Michael Finch Athletics
If Elana Meyer was looking for a sympathetic ear after her disappointing London Marathon performance last Sunday, she’d better not look to Gwen Griffiths.
The newly crowned South African marathon champion was far from impressed by the performance of Meyer and believes the star needs a major rethink of her strategies.
Meyer, battling with cramp after just 22km, finished a disappointing fifth after starting the race as one of two favourites along with race winner, Kenyan Joyce Chepchumba. Meyer fell off the pace at 32km when Mexican Adriana Fernandez broke up the lead pack of five with a powerful surge.
As far as Griffiths is concerned, Meyer’s performance was a major disappointment given her outstanding ability. “Elana was very disappointing,” Griffiths says. “She ran slower than she did in her debut marathon and didn’t do a stitch of work the whole way.”
Griffiths refuses to sympathise with Meyer’s cramping problem, saying that incorrect preparation could have been to blame. “That’s all part of marathon running. She must be doing something wrong if she’s cramping because it wasn’t even hot out there. It’s all part of the preparation. It’s not like running a half marathon.”
Griffiths believes that Meyer, whose 66:44 in Tokyo was a world best for the half marathon, will never attain her goal of winning a major marathon unless she rethinks her strategies.
Even Colleen de Reuck, who finished a dismal fourth in Boston on Monday after starting as second favourite behind eventual winner Fatima Roba of Ethiopia, didn’t escape Griffiths’s critical eye.
“If you look at the performances of the two in their last two marathons, they’ve both blown badly over the last 10km,” Griffiths says. “If you can’t run very, very hard over that stretch, you can’t run a marathon. The days of running ahead and sneaking a win are over. Both Elana and Colleen need to rethink their tactics.”
As for Meyer, she admits that the memory of her torn Achilles tendon injury during the Atlanta Olympic Marathon had played on her mind when she first felt a cramp. “It made me have negative thoughts and that’s not good during a race,” she said.
Meyer leaves for the United States at the start of July to run in a number of road races, and plans to focus on the World Half Marathon championships and another marathon later in 1999.
ENDS