To beat Lagat at worlds people should take it out HARD

DoTheRightThing wrote:

His kick was nonexistent in the half marathon? Did you watch the end of that race? He lost because he gave Bekele way too much of a headstart on the long downhill. But to say he didn't have a kick over the last 800m is insanely wrong.

Folks keep repeating this line about Farah losing a lot to Bekele on the downhill. This is false. He lost a couple of seconds. It was AFTER the downhill, when KB did not slow up while MF did, that Farah really gave Bekele way too much of a head start.

BAD idea!

Taking it out hard against Lagat was what go Bumbi DQed in ABQ. If Rupp wasn't going to be in the same race, it might be a safe tactic.

It's a championship race. Anyone who can go with the leaders thinks they have a chance to win. Nobody wants to lead the race. Nobody is far and away good enough to leave the pack.

* wrote:

Farah ran 27:21 not 27:30.

He closed in 54, not 59 or 60.

It was 80 degrees and humid.

Huma, Merga and Gebremeskel were the only ones under 27 last year and none of them got a medal. I don't see how they were going to lead and win.

Winning a slow race doesn't show you can't run fast.

Being beaten badly would show you may not be able to run fast.

Farah lost by one second in that half marathon, so you can't judge his fitness there either.

Dodging Bekele at Pre did suck but that race was slow enough that Bekele didn't make the 4 man Ethiopian team.

This post should be the beginning and end to the idiotic notion than Farah was "definitely" nowhere near his PR form...

You idiots do know Gebremeskel and Gebrehewit aren't running world indoors right?

GebreMESKEL will win this race. Cleanly too, by at least half a second.

LOL II wrote:

For the same reason why they didn't do that with Farah. Most think they have a great sprint finish. They do but Farah had a better one.

Having raced a few times over 30 years, I'm still a bit puzzled as to why folks think that it's so much the better to go out hard ...against star runners! They are not stars because of the press. If you go hard and blow up...you look bad. If you stay close and launch your kick ...you probably come out better and suffer less. The best runners can go out hard and survive probably better than lesser runners ... so you are not being all that smart by going out hard and blowing up.l

Some Things Should Be Obvious wrote:

Folks' top priority is not beating Lagat. It is maximizing their chances at a medal - hopefully a gold.

Unless you are clearly superior to THE FIELD than you are likely committing suicide by setting a hard pace and letting others draft off of you.

Why is this so hard for you SUPPOSED runners to understand?!?

Great point. You wonder if folks in here have actually been in some competive races?? You can suffer and blow up w hen you go out to hard!

Actually yes. In every game theory scenario you have mentioned, you are assuming non-communication prior to the event, whereas in the past national teams set out an exact pecking order and what each would do in advance. Team tactics mean that among the people on the team, they are not guessing and strategizing about how to beat each other, but that they have a set agreement and they are strategizing rather about how to work together to defeat others. When Skah was paced, for example, do you honestly think that he was worried about what his pacer was going to do? No, he wondered what Chelimo (?) would do. He had his plan set. When El G was paced repeatedly in championship races by his countrymen, there was no game theory relevant component to his relation to his countrymen. They were determined to work for him, much like the domestiques would work for Lance without testing him and gauging his strengths and breaking away when he grabbed water, etc. By contrast, with Gebrhiwet and Gebremeskel, there's been no evidence that they think at all in terms of sacrifice for the other. So, there's more of the classic game theory approach. They distrust each other. Each aspires to the victory. They may think that working together will lead to a better outcome for the one who's paced and to no medals for the pacer, so neither has an incentive to pace.

On what do you base that assessment?

* wrote:

Farah ran 27:21 not 27:30.

He closed in 54, not 59 or 60.

It was 80 degrees and humid.

Huma, Merga and Gebremeskel were the only ones under 27 last year and none of them got a medal. I don't see how they were going to lead and win.

Winning a slow race doesn't show you can't run fast.

Being beaten badly would show you may not be able to run fast.

Farah lost by one second in that half marathon, so you can't judge his fitness there either.

Dodging Bekele at Pre did suck but that race was slow enough that Bekele didn't make the 4 man Ethiopian team.

How is your reading comprehension that bad?

27:21 is about the same as 27:30. Especially for the purpose of my point.

Farah's final 400m in the half was definitely not 54. It was around 59. But if you're talking about the WC 10k then that 54 supports MY argument. If he was really in sub 26:45 shape then he would have run a 52 or so off of such a slow pace.

I never mentioned Huma or the Ethiopians in that post, so I have no idea why you are talking about them.

No, you're wrong. Winning a slow race CAN show that you can't run fast. It depends on how you win. In Farah's case, it's clear that he lost some endurance or he would have run faster for the final 400m. I don't recall exactly how the last lap went, but if he shut it down before the last straightaway then I take it back.

In the half, I can most certainly judge his fitness there. He lost by a second. But it was more than that. His final 400m was only a 59 like I said before. And the pace of the race was a tempo run pace for a sub 26:45 runner. And he was fading. He was completely spent. That clearly shows that he lost some endurance. His final 400m should have easily been around 52-54 if he was really in sub 26:45 shape.

LOL this is sad

* please don't feed the troll here.

Subfive wrote:

LOL II wrote:

For the same reason why they didn't do that with Farah. Most think they have a great sprint finish. They do but Farah had a better one.

Having raced a few times over 30 years, I'm still a bit puzzled as to why folks think that it's so much the better to go out hard ...against star runners! They are not stars because of the press. If you go hard and blow up...you look bad. If you stay close and launch your kick ...you probably come out better and suffer less. The best runners can go out hard and survive probably better than lesser runners ... so you are not being all that smart by going out hard and blowing up.l

If your goal is to win, a good idea is to scratch out the ideas of things that you already know won't work .. such as, say, jogging the first 4k then blasting the final 1000m to win over Mo .. In the last 2 seasons (outdoors) of T&F, no one has beaten him doing that (Soi's run in 2013 Pre 5000m against a sick Mo excluded) … if any of the guys in London or Moscow really wanted to win, they should've known at least how NOT to do it … yet they all ran the races that way.

When it comes to that final 200m and someone has to blast past Mo, not only does he have the advantage of his closing speed, but his confidence is stronger, because he knows he's beaten you before in this situation. At this level of sport, that's a big deal. The fact that no one really stepped it up against him illustrates where their confidence was at.

kenyuh wrote:How is your reading comprehension that bad?

27:21 is about the same as 27:30. Especially for the purpose of my point...

i suggest you go watch geb's interview before that 1/2M

his eyes opened in incredulity when mentioning mo's 3'28 off 5k/10k training

if you had suggested to him that mo was no better than a 27++ guy in moscow, the great man wouda probably told you to "go fuuck yourself moron" although he's become more of a gentleman in his dotage & wouda probably said something more like

"i have some goats which need fertlising, go start & keep going until you hit on some of the females"

i've never seen the great man in awe of another runner since talking about hicham after losing that indoor race in '97 - not komen nor kennster elicited such amazement from interviews i've seen or read

mo's achievements were something he had never contemplated in his life & had shocked him into disbelief

Salazar himself has said in interviews that Mo and Rupp did more like 1500/5k training leading up to the WC because he knew that it would probably be a typical championship race. Mo was good enough to win even though he was probably lacking somewhat in endurance, but Rupp clearly suffered from that training strategy. AlSal said that they probably lowered his mileage too much.

coach d wrote:

When Bekele did NOT ramp it up with 600m to go in 2007, Lagat beat him. You CANNOT beat a miler at the miler's game if you're not one of them. They should have learned that in 2004 when they tried to pull that same stunt against El Guerrouj.

I believe Hill could have taken out Rupp if he had gone with 3 laps to go, Bekele style.

Wasn't kicking from 600 or more out always El G's thing?

Salazar himself has said in interviews that Mo and Rupp did more like 1500/5k training leading up to the WC because he knew that it would probably be a typical championship race. Mo was good enough to win even though he was probably lacking somewhat in endurance, but Rupp clearly suffered from that training strategy. AlSal said that they probably lowered his mileage too much.

This is a good point and we need to clarify the point were making. I don't think anyone is arguing that Mo was in WR or his lifetime PR shape when at the Olympics or world championships...that would be idiotic, the primary goal of a championship year is to win a championship not PR and to do that you need the right mix of strength, speed, and the ability to change up paces which requires a different training formula than maximizing your ability to hold a steady pace for as long as possible

What we are arguing against is the idea that anything as happened to support the notion that Mo was in substantially worse shape (for a fast race) than anyone else in the field, that he wasn't close to the 26:45 that he ran 2 years and 4 medals ago in really his first race to break out as a world beater, or that the conversions of "what he would have kicked in" had he been in XX:XX shape hold any relation to reality at all

make that 6 medals*