, to all those saying he's doing long/base work at present and once he puts in the speed he'll be fine, thats pretty unlikely. Well managed athletes should be able to stay relatively race sharp year round, and even under his biggest training loads, if he's fit, it is unlikely he would be as much as 14 secs of his best.
Props to Webb. However, he needs to train and not race. The pro game is different from high school and college. This is something his management and coach has to understand. These guys need to look at Michael Johnson or Edwin Moses. Why did they win so many races? The reason is that they did not race until they were at least 98% ready. When a sponsor is paying you big money, they would prefer for you to not race than to embarass yourself and their product.
I will give you an example how cruel the pro game is. Jeremy Wariner opened his season this year with 44.9 and fans were saying "how come he ran that slow". Pretty darn ludicrous when you consider Xavier Carter openened his outdoor with 45 high and everybody is wowing over this kid.
Webb is a studd and will be back. I think his 10 took a bit out of him and he has not had time to recover. Remember he was racing very soon after the 10, which is new territory for him.
wuzthere wrote:The pro game is different from high school and college. This is something his management and coach has to understand.
I think Ray Flynn, Webb's agent and manager, knows a thing or ten about elite level competition.
I think it isn't our place to judge the outcome of the preparation and racing schedule at this point of the season. There's another 2.5 months of racing in Europe to do.
If I have to comment on the 10k track race, I will say I see nothing wrong with it. Would I, as a coach, schedule one? Probably not - unless Webb was doing no speedwork and needed to do a test run of his strength. However, I would not have placed Webb in a big 10k race. I'd rather he run in a road 10k or smaller 10k track race. I'd probably select a 5k race as my first choice or a 3k race if Webb was going to focus on the 1500m. In other words, run in a race just a bit longer than the actual track event Webb plans to focus on is what I would do. This is me. I am not Webb's coach and thus I'll cut him some slack. He probably has a plan.
A fluke injury happened to Webb at the Prefontaine meet. But, perhaps, it was building up the previous couple of weeks. I say this because Webb looked weak in the meet at Carson, CA. He looked really tired and unable to generate power. If I had to take a stab in the dark, Webb was doing hard workouts to soon after the 10k track race. I've seen this time and again when runners undestimate how hard a 10k track race is and they return to hard-core training too soon. That was my guess when I saw Webb run poorly at the Carson meet. I did not expect him to race well at Pre since he looked tired and weak at Carson.
The weather at Pre was not conducive to warming up, by the way. I was there and can say it was a horrible situation with hard, cold rain coming down. Nobody wanted to move. So, I think Webb might have been less than fully warmed up for the mile. Plus, Webb was likely already less than par in terms of strength being returned to his legs. Add to that expectations of winning the Bowerman mile and you have a bad situation.
I suspect Webb cramped badly more than tore a hammy at the Pre meet. He needed time to recover, anyway, so the sore hammy and 3 weeks to get his body feeling good again is probably what happened. Then, Webb enters a race in Europe to get things going again and finds himself following a pacer who hits 2 flat, only, at the 800m mark (3:45 pace), and gets spiked in the calf muscle by someone. He fades just a bit after being spiked and runs 3:46. I don't see it is a totally horrible situation. I see it as a matter of getting back into the swing of things and getting some sharpness back.
In particular, the sharpness is what was missing for the shorter races. The 10k race revealed he was strong, so that isn't an issue. He needed to recover more, I think, after the 10k race, then start doing quicker reps and some races to round himself into shape. The problem is Americans expect Webb to be sharp at the Prefontaine meet in late May when the truth is he needs to be sharp in July and August. I would venture to say that Raczco analyzed past seasons and calculated the Alan would perform better in late summer if he delayed his speedwork more - makes sense to me. Thus, longer winter and spring track races were planned.
I think we give Webb some time to work through the rest of the racing season before we evaluate what happened. Even then, it is Webb's career, we need to find ways to be supportive. After all, it doesn't do him any good to have his fans waffle their support. Tinman