Great race Ritz!! Next up american record??

classic wrote:

talent is purely subjective and is easily swayed by bias, which it appears you are.

i like to have some methodical way of comparing people. meb has more medals and faster times, that makes him better in my book. plus if you want to argue talent, meb ran just as fast (and in some cases faster) as a 24-25 yr old as Ritz did. but you must have forgotten that.

Talent is NOT subjective AT ALL. Talent is a static thing that either is or isn't. Ability is what one ends up doing with that talent. Perhaps what you meant to say is that recognizing talent is purely subjective, and even there I disagree. Lots of things to look at to this point in Ritz's career to determine that he has more talent than Meb. I've listed them a million times before, and don't feel like doing so again. Ritz has more talent. If he can figure out a way to stay uninjured, he will blow by those PRs of Meb's...EASILY. Why? He's better.

talent is purely subjective. if it objective, then how do you quantify it. go for it, i'd really like to hear this.

right now, Meb is better. Ritz, being younger, might surpass Meb's accolades and times, but for right now, which is the only thing we can judge, Meb is clearly a better runner.

given that choice, i'd be meb any day of the week, and when ritz approached me telling me how he was better than me, i'd pull out my silver medal and be like, booyah!

classic wrote:

right now, Meb is better. Ritz, being younger, might surpass Meb's accolades and times, but for right now, which is the only thing we can judge, Meb is clearly a better runner.

Actually right now Meb is more accomplished. Doesn't mean he's better. If we're judging them TODAY based on what each could do TODAY, Ritz has a good shot at being better TODAY even, so if we take the past, present and future, I say Ritz wins two of those. Ritz is better.

are you insane? how is he better today? try and use facts, not your own incredibly biased opinion and conjecture.

Someone should break it this year or in the next year or two; it is by far the softest USR on the books. You only need to be 13:10 5k guy to run a 27:10 10k; I think Bob Kennedy could have broken it by several seconds on his first attempt. (BK did not like the 10K, but I don't know why he never just ran it to get record.) It is really a flute that several guys never ran faster.

Meb could have run faster with in race where he set the record. Keep in mind that Meb is a very good marathoner, but he does not have great track credentials, which is why he moved up to the marathon and never looked back. Meb had an excellent NCAA career; he won the outdoor 5000 and 10000m and indoor 5000m and XC. Although his NCAA career crossed paths with Culpepper and Adam Goucher, the NCAA comp in the late 90s is not where is was a few years latter.

The Alistair Cragg, Daniel Lincoln, Ritz, Hall, and Tegenkamp and subsequently Rupp and Solinsky era of the early to mid- 2000s had/has better comp. Meb did run a 13:12 5k, but for most of his career he ran his 5K in 13:30x range and popped a fast 5K at a meet in Europe. When Meb broke the USR, he had never broke 28:00 in the 10k and he never ran close those times 5k or the 10k again.

Pardon me if it sound like I am using Meb, an Olympic medalist as an example ofwhy the record should be lower. The record Meb broke was set by Mark Nenows 1986, Meb and Mark had said themselves that the record is soft. Meb always intended to lower the record, but never could get the right situation to do it.

Flagpole Willy wrote:

classic wrote:

right now, Meb is better. Ritz, being younger, might surpass Meb's accolades and times, but for right now, which is the only thing we can judge, Meb is clearly a better runner.

Actually right now Meb is more accomplished. Doesn't mean he's better. If we're judging them TODAY based on what each could do TODAY, Ritz has a good shot at being better TODAY even, so if we take the past, present and future, I say Ritz wins two of those. Ritz is better.

Actually right no Meb is better. Period. Ritz has a shot at being better. He's not there yet.

You're a douche.

Flagpole Willy wrote:

Depends on how you define better. I define it by talent, and I'll go so far as to say that in this case it is talent that WILL be realized. Meb is NOT the runner that Ritz is. Ritz may never win a Silver medal in the Olympics; one race doesn't make someone better. Luck plays a HUGE role in Olympic marathon races -- not lucky that he ran well, but lucky that others didn't.

Ritz is better.

This is simply an absurd statement. I've never heard of someone comparing two runners by "talent". Time? Yes. Placing in important races? Yes.

i predict that webb will beat him every time that they go head to head.

thefore, ritz will not be the 10k ar holder. webb will.

the430miler wrote:

i predict that webb will beat him every time that they go head to head.

thefore, ritz will not be the 10k ar holder. webb will.

When is Webb planning to run a 10k?

Webb won't because last year's killed. I'd like to see if Teg could take Ritz in 10k, 5k he's the man.

Ritz will end up like Rupp

Saying ritz is better than Meb right now is asinine. i'm not even going to entertain this one.

Actually, I haven't seen too much in the way of progression from Ritz. We can talk about "talent" "potential" and "vo2 max" all we want, but he hasn't put up yet. You don't get an award for your altitude tent.

Yeah he ran 28:0x on a hard course... So? He beat Mottram... big deal homeboy just dabbles in the 10k.

That was by no means a great result. Look I'm not bashing or hating in anyway. Crackhome is a great runner and hopefully will get better. That said, I think he's gonna get his clock cleaned at the trials and wont come anywhere close to the AR. He hasn't shown the wheels necessary or the race performances that he's ready for that yet.

My .02

Ny runner wrote:

Ritz will end up like Rupp

no. he wont end up near as good as Rupp.

classic wrote:

talent is purely subjective. if it objective, then how do you quantify it. go for it, i'd really like to hear this.

right now, Meb is better. Ritz, being younger, might surpass Meb's accolades and times, but for right now, which is the only thing we can judge, Meb is clearly a better runner.

RIGHT NOW. If you are talking potential vs. what someone has done, then Meb has done more than Ritz. However, RIGHT NOW, Meb has not been able to break 2:20 in the marathon in his last 2 attempts. RIGHT NOW Ritz is coming off of a victory over Mottram. RIGHT NOW Ritz is better. I still believe that Frank Shorter and Billy Mills and MEB are all more accomplished than Ritz. But RIGHT NOW, they are all in the past.

Now if you want to say that Meb is not done. Then you are getting into the same "opinion" as someone that says Ritz will break all the records. As you clearly state RIGHT NOW is the only thing we can judge. RIGHT NOW Meb is a DNF, or if you want to throw that one out and call it a fluke, then he is a 2:22 marathoner.

i think you are missing the point, "right now" means "as of right now" as in all performances up to today. taking it on a last race granularity is pretty ridiculous. you sure aren't FW posting under another name?

and you also conveniently forgot that in the space of his 2 marathons which weren't great, Meb still ran a 1:02 half and won the USA 15k champs.

Wetmore harped on Ritz and the boys when they were all together under his domain that they needed to get their 1500m times down to 3:35 or better if they wanted to be a factor in a WC/Olympic final. Obviously Ritz knew better and set about running a timetrialish evenly paced 10K. Anybody, with ANY speed merely has to let Ritz do the work and run a fast last 200m to out kick him. Ritz cant run a fast enough pace overall to shake anyone - when it counts - and doesn't have a kick.

dsn wrote:

i think you are missing the point, "right now" means "as of right now" as in all performances up to today. taking it on a last race granularity is pretty ridiculous. you sure aren't FW posting under another name?

No it doesn't. I listed it all out brother -- past, present, future. Meb is better in the past. Ritz is better NOW (present as in if they raced each other today Ritz would win). Ritz also is better in the future, and for clarification, I mean better in the future than Meb has EVER been. And if you know my opinions, you know that I don't care too much about Olympic medals as a measure of greatness. Measure of posterity; measure of good placing on a particular day, but not much else. Best times = better runner. Can compare the times at the end of their careers to really see who was better. I'm saying all the evidence is there to predict that Ritz will have better times than Meb. Ritz is better.

I'd look for Ritz to do some modest PR's this summer (13:15, 27:30), then try for a full year of training at his new home base. 2008 could be the year that some uninterrupted training shows results. Right now, he's still recovering from too many injuries over the past couple years to run anything really fast. Too bad, but that's the reality of it all.