Great Expectations: By Bryan Green

 

Can anyone live up to the standard Mr. Solinsky set this year?

By Bryan Green

"Happiness is reality minus expectations."
--Tom Magliozzi

"I am so bored by this result."
--Anonymous LetsRun message board poster, following Galen Rupp's 13:10.05 PR in Gateshead

Galen Rupp ran another PR on Saturday.  His 13:10.05 at Gateshead moved him up to 8th on the US all-time list, just .05 seconds away from Adam Goucher--the man once thought to be America's next great hope at 5000m--and yet the performance was met with little of the fanfare we might have expected just two years ago.

As a fan of US distance running, I can't help but feel I've been spoiled these past couple years.  I've seen my countrymen medal at the Olympic Games (Flanagan) and World Championships (Lagat, Rowbury, Johnson), break American Records (Flanagan, Barringer, Ritzenhein, Solinsky, Lagat), and rewrite many of the US all-time lists.

On the women's side, our middle distance runners have developed into arguably the best group in the world.  We now have six active 800m runners going sub-2:00 and four who are sub-4:00 (or super close, in Rowbury's case).  On the men's side, our long distance runners continue to rewrite the US all-time lists.  Five of the top 10 performers on both the 5000m and 10000m lists set their bests between 2008 and now.

And then there is the new crop of young runners, athletes like Phoebe Wright, Angela Bizzarri, Lisa Koll, Andrew Wheating, Robbie Andrews, German Fernandez, Chris Derrick, and (I never thought I'd write this) A.J. Acosta (!) who all appear to be on the cusp of joining the US elite.  Yes, I can't say it enough, it's a very fun time to be a fan of US distance running.

Some memorable expectation-defying performances German Fernandez #1 (2008): HS distance double 4:00/8:34 German Fernandez #2 (2009): 3:56.5 debut indoor mile for WJR Jenny Barringer (2009): sub-4 near victory in Pre Classic 1500 Maggie Vessey (2009): drops a world leading 1:57 after 12 races w/o breaking 2:00 Dathan Ritzenhein (2009): 12:56 5000m AR is 20 second PR Dan Huling (2009): 8:14 steeple PR to go from unknown to mostly unknown Meb Keflezighi (2009): wins NYC marathon against stacked field Alysia Johnson (2010): wins World Indoors after 2 years w/o breaking 2:00 Lisa Koll (2010): solo 31:18 to get CR at Stanford and become #6 US Chris Solinsky (2010): debut 10k is sub-27 AR, followed by 16 sec PR at 5k for #4 US all-time Phoebe Wright (2010): 1:58.22 huge PR at Pre Classic

But it's also a dangerous time.  That's because US runners haven't just run fast times; they have put up such a consistent run of unbelievable performances that fans are losing their sense of perspective when it comes to judging their performances.  We're like a power hitter on a hot streak...we think every swing is going to be a home run, and we're a little disappointed when it's just a single.

When I grew up, the advice I got playing baseball was not to try to hit home runs, but to just hit the ball hard.  Put the ball in play and good things happen.  Great hitters get lots of hits, not necessarily home runs.

This isn't so different from my former coach Bob Larsen's advice for becoming a great runner: Put yourself in position to have a good race every race (just hit the ball).  Great runners don't run great and then run terribly, they consistently run well (hit the ball hard every time).  Once in a while they may really hit one and get a PR (home runs aren't the goal, they just happen).

Maybe today's runners didn't play baseball.  Or maybe they did.  I don't think many of them are swinging for the fences.  I think they are simply trying to hit the ball hard, and for whatever reason that's led to a bunch of grand slams of late.  So many that it's almost begun to seem normal.  

But it's not normal.  It's fantastic, it's awesome, and it's a bit mind-blowing but it's so not normal.

We've seen so many out-of-nowhere great performances that when Galen Rupp runs 13:10 in his European opener, it doesn't even get bold font on the LetsRun homepage.  Two years ago it would have been a lead item and the forum might have gone down.  But today it gets one of two responses: a shrug or a hyper-critical analysis of why it wasn't good enough!  What a difference two years makes! 

And I'm not being critical of LetsRun here.  I wouldn't have done anything different.  In fact, despite the fact the anonymous poster I quoted above was probably trolling, the truth is that I felt pretty much the same.  I nodded my head and thought, "Not bad."  Not bad?!  In reality, I should have been ecstatic for him, but it's hard when your expectations are set way too high. 

Galen Rupp is right on track.  He's hitting the ball hard every time out there.  In baseball it can be hard to get excited about a routine single, but when a batter starts stringing a bunch of them together, good things happen. Maybe one of these hits will be a home run.  Maybe not.  But ultimately that won't matter.

If he can continue to smack out performances like these, we'll look up and wonder why we weren't more excited about Galen Rupp's breaking all the American Records.  And the only answer will be that we were too busy watching other people hit home runs, and he just didn't do it with a big enough swing.