Geb the Great (Read 678 times)

I think it's crazy he went out as fast as he did and still ran under 2:05. It definitely shows he's capable of 2:03.xx. Before the race he said he was gonna go out in 62:15 for the first half and try to negative split so it seems the pacers really messed up. His first 10k was at 2:00.00 pace which is nuts. He may not even be running the Olympic marathon now because the pollution in Beijing. If he only runs the 10k at the Olympics he may have one more shot at his record next winter.

I'm actualy rather disappointed (though still impressed!!). Reports were that he was going to go for even splits. Instead he goes out at 2:00:30 pace for the first 10K (!!!!), effectively destroying his changes at a WR. I'd understand if the point was to break 2:00, but not 2:04. I am a big Geb fan but unless he was secretly trying to break 2:00 while holding himself publicly accountable to a lesser goal time I would call this a "rookie" mistake (I use the term rookie LOOSELY!!!).

Actually, his first pacer is to blame. Geb kept telling the guy to slow down and to cool it, but he still went too fast. He was pretty pissed about it. Unfortunately, I doubt that he's going to run in Beijing because of the smog. I figured that this would be the case after Geb dropped out of London, and I knew 4 years ago that China wasn't going to clean up the air enough, but now its all but certain he'll be running something shorter in the Olympics.