This past weekend I found the time to watch the Adidas Track Classic. My favorite was definitely the men's 1500m where Bernard Lagat showed he is coming into great form for the 2009 season. He has always been one of my favorites as he beautifully turns his legs over at the end of the race.
Lagat is an amazing athlete showing a brilliant combination of anaerobic and aerobic running economy is the race. You can tell he is in good form when he can come through the first 800m in 1:52 or so this early on and then brilliantly close out the last 100m of the race as well. The speed and power that he has makes it possible. When you have a 1:46 800m speed then going through in 1:55 is not bad; the ones that hurt are those that are either not in 1:46/1:45 shape yet (which they should be) and then as a result, we saw them hurt for the last 700m of the race. For this same reason, athletes like LaShawn Merritt would make brilliant 800m runners-much like Jearl Miles Clark has done.
So frequently people think of 1500m runners as an aerobic animal. In all reality, they are an amazing combination of both the aerobic or anaerobic systems to their fullest extent and can turn on either-just depending on the type of training they are doing.
It will be great to watch Lagat as he races the 5K at the end of May.