Why our marathoners need to be tactical

Kenya started its athletics programme at the Commonwealth Games in Scotland in earnest as they picked up two gold medals on the road and the track.
It was a good outing for the Kenyans after the Sevens team were knocked out of medal contention after losing to New Zealand.
While we celebrate the achievements of Flomena Cheyech (marathon women gold) and Caleb Ndiku (5,000m gold) we need to find out how we lost the men marathon to Australian Michael Shelley.
As we congratulate the Aussie for a job well done that should act as a wake up call to our runners that it is no longer the Ethiopians who are our main rivals.
We should go into the remaining track competitions knowing that anybody can beat us and they don’t have to come from a country which has a rich history of distance runners.
We should also learn to be tactical in future marathon races as defending champion John Kelai fell victim to an early surge by the Ugandans while the winner Shelley was just happy to follow the leading pack from a distance.
We hope our marathoners will remember to be tactical in future.