A few comments on people's comments on this thread.
Diferreingviewpoint,
What are you talking about? Their undoing? Solinsky was the 1st white man under 27:00 and Mottram won a world championship medal.
By definition, there can only be one winner to a race. I think there careers have been pretty amazing.
Striving to get better in a logical fashion is the only way. I've always said the thing that's weird about running is it's really just a matter of when you stop improving. If you keep improving, you'll eventually set the world record.
Rupp has a plan to improve and he's always on his game as everything is always in order - asthma, allergies, thyroid, etc. He's not going to miss a season because of anemia, malaria, allergies, whatever.
ventolin^3,
You do realize that no one in the world has broken 12:50 in almost 5 years?
http://www.letsrun.com/2012/week-0402.phpAnd yet Rupp, whose best event isnt even the 5k, is going to run 12:45?
No way. Not unless we go back to the days when EPO was undetectable.
Rupp's PR is 13:06. He ran 13:07 in 2010 and 13:18 in 2009. He's come down 12 seconds in 2 years and you think he can easily go 21 more seconds?
Not a chance. The odds are way greater that he never breaks 13:00 than that he even runs under 12:55.
Earlier, I talked about how it all comes down to when do you stop improving?
Well Rupp has been gradually progressing for about a decade now. But the fact of the matter is it's now going to be harder to improve as the low hanging fruit is gone. This is a guy who as of a few years ago wasn't even over 100 mpw on a regular basis and wasn't even doing sustained tempo runs.
I always say, once you get up to 120 mpw, are running long progressions and what not and are doing high/low, it's not easy to come up with easy ways to significantly improve.
Moreover,the one thing that Rupp hasn't dealt with at all really is injury. Will he go an entire career with zero major setbacks?
He's a few years of improvement away from being on top of the world but he's also one injury away from being mediocre at the world level.