How Does it Feel to be Lagat?

Sure, it would be great to be as talented as Lagat.

There are also many people who would love to be as talented as you. The talent it takes to run 14:20, regardless of how hard one works, is a lot.

After all the A vs. B sample and leaving things in the car, I am sure plenty of people are sick of hearing this, and I honestly don't know what to think, the science behind the A vs. B sample stuff seems legit, but after hearing his training, it is hard not to speculate he feels like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ProqncLrMT8

Dope Boy Fresh.

Just watch him do a shake-out and drills at about the 5:00 mark. So incredibly light on his feet. Only a handful of people in the world could ever look that graceful.

As others have stated, if helps to be extremely talented, but other than that, once you have had years of accumulated fitness in your body, most your training is maintenance. Athletes in Lagat situation can go 2 weeks with no training and lose only about 2% fitness, which they can completely gain back with 2 weeks of training.

Once you get there, it does not go away as quickly as some people think.

Industree wrote:

Seriously, if I miss 10 days of training, I go from a 14'20" guy to a 16'20" guy overnight. I HAVE to be more like Farah to be successful, almost OCD.

10 days of training = overnight? seems more like = 10 overnights haha, just messin' with ya

often, the detriment of taking time off is due to your muscles tightening up and losing coordination. next time, instead of taking 10 complete days off. warm up and do mile paced strides on those days instead of sitting idle.

Just sayin dude wrote:

Industree wrote:

Seriously, if I miss 10 days of training, I go from a 14'20" guy to a 16'20" guy overnight. I HAVE to be more like Farah to be successful, almost OCD.

10 days of training = overnight? seems more like = 10 overnights haha, just messin' with ya

often, the detriment of taking time off is due to your muscles tightening up and losing coordination. next time, instead of taking 10 complete days off. warm up and do mile paced strides on those days instead of sitting idle.

"warm up" includes plenty of stretching

I'm sure you think that, but if you trained like Lagat you'd probably about the same times you do anyway; almost certainly no worse than 14:4x.

Lagat is a doper supreme. You're kidding yourself if you believe otherwise. The dude tested positive for EPO. Here is an excerpt from an article with Angel Heredia from 2008:

SPIEGEL: Do you have any other secrets?

Heredia: Oh yes, of course. There are tablets for the kidneys that block the metabolites of steroids, so when athletes give a urine sample, they don’t excrete the metabolites and thus test negative. Or there is an enzyme that slowly consumes proteins - epo has protein structures, and the enzyme thus ensures that the B sample of the doping test has a completely different value than the A sample. Then there are chemicals that you take a couple of hours before the race that prevent acidification in the muscles. Together with epo they are an absolute miracle. I’ve created 20 different drugs that are still undetectable for the doping testers.

A sample positive for EPO, B sample negative for EPO

Lagat, what a joke.

so because it exists, then every runner must be using it?

Just sayin dude wrote:

so because it exists, then every runner must be using it?

every runner that had a positive A but negative B sample

Industree wrote:

Seriously, if I miss 10 days of training, I go from a 14'20" guy to a 16'20" guy overnight. I HAVE to be more like Farah to be successful, almost OCD.

The talented guys like Lagat, where running fast is simply like breathing air, amaze me and I don't hate them for it, but for once, I'd love to be that "talented."

I'd also like to wake up without having to wear contact lenses. Maybe that's what it's like: Lagat is the perfect vision of runners and I'm -8.20 on vision.

Lagat has been training hard for years. He's getting a little older and has a ton of experience. I just think now it's just not that hard to maintain 12:50-12:55 form for him because, in most cases, that's good enough to win races. He's got a lot of lifetime miles to derive from.

Kip kicks the asses of younger guys with more lifetime miles than him.

How does it feel? How about "laughing all the way to the bank"?

coach bigfoot wrote:

Lagat has been training hard for years. He's getting a little older and has a ton of experience. I just think now it's just not that hard to maintain 12:50-12:55 form for him because, in most cases, that's good enough to win races. He's got a lot of lifetime miles to derive from.

Good point, I think Lagat is actually doing what's smart for his body. If he trained like Farah it wouldn't go well.

I wonder if he is being completely honest about his training. Maybe downplaying it a bit to bring about a myth regarding his talent, and perhaps psych out the competition.

Lagat's A sample was mishandled in a way that has been proven to cause false positives. End of story. A drug dealer's anecdote about a supposed EPO denaturer doesn't change the fact that Lagat was a false positive.

NJcredible wrote:

Lagat's A sample was mishandled in a way that has been proven to cause false positives. End of story. A drug dealer's anecdote about a supposed EPO denaturer doesn't change the fact that Lagat was a false positive.

And Marion Jones never knew she was taking drugs. And Dieter Baumann's toothpaste was spiked!

A runner would not go from a 14:20 to a 16:20 guy if he missed ten days of training. He'd still be able to do well under 15:00

not if he tightened up! i've seen it happen

if you read that interview, it sounds like it feels hella good to be lagat. I wonder what he does those 10x1K (90 s rest) in.

He sounds very confident that he will have what it takes this year. He may doubt Farah's being clean, though, as he refers to his sudden improvement.