Disadvantages of Perfect Pacing??

Not to long ago, I came across a VERY interesting article from one of the best websites of all time, Runner's World. It is written by Alex Hutchinson, and talks about a marathoner I am not familiar with (any Canadian may know who he is though) by the name of Reid Coolsaet. Mr. Coolsaet, who went to the Olympics for Canada, recently returned from a two month trip to Kenya to go train with the elite Kenyans. The article has a very interesting perspective from Reid, it states:

"I know I’ve written about this phenomenon before but it still blows my mind that Kenyans stay with the leaders as long as they can only to drop out.  I witnessed it during the Discovery XC race, tons of DNF’s and tons of guys coming back to me at a very slow pace. On Thursday I took Eric, Dan and Lee to watch the famous Iten Fartlek workout and we stood at a corner where many guys call it quits.  We watched as 200+ runners came through and I bet at least 1/3 of them quit the workout after 5-6 intervals of 3 minutes instead of completing the prescribed 15 x 3 minutes. 

The mentality is to stay with the lead group as long as possible and hope that next week they can stay up there longer. As opposed to completing the full workout and hopefully later on they can complete it faster."

First off, this concept has NEVER crossed my mind AT ALL! However, this is a very interesting concept and one worth possibly exploring. He further states:

"In my training history, I've always been very disciplined about running workouts at a sustainable pace, making sure I can finish the session. Being able to judge the pace you can sustain all the way to the end of a workout seems like a crucial skill that you'd want to develop for racing -- after all, the art of racing is to go as fast you can without blowing up. Over the years, I've lectured lots of training partners about the error of their ways if they consistently misjudge their ability and have to drop out of workouts or skip intervals over and over.

And yet, this seems to be the default approach of the world's greatest concentration of runners! The North Americans tend to run as evenly as possible, in pursuit of time goals, while the Kenyans just go for it:

Even second- and third-tier Kenyans will run with the lead pack for as long as they can, looking for glory—and a paycheck—or bust. Many will slow dramatically or drop out later in the race, but a few will hang on for an unexpectedly high finish. If you are trying to break out of crushing poverty, it is better to win one race and drop out of another ten than to finish fifth or sixth many times in races where the money only goes to the top three.

The motivation of money is part of it, but I wonder whether this fundamentally different mental approach also plays a role in the phenomenal success of Kenyan runners."

So I pose the question to anyone who reads this blog. Are we training all wrong? My personal opinion is you would probably benefit from both kinds of training regimens. BUT, if the best runner's in the world do this all the time, maybe I am wrong.