Reid Coolsaet, the Canadian Olympic marathoner who writes my favorite running blog, has just returned from a two-month stint in training in Kenya. If you're interested in what the athletes eat at Lornah Kiplagat's High Altitude Training Centre, or what it's like to race in one of the talent-discovery races in Eldoret, or just want to see some awesome pics, Reid's blog is the place to go.

Last month, Reid wrote about a phenomenon that I've been thinking a lot about lately. He joined a track workout with about 35 locals ranging from 2:06 to 2:15 marathoners. The goal workout was 7 x 2000m with 2.5 minutes rest, aiming for 5:55 (at altitude, mind you). For all but the very top runners, this goal time would be impossible. Reid's approach (at least, his intended approach): go a little slower so he'd be able to finish the workout. The approach of all the Kenyans: just run, baby:

I know I’ve written about this phenomenon before but it still blows my mind that Kenyans stay with the leaders as long as they can only to drop out. I witnessed it during the Discovery XC race, tons of DNF’s and tons of guys coming back to me at a very slow pace. On Thursday I took Eric, Dan and Lee to watch the famous Iten Fartlek workout and we stood at a corner where many guys call it quits. We watched as 200+ runners came through and I bet at least 1/3 of them quit the workout after 5-6 intervals of 3 minutes instead of completing the prescribed 15 x 3 minutes.

The mentality is to stay with the lead group as long as possible and hope that next week they can stay up there longer. As opposed to completing the full workout and hopefully later on they can complete it faster.

In my training history, I've always been very disciplined about running workouts at a sustainable pace, making sure I can finish the session. Being able to judge the pace you can sustain all the way to the end of a workout seems like a crucial skill that you'd want to develop for racing -- after all, the art of racing is to go as fast you can without blowing up. Over the years, I've lectured lots of training partners about the error of their ways if they consistently misjudge their ability and have to drop out of workouts or skip intervals over and over.

And yet, this seems to be the default approach of the world's greatest concentration of runners! I started to think about this last year when writing an article (in which Coolsaet featured prominently) about the role of the brain in determining our endurance limits. Early in the article, I note that the same pattern plays out in road races across the country: the North Americans tend to run as evenly as possible, in pursuit of time goals, while the Kenyans just go for it:

Even second- and third-tier Kenyans will run with the lead pack for as long as they can, looking for glory—and a paycheque—or bust. Many will slow dramatically or drop out later in the race, but a few will hang on for an unexpectedly high finish. If you are trying to break out of crushing poverty, it is better to win one race and drop out of another ten than to finish fifth or sixth many times in races where the money only goes to the top three.

The motivation of money is part of it, but I wonder whether this fundamentally different mental approach also plays a role in the phenomenal success of Kenyan runners:

According to conventional physiology, steady pacing is the most efficient way to ration your energy stores. Its logic has been taken for granted since Aesop and his tortoise. But it is inherently limiting: to run at an even pace, you have to decide on your final finishing time, and thus set a ceiling on your potential achievement, before the starting gun fires. As a result, even pacing may produce better results on average, but it is less likely to produce dramatic outliers: jaw-droppingly fast (or slow) times.

I don't know the answers here, but it's something I've been chewing over. Lately I've been working out with a few guys who are faster than I am. At last night's hill workout, there were four of us. The top guy started pulling away right from the start (it was a continuous workout); the rest of us were chasing, with me in last. I caught one guy halfway through the workout -- he'd gone out too fast and dropped out shortly after I caught him. Three-quarters of the way through the workout, the second guy, who was still ahead of me, dropped out. So only the top guy and I finished. Normally, this kind of result gives me satisfaction: I had enough self-awareness to start the workout a little slower than the others, and as a result I was able to finish it (though even I got progressively slower through the workout). But I wonder: would I be a better runner and racer if, at least now and then, I threw caution to the wind and just ran until I couldn't keep it up any longer?

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