Alberto Salazar, as usual, is leaving nothing to chance on a cool, overcast day at the Lincoln High School track while putting two of the world's best distance runners through the first phase of a workout.

Mo Farah and Galen Rupp run eight 200-meter sprints and eight 300-meter sprints -- they run some on the field's artificial turf, some on the track -- and then jog back slowly while Salazar mentally critiques their sprinting form and jots down their times.

Salazar obsesses on the details. He

meet the physically taxing, mentally demanding, scientifically grounded workload. Some of it is on the track. Much of it is in the weight room.

Farah and Rupp were born with ability. But ability alone didn't take them to the peak of their profession.

"They are more than a pair of lungs on legs," Salazar says.

On the infield, Portland firefighters play a pickup soccer game. Farah and Rupp share the track with members of the Portland State track team. A handful of Lincoln students stop to watch. Some recognize the runners. Many do not.

Farah and Rupp train with the Portland-based Nike Oregon Project, which Salazar founded in 2001 and continues to coach.

Then

with East Africans who were dominating distance running on both the track and roads.

In last summer's London Olympics, Farah, a Somali-born British citizen, won the gold medal in both the 5,000 and 10,000 meters.

He became the first U.S. man to medal at that distance in 48 years.

That might have fulfilled the quest that drove Salazar for more than a decade. But he believes the job remains unfinished.

His runners still can run more efficiently.

more powerful, kick harder.

Salazar and Rupp have paid particular attention to Rupp's stride, which they have tinkered to make shorter, sharper and stronger.

Salazar says it's tighter and more powerful now than it was the August night Rupp won the silver medal.

This is particularly important at the end of a race,

to a sprinter's form.

"A lot of people are quick to point out that guys are running well, so why would you want to change things," Rupp says. "Alberto has the courage and the guts to say, 'It's not what it could be.'

"That's a huge thing. A lot of people say, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it. It's good enough.' That's never been Alberto's way."

Long distance runners Galen Rupp and Mo Farah workout in Portland 27 Gallery: Long distance runners Galen Rupp and Mo Farah workout in Portland

Salazar, who starred as a distance runner at Oregon, won the New York City Marathon three times and the Boston Marathon once in the early 1980s. A building at Nike World Headquarters bears his name.

He doesn't have to do this.

. No detail is too insignificant.

When it comes time for Farah and Rupp to put spike plates on their running shoes, Salazar does it.

As they cool down from interval training, he leaves to buy their sandwiches.

Counting warm-up laps, intervals and cool-down laps, Farah and Rupp each will run 12 miles at Lincoln. That doesn't count the impromptu one-on-one soccer they play between drills.

They will run again later in the day, logging about 17 miles overall.

But running is only part of the day's work.

--

Farah, Rupp and Salazar meet less than an hour later at the Portland Athletic Center of Excellence on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Oregon Project strength and conditioning coach David McHenry is waiting.

McHenry, a former Penn State quarterback with a doctorate in physical therapy, shares with Salazar the belief that boundaries can be pushed through a scientific approach to biomechanics, the way the body moves.

Farah and Rupp start on an OptoGait treadmill that spits out a stream of data each time each runner's foot lands.

McHenry pores over the data for changes, especially those that might signal a breakdown in mechanics.

"What we find, more often than not, is whatever biomechanical imbalance that is manifesting in their running mechanics is a byproduct of a minor weakness they've developed from who knows what," he says. "So we correct the weakness and reassess."

That's done in the strength and conditioning room, where the workouts are varied and intense.

Salazar says runners new to the group don't have the strength to do the drills that McHenry puts Farah and Salazar through. It usually takes a year of training first.

McHenry employs medicine balls of varying sizes, kettle weights and barbells. The runners put on boxing gloves and spar with a trainer, taking care to shift their bodies to get their weight behind each punch. The drill forces the core muscles to twist and contract.

Core muscles are a particular focus of this session. Salazar says a tight core holds the runner's body in place in a race.

"If you've got good core strength, the force is going down from your front arm, through your body, to your hips to the back arm," Salazar says.

Every fiber of the body is directed to propelling it forward.

"If you've a weakness there, you're losing a little of your power," Salazar says. "It's like static interrupting electrical flow. But if everything is really stable, all of these forces constantly are going in the right direction. That's the way you get faster."

Rupp has become faster. Early in his career, his ability to finish a race was his biggest liability at the elite level.

Over the winter, Rupp clocked the world's fastest indoor times this year in the 1,500 meters, the mile and the 3,000 meters.

before joining the Oregon Project a little more than two years ago.

"Mo is getting stronger and stronger," Salazar says. "He was behind Galen in terms of stability and core stuff. He has progressed so much. He is really ripped now, and that is why he is kicking so fast. It's just body strength."

Farah and Rupp do lunges with unbalanced barbells to strengthen their hips. Much of what would be more traditional lifts are done on one leg.

"It's a lot more functional to what they do as runners," McHenry says.

They do heavy weights and limited reps, lifts designed to increase power.

Particular attention is paid to shoulder position, which McHenry says tends to be hunched in many distance runners.

"That loads the ribcage so every breath comes at increased metabolic cost," he says. "We want to keep these guys loose in the front, strong in the back, keep their shoulders back and their chest open so breathing becomes a lot less effortful."

The strength and conditioning session ends five hours after Farah and Rupp ran their first warm-up laps. They leave to nap before their evening runs.

It's all part of the long, slow, grueling build up to the IAAF World Track & Field Championships in August in Moscow.

Every day isn't like this one. Salazar builds recovery days into the week's schedule, which he says are as important as the mileage and the core exercises.

"Alberto is always trying to push boundaries, always trying to push the edge," McHenry says. "He does it in a very well thought out, very scientific way. He is as willing to grab onto something that works as he is to let it go if it isn't working."

It seems to be working more than not.

Farah and Rupp have the medals to prove it.

-- Ken Goe