Flashes of Panic

Sprinters like warm days. It’s easier for them to get loose, and easier for their muscles to reach maximum energy output.

Distance runners like cool days. Maintaining efficiency over long races is easiest when they can shed the excess energy their muscles are producing without too much sweating, a cooling method which is hard to keep up.

It’s pretty clear, at least to me, that Tiru Dibaba is here hoping for the kind of cool evening that let her rival Meseret Defar run the 5,000m world record here last year. It’s also obvious that there are a slew of sprinters here who are expecting to post up some seriously fast times early in the season.

So far, it looks like Dibaba will be disappointed. We’ll see if the sprinters are. So far, they’re all warming up, just like me.

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