If you go to Hodgie-san's website and look at what he did, what Rodgers did, what malmo, did, it's impressive but it's simple. Years ago I was talking to Bob and he said that running is an incredibly simple sport and that people have a hard time believing it's as simple as it is.
In my opinion people today have lost that simplicity. Where you'd once get together with a few guys and do a 20 miler going hard if you felt like it for a while, now it's all pre-planned and analyzed. I don't know if it's better or worse, I have my ideas, but it is a difference.
When Ryan Hall decided not to run in Chicago didn't he say a reason was that his workouts weren't going well? I'm not going to criticize his decision but thirty years ago no one would have done that. If your workouts were going poorly you went to the race and hoped it went better than your workouts. Again, I'm not criticizing Hall but there's another difference.
People raced more thirty years ago as a rule. That's another difference and here I think clearly the old way was better. You cannot get racing experience any way other than racing. It's one thing to get very fit. But it doesn't follow that just because you're really fit you're going to race well. You need to practice racing and really the only way to do that is to race."
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