Flashes of Panic

I spent a chunk of Friday afternoon downtown in a boutique hotel conference room, asking questions of a small collection of really fast people.

I’m ready to adopt Craig “Buster” Mottram as a new hero. First, he throws the typical distance-runner body type out the window; sitting at the head table, he’s so tall his feet stick out under the table’s skirt. Second, he’s not afraid to talk; unlike Sileshi Sihine and Gebre Gebremariam, who looked a little like the quiet kids hoping the teacher wouldn’t call on them, Mottram was practically grabbing the mike to answer questions not originally directed at him. Someone tried to get him to comment on the weather, coming from the height of an Australian summer, and he was even positive about that—too hot to sleep at home, he said, so he’s come here “to find some ice and bring it home.”

Beyond that, he’s refreshingly positive about competitive racing, as opposed to time trials in pursuit of a record. Why spend a week away from altitude training in Australia to fly to Boston and run an odd distance against a fast field, including one of the guys who beat him in Helsinki? Because he can’t find people that fast in Australia, he says. In a championship race, he points out, the character of the race is different, and paced races in Europe don’t teach you how to race that way.

Nonetheless, the world record was announced for our notebooks: 8:04.69 by Haile Gebrselassie. That’s two consecutive 4:02 miles, if the bald figure means nothing to you—or, more likely in this situation, a 4:10 followed immediately by a 3:54. I can imagine it happening; I think at least three guys in the field think themselves capable of it. Will the race take shape in a way that makes it possible? Less than twelve hours to find out. (The women’s 3,000m mark seems more likely.)

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