By Kyle Merber
June 28, 2023
The main attraction heading into the New York City Grand Prix this past weekend was undoubtedly Athing Mu’s return to racing. We hadn’t seen her toe the line since winning last year’s World Championships, and an absence that long always invites questions. But any concerns over how she’d adjusted to training under her new coach, Bobby Kersee, and if the 21-year-old was healthy were answered after 1 minute and 58.73 seconds of racing. Mu looked strong and well-composed at the front, daring the pack to try and run a negative split with her, before slamming the door shut with a 14.09 final 100m.
With that performance, Mu extends her streak of sub-two-minute races to three years – just a couple of Olympic cycles shy of Ajeé Wilson’s 11. The first time Wilson broke two was at the USA Championships in 2013 when she ran 1:59.55 to finish third and qualify for Worlds. She has done it every year since.
That’s why no Ajeé fan should be worried about what is a Halley’s comet-level rarity: her running a bad race. Remember, her 1:58.16 from Paris is still the US leader. And also, I went to Philadelphia to join her for a workout the week before her off day in New York and I can personally confirm she is fit!
I have a bunch of takeaways from the workout, and without going into the excruciating detail I know you’d like to read, first and foremost it was a good one! On tired legs from the 800s and one set of 300-200-200, our first set, we ran another 700m at WR 800m pace with a total of 60 seconds rest. As a refresher, the WR is 1:53.28!
It’s rare for an athlete to stay with their coach from their youth track days all the way through their time on the professional circuit. Think about how much you evolve as a person and an athlete in that timespan – so it’s a testament to Wilson and her coach, Derek Thompson, that they’ve not only made it work, they’ve thrived. And they’ve done it their own way.
In a world of GPS data, double thresholds, lactate strips, heart rate monitoring, altitude tents, and endless testing in a lab, it’s refreshing to see that there are still athletes and programs that can be successful with a more old-school approach. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of that stuff. But Wilson’s training is a reminder that every successful system boils down to a simple formula: get tired, recover, repeat.
It took me a few reps with her to realize that Ajeé wasn’t even wearing a watch. She jogs eight laps clockwise around the track for her warm-up. When she runs on easy days she goes by the mile markers on the trail. During most reps, Coach Thompson doesn’t even yell out the mid-way splits, just whether or not his World Champion should speed up, slow down, or keep things where they are.
There is no training journal meticulously kept at home. And after a lot of workouts, Ajeé doesn’t even know how fast she ran them. When I went too quickly for a 300m rep because I was terrified of being too slow, there was no reaction from her or her coach. Like in a race, sometimes things go out faster than expected, and sometimes a washed-up miler will show up to practice and start pushing the pace.
Working Out With A World Champion: 800m Record Pace With Ajee’ Wilson
As someone who loved training and was always obsessed – often detrimentally – with the numbers and splits, I envy that level of liberation from the watch. Ajeé has reached nirvana when it comes to the understanding that the purpose of the workout is not to have a pretty Strava entry but to get better.
How many of us would benefit from not wearing a GPS watch every day? The purpose of a recovery day is to recover. Does knowing the seventh-mile split really help with that?
Ultimately, what a long and storied career like Wilson’s comes down to is trust. It takes trust in one’s training, which typically means trust in a coach. For most athletes, it would be a blessing to at least occasionally shut off the doubting, questioning part of their brains and leave the configuring to someone else.
And then it takes trust in oneself on race day that the preparation was enough. There is no need to compare one workout to another from years past, or to what your competitors are doing.
While Ajeé Wilson's career is underappreciated for its consistency and longevity, the way she has done it is also undervalued. Fortunately, she is only 29 – there is still time to fix this.
Kyle Merber
After hanging up his spikes – but never his running shoes – Kyle pivoted to the media side of things, where he shares his enthusiasm, insights, and experiences with subscribers of The Lap Count newsletter, as well as viewers of CITIUS MAG live shows.
