Oh the irony: Josh Kerr: "It's all about the medal count this year"

Presumably he means medals at World Championships, European Championships, and Commonwealth Games. That's 3 medal opportunities right there.

He clearly meant medals NOT from the G League. Those don't count.

That’s what he means.

If Kerr does well in those three few will care he skipped World Indoors.

world athletics does need to put some rules in place to encourage certain competitions. For example they could easily have a rule that any mark doesn’t count if it’s run the same week as your national championship and not at the national championship. (Kerr ran at BU last weekend instead of British nationals)

agreed

It’s a good thing that he went to UNM. It was the perfect spot for him.

Bronze at worlds (Jakob, Tim), silver at Euros (Jakob), silver at commonwealth (tim)

Katir could give trouble at worlds and euros, mcsweyn at commonwealth. perhaps wightman at Euros?

Perhaps motivating people to run the world indoors, offer them a guaranteed place in the summer champs if they medal for example, if they don't already do this. Taking things away or restricting things makes no sense. It is an individual sport the 1500m and the individual gets to decide on their plans.

Josh Kerr is based in the USA and it is a big disruption for him to come back for the British indoor trials. Times zones, difficulties travelling etc.

Indoor is never likely to get much action. It's great to watch and a good opportunity for up and coming athletes though.

In the UK there are very few indoor tracks and participation is low relative to the outdoor. For distance runners the club cross country scene is most peoples focus and it has never been a thing to do indoors, so it is hard to break habits.

He has three major medals to go for this summer and that is what he was talking about to the BBC, headline level stuff rather than exact details of his plans.

If he returns home to Scotland to run a park run then we can question his approach!

That's not irony, and some people continue to miss the forest for the trees when it comes to track.

Anyway, there is no reason not to trust his plan, seeing as it just netted him an Olympic medal and a time well under the previous Olympic Record. Next he wants a British record, an outdoor world medal, and another olympic medal.

Indoors seems to be big in the US only. They run indoors in Europe but no one really cares that much. It's like the mile record.

Yeah, he should be at World Indoors. I doubt he'll run the Euro's as he doesn't seem to like racing too often and he's talked about World outdoors and Commonwealth Games as his priorities.

But World indoors is early in the year, plenty of time to peak again for outdoors. He's not alone, the British indoor team is pretty weak other than Hodgkinson and Johnson-Thompson. Maybe Marc Scott can pull a surprise in the 3k

NCAA conference championships were that weekend, too.

None of those performances should count?

Or back to BU - Bienenfeld ran a German 5000m indoor record (and got the standard for home EC in Munich). Why do you want to deny him that? The chances that he would have shown up at German indoors during NCAA season were slim to none even without that race. He would have raced PAC-12 Invitational instead. (And there was no 5000m at nationals anyway, indoor championship distance is 3000m. Basically no one outside the US runs 5000m indoors).

It's reasonably "big" in Germany.

Sure, there is a fair share of athletes who skip it (and the amount of people who decided to not go to WIC despite qualifying is almost disgusting). But many do at least a few indoor meets.

It's definitely much bigger than XC.

Not unexpectedly, you appear not to know what irony means.

No offense, Rojo, but what on earth are you going on about here?

Europe and Commonwealth are not 'world'.

My god, it's just never enough for you people. A few years ago it was complaints that athletes never went for fast times, and now that runners are churning out fast TTs indoors, they're getting reamed for not then trying to peak (yet again) for the chance to win a crappy indoor medal. Just wait for outdoors!

It's like people don't understand how periodization works. In order for these athletes to give themselves the best chance of competing well, they have to take time to build their fitness before tapering off for their big race, which is what Kerr is doing. He put all his eggs in going for the British record, now he's going to take time to build fitness for whatever race he has coming up for outdoor. He's not going to try and peak for his record attempt, then try and peak again in 3 weeks. That's not the smartest move when your goal is outdoor medals.

Rojo, I think that most world class runners would rank world indoors down there with the Pan Am Games. Its just not an important event.

Malmo, you're the top moderator at LetsRun. do you ever give feedback to Rojo about the content of his posts? I'm just trying to help

As a UK based supporter and runner, at this time of year pretty much all runners are looking at the finals of the cross country, be that Nationals at Parliament Hill or Inter County which is the pinnacle.

Our indoor season doesn't really exist due to facilities and traditionally being XC season. That Josh Kerr is based in the USA means he's not going be involved in the XC scene and Indoors probably isn't a priority.

I do however agree with LRC in that the sport needs to grow, and 4 majors a year seems like a good idea - but let's be honest, the money lies with the athletes sponsors not, the governing body.

As for medal count - Worlds, Commonwealth Euros from a UK view are the track highlights of the year. I have watched some of the indoors, but again, it's hardly a highlight of deep fields, variety and quality. Caveated that we have seen some good races mixed in.