The late Brooks Johnson once said, "it all comes down to speed, without speed, you have an incredibly fit runner who always gets his butt kicked". That may not be the exact quote, but that was the idea. A couple of weeks ago, there was a thread about the idea of dedicating a training block for speed development in 800m runners.
I've been thinking about that thread a lot lately. As my own team's summer training continues to progress, I constantly wonder, "am I leaving something off the table". I don't think that I am, at least when it comes to developing newbie runners, but I come back to thinking about races like Mills' monster kick in Tokyo (I've read that his last 200 was in the 23.x range, but I'm not sure of that), Skah's 53 second last lap to win the 10k in Barcelona, or even Parker Wolf dropping what appears to have been a 1:52 high, 1:53 low to win the NCAA 5k. I'm also thinking of Jakob's inability to beat Wightman and Kerr at the last two WC's despite being the world leader in the event.
All of the great kickers listed above exhibited great speed, BY DISTANCE RUNNING STANDARDS, but in comparison to elite sprinters, their finishing kicks were relatively slow. So, here's my question: What is the key to being able to kick well and win championship races?
Is it true top end speed?
Is it mechanical efficiency that allows a runner to run near his or her relatively slow top speed while near total fatigue
Is it just having a bigger aerobic engine than everyone else so that by the time the kick comes around, the athlete just has more gas left in the tank?
Is it lactate tolerance?
Personally, I feel like the answer is that it's a combination of all of the factors listed above and probably some I didn't mention as well. So, here is the second big question
How do you train athletes to be able to win races when everyone around them has almost the same ability?