Disappointing 5Ks

The Olympic Trial 5000m runs were not disappointing to watch - there was plenty of excitement!  The disappointment was in the poor race strategies demonstrated by many of the runners.

The easiest runner to pick on is poor Julia Lucas.  In the women's race, she was one of only 3 finalists that had the "A" standard to qualify for the Olympics.  So, when the pace started out slow, and remained slow, she should have been ecstatic, because if no one went under 15:20, she would make the Olympic team simply by crossing the finish line.  But with just over 1200m to go, and breaking 15:20 almost becoming an impossibility, she took off on the field, dropping the pace from the 73-76 range to 68 for two laps, before she started to falter.  This allowed the field an outside shot at 15:20, and with Julie Culley and Molly Huddle helping pull along the small chase pack, Kim Conley had just enough left on the final lap to both catch Lucas and finish in 15:19.79.  Sometimes a slow pace is a good pace.

And sometimes it is not.

In the men's race, there were four men who had already made the "A" standard of 13:20.  Three of the four are known for their closing speed: Bernard Legat's finishes are legendary (he remains the American record holder in the 1500m), Ryan Hall and former Tully runner Lopez Lomong, who was on the 2008 Olympic team, competing in the 1500m.  A slow early pace would mean that there was an obvious odd man out: Andrew Bumbalough, plus a dozen other runners who would not be competing for a spot on the Olympic team.

So, what happens?  A slow early pace.  A couple of runners, Mohamed Trafeh and Brandon Bethke made a brief effort to pick things up, but when they didn't sense any help, they retreated into the pack.  I'm not sure what Bumbalough was thinking - it must have been either ignorance or arrogance that had him following along with a trio that he had no chance of outkicking.  And what about the other ten gentlemen lacking the standard?  Why not go with the pair and try to run sub-13:20 in the most efficient manner possible.  When those ten didn't respond on those early laps, they were saying, "no, I don't want to make it to the Olympics".

Bumbalough's last hope was a Lucas-like strategy, but he appeared content to sit behind the big three, and when Hall and Legat popped 52s on the last lap (to just break Pre's Trials record), and Lomong put up a 54 to his 56, he was destined for the dreaded fourth spot on the finish list.

So, in a bit of irony, the fourth place finishers in the two races should have swapped strategies in order to maximize their chance of making the Olympics.  But the biggest disappointments of the meet were the gutless "Anti-Pre"s that made their way around the hallowed Hayward Field track, without showing any sign that they had a desire to be on the Olympic Team.  It was time to "go big or go home", and they went home.