Thoughts on slow pace of NCAA 5000m races.

[26mi235]

[quote=George P.]

And, of course, most athletes probably overestimate their own strategic cleverness vis-a-vis everyone else's.

Bingo! It must be an occupational hazard: everyone in the field is convinced he or she has the best kick. (This is most evident on the European Circuit.)

In my view this is an incorrect inference or [more likely] a mis-stated one. Specifically, runners do not have to think that they have the BEST kick, just that they have a better chance of winning/placing well that way compared to an alternative strategy, such as leading everyone else around the track.

Often, the alternative is not to have a hard pace that someone else sets but to have a hard pace that they set, which puts the leader at a big physical disadvantage?

When one tries to sum up, concisely, complicated strategies among individuals of varying talents and motivations, one always gets hammered. Fair enough, but does it really have to be so brutal and so ... personal?[/quote:v66hcucu]

No, one does not -- I will edit back my post; will you excise some as well?

[2 cents]

I think what 26 is trying to say is that, for instance, Hassan Mead may not have felt that he had the best kick. However, he may have felt that his kick would be better if he chose to follow the pack than if he chose to venture out on his own and was not able to draft off others. So, what do I do if I KNOW that I do not have the best kick, but I also KNOW that I do not have the best endurance. That is what most, if not all, of these athletes were facing vis a vis Rupp. OK, so if I try to break Rupp by running hard, I may break myself, also, and be defeated by that other guy who was not trying to break Rupp, and therefore did not break himself. So I agree with 26 that it is not simply a matter of all the athletes thinking they possess the best kick, but looking at the alternatives and perhaps finding them even less palatable.

[gh]

Addressing the Fayetteville men's 5K specifically, one should also note that everybody in the field had seen what had happened the night before, when Chelanga and Rupp tried a sneaky early breakaway on Rupp and he methodically gobbled them and spat them out at the end.

I'd have to think that in at least some minds, "let's try the other way" had to be in the frontal lobes.

[guru]

Nice piece on Bizzarri in the local paper today.

http://tinyurl.com/msxqr3