Ritz: mid 2730's w/ a pb of ~1320 = 1/2 marathoner/marathoner. Jones/Salazar/Placencia stamina, off of much more talent.
Should be able to get the AR 1/2-marathon, but without a meaningful speed side progression, the future is bleak for any racing distances below 10 mi.
Teg doesnt need more miles to run the AR 10k, he just needs to race it when in 13:04 shape.
Rumor out of Madison has it that Teg will not run any XC this Winter; opening up with an indoor race or two???? It appears that he, Ritz, and Webb all have different plans. Should be interesting to see who is where come Worlds.
dsrunner wrote:
Ritz: mid 2730's w/ a pb of ~1320 = 1/2 marathoner/marathoner. Jones/Salazar/Placencia stamina, off of much more talent..
Remember ritz had a 5k pr last year as well going 1316 and could have most likely gone faster...and i believed tried to but got over his head in another race.
Not a rumour, this is from an interview on
in early October.
So do you have plans for indoor or cross country?
Cross country is up in the air. My track season wound up being so long, and World Champs next year are so late, that I don’t know if it makes sense to make cross country a real focus. I’ll definitely do a couple of indoor races to break up the monotony of training, probably in January.
I agree with the notion that Ritzenhein had more in him than 13:16. Nationals wasn't ideal weather-wise or how the race played out. Running 13:17 in hot, humid Rome says a lot. Bakken was there for maybe 2K but it was mostly DR on his own.
long ago if you are 6. I got stuff I've been meaning to clean out of my gym bag from before Ritz was born.
Ritz, probably could have run 13:10-12 last year if healthy and concentrating on the 3k-5k. That is still a ways behind 13:04.9. Nevertheless, Teg has to be at the "top of his game" to beat Ritz. As we know, an injury, interruption in training and either can beat the other. I would agree though that when both are at their top form that Teg seems to have surpassed Ritz in anything up to the 5k; the 10k would be a great race and Ritz is probably quite a bit ahead of Teg over the 10k. These two could be very good through 2012 (or 2016). Go USA!!!!!!!
Teg looks real powerful when he run and those long 1000m kicks, nobody likes to be be burned with a 2.25 in the end. Maybe he can extend it a bit taking it with a mile to go, maybe Bekele starts to wonder why he gets tired when he races Teg.
"maybe Bekele starts to wonder why he gets tired when he races Teg."
OK, as a KC guy, I am a huge Teg fan, but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. Bekele is still 27 seconds ahead of Teg in PR's. That's half a lap guys. Now maybe in a tactical race Matt is a lot closer than that, but Bekele has run 1:05 for the last 500m of a 5K before. I hope Matt ends up getting to that level, but he isn't there yet.
Sean Nunn
Raytown South High School
Raytown, MO (right next to Lee's Summit)
franz wrote:
Ritz, probably could have run 13:10-12 last year if healthy and concentrating on the 3k-5k.....
Agree. In the past couple years, Ritz has been racing all distances, from 3K to the Marathon. And, to his credit, he's done well in all of them, but not well enough to really stand out. He needs to narrow his focus a bit.
Ritzenhein is in a tough spot. I agree with the above poster who said he needs to narrow his focus a little bit. The problem is that Ritzenhein's potential obviously lies in the marathon. Unfortunately, due to a lot of injuries from 2002-2005 he doesn't yet have the miles in his legs to be great at that distance. The training necessary to really run quickly in the 3K-5K (say 7:30-:35 and 13:00-:05) seems to be too hard on his body and DR ends up injured. So that leaves him with the ten and the HM, neither of which you can run every weekend. Unfortunately for him, cross country appears to be his best event at the moment (4th at Edinburgh last year behind Bekele, Shaheen, Tadesse) and the cross country "season" at the international level is quite short, affording really only two or three opportunities per year to race the best in the world.
Has Teg been doing any training at elevation to prepare for Boulder? If not, then I'd say Ritz (if healthy) will beat him.
Apparently he is not running US XC nationals
When does Teg open up?? If I remember correctly, he was going to run indoor last year, but had a slight setback in training and did not open until Stanford or Mt. Sac??? I hope that he can keep the momentum going this year, but obviously most importantly keep it going into '08!!!
Last year, Tegenkamp's first outdoor race was a 5000 at the Oregon Invitational.
ttc wrote:
I wouldn't be surprised if Teg never surpassed his 2005 season. Just in the past several years, there are too many U.S. runners who never progressed past their early breakout seasons.
luckily for us fans, teg will not join this group.
No. Teg has much more leg speed, and he's not even that speedy a guy in terms of raw sprint speed. Ritz will never beat Webb or Hall again either.
Right on...Ritz, his early college type training in high school set him apart from his peers ..then. We are talking about grown men against grown men now with everyone doing similar mileage. Teg is more developed physically now and is faster than Ritz in at least 8K and below. Hall is as fast as Ritz on the track, but his effortless running style in cross country and on the roads is going to give Ritz problems. I project Hall to finish 1st in XC nationals, (by about 10 seconds.) He strives in those conditions. The only knock on Hall is that while he has the talent to win many races, he sometimes turns in subpar performances. Ritz stands out as being more consistent when he toes the line for the most part.
In a 12k CC race Webb would come in after Ritz, Hall, Goucher, Torres etc due his type of running style is more suitable to the track.
Q: Will Ritz ever beat Teg again?
A: Yes, and at distances as low as 5,000.
Tegenkamp's breakthrough last year was amazing, but of course those really stellar times of his were 5,000 and down. While he will likely continue to get faster, I think Ritz will also. Oddly enough, that 2:14 in New York for Ritz might make him stick around in the shorter distances for longer than he would have had he run 2:09. He's said he has unfinished business in the 5,000 and 10,000. I still think the current ARs in both races are within his reach.
Still think that Ritz has an edge in cross country though, but if Tegenkamp improves this next season like he did last season, then all bets are off -- I just don't think he can have another monumental jump -- I think it's slow improvement from here on out while I think Ritz still has room for a BIG race coming up.
As far as US runners go, other than Tegenkamp, no one is in Ritz's class (yes, not even Hall). A healthy Ritz will destroy Hall in CC.
Flagpole, there is this guy named Alan Webb, have you heard of him? Some guys tell me he might be in Ritz's league. I vaguely recall a 10k last spring and superiour 5000 and 1500 pr's...
jammin wrote:
When does Teg open up?? If I remember correctly, he was going to run indoor last year, but had a slight setback in training and did not open until Stanford or Mt. Sac??? I hope that he can keep the momentum going this year, but obviously most importantly keep it going into '08!!!
I'd keep an eye out at Ark. Tyson meet and then Indoor Nationals.