[tburmeister]

Thinner is faster, up to a point, but as noted in the article if you take it too far it leads to injury. I suspect a lot of the grey area stuff NOP was infamous for, i.e. abuse of prescription drugs and therapeutic use exemptions, allowed Salazar to be more successful with this approach with other athletes. For most runners, the short term speed gains of losing weight ultimately do not outweigh the lost training from injury, but if you can get a shady doctor to help with the negative side effects then the calculus changes.

Also, I wouldn't say Salazar is incompetent, but he was supposed to be this distance running genius and it seems more and more like he was no better than the dozens of crappy DI college coaches out there who get a lot of talented athletes, grind them up, and see who survives, leaving a trail of injury and burnout in their wake. Salazar just had access to better talent and drugs.

[The_Amp_Walrus]

Interesting, thanks!