Want to procrastinate? Find someone who's beaten Bekele, then find someone who's beaten them, and keep going until you beat one of those people. See how few degrees you can do it in.
Here are my arbitrary rules:
DNFs don't count.
High School doesn't count.
Prelims don't count unless the beaten person was eliminated.
XC at your discretion. Too much opportunity for abusing 800 guys who don't want to be there. I didn't use it.
Runner must still be competitive so beating Bill Rogers at Boston recently is out.
Please post PR with your chain. I think it will interesting to see if most people's chains go through the same key persons like say Leonard Korir since he ran so poorly last year and so well this year.
Anyway here's mine:
Bekele
1:defeated by Alistair Cragg 3k Boston Indoor 05
2:defeated by Nathan Brannen 1500 Beijing Prelims
3:defeated by Khadevis Robinson 800 Reebok Grand Prix 09
4:defeated by Andrew Wheating 800 US Olympic Trials
5:defeated by Andrew Dawson 800 Alex Wilson Invite 07
6:defeated by Nathan Dunby 1500 FSU Relays 07
7:defeated by Michael Rutherford Mile at Rod McCravey Memorial 2010
8:defeated by Steve Innacone 800 Big East Outdoors 09
9:defeated by Peter Najem 800 New Englands Indoor 09
10: defeated by Alex White Mile Northeastern TF Carnival 05
11: defeated by Steven Kress 3k BU Invitational 06
12: defeated by Me at 10k Northeastern Spring Open 07
12 degrees. 30:25pr Actually that wasn't all that much fun. In hindsight it probably would have been waaay smarter to start with myself and the best person I've ever beaten rather than to start at Bekele and work backwards. The main trick though is to find someone who made huge improvements freshman to senior year and dabbled in a lot of distances. Peter Najeem with a 1:50 800 senior year and a 9:30 3k freshman year was that guy for me. Good luck.