nice spin! wrote:
Camoo wrote:Funny, I seem to recall an NCAA Cross country Championship he won.
Wow, one for four. He's lost more close races than he's won.
This is true, but he has never lost without making a helluva race for the winner. In the times he lost, he did a lot of work. Losing to McDougal, he just came off the world championships, took down time and jumps into the end of the cross country season. Meanwhile McDougal (already a 13:20 5K runner) is coming off a full summer and cross country season dedicated to one meet, the pinnacle of the last 5 months of training and yes he barely beats Rupp.
In his first season he led nearly the entire 10K at NCAA's with 5th year senior Rob Cheseret sitting off his shoulder the entire way. Do you remember who Rob Cheseret was? This is a guy that fell down in the middle of the Pac-10 1500 while the race was moving, get's up, catches up and wins the race. Yeah, that dude had some talent. So Rupp makes it a sub 28:30 race at nationals and get's outkicked.
The next year was the same result, and a tactical error. Nobody wanted to lead so finally Rupp does but this time he doesn't make it fast. Tries to go with less than 1K and gets burned by a one hit wonder Kenyan burner. This is a guy that could outkick Bob Kennedy in his prime, but would never be within kicking distance in any fast race.
So while Rupp has taken the reverse approach, it may turn out to work. He has spent over six years increasing his strength and base to be able to handle fast paced races and surges and is now working on speed.
The fact that Rupp lost 3 of 4 NCAA chances on a kick is a good thing. It means he was there in the end to lose it. It means if he develops his kick (which he certainly IS doing) he will be the full package. All those who outkicked him before will not be able to anymore, and more importantly in the big races, they won't be near him in the first place.
Rupp is what he is. He is not Bekele, Tergat, Geb or Daniel Komen. And hopefully he will never use the garbage that they did/do. But regardless he has his own ability, and you can't bash him for not being a world beater. You can't project your own fantasies onto him and them tear him down because he didn't make the exponential performance enhanced jumps to go from a National Junior Record holder to a world record holder or Gold Medalist. That's just insane.
But if you keep things in perspective, and live in the real world, I don't know how you can't be impressed with the progress and achievements he's made.
3 years ago he is getting soundly outkicked by a random 13:3X kenyan at NCAA's. Now he's throwing down and barely being bested by 13:04 ethiopian while setting an American Record. He's running 1:51 for 800, indoors, first meet of the year. He just really started true speedwork, he had an unnoficial PR for 400 at :53 seconds. Do you know how slow that is? I could run :52 on the relay my junior year in high school and I usually didn't get put on the A team. And I was a 1600 - 3200 guy. I could hit :52 after doubling or tripling! And so could almost any of your top 15 high school 1600 guys, any and every year.
Rupp actually has a lot of upside on his speed. If he can get under :52 for 400 and under 1:50 for 800 he will have another gear at the end of his 27:0X 10K. And that may open up some possibilities.
Why don't you try to observe Rupp objectively on the following and tell me how many Americans are doing better:
Consistency
Strength
Speed
Racing Tactics
His consistency has always been good. I can't remember when Rupp went into a race that he was capable of lets say 1-3 and finished outside of that range. I can think of races where Hall has, where Meb has, where Fam has, where Ritz has, where Lagat has, where Abdi has etc. etc.
But if you look at his strength, speed and racing tactics/ability over the past 5 years and made a line graph, I think you'd see a strong upwards trend without much wavering, that is still really going up.