US Olympic Marathon Trials

pconn062

Two very interesting races, I always enjoy these trials races, very much like tactical championship style races.

Men:

1. Rupp (2.11)
2. Meb
3. Ward

Women:

1. Cragg (2.28)
2. Linden
3. Flanagan

Rupp very strong in the end and broke away from the evergreen Meb with ease. A very strong run by Ward to come through for 3rd, ahead of some fine runners. Some big name drop outs including Ritzenheim and Diego Estrada. I fear that today we seen Ritz's last race, big fan of the guy so very sad to see him drop out.

Women's race was very interesting, Cragg and Flanagan got away very early and had a big lead. But about 5 miles from the end Flanagan blew a gasket but Cragg (her training partner) hung back and dragged her to the 25th mile. Linden finished very strong and went by Flanagan like she was standing still. Flanagan managed to hold off Kara Goucher who had a fine run herself.

adrian522

Anyone else think it's crazy having them run a marathon in LA in Feb, and the another in Rio in august. Don't think they can possibly be at their best in Rio.

Notwork Error

adrian522 wrote: »

Anyone else think it's crazy having them run a marathon in LA in Feb, and the another in Rio in august. Don't think they can possibly be at their best in Rio.

6 months is a huge amount of time for an elite athlete between marathons. The elites that usually do London and Berlin in the same year have a shorter turnaround and don't seem to have an issue. Those guys recover ridiculously fast after a marathon and don't need a huge block of training to recover and train for the next one. Look at Rupp for instance, Salazar who is obsessed with recovery feels comfortable with him running the World indoors at 3k next month before even refocusing on the marathon in Rio and he'll have to run the 10k as well at the Olympics.

It wasn't unusual for the guy's back in the 70's and 80's to run really close back to back marathons and crank out ridiculously quick times. A major part of what makes these athletes as good as they are is just how good their bodies are at recovering and adapting to training compared to the average Joe which means they can have a higher workload in a shorter space of time. The Kenyans and Ethiopians have a much shorter turnaround with all their top guys out in London in April in the defacto trials for them. Alot of people say that affects their results at the Olympics and maybe it does, I'm not sure but running London in 2008 didn't seem to take too much out of Sammy Wanjiru heading in to Beijing and realistically, Wilson Kipsang threw away gold in the London Olympics with tactical naivety after running London earlier that spring. Stephen Kiprotich won the Moscow World Champs after running London that year and the top 2 in Deagu 2011 ran April marathons so I don't it's as big an issue as it's made out to be. The Olympics and World championships tend to be choppy slow races and I think this plays a bigger factor in the Kenyans stars underperformance in my opinion. Smart coaching is probably the most important factor when looking at a 4 month turnaround but 6 months is huge block for these guys and a normal timeline that elite runners are used to. Jaysus, I waffled on a bit there:D

average_runner

Notwork Error wrote: »

6 months is a huge amount of time for an elite athlete between marathons. The elites that usually do London and Berlin in the same year have a shorter turnaround and don't seem to have an issue. Those guys recover ridiculously fast after a marathon and don't need a huge block of training to recover and train for the next one. Look at Rupp for instance, Salazar who is obsessed with recovery feels comfortable with him running the World indoors at 3k next month before even refocusing on the marathon in Rio and he'll have to run the 10k as well at the Olympics.

It wasn't unusual for the guy's back in the 70's and 80's to run really close back to back marathons and crank out ridiculously quick times. A major part of what makes these athletes as good as they are is just how good their bodies are at recovering and adapting to training compared to the average Joe which means they can have a higher workload in a shorter space of time. The Kenyans and Ethiopians have a much shorter turnaround with all their top guys out in London in April in the defacto trials for them. Alot of people say that affects their results at the Olympics and maybe it does, I'm not sure but running London in 2008 didn't seem to take too much out of Sammy Wanjiru heading in to Beijing and realistically, Wilson Kipsang threw away gold in the London Olympics with tactical naivety after running London earlier that spring. Stephen Kiprotich won the Moscow World Champs after running London that year and the top 2 in Deagu 2011 ran April marathons so I don't it's as big an issue as it's made out to be. The Olympics and World championships tend to be choppy slow races and I think this plays a bigger factor in the Kenyans stars underperformance in my opinion. Smart coaching is probably the most important factor when looking at a 4 month turnaround but 6 months is huge block for these guys and a normal timeline that elite runners are used to. Jaysus, I waffled on a bit there:D

Great run by Galen for his first attempt.
Cragg was very impressive in helping Flanagan.
Flanagan will only get stronger if she stays fit. Linden ran a very even pace run

Itziger

But what session did Galen do AFTER the race, that's what we all want to know.

I'm going for a classic 5x1mile @ 10k pace off 2 min steady rec.

pgmcpq

Interesting that this displaced the usual Premier League game from network tv.

The Cragg/Flanagan tandem was interesting. But the Linden run was really impressive as she had to do all the work herself.

Rupp was really impressive, Meb was Meb, but spare a thought for Pennel, there is my marathon runs in a nutshell !

Nice to see the old guys still have it.