USOT - 16 Men under 2:14. Best ever? U.S. men finally better than the 80s, or is it the shoes?

plus top-5 in 2016. but maybe that was a different thing.

It’s the shoes.

yuppie wrote:

It’s the shoes.

Cool but this course was also a couple minutes slow. Imagine re-running these numbers with similar weather on a flat course? LRC has been trashing US men's marathoning for a while now. It's clear that outside of a few countries, we're one of the best countries out there and are getting better and better.

How much more irrelevant is 2:14 today than it was in the 80s?

Sure. One third of them foreign born.

I’d enthusiastically root for a native born American of Kenyan descent to make the team. (As an aside, how come there aren’t any of them competing?)

A Kenyan born American not so much. I accept it, but I don’t have to like it.

After Abdi it doesn’t matter where anyone finished. Better to have gone for top 3, blown up, and run 2:20 then to have run a conservative 2:12.

So 4th place on tells us nothing about the state of American Marathoning.

Top 3 or go home wrote:

After Abdi it doesn’t matter where anyone finished. Better to have gone for top 3, blown up, and run 2:20 then to have run a conservative 2:12.

So 4th place on tells us nothing about the state of American Marathoning.

That's not true. For one thing, prize money went 8 deep. So for instance, if you were in 9th late in the race, you may have no chance at an Olympic slot, but you might still have a chance at a few thousands dollars.

And besides that, your statement is just silly. It's one of those statements that's easy to say when you're talking about what other people should do, but somehow the vast majority people don't do it. Do you really think all 700-800 runners (or whatever the field size was, m and w) should have been running do or die style? Most of the runners in the field had no realistic chance and knew it. But they still would want to have a good race, and possibly even get a PB. I think they would approach the race with the attitude that they were going to have the absolute best race they possibly can, and if that somehow miraculously put them in contention for an Olympic berth, all the better.