Unsolicited Advice for Hobbs Kessler

I agree with you. I also think he should consult with a nutritionist. I remember reading that he fuels his workouts with ultra processed junk food.

He finished less than a second behind Koech, at the USATF championships. One would think that with such poor preparation, he would have run something like 3:35. Would adding a few miles to his Sunday long run have helped him find that fraction of a second?

Have you seen his Strava? That statement about 7 mile runs is from 8 months ago, post milrose 2024. He runs longer now, that isn't the issue here. The issue here for Hobbs is his top end spee, or ability to gear shift. Once the pace went through in 154/55 at 800m, Hobbs should've had considered passing Neguse and ratcheting down the pace over the final 600m.
He doesn't, currently, have the ability to go from 58sec pace to 53 sec pace in 2-3 steps like the other guys do. my observation is he missed the jump coming off the turn. Neguse historically has a similar issue in tactical races.

Yes friend, that's literally how it works.

“There is a lot of research on getting sugar immediately after training spiking your insulin levels, which actually improves recovery,” says Maddie Harris, a former University of Colorado runner and registered dietitian specializing in sports nutrition for endurance athletes. “It actually improves muscle glycogen storage, so you’re better at refueling and storing those carbs where they need to be post-training.”

Agreed - he should ride his bicycle on a bike trail (paved) for a couple hours a couple times a month.

Sorry, I don't think high fructose corn syrup, seed oils, and preservatives are optimal for health or performance. There must be better alternatives.

I was all in on Hobbs last year but this year has made me reconsider. I’m not sure he has that next level in him.

It was 1 race he didn't hit goal. He'll go back to the drawing board and come back better. He has the support and advice and the drive to do so. Sometimes we learn more when we fail (the failure not being 4th but not being in the top 3) than when we succeed.

Seed oils have been shown to be healthy is moderate amounts. The rest doesn't really have good evidence that it is harmful to the body.

Work with a sports physiologist or biomechanist to assess how your high-intensity, shorter-run approach affects your running form and injury risk. Small tweaks could prevent overuse injuries.

Im not sure how we decided what perfect form is...but he is it. Form is the best i have ever seen.

OP,

I received a text from a buddy after USAs basically saying a lot of what you are saying. If you are a Kessler fan, you can be encouraged by the fact that he's this good despite not running longer than 7 miles at a time. I mean I didn't even used to warmup on my 12-15 milers that I did every day until 45 minutes in and he's done at 45 minutes.

Now, there is one key aspect of your post.

We'll find out if he's on an upward trajectory or not this weekend. I've seen nothing outdoors that he's on an upward trajectory from last year. I guess maybe you could say he's beaten Yared in the last two races after never haven beaten him before.

And I totally disagree with your statement that "the order could have been different on any given day." If he run 3:27-28 in Silesia, maybe I'll think that . But I right now think Hocker is significantly better than him, Strand has a way better kick and Koech is also better at 1500 even while hurt for most of the year.

I am a Hobbs fan as well. After the interview, I had a few thoughts. Firstly, I wish he had a more positive attitude about the race. Not so negative and fatalistic, others commented that it was only one race. He still appears somewhat immature. After all, he is still just a kid who did not have a college experience, I bet his team had a talk with him about his thought process.

Also, and I may be completely wrong here, do you think in his interview he was suggesting that the playing field is not fair, i.e. doping?

I don’t get why everyone says this. Jakob only does 60-70 minutes for his “long runs” and Bakken never did any type of long run. Nobody has ever said either of them should extend their long runs. Kessler doesn’t have the strength to kick at the end because he’s a 8/15 guy, whose training has been less aerobically focused this year. Jingy does 5 LT sessions and a “long run” that’s really just a normal easy run. Bakken did more LT volume than even Jakob and no long run at all. Kessler currently does 3-4 LT sessions. Suggesting that Kessler should add a long run at this point suggests that Kessler would benefit more from a long run versus a threshold session relative to Jakob, which doesn’t make sense because Kessler struggles with sustained efforts, which means he would be getting less stimulus versus load than Jakob, unless Kessler somehow stood to benefit more from long runs, which would be weird since he’s more fast twitch. The purposes of a long run are to practice with glycogen depletion, which obviously isn’t useful for Kessler, and to enhance aerobic strength. It seems like adding a 4th threshold session would be a better move because it fits better with the Norwegian system and because he’s a more fast twitch athlete. 2 hours on a bike is just gonna deplete his glycogen. Also, something that I think people might be missing is that Kessler, when he did does interviews about his revamped training, claimed to be going 8-9 minute pace on his easy runs. 8-9 minute pace for 7 miles is about 60 minutes, which suggests he’s only 10 minutes shorter than Jakob. I think the runs on his Strava that look like long runs are threshold sessions because the mileage gets kinda high if you add a warmup and cooldown.

Seed oils are good for lubricating engines. They should be banned for human consumption.

Rojo talked about this on a recent podcast. A lot of Letsrunners think that for a 1500 runner, being fast at 800 means you'll have a great kick in the 1500. Kessler is a great example of why this isn't necessarily true. He'd probably crush all of the other runners in an 800, yet he still got outkicked in the 1500.

I'll leave how he can develop a better kick to the experts though.

People make this all way more complicated that it really is. The only things that really factor into a kick are speed (can't close in 52 is you can't run 52 fresh) and how much you have left. It's literally not more complicated than that. Some people with not great speed still have great kicks solely because they still have a lot left at the end of those races. Hocker has a great kick when he has it left in the tank, but looked pretty human last year after the Olympics when he was racing Jakob and gassed by the last 200m. Beamish gets a lot of credit for his kick, but it's really just since he has some sort of mental block that prevents him from exerting himself too hard until the last 200m when he realizes how much he has left. I promise his kick wouldn't look too great if he was able to get over that and even though it would result often in better overall performances. Hobbs just doesn't currently have the aerobic strength to keep up with the best in the world and still have enough left to kick hard. He's barely hanging on in 3:29 races so of course he doesn't have the speed at the end to kick. This is evident by his much worse over distance results compared to his 1500m competition (Hocker 7:23, Jakob 7:17, Yared 7:28 while Hobbs has only run 7:35).