Mary Cain 2nd to Last Place in Germany in 4:20.73

Bottom line--

she's not having fun anymore=bad running. She needs to get back to the enjoyment and take the pressure off herself, or she's done.

Guru Morimoto wrote:

messi wrote:

For the umpteenth time, Saladbar has monkeyed with Mary's running form. Her arms used to drive ACROSS her body....generating power; now they do not. "Efficiency" has robbed her of power......u gotta trust me on this,

100% agree. Watch her run that 2:03 800 split as a freshman. Supposedly bad form according to many who don't understand it.

It's time for her to realize she knew something intuitively that Salazar is unlikely ever to figure out. All she has to do is study how she used to run and let that happen again. And lean out a bit, unfortunately, which is not much fun.

You are joking right!

You can't possibility be saying efforts to clean up her form is why she in underperforming and that basically if she ran like she did when she was 15, everything would ok.

I'm not inside the US activity, but I think american people are too much complicated when try to explain the decrease in performances of Mary Cain.

It's not a problem of form, or of training. It's a problem of mental pressure, that in your Country is the main enemy for a right and progressive development of your best talents.

Since the most part of people following athletics are Young students, without any knowledge of the athletic history, there is the trend to give to the best Young talents responsibilities they are not yet able to sustain.

For example, about Mary Cain, already in 2013 people spoke about winning Olympics and running WR, when she was n. 27 in the world with 4'04"62.

The next year, she won World Junior Champs in 3000m, but her performance in 1500m didn't improve (4'06"34, n. 49 in the world).

The pressure on her mind grew very much, because, after winning WJCh, nobody had the patience to look at graduality for building up not only the body, but also the personality, and this fact destroyed her fun of running.

Same thing happened with Jordan Hasay, with people speaking about medals, when she is still one and half lap far from the best in the world in 10000m. She can become a strong Marathon runner with the time, but doesn't have any chance when we speak of track : the talent of the best African is something different.

I hope you don't do again the same mistake with Donovan Brazier and with Drew Hunter : athletics needs top american in every middle distance event, for the international activity, not only Young talents good for HS, and the best talents have to spend more long time before approaching the international level and being consistant as world class athletes.

Damn if all those Kenyans had run in an American college. I bet the WR records would have been a lot faster.

Thank goodness that we have a voice of reason on LRC, not just the usual idiots.

... consistency. Your two posts are completely contradictory to each other. While the collegiate system certainly isn't perfect, and has some significant drawbacks, going to and running in college would have given her the opportunity, the time, and the environment in which to work through the kinds of gradual development that Coach Canova is talking about.

Renato Canova wrote:

It's not a problem of form, or of training. It's a problem of mental pressure, that in your Country is the main enemy for a right and progressive development of your best talents..

+1

agree completely

Rather lacking in... wrote:

... consistency. Your two posts are completely contradictory to each other. While the collegiate system certainly isn't perfect, and has some significant drawbacks, going to and running in college would have given her the opportunity, the time, and the environment in which to work through the kinds of gradual development that Coach Canova is talking about.

You can have gradual development without going through a system where you have 3 season/year for several year and a coach who isn´t employed to care for someone´s post-collegiate career.

Don't be so quick to judge the pro route, after all there are many ways to go about it.

Lets see how Efraimson's pro career pans out and compare it with how Cranny goes at Stanford before regarding professionalism as the 'darkside'.

Well said, Renato. Here here!

...agree with Renato Canova. We need to protect and develop talent. Too much hype, very little time to develop mentally and physically. We are setting up kids to fail when the lights turn on.

So do I wrote:

...agree with Renato Canova. We need to protect and develop talent. Too much hype, very little time to develop mentally and physically. We are setting up kids to fail when the lights turn on.

Canova's post was great as was yours. But who is 'setting her up to fail' in this case?

Who is to blame for that? Don't blame the fans or media first. Blame Alberto, maybe her parents and Cain herself. Seriously.

Salazar said he knew she could run 3:55 in the NY Times. Her parents let her basically never run for her HS team even though it's a great team and then go pro early.

It can be REALLY hard impossible for a parent to know what to do. As they have no perspective and history in the sport. If you run 4:20 one year and 4:04 the next, they think 3:50 is logical the next year. It's not.

Maybe it is time for MC to ask Tinman to coach her

No, Massachusetts does no testing at the High School level. The only state on the east Coast that I know of that does test is New Jersey.

You are incorrect.

Too much too soo for MC. She tried flying too close to the sun and now suffers like icarus.

She is bright but i have found that even the brightest hs students havent always had the most emotional maturity. Her career looks like she was pressing too much to achieve just like sometimes pressing too much in a race costs you. It was like she was leading a race pack when she should have tucked into the back end of the lead group where she would be in it at all times but having patience.

Her trajectory is a combination of mental, emotional, and physical issues. I feel bad for her because a college progression and experience would have helped her in all these areas and likely would be a better preparation. She would have found outstanding college coaching guidance from someone who has a long history of developing kids ages 18-21.

rojo wrote:

Canova's post was great as was yours. But who is 'setting her up to fail' in this case?

Who is to blame for that? Don't blame the fans or media first. Blame Alberto, maybe her parents and Cain herself. Seriously.

Salazar said he knew she could run 3:55 in the NY Times. Her parents let her basically never run for her HS team even though it's a great team and then go pro early.

It can be REALLY hard impossible for a parent to know what to do. As they have no perspective and history in the sport. If you run 4:20 one year and 4:04 the next, they think 3:50 is logical the next year. It's not.

Since no one knows with any certainty what's going on with Mary Cain, placing blame is a bit of a stretch. Is there always someone to blame when a HSer who appears to have a bright future flames out in college to some degree? I don't think there is. Sometimes it just happens.

If blame must be assigned, I'd go with a combo of parents and Salazar (for pouncing where he probably shouldn't have) and the athlete herself. Perspective was not kept and that can be a problem.

TrackCoach wrote:

Guru Morimoto wrote:

100% agree. Watch her run that 2:03 800 split as a freshman. Supposedly bad form according to many who don't understand it.

It's time for her to realize she knew something intuitively that Salazar is unlikely ever to figure out. All she has to do is study how she used to run and let that happen again. And lean out a bit, unfortunately, which is not much fun.

You are joking right!

You can't possibility be saying efforts to clean up her form is why she in underperforming and that basically if she ran like she did when she was 15, everything would ok.

I'm saying if she didn't run like a robot, which she was taught to do by Salazar, AND she leaned out then she would be back in the sub-4:05 range.

It's not that complicated. Pretty simple physics.

4:20 @ 123 lbs = 4:09 @ 115 lbs

There's 11 seconds right there. Plus you have to figure she was off the back and stopped fighting like she would if she was in contention for the win. That loss in motivation during the race could easily be worth another 4-5 seconds.

So no, I'm not just saying she needs to have the same form as she used to, I'm saying she needs to run like she used to, and she used to run more fluidly AND with a leaner body.

Well actual physics say that denser objects move efficiently, so you're kind of just making stuff up. Please refer to the posts regarding her improper upbringing throughout her career for better insight.

She should have run track in College and not went straight to the pro's just my 2 cents.