Geb's 10K was at a faster pace than Tegenkamp's 5K. How is Tegenkamp expected to come anywhere near a medel this summmer? Not to be negative, just shows how far away the US is from Ethiopians + Kenyans.
Geb's 10K was at a faster pace than Tegenkamp's 5K. How is Tegenkamp expected to come anywhere near a medel this summmer? Not to be negative, just shows how far away the US is from Ethiopians + Kenyans.
not a good sign wrote:
Geb's 10K was at a faster pace than Tegenkamp's 5K. How is Tegenkamp expected to come anywhere near a medel this summmer? Not to be negative, just shows how far away the US is from Ethiopians + Kenyans.
Yeah but keep in mind that it's early for the Americans, who are the most seasoned at performing when it matters most. The Ethiopians on the other hand are better at running fast times early in the season and setting WRs, while falling apart at the Olympics.
last time i checked, world championship 5k races like the world champs or olympics often cater to slower paces and faster finishes, and in such a race matt tegenkamp did well last year, running the last 800m in 1:53.xx.
13:28 isn't fast for the top runners in the world, it's 10k pace, true. but he was 10 seconds behind low 12:50 runners, so i don't think he was necessarily running below par, especially considering the fact that he has upped his mileage this year, so it will probably take him a little longer to incorporate the perfect mix of training to get himself just where he wants to be. i'm not worrying about, and i imagine he's not worrying about it. if the top 9 finishers had all finished in under 13 minute or if they had all finished in under 13:10, then i'd wonder if it was a matter of bad tactics or bad fitness, but that wasn't the case. just one race, no need to stress or start tearing anyone down over it.
if you think about it, bekele had a bad race too if all we're considering is time relative to the runner's potential. bekele ran 21 seconds slower than his pr and tegenkamp ran 24 seconds slower than his pr, so if you think about it as being relative to each runner's potential or performance divided by best performance tegenkamp ran almost as well within himself as bekele did. bekele just happens to be ethiopian and tegenkamp just happens to be from missouri.
irun wrote:
if you think about it, bekele had a bad race too if all we're considering is time relative to the runner's potential.
I don't think that is a fair statement because a) Bekele won and b) he won by a lot.
I guess what I meant to say is that it's hard to entertain your premise because when you're in the lead that much, time is not much of a concern.
ok then, forget about bekele. consider how EVERYONE ELSE ran compared to their potential. soi, longosiwa, jeilan, and ebuya have all run 12:50-12:58, so they each ran about 20 seconds slower also, and they're top athletes in the world. the guy tegenkamp beat has a 13:14 pr so he ran 16 slower than his pr. basically everyone ran considerably slower than their own personal pr's, but everyone who wants to talk about this race on letsrun only care to focus on how much slower tegenkamp ran as opposed how slow everyone else also ran when compared to their own personal pr's. out of 18 finsihers, tegenkamp got 10th, and i read on a previous post on another thread(not sure if this is true or not) but tegenkamp supposedly went through 3k in 7:49 compared to bekele going through 3k in 7:44, so it sounds like he was trying to compete and keep himself in a competitive position, which is usually his style.
some food for thought: in some of his better races, tegenkamp slowly turns it on the 800-1000m with a long building drive, and he can usually build it up to finishing pretty fast, i.e. pre 2 mile last year, us champs 5k last year, world champs 5k last year, etc. being this early int he season, and seeing how he hasn't worked on speed really, that gear wouldn't be there for him at this point in the season, so depending on where he let himself drop to after the 3k, that strong finishing speed wouldn't be there to help him make up any ground because he hasn't touched upon that speed since last august.
in that last paragraph, i meant to say he "slowly turns it on the LAST 800-1000m..."
What did Lagat run at Stanford a few weeks ago? 13:16? He's the world champ! It's pretty early. As always, letsrunners are jumping the gun.
irun wrote:
tegenkamp supposedly went through 3k in 7:49 compared to bekele going through 3k in 7:44, so it sounds like he was trying to compete and keep himself in a competitive position, which is usually his style.
7:49 is PR pace of ~13:01-02, and he must have died (and once you are dead, it is worth burning your self to run 13:2x instead of 13:2y?
Also, 7:44 for Bekele implies that he slowed 5 seconds even with a kick in the last lap that typically picks up 5 seconds on pace (thus over the next mile he slowed 2-3 seconds per lap).
Both of these are consistent with: 1) it was a bit warm(?); and 2) the guys are not racing fit and dropped off a bunch i the last third of the race.
good point.