Bank of America Chicago Marathon 2013Oct 14, 2013 by Benjamin Rosario
Handing out Grades for the 2013 Chicago Marathon
Handing out Grades for the 2013 Chicago Marathon
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In addition to being a huge running fan I am also just a sports nut overall. I especially love soccer and in particular, the U.S. Men’s National Team. One of my favorite soccer writers, Jeff Carlisle of ESPN, always gives out “grades” after each U.S. game and it’s a column I never miss. So I thought I’d steal a page from Jeff’s book and give out some grades from yesterday’s Bank of America Chicago Marathon. Here goes:
Dennis Kimetto, A +++
Kimetto gets a grade worthy of Ralphie’s “dream” theme in A Christmas Story. Only this wasn’t a dream. The rising Kenyan star really did run 2:03:45 on a day when the pacers could only give him 25k and on a course that was thought to no longer have world record possibilities. After an opening 14:46, Kimetto and the gang hit four consecutive 5ks in the 14:30s. A 14:45 from 25-30k after the last pacer had said goodbye was the only blip. After that, Kimetto laid down the hammer with a 14:35 and 14:39 that shook everyone but Emmanuel Mutai. Kimetto seemed to hardly be fazed by Mutai’s presence however, and always the aggressor, pushed hard until Mutai too, was gone. And you can’t fault him for a 6:27 final 2.2 k (4:45 pace) into the wind and with the course’s only real uphill that left him just 23 seconds shy of a new World Record.
NBC Chicago Race Coverage, A
Absolutely excellent job. First of all it was technically sound. There were no buffering issues with the live stream and no technical issues with the mics, the feed, etc. (other than leaving the mics hot during the breaks which actually provided some humor on the live stream). Second, props for allowing LetsRun.com and Flotrack.org (or anyone for that matter) to offer the stream straight from their websites. It’s all about exposure and LetsRun and Flotrack brought the feed straight to probably 100,000 daily visitors between them. Finally, they didn’t mess around with their team. Ed Eyestone, Tim Hutchings and Toni Reavis were awesome. They bring KPE to the broadcast; knowledge, passion and energy. As the drama builds late into the race their voices get raised and you feel what they are feeling watching the race unfold right before their eyes. They did miscalculate a little by suggesting Jeptoo had gone out too slowly to have a shot at sub 2:20 and perhaps didn’t give her her just due when she ripped off some ridiculous splits late in the race to get the job done, but that was the only blip I could find. Overall, this was a broadcast worthy of a live national audience and I’d encourage NBC to consider that for 2014. My money is on ESPN2 getting really good ratings in November at NYC so maybe it can happen. I would love to see Boston, Chicago and NYC all back on National television within the next two years.
Chicago Marathon Staff, A-
Carey Pinkowski and his crew once again did an amazing job with the event. It is a little hard for me to grade the staff this year because I wasn’t at the event in person but judging off of first-hand accounts I would have to say it was as good as its ever been. The crowds were huge, you could see that on TV. They also handled the Boston tragedy in a very classy way with 30 seconds of silence to honor the bombing victims before the start. From the elite perspective they crafted a really good field for both the men and women with plenty of story lines. I especially liked them bringing in Jason Hartmann, Chris Solinsky and Alistair Cragg as pacers. Those guys have big fan bases in the U.S. and having them at the event means that much more exposure. It also introduces them to your event or to the marathon in general (in the case of Solinsky), a strategy that has worked well for Mary Wittenberg and the New York Road Runners.
Rita Jeptoo, B+
Jeptoo’s run was a lesson in how to negative split a marathon. Check out these 5k splits; 16:59, 16:52, 16:53, 16:50, 16:45, 16:33, 16:07, 15:58 and then 7:00 for her last 2.2k (5:09 pace). As LetsRun.com pointed out on their homepage this morning her last 12k was faster than that of both Dathan Ritzenhein and Matt Tegenkamp. The reason she gets only a B+ is that with splits like that you’d have to believe she could have gone out a little faster and gone for perhaps a sub 2:19 instead of a sub 2:20. You can’t fault her too much of course, but if any woman is going to start running in the vicinity of what Paula Radcliffe was able to do ten years ago they are going to have to be a little more risky.
Matt Tegenkamp, C+
Teg laid down a 2:12 debut, which isn’t terrible by any means. It’s faster than the debuts of Abdi Abdirahman, Meb Keflezighi, Brian Sell and many other American marathon stars past and present. It just wasn’t quite what he wanted or quite what his times at shorter distances would suggest he was capable of. I do think, however, it was enough to show that he can run much faster the next time around with just a few tweaks in training and simply with the experience of having this one under his belt. As for why he didn’t run even faster, much of what I have to say below when it comes to Ritzenhein’s performance is what I would ask when it comes to Teg.
Dathan Ritzenhein, C
First of all this isn’t me ripping Ritz like so many message boarders love to do. In fact, Ritz would probably grade himself much worse. Objectively, there just isn’t much to be happy about when an athlete takes a step backwards on a day where running fast was obviously possible. In this post-race interview on Flotrack, Ritz lets us in on the fact that he began experiencing cramping at 30k which made the last 12k a struggle. As always with Ritz, it’s a huge credit to his toughness that he held on as well as he did to still run his second fastest marathon ever and finish fifth place. Other, faster marathoners like Moses Mosop for example, did not survive so valiantly.
The question really is why does this keep happening? In my mind there are three possibilities. Either he’s going out too fast which is leading to muscle fatigue late or he’s running out of glycogen stores too early or he’s not ready for the pounding that your legs take from the pavement over 26.2 miles. Certainly you could make the argument that 1:03 was too fast for a guy whose PR is 2:07:47. 2:06:00 would be a nearly two minute personal best. Going out too fast can lead to muscle fatigue late in the race. I think marathoners of all levels have experienced that! It always seems he never wants to blame it on that because he says he feels comfortable through halfway and still feels good aerobically when the cramping occurs, but I mean who doesn’t feel good at halfway? And the marathon is never really all that hard aerobically. It’s all about energy distribution over 26.2 miles. If you use too much of it by going out too fast then you’ll run out of it before the finish. Simple as that. The same thing happened to Mosop, Abshero and a host of others on Sunday.
My second theory is just that he is running out of glycogen before he should. As we talked about on RunFan Radio with Scott Simmons, this is a common issue with American marathoners (of all levels) today. We aren’t training our bodies to burn fat efficiently. Read this article from Greg McMillan where he talks about doing long runs without carbs. We are constantly running long runs and long, hard workouts with sports drinks and energy gels on the ready every two miles. I have no idea if that’s what’s happening with Ritz or not. It’s just a theory but I’d be very interested to know if he and his coach, Alberto Salazar, are experimenting with carb-less long efforts to stimulate fat-burning and force glycogen storing.
Finally, what about just being ready to handle the pavement for 26.2 miles? As Tegenkamp talked about in his Flotrack post-race interview his initial thoughts were that he needed to be on pavement for his longer runs next time around. When you look at a group like the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project, whose athletes never seem to bomb in the marathon, you have to say to yourself that they are doing something right. Did you know that every single one of their marathon workouts are on pavement? What about Bill Rodgers and Greg Meyer and the guys from the Greater Boston Track Club back in the day? There sure as heck wasn’t a lot of soft surface running being done in Boston. I know Ritz has to be careful because of his injury history, but at the same time, running extra miles on the Alter G or staying on soft surfaces for such a high percentage of his runs is not preparing him for what he’ll face on race day. I’m sure he does a lot of work on the roads as well, but perhaps he needs to do more? Again, just a theory. Ultimately I am a fan just like all of you guys and I just want to see Ritz (and all the Americans) succeed. I know we work hard. I know we want it bad enough. I know we’re tough enough. Maybe we just need to be a bit more “old-school” sometimes.