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Bernard Lagat is Focusing on the 5000m
By David Monti (c) 2012 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved.Used with permission.
Note: After this story was written, Bernard Lagat finished second (4:00.92) in the Visa Men's Mile at the U.S. Open indoor meet on January 28.
NEW YORK (27-Jan) -- Back at home in Tucson, AZ, the license plate on Bernard Lagat's Mercedes reads "5000M," a hint to where his thoughts might be when he competes in the mile at the U.S. Open on January 28 here at Madison Square Garden.
Lagat, 37, who won a record eight Wanamaker Miles when the Millrose Games were held in Madison Square Garden, has geared his recent training toward the 5000m race. He won the 5000m silver medal at the IAAF World Championships last summer in Daegu, Korea, and he hopes for 5000m gold at the London Olympics this year. He is the American record-holder in the outdoor 1500m (3:29.30, 2005) and 5000m (12:53.60, 2011). Photo at left by www.photorun.net: Bernard Lagat, at left, was 2nd in the 2011 World 5000m."I'm excited to run the 5000m," Lagat said in an interview here today. "I've been training differently. Like I said, I've been trying to get the speed, to work on the speed. . . but to also have the strength, working on the long distance stuff."
Under his longtime coach James Li, Bernard Lagat has surrounded himself with athletes who compete at the 5K and longer distances, instead of middle distance runners. That group includes the reigning NCAA cross country champion, Lawi Lalang; Mexico's best 5000m and 10,000m runner, Juan Luis Barrios; and four-time Olympian, Abdi Abdirahman, who just finished third at the USA Olympic Marathon Trials. Lagat, who only trains once a day but at a high intensity, said he's been doing more long runs and endurance work which he hopes will pay dividends in the summer.
"If I keep doing the best training ever, in terms of gaining that strength that I need by doing the volume, and also faster stuff on the track and the roads, I feel like I will be very comfortable when the outdoor season comes to do the 5000m."
Lagat won't have to wait that long. On February 11, he'll challenge the USA record for 5000m at the Millrose Games in the Armory in Upper Manhattan. He said today that he'll be ready for that race.
"I'm really excited about it," said Lagat, who hopes to break Galen Rupp's national indoor mark of 13:11.44. He continued: "I have a really good training group right now in Tucson, so this is the perfect time. I feel that by the time I come back to New York to do that 5000m race, I'll be ready for it."
In the U.S. Open mile, Lagat will face Kenyan Silas Kiplagat, last summer's World Championships silver medalist, a man who is 15 years his junior and who was the second-fastest in the world last year at both 1500m (3:30.47) and the mile (3:49.39). But Lagat has at least one big advantage over Kiplagat: his unrivaled experience on the the quirky 145.5-meter track in The Garden. Kiplagat has never run on the track.
"People think you always have to go slow (on the tight turns), but you have to power through on the curves then work on your strides, but not going all-out in the straightaways," Lagat explained. "Just basically running fast on the curve, and making sure that nobody is going to overtake you on the straightaway."
Despite the endurance tilt to his recent training (Lagat spent two weeks running alone at high altitude in Kenya last December), Lagat said he has enough speed--and experience--to beat Kiplagat.
"This mile is very important," Lagat concluded. "It's going to make me know exactly where I am in terms of fitness."