Serious question - Why do East Africans seem to get race strategy so wrong?

Serious question - Why do East Africans seem to get race strategy so wrong?

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Answer: The East Africans are not the brightest people in the world. I coached three of them, I should know. The level of

sophistication is so low with East Africans. Whether it is the confidence in the 2017 women's WC Steeple, or various

other bonehead moves (Getting passed 2 meters from the finish line is another doozy) that were mentioned

here. It is extremely frustrating coaching these people. In the end, I just tried to get the East Africans to

remember two or three things. And that is it. Bringing the right shoes is probably first on that list.

Good point about the women's 2017 WC Steeple. As much as I love Coburn and Frerichs, there is no way the Americans should have finished 1-2. I heard some of the east African excuses of being over-confident at WC. And the bonehead move by the favorite of not taking the first water jump because you forgot. It must really suck to coach these children.

Is that why they are so terrible at running the tangents? They are just dumb. They literally run all over the road from one side to the other.

Since nearly all of the contenders in a given race are East-Africans, it's easy to cherry pick examples of bad strategy. In Berlin, Adola used bad strategy by not running the tangents, even after Kipchoge told him he should follow the blue line, while Kipchoge used good strategy following the tangents, while not panicking and apportioning his energy to catch the surging Adola. That's just an anecdote, but I really doubt a statistical analysis would at all support your contention. It's not even clear to me that the examples you give indicate poor strategy. Are you saying that the entire field should have focused on Shalane as a primary threat and collectively devised a game plan to defeat her? That doesn't make any sense unless you already know how the race is going to play out or if Shalane had a history as a world beater that consistently kills the last 10km in marathons. They were worried about Keitany and Kiplagat. Similar situation with Rupp in Chicago.

wtfunny wrote:

A "long season"??? From what you just described they have an incredibly SHORT season. Which is it?

A spring, championship, fall marathons with two fast half marathons is a short season?

Jefe in the CO wrote:

wtfunny wrote:

A "long season"??? From what you just described they have an incredibly SHORT season. Which is it?

A spring, championship, fall marathons with two fast half marathons is a short season?

That's not what they ran

Passed 2m from the line. You mean like 25x US champ Molly Huddle (who has forgotten more about racing than you or I will ever know) at worlds?

If you’re so sure of your opinion, coach, post your real name and people can react as they see fit.

sc42 wrote:

(who has forgotten more about racing than you or I will ever know)

I'm not sure that means what you wanted it to mean

CoachZ wrote:

Serious question - Why do East Africans seem to get race strategy so wrong?

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Answer: The East Africans are not the brightest people in the world. I coached three of them, I should know.

I said exactly that in the first reply in the thread, but some mod thought it was too un-PC. The fact is, they have very low IQs, and therefore aren't that intelligent about race strategy. Delete this one too, if you can't handle a non-PC opinion. Cowards.

James Watson wrote:

CoachZ wrote:

Serious question - Why do East Africans seem to get race strategy so wrong?

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Answer: The East Africans are not the brightest people in the world. I coached three of them, I should know.

I said exactly that in the first reply in the thread, but some mod thought it was too un-PC. The fact is, they have very low IQs, and therefore aren't that intelligent about race strategy. Delete this one too, if you can't handle a non-PC opinion. Cowards.

That would imply that runners of East African descent in non-East African countries (eg, Mo Farah, Meb) also have poor race strategies, which is incorrect.

More likely, it is selection bias — no intelligent East Africans would actually choose to train with “Coach Z”, otherwise by definition they wouldn’t be intelligent. Hence he thinks they are all dumb.

I don't get the premise of this thread. You're saying that the people who couldn't handle a moderate then fast pace could handle fast from the gun?

That makes no sense.

James Watson wrote:

CoachZ wrote:

Serious question - Why do East Africans seem to get race strategy so wrong?

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Answer: The East Africans are not the brightest people in the world. I coached three of them, I should know.

I said exactly that in the first reply in the thread, but some mod thought it was too un-PC. The fact is, they have very low IQs, and therefore aren't that intelligent about race strategy. Delete this one too, if you can't handle a non-PC opinion. Cowards.

Invoking IQ and PC rubbish shows that you yourself are of low intelligence.

This thread is the height of nonsense. : Mo Farah, Bekele, Gebreselassie, Rudisha, Tirunesh, etc are all East Africans who dominated for long periods with tactically sound running.

Kipchoge outwitted Ryun in 1968. Peter Rono and John Ngugi ran some of the best tactical races ever at the 1988 Olympics. As did Rudisha in 2016.

The Ugandan Stephen Kiprotich ran a masterclass of tactics to win OG in 2012 and WC in 2013

I could go on and on.

Hardloper wrote:

Jefe in the CO wrote:

A spring, championship, fall marathons with two fast half marathons is a short season?

That's not what they ran

Ok, let's get that robot in here to compare Kipsang and Keitany's (the two being accused of bad strategy here) 2017 season starting with December 2016 through November 2017.

From what I gather you believe that they have not run a "long" season and should have plenty of spring in the step to go hard in NY from the start.

My premise is that they would much rather run as slow as possible to win throughout the course of a season to maximize paydays. Sometimes it works; Boston,/New York/Chicago and sometimes it doesn't; Berlin/London/Frankfurt.

Just to be clear: running and winning a fast spring marathon can impair your ability to run fast and win a fall marathon.

So I think Keitany had it mostly right by following up London with a non rabbited fall marathon and try to squeak out a slow win. This is a smart strategy as compared to the noobs here who are accusing EAs of being unintelligent.