There's nothing standing in your way

It's hard to know what maintains the will to win. There is more information on the importance of altitude training especially if you are born at altitude and have grown up used to running over the open dirt roads, covering significant distances each day in the normal course of the days events.

Watching the woman's marathon, run under a pitiless sky with a heat, which one must assume favour the African runners. Each athlete  pounding away, with no shade at all, the miles slowly eaten up and in the distance Rio's city sky line looms ever closer to the finish.

The Ethiopian, and the Kenyan runners are all in place. Each marathon is a template. The same runners from the same nationalities make up the lead group but unusually, this time, there are also three American Caucasian women who have challenged the Africans  and also one white female from Belarus.

Clearly the American coaching has given these girls a self belief which is missing in the rest of the non African athletes. The long distance British women never seem to put themselves up for a contest, they seem happy to sit at the back of the race and run within their mental competence.
Yesterday we flew the flag for Mo Farah but of course he was born in Africa, it's his gene pool which marks him out for success. He also trains in America and uses an American coach to instil what it is that's needed to make a champion.
His training partner, the American Galen Ruff is the only white male who seems to be able to mix it with the Africans and in the 10,000 metre race, which Farah won, he finished amongst the Africans in the sprint to the line.
It's impossible not to acknowledge that the African runners, at the longer distances have some sort of advantage over white people, usually leaving them trailing in their wake but it seems that it's not all anatomical and that the mental aspect of what we believe we can achieve is as important. Galen Ruff and the American women were keen to banish the mystique of African invincibility, the "no can do" attitude which limits the British long distance runners as they trail around, with the other Europeans at the back of the field, losing not only minutes each lap but also the confidence to compete.
It's only in athletics that we trail behind. In cycling and in rowing we lead the world and, speaking to the athletes after their success it's clearly down to coaching, nutrition, and a host of small things which seems to give them the edge, the mental capacity to know there's nothing standing in their way.