Where yall at now?? wrote:
It's funny how everybody was so quick to hop on Stinson's back about how shitty he trained, how stupid his racing strategy was, and how he'll never amount to anything outside of being a "sub-par sub-elite runner" when he had a couple bad races. Here he is now though, after Houston being the second fastest American with a massive PR, and nobody bats an eye or even talks about the dude.
I personally think he's got a head of frickin pure steel and guts and focus. He's had some rough races and letdowns and the dude just kept coming back for more punishment, and it finally paid out. Super happy for him (and Reed Fischer, my homeboy from MN because that's sick AF). I could 100% see Stinson keeping the way things are going and making the Olympic team for the marathon. Legitimately wish him all the success in the world because he is a dude who has actual passion and fire for the sport, and that is god frickin inspiring.
Not really sure what your malfunction is, but I'll try to help you with it.
What I and others *correctly* criticized is the fact that Parker has run like a moron in both his marathon attempts, and paid for it with unnecessarily crappy results.
Both times he went out at stupid paces *no one* thought he could hold --and both times he naturally *failed* spectacularly to hold them, and crashed out to performances *much* worse than he could've hit if he'd gone out at a pace he was actually *capable* of.
Our interest in making this obvious observation (in my case, at least) is that we'd really like to see the kid do well, and would *love* to see at least ONE of the younger Americans actually achieve something halfway respectable in the marathon sometime before we're all dead.
That's not *too* difficult for you to understand, is it?
Parker's done the same stupid thing in *other* earlier races, too, including at least one NCAA championship on the track, where he once again went out at a pace *way* over his head, and paid for it by crashing out badly in the last quarter of the race --getting beat by several guys he could've and should've handled comfortably.
So it appears to be something of a long-standing psychological issue with this kid, not just a one- or two-time freak thing.
Obviously, it should be the easiest thing in the world to *fix*, which is why it's so freaking frustrating to see him do it again and again.
In the half-mar, for whatever reason, he *hasn't* done that. I think he's run three of them now (three more recent ones that I remember off-hand, anyway), and all three have been pretty good performances.
In all of them he ran controlled, and disciplined, and did a solid job of running a well-chosen, consistent, reasonable pace,... and in all three he was rewarded with good results.
His result this weekend was light-years better than his last marathon performance,... and that's exactly *because* he ran intelligently and rationally this time, while he ran stupidly and *irrationally* last time.
This race would seem to indicate he ought to be able to go 2:11, or even better, for a full mar, but we'll obviously have to see him actually DO it, since he hasn't gotten anywhere close to that so far.
Ritzie --who's always been a very smart and disciplined racer, even when he seemed to really run his guts out-- should probably be a great influence on the kid, but we'll have to see.
If he runs like someone who actually wants to be a good marathoner next time, and goes out at a sane and reasonable pace, and hits that 2:11 or better, we'll know there's some hope for the kid --and that would be great.
If he talks a good game, and then goes out at 2:06 pace again, and crashes out yet one more time, we'll naturally feel like he's just hopelessly stupid, and maybe we'll simply stop caring.
I wish him all the best, but one more idiotic marathon will be three strikes, you're *out* for me.
There's a limit to how much stupidity I can handle (which is exactly why I rarely look at the LR message-boards anymore).
Can you process all that, or do I need to use even *smaller* words?
