Optimal Training

Nate Jenkins puts success and failure in perspective

A great blog entry by marathoner turned indoor trackster Nate Jenkins.  He had a rough go of it at the USATF Indoor Nationals 3000m, but he explains in his blog why he's not losing any sleep over it.  I think we all could stand to be reminded that we need to be judged against our total set of goals at the beginning of the season, not just our expectations prior to one particular event.  Here's the blog post.

Your unspoken goals...and how they affect your performances

There was a short, insightful post by Seth Godin a few days ago about goals that really hit home with me.  I've recreated it in full below (italics mine):

Doing goal setting with friends and colleagues is always motivating and invigorating for me. You hear things ranging from, "I want to help this village get out of poverty," or "I want to double our market share," or "I want to be financially independent."

What you rarely hear is, "I don't want to fail," "I don't want to look stupid," or "I don't want to make any mistakes."

The problem is that those goals are really common, and left unsaid, they dominate. If your goal is not to be called on in class, that's a largely achievable goal, right?

Think about how often your goal at a conference or a meeting or in a project is, "don't screw up!" or "don't make a fool of yourself and say the wrong thing." These are very easy goals to achieve, of course. Just do as little as possible. The problem is that they sabotage your real goals, the achievement ones.

It's not stupid to have a stated goal of starting several ventures that will fail, or asking three stupid questions a week, or posting a blog post that the world disagrees with. If you don't have goals like this, how exactly are you going to luck into being remarkable?

I see a lot of parallels here with regard to developing a race strategy and then executing it.  How many times have you gone into a race with a plan to run X-minute pace or to stick with That Guy, only to find yourself doing something completely different mid-race?  How often have you made a split-second decision during a race that was the opposite of what you told yourself you'd do?

You could look at these situations and say, "well, you can't overplan your races, you need to just react, to just compete."  That's more or less what Matt Tegenkamp said about his Beijing performance recently, after he didn't execute the plan he had prepared and finished 13th in Beijing.  And there's some truth to that, for sure.  But to be able to approach a race that way, you have to have no unspoken goal "not to mess it up." 

My guess is that Teg went to Beijing with spoken goals (get a medal, put yourself in a position to medal, conserve as much energy as possible in the prelims without taking unnecessary risks, etc.) but also at least one unspoken goal: don't do anything stupid that will mess everything up.  And it's that unspoken goal that paralyzes you mid-race, when you're trying--in a split second--to figure out if you're doing anything stupid or not.

I'm not trying to pick on Teg, really, and for all I know I'm wrong about his particular goals.  I do know I've gone into races where I was saying one thing (perhaps to convince myself) but reacting based on something else.  Often I was reacting based on a fear of the unknown.  ("He went already?  Should I go with him?  What if I blow up?  Or get stranded in no man's land?  Oh crap the race is over.") 

And then when the race was over, I always rationalized some external factor as being the reason things didn't go as I said they would.  ("I don't know what happened, coach.  My legs didn't feel that good and I couldn't tell my splits and he kind of surprised me and and and...")  I never said to myself, "you had an unspoken goal to run a safe race and not embarrass yourself, and you weren't ready to take the necessary risks or experience the necessary pain."

I think this idea of an unspoken goal is incredibly insightful.  It has helped me to put so much of my past running experience into a different perspective.  I encourage you to take a moment and think about whether you're not doing the same thing to yourself.  If you're not sure whether you do it or not, think about the last thing you mutter to yourself as you step to the line.  That's your unspoken goal.

I'll end by returning to Seth's last paragraph, but I'll change it for a more running-centric message:

It's not stupid to have a stated goal of running a race strategy with a losing-be-damned attitude, or making a reckless move mid-race, or even entering a race with no goals at all. If you don't set goals in open contrast to your natural approach, how exactly are you going to luck into being remarkable?

Doing goal setting with friends and colleagues is always motivating and invigorating for me. You hear things ranging from, "I want to help this village get out of poverty," or "I want to double our market share," or "I want to be financially independent."

What you rarely hear is, "I don't want to fail," "I don't want to look stupid," or "I don't want to make any mistakes."

The problem is that those goals are really common, and left unsaid, they dominate. If your goal is not to be called on in class, that's a largely achievable goal, right?

Think about how often your goal at a conference or a meeting or in a project is, "don't screw up!" or "don't make a fool of yourself and say the wrong thing." These are very easy goals to achieve, of course. Just do as little as possible. The problem is that they sabotage your real goals, the achievement ones.

It's not stupid to have a stated goal of starting several ventures that will fail, or asking three stupid questions a week, or posting a blog post that the world disagrees with. If you don't have goals like this, how exactly are you going to luck into being remarkable?

I see a lot of parallels here with regard to developing a race strategy and then executing it.  How many times have you gone into a race with a plan to run X-minute pace or to stick with That Guy, only to find yourself doing something completely different mid-race?  How often have you made a split-second decision during a race that was the opposite of what you told yourself you'd do?

You could look at these situations and say, "well, you can't overplan your races, you need to just react, to just compete."  That's more or less what Matt Tegenkamp said about his Beijing performance recently, after he didn't execute the plan he had prepared and finished 13th in Beijing.  And there's some truth to that, for sure.  But to be able to approach a race that way, you have to have no unspoken goal "not to mess it up." 

My guess is that Teg went to Beijing with spoken goals (get a medal, put yourself in a position to medal, conserve as much energy as possible in the prelims without taking unnecessary risks, etc.) but also at least one unspoken goal: don't do anything stupid that will mess everything up.  And it's that unspoken goal that paralyzes you mid-race, when you're trying--in a split second--to figure out if you're doing anything stupid or not.

I'm not trying to pick on Teg, really, and for all I know I'm wrong about his particular goals.  I do know I've gone into races where I was saying one thing (perhaps to convince myself) but reacting based on something else.  Often I was reacting based on a fear of the unknown.  ("He went already?  Should I go with him?  What if I blow up?  Or get stranded in no man's land?  Oh crap the race is over.") 

And then when the race was over, I always rationalized some external factor as being the reason things didn't go as I said they would.  ("I don't know what happened, coach.  My legs didn't feel that good and I couldn't tell my splits and he kind of surprised me and and and...")  I never said to myself, "you had an unspoken goal to run a safe race and not embarrass yourself, and you weren't ready to take the necessary risks or experience the necessary pain."

I think this idea of an unspoken goal is incredibly insightful.  It has helped me to put so much of my past running experience into a different perspective.  I encourage you to take a moment and think about whether you're not doing the same thing to yourself.  If you're not sure whether you do it or not, think about the last thing you mutter to yourself as you step to the line.  That's your unspoken goal.

I'll end by returning to Seth's last paragraph, but I'll change it for a more running-centric message:

It's not stupid to have a stated goal of running a race strategy with a losing-be-damned attitude, or making a reckless move mid-race, or even entering a race with no goals at all. If you don't set goals in open contrast to your natural approach, how exactly are you going to luck into being remarkable?

The marathon in 2009

If recent trends are any indication, 2009 could be a huge year for marathoning.  I referenced this briefly in my Notes on an '08 Calendar article, but a recent article by David Graham at LetsRun.com reminded me of just how much the sport of marathoning has changed over the years, and more specifically, the past decade.

Not only have the great distance runners on the track (first Tergat, now Gebrselassie) moved up to the marathon, but young runners like Sammy Wanjiru and Tsegay Kebede have chosen to focus on road racing and marathons and foresaken lengthy track careers for potential marathon greatness.  As a result we have under-23 marathoners who are practically veterans at the distance.  Can we really not expect to see marathon times drop when the event has now become a career focus, rather than a "post-track" career focus for the best runners in the world?

I think we can.  Because one thing seems clear to me.  The way a marathon is perceived has fundamentally shifted.  Not by you and me, perhaps, but for the top athletes in the world 26.2 is no longer viewed with the same fear.  Whether you agree with his skipping majors in favor of time trials or not, Haile Gebrselassie's world records in the marathon change--at a fundamental level--the way every elite runner views the challenge of completing 26.2.  The result is that the bar is set higher, and more and more athletes are achieving faster times, times that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago.

Just as I wrote recently that German Fernandez's "baseline" needs to be set higher, elite marathoners have had their "baseline" moved way up, and there's nothing they can do about it.  Well, except train harder, make the long-term sacrifices necessary to approach the new standards of excellence, and believe that they, too, can achieve what they themselves must have thought impossible just years before.

It won't be easy.  Overcoming mental barriers in this sport is probably the hardest aspect of it, in the end.  I'm not sure we'll see any world records or a year of marathoning that is "statistically superior" to 2008, but we won't be seeing a regression back to 1998 ever again either.  A new era of marathoning is here to stay.

Adding some perspective to German's performance

German Fernandez just ran 3:56.50 in his first indoor mile race ever.  He won the race with a big finish, despite being just two months removed from an Achilles injury that kept him from finishing the NCAA Championships.  It set an unofficial* junior indoor world record, and was among the greatest ever performances by an American junior.  He is 18 years old, and will turn 19 in November of this year.

What I found interesting about this weekend was that another young runner, Matthew Kisorio, ran what was arguably a more impressive race that went largely unnoticed.  He won the Discovery Cross Country Championship in Eldoret, Kenya, defeating such elite studs as Luke Kibet (World Marathon champion), Asbel Kiprop (Junior World Cross Country champion) and Barnabas Kosgei (World Cross Country bronze medallist).  Kisorio is apparently 1.5 years older than German Fernandez, and boasts a 5k personal best of 13:11, run as a 19 years old.  As an 18 year old, his best was 13:28.

For all intents and purposes, these two look pretty equal to me.  I'd be shocked if Fernandez didn't run 13:28 this year, given the speed he showed on Saturday and the fact that he has an amazing ability to run at pace.  But I have to wonder about their respective "development arcs" and whether Fernandez will show the same improvement as Kisorio has.  I wonder about this because so much of this sport is mental, and a simple difference between who you compare yourself to can make all the difference in what you believe you can achieve.

Kisorio's "baseline" for comparison is so much higher than Fernandez's.  Even as a 19-year old 13:11 guy, his baseline is Eliud Kipchoge's 12:52.  Here, we are content to compare Fernandez to other American high schoolers and collegiate freshman and say, "He's the greatest ever!"  And in that limited respect, he certainly could be.  But if we cast the net a little wider, we get an entirely different picture.  In fact, one could argue that our national measure of greatness is a bar set a little too low.

Here are the junior American records for the distances and middle distances (German's most likely "baseline"):

Junior American (Ryun/Gregorek times from here)

800m - 1:44.9y - Jim Ryun
1500m - 3:36.9 - Jim Ryun
1 mile - 3:51.3 - Jim Ryun
3000m - 7:49.16 - Galen Rupp
5000m - 13:37.91 - Galen Rupp
10000m - 28:15.52 - Galen Rupp
steeple - 8:33.8 - John Gregorek

American (just for comparison, full list is here)

800m - 1:42.60 - Johnny Gray
1000m - 2:13.9 - Rick Wohlhuter
1500m - 3:29.30 - Bernard Lagat
1 mile - 3:46.91 - Alan Webb
3000m - 7:30.84 - Bob Kennedy
2 mile - 8:07.07 - Matt Tegenkamp
5000m - 12:58.21 - Bob Kennedy
10000m - 27:13.98 - Meb Keflezighi

There do not appear to be any indoor lists for American juniors, unfortunately.  I would say that all of the American junior records from 3000m up are within Fernandez's reach, though I'm not sure he'll attempt a fast 10k while still eligible as a junior.

Now compare those times with the junior world records for the distance and middle distance events.

Indoor (full list here - only updated to 2006, unfortunately)

800m - 1:44.35 - Yuriy Borzakovskiy
1000m - 2:15.77 - Abubaker Kaki Khamis
1500m - 3:36.37 - Mike Too
1 mile - 3:56.50 - German Fernandez (previously 3:58.60 - Geoffrey Rono)
3000m - 7:40.83 - Markos Geneti
2 mile - 8:13.32 - Tariku Bekele
5000m - 13:32.90 - Ismael Kirui

Fernandez would appear to have at least two of these within reach this year, the 1500m and the 5000m.  Both would be a stretch, but they remain a possibility.  But check out the outdoor junior world record list (the true "baseline" for athletes like Kisorio).

Outdoor (full list here)

800m - 1:42.69 - Abubaker Kaki Khamis
1000m - 2:15.00 - Benjamin Kipkirui
1500m - 3:30.24 - Cornelius Chirchir
1 mile - 3:50.25 - Alex Kipchirchir
3000m - 7:28.78 - Augustine Kiprono Choge
5000m - 12:52.61 - Eliud Kipchoge
10000m - 26:41.75 - Samuel Kamau Wanjiru
steeple - 7:58.66 - Saif Saaeed Shaheen

Did you notice that the junior world records for 3000m and up are significantly faster than the American records in those events?  Every day, when Kisorio wakes up, he knows he's 20 seconds behind his "baseline" at the same age.  In fact, whereas most American runners view the American record as a reasonable career goal to shoot for, athletes like Kisorio treat our national records as milestones on the path to their ultimate destinations.  That difference in mindset makes a huge difference in performance.

My hope is that German takes a similar approach to viewing this mile race and his subsequent performances.  With his ability, he needs to be using the world as his benchmark, assuming the American records are his for the taking, and then settling for nothing less than his best.

*Indoor performances are not ratified as world records by the IAAF.  They are simply "best performances". 

Lindsey Anderson: Set Goals, Visualize Goals, Achieve Goals

There was an interesting article in the Deseret News about Lindsey Anderson, Beijing Olympic qualifier in the women's steeplechase.  Lindsey has had a roller-coaster career that has now seen her emerge as one of the best steeplers in the country.  This article outlines how she uses visualization techniques to eliminate self-doubt and the fear of failure, as well as prepare herself mentally to achieve her goals.  She works just as hard at preparing her mind as she does at preparing her body. 

One of the things Lindsey did before the Olympic Trials was to write down her goal every day: "I will run 9:30.  I will make the Olympic Team."  Every day.  She wrote it, she said it, she externalized it.  She committed herself to it.  And slowly, in line with her workouts, she believed it.  Despite it being a nine second PR, she reached a point where she knew she could do it.  When she stepped on the line at the Olympic Trials, she had already seen herself run 9:30 every day leading up to it.

Visualization is a key part of preparing to achieve a goal.  If you can achieve a goal without having to mentally prepare for it, then you chose a bad goal.  Any goal worth achieving will require painstaking mental preparation on top of whatever physical preparation is required.  Part of that preparation is convincing your mind not to give in before your body does.

Not all athletes approach visualization techniques as systematically as Lindsey.  But elite athletes definitely utilize visualization in their training.  My recommendation is to try and be systematic the way Lindsey is, and if it doesn't work, modify it.  But build it into your training.  Take that 15 minutes everyday to block out the distractions and see yourself achieving what you hope to achieve.  Come race day, you may find yourself simply executing a replay of a race you've already known was going to happen.

By the way, Lindsey's new goal: "I will make the Olympic Finals.  I will run 9:25."  Any doubts she'll be mentally ready to do it?

How records can become mental barriers

I just read an article at Japan Running News about an 18-year-old Kenyan named Paul Kuira who ran 27:51.92 for 10,000 meters on June 1st.  Considering that was the same weekend that German Fernandez ran his amazing 4:00.29/8:34.23 double, it's worth considering the difference between what some of the elite foreign high school students are doing in their training/racing.

To put this in context, I saw a thread at Dyestat debating which performance was more impressive, German's double or Chris Derrick's 13:55 5k from the Arcadia Invitational in April.  Both are obviously very impressive, and while I lean toward German's, the answer obviously doesn't matter.  After all, they may have been the best performances by American 18-year-olds, but not by 18-year-olds overall.  Kuira accomplished Derrick's feat twice in the same race!

As a rule, American juniors don't perform at a world-class level.  The only performance I can think of by an American that rivals elite runners is Alan Webb's 3:53.  That's gotta be among the best junior times ever.

But why are American's slower?  First off, most Americans don't train long or hard enough.  Foreign elites often start training much earlier than Americans.  Most Americans don't start, let alone get any real sophistication in their training, until high school, and then they have to build into it.  (That's one thing that makes German's performance so good, actually.  He's spent much of his young career injured.  So he's not running that double off of years of consistent hard work.)

I don't think it's talent, either.  Africa may have more great talents, but the best in America should be comparable to the best in Africa.  What I do think happens to American high schoolers with a lot of talent is they benchmark their progress against previous Americans, not "the fastest junior performances ever."  Times like Dathan Ritzenhein's high school record in the 3,200 meters become myth, legend.  And America's best treat them as if they are the outer limit of a high schooler's ability.  Do they even know what the all-time top ten times run by juniors are? 

Could a focus on the American records actually be acting more as a barrier for Americans than anything else?  When Augustine Choge can run 7:28.78 for 3,000 meters at age 18, shouldn't Americans be aiming a little higher?  At the beginning of the year, my guess is that German set a goal to break Ritz's record.  Not to break it by 10 or 15 seconds (which is what the record should be by now).  That's just a hunch, though.  I'm sure his thoughts have changed since Saturday.

One of the ways we establish self-efficacy--the belief in what we can do given the effort we put into something--is by looking at what people we relate with have done and then basing our performance off of that.  It's the classic, "If he could do it, I can too."  But mental barriers can get created as a result.  When we see a performance by someone we don't relate to (say, 18 year-old Kenyans), we may believe we can't achieve it, even if we work hard.  And when we only focus on a small subset of performances (American juniors versus ALL juniors) we can establish a mental barrier that limits us from seeing even greater performances as being possible.

Foreign runners don't have that problem.  They don't see an 8:41 3,200 meters as anything more significant than a fast time.  It's a stepping-stone time.  They won't aim for it so much as aim past it.  A select few Americans (Webb, Rupp, Granville, maybe Ritz and now Fernandez?) are able to get past the very idea that those times are the limit for high school runners.  Most elite juniors, even if they have the physical ability, don't get past that mental barrier until they enter college and see older, more experienced runners doing it consistently.

Who you compare yourself to matters.  If you want to be the best, you need to compare yourself to the best.  And not just the best in your town, state, or even country.  Sites like Dyestat and MileSplit have expanded runners' horizons.  They have shifted the context within which high school runners understand their sport from a regional to a national focus.  It's no exaggeration to say that those sites have directly contributed to American runners getting faster.  Now we need a site that provides the next level of context: a global context.

Persistence

Sometimes people capture the essence of an idea so perfectly, I know I'll never think about nor explain something the same way.  This morning, Seth Godin gave us the best definition of "persistence" I've probably ever read, as only he could.  He writes:

"Persistence isn't using the same tactics over and over. That's just annoying.

Persistence is having the same goal over and over."

As usual, I couldn't agree more.  So what does this mean for distance running?

I've argued before that the single most important element of greatness is the ability (the need?) to get out the door every morning and pursue your goal.  It is not the specific workouts you are doing!  Those are tactics.  They can (and must) change over time to best adapt to your present level of ability. 

But the goal--to realize your potential and be the best (in that order)--need not ever change.  In that you must persist.   

 

Persistence is having the same goal over and over."

As usual, I couldn't agree more.  So what does this mean for distance running?

I've argued before that the single most important element of greatness is the ability (the need?) to get out the door every morning and pursue your goal.  It is not the specific workouts you are doing!  Those are tactics.  They can (and must) change over time to best adapt to your present level of ability. 

But the goal--to realize your potential and be the best (in that order)--need not ever change.  In that you must persist.   

 

The Relative Benefits of Undertraining

Matt over at Active.com just posted about what I call The Relative Benefits of Undertraining.  He quotes an old running maxim on the topic:

"It is better to be 10 percent undertrained than 5 percent overtrained."

After watching Dathan Ritzenhein win the USATF Cross Country Championships last weekend--despite having spent a month running on an anti-gravity treadmill due to an IT band injury--Matt said he came to think a little differently about the relative benefits of different training approaches.  For example, he writes:

"Training is a blind process, in the sense that you cannot discern a clear line marking the threshold between undertrained and overtrained...If you try to feel your way right up to this limit in training, you put yourself at great risk of crossing it, and I do believe that every step beyond the limit is equivalent to two steps behind it."

He also attributes--somewhat implicitly--American distance runners' early season successes and late season struggles to a notion of "freshness", that their bodies haven't yet broken down from the rigors of training.  I think he's on the right path with the insights about risk in training, but I disagree with the idea that Americans are successful because they are "fresher" early in the season.

Defining Undertraining and Overtraining

I think I should be very clear about what I consider Undertraining and Overtraining.  (Lest we talk right past each other.)

Undertraining:  This is the idea that you are doing less than you are capable of sustaining in your training.  It could be a case of cross-training due to an injury, insufficient speed work, or insufficient volume, relative to where you need to be in your ideal training program.  Undertraining is not to be confused with being at an early stage in one's training cycle, or not having reached one's "peak".

Overtraining:  This is the opposite of Undertraining.  It is doing more than you are capable of sustaining during your training, relative to where you need to be in your ideal training program.   Overtraining is not a case of having already passed your "peak". 

These definitions beg one question: Can we identify our ideal training program?  Honestly, no.  But with experience and enough training history to rely on, many good coaches can get pretty close.

The Relative Benefits of Undertraining

The definition reads something like this: Runners training below their sustainable limits will benefit over those who are training over their limits.  This benefit arises due to a decreased risk of injury, generally safer racing strategies, and the comparing of an individual's performance to lower standards of excellence or success.

Let's take a look at these in more detail:

Decreased risk of injury:  We all know that people who chronically overtrain are at higher risk of injury.  They simply don't recover enough.  People who undertrain, however, stay well within their body's threshold.  That means on any given day, the overtrained individual is likely to experience their inevitable breakdown.  The undertrained individual may still get injured--hey, it happens--but it's less likely.

Generally safer racing strategies:  If you feel you are undertrained, you will be less likely to attempt something outrageous.  You will hold back, run conservatively, and then go for it when you are sure you can do it.  This strategy won't get you a world record, but it will often eliminate the possibility of a complete and total rig.  Athletes who feel they are at their peak--people never feel they are overtrained--are more likely to take a "go big or go home" approach because they feel they are ready.  Many have to be scraped up off the course when "going big" turns into a "big rig".

Relative notions of excellence/success:   When you believe you are undertrained, you lower your expectations.   People pick goals and benchmarks based on what they think is realistic.  The problem is, we rarely have that good an idea what we are capable of at any given time.  As Matt said, "training is a blind process."  Someone who has overtrained might expect to do something remarkable as a result of that training.  And they might do it.  But when they don't, it looks like disappointment.  Undertrained individuals, on the other hand, either experience "expected struggles" or "unexpected triumphs".

What about the idea of "freshness"?  I just don't think it holds up.  Undertraining and overtraining occur over time.  You can over-extend yourself in a workout, but that's not exactly overtraining.  And even if an individual has overtrained for three months, they can make themselves feel pretty "fresh" by taking a few days of light training before a race.  Similarly, someone who is technically undertrained may have been doing 100 miles per week on hills at altitude.  His legs may not feel so "fresh". 

Dathan and Americans' Successes and Failures

I want to take a quick look at Dathan's USATF Cross Country Championships victory and the larger body of American distance runners' work to dispel the notion that they are benefiting when they "undertrain" and struggle due to "overtraining".

First off, Dathan may have been undertrained.  He certainly had to work out on the anti-gravity treadmill, so he wasn't running as much as he would have liked.  But running on the anti-gravity treadmill is no guarantee of undertraining.  You can work pretty darn hard on those things, at least aerobically.  I once saw Meb work out in a pool for three weeks and then run 13:35 for 5k.  It's not ideal, but cross-training doesn't have to hurt you.

I think the more likely explanation for Dathan's success is not his relative undertraining but the fact that the majority of his competition was in an early stage of their training cycles (as was he).  At this point in the year, he's not going up against guys who are tuned up for the ideal race.  So it was a "battle of bases," and Dathan's base is incredibly strong. 

In short: he didn't win because he was undertrained, he won despite being undertrained.

As for American runners, I think there are two things that make their races seem better early in the season.  The first is that most have somewhat early training cycles.  They race to get in peak shape by June (for the US Nationals), but the biggest international races are in August and September.  It's not that they aren't "fresh" come August and September.  It's that they have often been unable to sustain their peaks.

Second, as I wrote above, they are being judged against lower expectations early in the season.  They aren't expected to succeed or excel, so when they do the performance looks better than it is.  On the international scene, they are often beating guys who are earlier in their training cycles than the Americans are.  Later in the season, when the competition is reaching the "peak" phases of their training cycles, the roles get reversed but the expectations set early in the year make it look like a disappointment when the Americans struggle. 

Does this explain it all?  No.  I'm sure plenty of runners overtrain and start breaking down.  It's natural, since all elite runners are trying to find that magical "perfect training regimen".  Did Alan Webb just misjudge his training cycle last year when he ran the fastest times in the world but struggled at the World Championships?  Or did he overtrain and struggle because he wasn't "fresh"?  Or can he just not perform on the biggest stage?  I don't know.  But I lean toward the first explanation.

How about you?  What do you think about undertraining, overtraining, and/or American distance running?

The Great Gebrselassie to Bypass Beijing?

As you may know, Haile Gebrselassie just ran the second fastest marathon ever in Dubai--2:04:53--behind only his world record 2:04:26 in Berlin last year.  Apparently, he had some issues with the pace runners that caused him to miss out on the $1,000,000 prize (yes, 6 zeros) for breaking the world record.  He'll have to be content with the $250,000 prize for first place...

What's even more interesting, however, is that Geb is thinking about not running the marathon in Beijing.  He has a breathing problem that has already caused him to drop out of London, and he doesn't want to risk running the marathon in Beijing's polluted air.  He's very worried about it, as he says he plans to run until he the 2012 London Olympics, and he doesn't want to risk the race in Beijing shortening his career.  The article on all this is here.

This is pretty interesting to me.  Geb is 34 years old.  One would think this will be his last chance to win an Olympic gold.  But Geb sees this sport as a business, and he doesn't want to risk his livelihood (or that of the 400 people who work for his various businesses in Ethiopia) to chase a gold medal.

Of course, I'm assuming he can't beat Kenenisa Bekele and Zersenay Tadese in the 10,000 meters with his 34 year old legs.  Maybe Geb thinks I'm wrong.

It would be a shame if the Greatest Distance Runner Ever decides not to run the marathon in Beijing, but you have to respect any athlete willing to make a choice like that.  Geb has long term goals, and he's not going to sacrifice those for short term success.  A lesson many high school and college runners would be wise to learn.

In other news, I made a lens on Haile Gebrselassie.   It's got a biography, tons of great race videos, and some interactive stuff as well.  There's also a link in the sidebar.  Let me know what you think.

Haile Gebrselassie on Goals, Motivation, and Breaking the World Record

I don't know what I find more amazing, Haile Gebrselassie's new world record in the marathon (2:04:26) or this interview, which gives us a brief look into the mindset of the world's greatest.