What Separates the Elites

Coach asked us what we thought the answer was one Saturday morning before our run. After many "wrong" answers, he finally told us. What separates the elite athletes from everyone else is to not have anything left after they cross the finish line. Elite athletes don't "save" anything. That's not to say that they don't pick it up at the end, but they don't sandbag the beginning to save their energy for a finishing kick. Instead, they run the race at a consistently hard effort, knowing just how hard they can run early on so that they can collapse two feet beyond the finish.

I have thought about this a lot. While I never feel great at the end of a race, and seldom have enough left in me to muster even a half decent kick, I have never collapsed across the finish. In fact, if I were to be perfectly honest, I could keep going. Obviously, I couldn't keep this up forever, but if the finish line were to be pushed a half mile further back at the end of a marathon, I would probably not even notice (mile markers aside of course). I stop because the finish line tells me to, not because my legs are no longer holding me up. While I'm not advocating collapsing at the end of every race, it's just something to think about.

Caroline Kilel - winner of the women's division of the 

2011 Boston Marathon