rupp-certified saladbar wrote:
Coach Rx wrote:Looks to me like she made a common mistake. Had a strategy going into the race and stuck to it no matter what. I haven't seen that work too often. Better to have a sense of the competition and be ready to change depending on how the race goes and how you feel.
That wasn't the problem.
The problem was she DEVIATED from the strategy, running a 66 instead of a 68.
As someone else pointed out the strategy was to run 68 or faster.
It is a false dichonomty to say the options are to sit and kick or to drop in a suicidal lap. There are options. She chose to go the run a really fast lap (66 or 68, doesn't matter) and try to slow down into a pace she could hold. That is a really tough strategy to get right since if you go slightly too fast you blow up. The people behind you can pick the pace up to some more reasonable level (call it 75s) and they will have 1200m to real you back in. Thats pretty much what Molly did.
Bates had a bunch of options to pick from. She could have picked an even pace that should could have held to the finish (something like 74s) with maybe a kick. She could have slowly cranked the pace up (78, 74, 72, and kick). Just do a fast 200 before settling back in. Or heck just do the suicide lap with one to go. And obviously you can permuate these as much as you want.
There are some success stories with the breakaway (Nugigi in 88 was epic) most of the time it ends like this.