According to Sean Brosnan, Lex and Leo Young are in 13:20 5k shape.

There is something you are not understanding here. Removing limits. That’s what Sean Brosnan does. He is a great motivator. When a respected coach tells his athlete he can run X time the athlete believes it’s possible. Shoot for the stars…

If I was making a prediction based on summer threshold training, like Brosnan is, it would probably be based on comparisons to the previous summer, and also based on what I saw from previous athletes like Nico.

but as I said before, mature runners usually just get better at workouts with age. In my experience, young runners really, really suck at tempos. But im sure a lot of what he is calculating is based on what he saw from Nico prior to his peak.

That “limits” stuff is nonsense. If the brothers ran somewhere else, their coach would tell them they could only run 4:05 and even though that would feel relatively easy, they wouldn’t dare run a second faster? I’m pretty sure my limits in HS distance running were not set by my coach.

Daniel Appleford is a great runner but at 1:57/4:11 he doesn’t match up to the brothers. Why didn’t Brosnan adjust his limits to 1:50/4:00?

They got him a job at UCLA, why wouldn't he make generous claims on their behalf?

3:56.24 = 13:23

In the ballpark.

His message was a generalized one to all his athletes. And he is not the only coach who encounters a mindset where kids put limits on themselves. Look at what the coach at Jesuit New Orleans encountered when he started there. Maybe he and Brosnan articulated their messages differently, but the essential meaning of the messages are the same.

milesplit.com

A Culture Change Has Led To The Reinvention Of Jesuit's Boys

Cory Mull

Cullen Doody believes it\'s important to quantify success.

Open link

Have you been around HS sports? The kids almost always have big dreams and unrealistic goals. Is the reason that 90% of minor league players never make it to the majors a result of putting limits on themselves?

Some do, some don't. Why did the Jesuit kids think that winning Louisiana state meet was the end all when their coach then told them that there's a bigger world out there, like NXN?

That's faster than the HS record. Did somebody run it in practice?

He was able to get more kids from a school with good demographics for running to come out for the sport and some are talented. It’s no different than what’s been happening at schools like Davis, Great Oaks and Newbury Park. Telling kids they aren’t the best runner in the room has nothing to do with their success.

I was self-coached in high school, training and racong very seriously, yet I broke no World Records. Who put my limits in place? A pompous blowhard bragging is not what causes successful running. It happens in spite of such.

Going for the HS record of the most idiocy crammed into one post?

I am confused. He doesn't know what 13:20 shape looks like based on 1st hand witnessing of workouts. He hadn't had a 13:23 runner. I don't understand why that claim was made.

In order to optimize your talent you have to train diligently, and getting kids and parents to buy into the training and where it can take an athlete is part of the motivational process. Yeah, there are kids who ran good times in junior high but may not have realized the level of commitment needed to get them to a high level. Not every kid with talent is willing to commit to the sort of regimen that Brosnan and similar minded coaches want them to follow. For all I know this whole thing may have started with a freshman telling Brosnan that he'd eventually like to run 4:20. We know what Brosnan said in reply.

If Lex is in significantly better shape than he was when he ran 13:43, maybe he is close to 13:20s shape. Nico was in 13:20s shape his freshman year, and he stays in contact with Brosnan and his brothers, maybe they’re basing it off of what Nico was doing in that shape.

also, in the article linked earlier, it said NP was considering skipping Woodbridge and they were gearing for NXN. I thought they had committed to running lane, did the article just get it wrong? I hope they go to Woodbridge bc they could set a record that probably isn’t getting broken.

At least you got something right this time.

No different than Kerr and his coach claiming he was in 3:27 shape going into Tokyo. Neither of them have had any experience with 3:27. Chill out.

Brosnan is a high school coach.

When HS athletes find out that they have great talent for a certain sport, they usually become self-motivated and it’s human nature to do so. There were serious athletes in every sport at my HS and I especially admired some of the wrestlers who were absolute fanatics.

”Buy in” is the new thing to say but I’ve never heard an explanation of what it’s supposed to mean. My parents bought baseball equipment for me and later shoes for running but they never had a conversation with my coach and had no idea how much I ran each week or what intervals were.

Distance running is a very healthy activity and I don’t believe any parent would be opposed to their child competing and they would not need the coach to sell them on the sport. Did your coach have to convince your parents to allow you to compete in the sport? Your story about the freshman telling Brosnan he wanted to run 4:20,4 years later, is ridiculous. The kid would have no clue how fast he might run as a senior and would always want to improve just like talented athletes in other sports. When you ran in school, did you, on your first day of practice, state your goals for HS PRs or did you just want improve like everyone else did.