After four days of watching (presumably clean) high school athletes go for all the beans at national championships, I was reminded of what "normal" hard core racing looks like. How many studs went out fast, looked like they were headed for a dominant win, only to fade a bit, or a lot, at the end? This is in contrast to what we see in most professional go-for-it-all efforts where the star of the day goes out at what seems to be an unsustainably fast pace, and just when you think they should be feeling the gorilla jump on their back, the opposite happens and they finish at a pace that is impossible to comprehend. I bring this up because watching Sydney run the first 200 at an unsustainably fast pace, I completely expected her to finish with the hand of GOD (or EPO) pushing her to a world record 400. But she was decidedly human instead. Now that you posit that her training partner has been busted, it makes perfect sense that Sydney just didn't have the "edge" that you would normally expect her to have 3 weeks before Nationals.
"Remember, however, that Occam’s razor is a heuristic, a rule of thumb."
Well played! I had to Google Occam's razor. I think if I were Athing Mu I'd be plenty concerned about Keely Hodgkinson and get my butt out the door and race. We saw how Sydney did at Paris after her long time away,(O.K., she PR'd, but it was expected she'd steamroll. Nice article.
After four days of watching (presumably clean) high school athletes go for all the beans at national championships, I was reminded of what "normal" hard core racing looks like. How many studs went out fast, looked like they were headed for a dominant win, only to fade a bit, or a lot, at the end? This is in contrast to what we see in most professional go-for-it-all efforts where the star of the day goes out at what seems to be an unsustainably fast pace, and just when you think they should be feeling the gorilla jump on their back, the opposite happens and they finish at a pace that is impossible to comprehend. I bring this up because watching Sydney run the first 200 at an unsustainably fast pace, I completely expected her to finish with the hand of GOD (or EPO) pushing her to a world record 400. But she was decidedly human instead. Now that you posit that her training partner has been busted, it makes perfect sense that Sydney just didn't have the "edge" that you would normally expect her to have 3 weeks before Nationals.
Good piece.
After four days of watching (presumably clean) high school athletes go for all the beans at national championships, I was reminded of what "normal" hard core racing looks like. How many studs went out fast, looked like they were headed for a dominant win, only to fade a bit, or a lot, at the end? This is in contrast to what we see in most professional go-for-it-all efforts where the star of the day goes out at what seems to be an unsustainably fast pace, and just when you think they should be feeling the gorilla jump on their back, the opposite happens and they finish at a pace that is impossible to comprehend. I bring this up because watching Sydney run the first 200 at an unsustainably fast pace, I completely expected her to finish with the hand of GOD (or EPO) pushing her to a world record 400. But she was decidedly human instead. Now that you posit that her training partner has been busted, it makes perfect sense that Sydney just didn't have the "edge" that you would normally expect her to have 3 weeks before Nationals.
"Remember, however, that Occam’s razor is a heuristic, a rule of thumb."
Well played! I had to Google Occam's razor. I think if I were Athing Mu I'd be plenty concerned about Keely Hodgkinson and get my butt out the door and race. We saw how Sydney did at Paris after her long time away,(O.K., she PR'd, but it was expected she'd steamroll. Nice article.
After four days of watching (presumably clean) high school athletes go for all the beans at national championships, I was reminded of what "normal" hard core racing looks like. How many studs went out fast, looked like they were headed for a dominant win, only to fade a bit, or a lot, at the end? This is in contrast to what we see in most professional go-for-it-all efforts where the star of the day goes out at what seems to be an unsustainably fast pace, and just when you think they should be feeling the gorilla jump on their back, the opposite happens and they finish at a pace that is impossible to comprehend. I bring this up because watching Sydney run the first 200 at an unsustainably fast pace, I completely expected her to finish with the hand of GOD (or EPO) pushing her to a world record 400. But she was decidedly human instead. Now that you posit that her training partner has been busted, it makes perfect sense that Sydney just didn't have the "edge" that you would normally expect her to have 3 weeks before Nationals.