Optimal Training

USATF Championships distance preview

In my preview of the USATF Championships I pay homage to Fam, and ask ten questions I'm looking to see answered.  You can get the full article here.  One of my observations was the following:

"Given his Hayward Field advantage and his competition's lack of race-readiness, I'm picking Rupp to win this thing with a big finish in the last 1000m.  Whether the time will be smokin' fast or not will be dependent on the other athletes in the race.  But it looks like Rupp will be adding a US title to his NCAA hardware this weekend."

Nice to be right for once.  In the men's 10,000 meters, Abdi disappointed and Rupp showed he's in a class all his own against domestic competition.  Ritz gave him a nice battle, and frankly made the race easy for Rupp by doing all the work, but no one was beating Rupp today.  Next step in Rupp's progression will be leading a race from the gun and still winning. 

But let me just say that Amy Yoder-Begley truly inspired.  Her battle with Shalane Flanagan was the race of the evening for me, and has set a pretty high bar.  I didn't even cover this event in my preview because it just didn't seem all that interesting.  How wrong I was.  Begley moved to 9th all-time in the US with her 31:22.63 performance, and she beat the lady who will probably go down as America's greatest distance runner ever. What a race

The Best "Team"

I've posted a new article at Runner's Tribe, where I take another look at the NCAA Championships through the lens of a hypothetical NFL football skills competition.  A couple snippets...

Imagine if, at the end of the regular season, the NFL's best players competed in a skills challenge to determine who was the best at their respective positions.  We could have any variation of events, but they'd probably include various passing contests, receiving contests, running contests, blocking contests, tackling contests and kicking contests.... And we can score this competition, maybe using a 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 point system like track and field!  That way, instead of having a playoffs and a Super Bowl, we can just name the NFL champion based on the results of this contest!  After all, a team is only as good as its superstars, and we now have a competition to decide which superstars are the superest of the super!

I know, I know.  It's a ridiculous proposition.  This would be a terrible way of deciding the "best team" in  the NFL.  It would be tantamount to saying that the special teams has no impact on a game, that your fourth best blocker doesn't matter, that actually beating a team head-to-head isn't the best way to determine which team is the best.  We all know that's not true, and trading the playoffs and Super Bowl for this event--no matter how entertaining and legitimate the competitions--would be a travesty.

So why is this how we award the NCAA team title?

Click here to read the full article.

NCAA meet recap

The meet lived up to the hype, and may have been the most exciting in many years.  Team titles were undecided until late in the meet, and a number of athletes put up amazing times and efforts to win outdoor titles and score points for their teams.

Last week I took a look at the meet through the eyes of a bookmaker, and now my NCAA Meet recap takes a look at those lines to see how the meet played out.  Of course I take some time to congratulate Texas A&M and call out some amazing performances that weren't predicted in the preview column as well.  A snippet:

1a. Oregon's Total Team Points (M & W) +/- 106.5
1b. Oregon's Total Individual NCAA Champions (M & W) +/- 6.5
My picks: Under & Under.  Actual points and champions: 89 and 6!

This points line may have been a bit high, but there's no getting around the fact that Oregon had an off day relative to expectations.  Projected to score more than 60 points on the men's side, they scored just 46.  The women competed pretty much up to expectations, scoring 43, but just lacked the firepower of Texas A&M, which scored 50. 

Texas A&M stole the show, scoring 98 points between their men's and women's programs.  And they did it with only two individual champions (4x100m and 200m).  They did have an impressive four scorers in the triple jump, however, which ultimately won them the meet.
 
Interesting to note:  Oregon was arguably the 3rd best team overall.  Florida State and Oregon showed up with the same approach: big guns and no depth.  They each scored a total of 86 points across programs, but remarkably, Florida State had seven individual titles to Oregon's six!  Amazing!

Click here to read all the ins and outs of the NCAA meet in its gory, er...glorious detail!

NCAA Preview: Over/Unders

It's time for the biggest meet of the year, the NCAA Championships.  Rather than give an event by event preview, my newest article at Runner's Tribe looks at some of the hidden stories within the meet, through the eyes of a bookmaker.  What's the over/under for how many meet records will be broken?  How fast will the men's 1500m be?  And how many sprint points will West Region teams score?

I look at nine lines and provide my feedback on what the likely outcome will be.  I'd love to know where you stand after reading the article!

NCAA Regionals are a Good Thing

My most recent article has been posted at The Runner's Tribe.  In it, I weigh in on the debate over whether to keep or do away with the NCAA Regional meets.  A snippet:

"I've been a little disappointed by the uproar against the NCAA Regional qualifying system. The Big-12 schools said they want to get rid of it, and Oregon signaled tacit agreement.  Presumably, they'd rather spend the regionals weekend at a last-chance qualifier someplace, trying to get their almost-qualifiers off the cusp and into the meet.  Like in the good old days.

The old system, based solely off of the descending order list, simply took the top marks of the season and shuttled those athletes off to NCAAs.  It rewarded those athletes whose programs could recruit top talent and get that talent in the meets with ideal conditions to put up big marks.  In short, it benefited big programs from big conferences, who could afford to send their  athletes across the country to compete, often more than once.  For some events, like the 5000m and 10000m, nearly all the qualifiers came from two west coast meets: Stanford and Mt. SAC.  Nevermind that a time run in late March is only occasionally an accurate indicator of where an athlete is come June.

I have two problems with the old system..."

You can read the full article at The Runner's Tribe!