While I can somewhat agree it’s hard to predict burnout for sure I feel I’m pretty good at giving a good guess and so our others. On these boards I’ve called Cain when she was at the height of running fast as well as Sarah Baxter, Claudia Lane and more. I’ve probably been wrong on some too. From my opinion as a coach on a more local level when I see girls train hard and have huge success early, and then push that success incredibly far it almost always leads to burn out. One thing we are beginning to notice is that high level training will kind of hold the last step of puberty for some girls, but that just means when it does come, it comes hard, ala Cain, you can’t look at her and say her body is the same as it was when she was running fast. No idea if there is anything scientific to that but I know what I’ve witness both at elite and local levels and it’s petty consistent. As we tend to expect and plan for a let down year sophomore year of HS we almost always have our athletes emerge stronger on the other side of that. Tuohy has talked numerous times how hard she works. What room is she going to have to improve if she is already working extremely hard and potentially has body changes coming too. She couldn’t close with B level pros today working that hard, yes she ran fast and it was a gutsy awesome race. But to make the Olympics in 2020 or ever she has to run that race and then be ready to close in a 58-59. Does that seem likely given that she never stops to develop herself and just keeps chasing fast times.
In regards to the differences between speed based 800 and distance type miles-5kers. To me it’s just that Wilson is a talent based sprinter type who didn’t train a ton at a younger age. Plus the shorter training isn’t maximizing yourself as much as it is just building strength. I guess in short I feel like focusing on the 800 good training is working hard and racing a lot but focusing on longer stuff needs to build more base, tempos, and also all out speed. But constantly trying to be in race shape doesn’t lend to that.