I have said this before and I'll say it again - the problem is not that individuals are not working hard or taking risks in specific races. the problem is that there are fewer individuals taking risks from high school onward. The result is that a pack of our better marathoners ran 2:14-2:15 rather than running 2:10-2:13 as they did on several occasions 20+ years ago. One or more of these individuals may indeed run 2:10 some day, but that's not the point. By the time the pool of people with both the talent and willingness to be world class gets out of college, it's already too late.
Blaming the current crop of athletes for working hard and coming up short doesn't make any sense. Sometimes people take risks, go for it and still don't succeed, and you don't have to split 1:04 just to prove it. - Ed Parrot ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, October 15, 2002 12:54 PM Subject: Re: t-and-f: Chicago and US runners > > > > > Richard wrote: > > >> My point is that these runners (running 2:12 pace not 2:11 BTW), were > >> running a conservative time oriented race without regard to the > competition > >> around them instead of running a "balls to the walls" risk taking race > >> against the best in the world. Until US runners start taking those > risks, > >> which they did in late 70s and early 80s, they won't be competitive with > >> the rest of the world. > > Benji (one of those 70's guys) wrote: > > >These guys in their dreams couldn't run 2:06 pace for more than 1/2 > without > >having to then stop. For them to run that kind of race would be nuts. > >Running 2:12 pace for most of the guys in that group was going for it. It > >wasn't a conservative pace since they all basically died back to 2:14. You > >can't run 2:06 with a 2:13 body. > > Yeah, Benji. Thanks for the burst of realism. > > I KNOW that Richard, deep down in his mitochondria, must know exactly what > you're talking about. Guess some of us are approaching "old fogeydom" at a > faster pace than others. > > Now, if these guys had gone out in 1:08, and then pumped it up in the > second half and hit 2:14 while flying along with some 5-flats down the last > few miles, the "risk taking" epitath might carry some ERG. But they were > hanging on at 5:10 over the last 12K, and that tells me that a few seconds > faster a mile over the first 15K would probably have resulted in a major > crash and burn, which would have been counterproductive. > > These guys are serious competitors, and had any of them had the ability to > knock off an extra minute in the last 10K, we'd probably have seen it. As > it was, they were already pretty close to "balls to the walls" it seems. > It'd be NICE if they were all Kahlid, or even Alan Culpepper, but they're > not ... yet. > > Phil > > > >
