On New Year’s Eve, Ingebrigtsen withdrew from what was referred to as a world record in the 5 km street race in Barcelona.
– Sore throat. Can’t take anything up into the Sierra Nevada, he wrote in a message to NRK then.
Then he went on the planned stay at high altitude and was in the Sierra Nevada when, on 7 January, he received the award as male athlete of the year during the sports gala.
WORLD CHAMPION: Jakob Ingebrigtsen won his first WC gold as a senior in the 5000 meters in Eugene.
Photo: Stian Lysberg Solum / NTB
– Constant relapses
According to the plan, he should still have been there. He is not.
– I decided to go home after two weeks in the Sierra Nevada, due to constant relapses with colds after stepping up training, he reveals in a message to NRK on Sunday.
He does not want to overdramatize the situation.
– I thought it was better to go home and start normal training as soon as possible, than to continue jogging at altitude. Things have progressed a lot in the last week, and I am almost 100 percent back in normal training, says the 22-year-old.
Indoor season in jeopardy
At the same time, he acknowledges that the entire indoor season is at risk.
– At least I have to train in the coming week to make a decision about running indoors. The Indoor European Championships would have been fun to achieve anyway, acknowledges Jakob Ingebrigtsen.
– Everything depends on what happens in the next 14 days, he states.
The Indoor EC takes place in Istanbul 2-5. March, i.e. in a month and a half. However, Ingebrigtsen has important races on the schedule before that time.
On February 15, he will initially run 1,500 meters in Lievin. He set a world record for the distance in the same race last year. On 22 February, he is registered for a 3000 meters in Madrid.
The organizers in both places have announced world record attempts, but right now Jakob Ingebrigtsen is a long way from world record form.
– Impossible to say anything about lost form
– Madrid is very unlikely, but it looks dark for Lievin too. If there is to be a race, everything has to go smoothly, says Ingebrigtsen, who says that he has been “jogging on and off for a month”. It is quite a long way from the training he normally engages in at this time of the year.
He nevertheless does not take the sorrows in advance, and points out that a month of less training does not automatically have a very negative effect on physical capacity.
– It is easy to say how much training has been lost, but impossible to say anything about lost form. It will be exciting to see with interval sessions next Tuesday and Thursday, says Ingebrigtsen to NRK.
At least he knows that he was in good shape before the illness. Ingebrigtsen was superb when he won the EC cross-country race in December. It was the end of a year in which he took WC gold in the 5000 metres, EC gold in both the 1500 and 5000 meters and set his first senior world record in Lievin.
But also last winter Ingebrigtsen struggled with illness. After he took silver in the 1,500 meters during the indoor WC in Belgrade, it turned out that Ingebrigtsen had been running with coronavirus in his body.
So it didn’t ruin the outdoor season.
