I've just caught up on the coverage of the men's 5000m final at the 2011 Daegu World Champs and Mo Farah is on fire. Fantastic last lap...

Mo Farah has incredible speed left in his legs at the end of the 5000m. It's pretty amazing. Great work and I think this makes up for being pipped at the line in the 10,000m. 2 golds in the Olympics? We'll have to wait and see.

On a personal note, I actually know someone who ran in that race: Alistair Cragg. His dad used to coach us when we both lived back in South Africa. I think he had an OK race. He started off very well but got left in the dust when the pace picked up quite considerably at about 2600m. He ended up finishing 14th over-all and got a whole article for his efforts on the BBC.

I watched this live this morning on the BBC and must say I was on the edge of my seat. This was probably the most gripping 10,000m race I've watched and oh so close for Mo Farah. I think if he leaves his kick until 400m to go (instead of about 500m in this race) he'll get the Olympic gold.

Pete Larson makes an interesting observation about the stride rate too...

During the final straightaway to the finish, if you start when the race time is at 27:04.5, Jeilan takes 32.5 steps over about 9 seconds to the finish line, for a cadence of 216.67 steps/min. Over the same distance, Farah takes 31.5 steps in about 9.3 seconds, for a cadence of 203.23 steps/min. What this suggests is that Jeilan was able to ramp up his turnover during the final stretch to catch up to and pass Mo Farah just before the finish line, whereas Farah’s turnover remained consistent. The one additional step gained by Jeilan by ramping his turnover up was enough for the win!

My money is on Mo Farah for the Olympic Gold in 2012. I'm not putting it on one of my birth-countrymen - the Saffer got lapped!!

I've just watched a quick highlights snip on the BBC showing Usain Bolt's amazing 100m (BBC / YouTube) and even more spectacular 200m (BBC / YouTube) races at the World Champs in Berlin this week.

This man is a flying machine, not a running machine. Take note of his times: 9.58 sec and 19.19 sec respectively. Notice something extra-ordinary? His 200m is only a fraction more than double his 100m time. I'd say once he's going, he's pretty much going at a constant speed for at least 160m of his 200m (assuming it takes him 40m to get up to speed). Imagine his times if he could take a running start to both races or even if he could keep this going for a full 400m.

Actually, come to think of it, if we did a very crude and overly simplified calculation we can probably guess what he's capable of over 400m:

First some assumptions:

• He starts all events at the same speed and takes 40m to reach top speed
• He maintains a constant speed (neigh on impossible, but we're looking at an ideal situation) for 360m of his 400m race
• He only slows by 3 5 1/100ths of a second for every successive 100m

This would give him a time of 38:41 sec. He'd smash Michael Johnson's world record (43.18 sec) by nearly 5 seconds. He'd beat it even if we assumed he'd lose a whole second per 100m. Now that's impressive.

Sadly, I don't think he'll be moving up to the 400m any time soon, nor do I think he'd actually be able to attain such a time - he is a man after all, not a machine, but I'm certainly looking forward to his future races.