Guess who we interviewed today??? Mary Cain (and Katelyn Tuohy)

Amazing journalism. Thanks. Cain is an outstanding young woman and has a good head on her shoulders. I wish her the best of luck in the future.

Good work

Initial reactions are that Cain seems to have a very good head on her shoulders, sounds at peace with the current situation, and has very much not given up on becoming great again.

Tuohy sounds like a 15 year old saying what she feels like she's supposed to say. That shouldn't be a surprise, but sometimes it's hard to remember that despite all her success she really is just a 15 year old girl.

Best of luck to both.

Mary is looking very attractive

I would love to see Cain return to form and reach her potential. But some red flags to me in this interview:

1) she has no opener picked out, because it is an "off year." An "off year" refers to no outdoor world champs or olympics. This would make sense if she was in contention to make a tream, but she hasnt been at that level the past 3 years, so being an off year shouldnt matter, she should be focusing on getting back to that level.

2) she is foggy on when her injury was last year. She says she was hurt in May 2017 or the summer, but has no result from 2017 track season at all. There would have been time for a few races before then.

3) she said she just started running again "a few months ago" which seems odd if her injury was 7 or 8 months ago. Shouldnt she have been at least doing base work starting in the late summer?

Again, I would love to see her hit some fast times again. I just think she seems a bit unrealistic and in denial about it. When she can accept where she is now, which is no longer a contender for finals on the national level, much less the worlds level, the sooner she can start to build from where she actually is. The longer she believes she is still a low 4 minute 1500 runner, the longer she will continue this cycle of becoming frustrated and giving up before she ever has time to let the kinks work back out again.

It took he years of running to reach the worlds stage the first time. She is basically back to where she was at 14 years old, she needs to give herself those 2 to 3 years of accepting whatever results she has if she hopes to build back up again.

Good interview. Only concern to me was Tuohy saying 3k record her next goal.

Mary should consult with Emily Infeld on how to weather injuries. That woman has been incredible in rebounding off serious setbacks.

Samebsyien wrote:

Good interview. Only concern to me was Tuohy saying 3k record her next goal.

She said that was her “long term goal.” Someone needs to sit down with her and help her realize that she needs to focus on long term development instead of just focusing on where she’s going to set her next record in the next 6 weeks. She is just 15 though, so I blame Coach Diglio, not Katelyn.

Wow, what the heck happened in Portland?

But good to see that she is a good place.

Did you actually read the article? To me she was quite clear:

1) She has no opener picked out, because it is an "off year."

Cain, " I just plan on being a little bit more flexible with my season, being a little bit more go-with-the-flow when it comes to races since it’s gonna be kind of fun in that there’s no big, hard peak. It’s kind of more like jumping into different races and exploring the circuit and getting back into it in that sense." In other words there is no predicting what the quality of the field will be in any given race until just a few weeks before the race. She will pick her races closer to the day rather than five months in advance.

2) She is foggy on when her injury was last year. She says she was hurt in May 2017 or the summer, .... There would have been time for a few races before then.

Cain, "Yeah, I ended up getting a stress fracture in my shin because I ran through a calf strain, which I shouldn’t have done. .... I had gotten a fracture maybe in May [2017] or something." She was injured before the stress fracture, therefore before May.

3) She said she just started running again "a few months ago" which seems odd if her injury was 7 or 8 months ago. Shouldn't she have been at least doing base work starting in the late summer?

Cain, "I’ve been probably training for the last few months and just kind of building up slow from there. Started off more on the cross-training front and now just kind of transitioning back [to running]." What she said is totally different to what you interpreted. The length of her recovery will depend on the severity of the stress fracture, its exact location and its potential for re-injury. The world is full of runners who tried to do too much too soon after an injury.

I am sorry but I do not see any red flags here, just a level headed person getting back into running after a couple of years of set backs.

Mary Cain, best of luck to you in 2018. You deserve a healthy year and a return to competitive fitness.

I'm not one to believe in conspiracy theories, but I'm willing to learn.

The deletion of another one of my highly refined posts means that I will need to double my efforts to test the PC censors fortitude and mental agility.

M.A.G.A.

She looks thinner than she has in a few years. Her talent won’t go away but I always thought that she couldn’t maintain an elite weight. I don’t think she will ever get to 4 flat but I will predict a 4:12 next year.

Ummm, ever heard of Jordan Hasay?

sleeeper wrote:

Initial reactions are that Cain seems to have a very good head on her shoulders, sounds at peace with the current situation, and has very much not given up on becoming great again.

Tuohy sounds like a 15 year old saying what she feels like she's supposed to say. That shouldn't be a surprise, but sometimes it's hard to remember that despite all her success she really is just a 15 year old girl.

Best of luck to both.

That's what I took away from the interview as well. I thought Mary had a great perspective on her struggles of the last few years and she seemed quite happy. I could almost feel her smiling through the phone when she answered a few of those questions. I don't want to make massive judgments based on a five-minute interview, but she seems to be in a good place right now, at least in her personal life, and I hope she can return to top form as she is fun to watch at her best.

I interviewed Katelyn right after Mary and it was clear that she had not done as many interviews so she wasn't quite as expansive in her answers. Which is fine! I, too, had to keep reminding myself that she's only 15.

Not that I would presume to give Cain any advice but from my personal experience of returning (or trying to!) after a long lay off with injury I would say she has things about right. If you set a date for a return to competition that date becomes a goal that has to be met, at least in your head. Not to be ready to race by that date is seen as a failure - which simply adds more pressure and eats away at whatever confidence you have left after your time away from the sport.

I would suggest that she gets back to a reasonable level of fitness and then finds a low key race - if Cain can ever find a "low key" race again! It probably wont be a very successful race - but that's going to be the case no matter how long she leaves it before racing. Genuine runners will appreciate that she will have to make her way back to the top slowly, that she isn't immediately going to start racing at her absolute best.

I guess you avoided the part where I pointed out that an "off year" only matters if you are a world class athlete for whome worlds/olympics matters. My point was it shows she has the wrong approach. She needs to accept the fact that she hasnt been at thst level in 4 years and focus on improving from where she is now.

As long as she is at that level in her mind, she is going to continue a cycle of being frustrated with "slow" (for her) times and either over training or giving up, followed by another round of trying to get back into it, only to be frustrated again.

If she just accepts her current situation and learns to be happy with any progress and improvement. That is the only way she will be able to settle in for the 2 to 3 years it will take her to reach her previous level without flaming out again.

Sdfsdfsdfsdfsdfsdf wrote:

I guess you avoided the part where I pointed out that an "off year" only matters if you are a world class athlete for whome worlds/olympics matters.

You are totally missing the point.

If it was 2020, or even 2019, her approach would obviously be very different. It is quite reasonable, and correct, for her to accurately reflect in 2018 that she doesn't have any hard-and-fast championship/trials schedule to plan around.

The question was early-season races, the timing of which in a championship year would be much more important, in relation to the trials and building/peaking for that. Even an athlete with a vague shot at a national final would and should be thinking that way. If you don't think that Cain can get there by 2019 and 2020 I would love to make a bet with you.

I was really glad to see this interview. Not sure if it's just the way they were transcribed for the site, but her answers came off as calmer and more mature. It would take a while for her to get the old magic back, physically but especially mentally and she would have to be prepared for some mediocre results as she starts to step back in the psychological feeling of racing again. But is sounds like she is ready for that and has thought about the long road more than the short term. It would be a comeback story for the ages: Teen phenom who had been written off as a has-been comes back to fulfill the initial expectations everyone had for her.

Go Mary!