haha, YO wrote:
Dude, I'm all for the excitement of a great non-rabbited race. 2:23 though is so incredibly awful and inexcusable for a race like this. That is probably 10k pace for some of these guys and they're running a 1500! I can't even understand how the field could stand to run THAT SLOW for over half the race.
The runners in the race and their coaches had some objectives that they were trying to balance. A fast time did not serve any of their objectives directly, so it only matters if it furthers their objectives.
The Wisconsin guys had either already run a couple of races (Gaspar) or run one and were looking at running another in the 5000 (Miller and maybe others). So, the Wisconsin team did not want a race that was fast from the start. A couple of the other runners might also have not wanted a race that was fast from the start (See, who had won such a race as this in the indoor mile?). Thus, if you are one of the other runners in the field do you want to take it out in 60 and let everyone sit on your tail and have no chance of picking up points, or at least a reduced chance of picking up points.
You do know that the objectives in the conference race are to pick up points, don't you? You do know that not a single one of the coaches cares if you think that the objective of this race is to get a mark that makes you happy, right?
Note that race closed in 51, which is VERY fast at this level. And, by the way, there is not a HS guy out there that could have won this race and probably the only two that could have ever were Ryun and Webb. Also, a majority of the field have run a 1500/mile faster than all but maybe two (or maybe 4) HS guys.