Ritz

Those who are critisizing Wetmore are the the same guys that make American distance running suck. You need to run LONG and you need to run HARD... just about EVERY DAY if you are going to be a World or Olympic medalist. If you can't handle the intensity, you won't be able to do it. Sure, Dathan may be able to back off a little and run 13:20... but I'm sure the kid is looking to be a World Champ and Olympic Champ. He needs to constantly be training at the verge of injury. IT DOESN'T HAPPEN ANY OTHER WAY. Until you guys realize that, we AND YOU will be mediocre runners in the grand scheme of things. Ritz will come back even stronger from this injury... mark my words.

M

>Ritz will come back even stronger from this injury... mark my words.

If for no other reason, he'll have an extra little knot of calcium where the break was..... (intended as humor from personal experience)

Although I'm not sure I agree with the "need to run long AND ... run hard" quote standing by itself. Doing both of them simultaneously, day in, day out, is (in my opinion) counter to really effective training. I'd be surprised if Wetmore was advocating that sort of strategy, but I wouldn't be surprised if his runners kept trying to turn it into that.

Conto, right on.

I have to believe that most of you are joking. If you train hard and consistantly you will get hurt sometimes, it is unavoidable. Ritz trains hard if there is someone telling what to do or not. He was the one racing and training hard this summer. It is not as if Wetmore was standing there with a stopwatch in July.

As for Nostradamus, errrr "Mike", who said that Ritz would be hurt by his Sophomore year: Wow you are a freakin' genius-you should be working for the CIA or at least doing some sketches for the police! You actually guessed that a hard nosed athlete who is , by all accounts, driven to succeed, would get hurt at some time during a 2 year period! That is just uncanny insight.

It must be a tough day when the fellow you sorry geeks live through vicariously is hurt. I understand your pain, but try not to take it out on Ritz. You will only feel guilty about it later.

Conto wrote:

Those who are critisizing Wetmore are the the same guys that make American distance running suck. You need to run LONG and you need to run HARD... just about EVERY DAY if you are going to be a World or Olympic medalist.

M

I think the problem here arises when the Wetmore supporters think that the Wetmore bashers are quality over quantity, early 1990's people.

It's not that at all. I believe in extremely high mileage, and running lots of days fast. There are really only two problems I have with Wetmore:

1. This is less significant. He calls his system a "modified" Lydiard system. Fine. The only problem is, he defeats the entire purpose of a Lydiard system by trying to peak his guys 3 times per year.

2. This is the biggie. You want to know why those HS kids get hurt on 40mpw? The same reason college guys get hurt on 100mpw. They run hard every day. Problem is, the body needs to recover. You can't fight that fact. You can spout rhetoric all day about what it takes to become a champion, blah blah blah. Fact is, you have to back off some days. Not volume-wise, but in terms of intensity.

Wetmore's guys (from what I gather) seem to run hard every day, and then wonder why they get hurt.

And no, injuries are not a neccessary part of building up to high mileage, and running fast. Consistent training beats injury-riddled two-month breaks any day of the week.

Wow, you know I don't see why American distance running is so bad afterall. After reading post after post every one of you should either be a world famous coach or an athlete winning the olympics or something because obviously the one kid who's actually proven that he can run with the Kenyans is an idiot and his coach who he seems to trust very much is even a bigger loser because of some freak accident. Shit happens, injuries happen. And, if any of you read the interview you will see that they are looking long term in the fact that they did redshirt him so that he won't come back too quickly or too hard. Also, look at wetmore...he doesn't stress racing. The team rarely races. How can that be stupid? As a 17 year old high school senior I look up to ritz more than any other athlete and to me him and webb are the prefontaines and peter snells and jim ryuns and ron clarks of previous generations. These are the guys that inspire us now and yes, they make some mistakes and some accidents happen but why should we sit here and bash them when they obviously just want to be the best and are doing what they think is the best. And, if you guys disagree that's great but as in any running related discussion, you got to prove it on the track. So, if any of you can run 13:27 or a 3:53 go ahead and criticize but if not I suggest that you post with some humility. But, that's only my two cents.

Mike, Wetmore isn't out there everyday on their easy runs telling them to relax. Even if he said go slow, crawl, run 7:00 pace, do you think they will? If you've run at a competitive D1 school, you know that these kids are ultra competitive, have been that way their whole lives, and usually, especially at such a young age, can't hold back; even when their coach tells them to. You assemble some of the best runners this country has had to offer over the last 10 years and throw them on a team together, they're going to work each other senseless... ITS WHAT'S GREAT ABOUT THEIR SITUATION. If only more people saw it that way. If only you could get Meb, Lane, Abdi, Goucher, to all train together in the same location, everyday. Sure, one or two will get injured, but the years of insane training will pay huge come 2004 or 2008. Even if one survives, I would rather have one champ or medalist than 2 semi finalists or "also finsishers".

M

Obviously they're super competitive kids. That's great. The workouts and hard runs 4-5 days a week are gonna be awesome. But if Wetmore wants to be the best coach he can be, it's his job to get their bodies recovered for the next hard training session. If he knows his guys are running each other into the ground every day, and then acts surprised when a third of them get hurt, that's ridiculous. The coach can't just "tell" them to hold back. It's his job to hold them back hardcore when neccessary, and to kick their asses when it's time to go hard.

Yeah--some people apparently do not like Mark Wetmore while others think the world of him, and this might even extend to some of his athletes. He's a pretty misunderstood, albeit charismatic, Paganish-intellectual sort of guy. He doesn't suffer fools gladly. If most folks got to know him they might actually like him, while others would find they dislike him even more than they thought.

I remember Mike's Wetmore-ripping post on RWOL a while back and that captured the anti-Wetmore camp perfectly. Maybe they have some personal justification or axe to grind in doing so but that's their business. Still, fellas, you're supporting your argument(s) with a weak grasp of the facts. Maybe Chris Lear's "Running With the Buffs" has lent credence to that perspective.

I remember reading on here Wetmore has his guys do 110+ mile weeks. Huh? Try 90 at max. Aaron Blondeau had to do 30-40 and cross-train because he couldn't handle mileage. Why do they do mostly singles at CU? So they can attend school and do well in classes, not necessarily Wetmore's ideal choice of coaching method. He makes do with ther time constraints imposed on being a full-time student.

And where do folks get that one-third of Wetmore's guys are ALWAYS injured?? Name the others who are injured THIS season. Slattery--healthy; Jorge Torres--healthy; Edwardo Torres--healthy; Jon Severy--healthy; Brett Schoolmeester--healthy; Billy Nelson--healthy; Jared Scott--healthy...the rest--healthy. ALL of the CU women--healthy. The top seven men last year were all healthy at nationals, not even a cold. Ritz and Colorado caught a bad break for sure, but it wasn't from Wetmore and his stopwatch yelling at his prodigy to push 22-milers.

One-third. During Chris Lear's penning of "Running With the Buffs" 1998 cross country season, 1/3 of the men's team had injuries of various sorts (including Chris Severy---who died in a freakin' bike accident). This was a bad jag in the program, but not a microcosm. People weren't able to sleep well or eat well after that. Sevdog was the heart and soul of the CU team.

RWTB author Chris Lear, with all due respect, tended to overstate how hard the guys trained, probably for narrative effect more than anything. And Adam Goucher, though he might not be better, pushes himself harder than any runner out there, including Pre or Kennedy. Goucher is a pitbull in a strong but somewhat fragile body. And remember, Chris Lear was thinking Hollywood and big dollars when he wrote that thing. Funny thing is, Wetmore said at a speaking engagement that he has never even read RWTB. 'Too much like listening to yourself on an answering machine.' Hmmm...

Wetmore's mentor Arthur Lydiard visited Boulder a few years back. When the legend spoke, hundreds of local runners crammed into the Broker Inn to listen. In effect Lydiard said Mark Wetmore is the only disciple (Wetmore worked with Lydiard for five years in Europe) who understands his coaching methodology and is able to apply it in his coaching practice. He is the only guy he had worked with who really 'gets' it.

CU's hard days are solid hard days but they're not supoosed to be races. Their easy days are not that easy (sub-7s maybe), but I was able to run a few miles with Ritz and Torres on an easy day and it was something like 6:30s per mile. That is not that hard for guys who are potentially running sea-level 10Ks at 4:30s.

Ritz got hurt doing base work. This may have been a long time coming. A fair number of collegiate and post-collegiate runners were able to train and stay with those guys (big CU and non-CU group in the summers) during their mid-1990s summer base-building period, including myself. I ran on some of thoses summer runs; some of the runs were solid, even really tough at times (Goucher, Pepper, Wells et al), but they weren't trying to hand me my ass and I wasn't a standout by any means. Wetmore also maintains that the guys who led the early-season workouts were always cooked by NCAAs so he tended to try and reign them in.

If what you say is actually the case regarding CU's training, then I will back off in my criticism.

What gets to me is people who defend the type of training described (and perhaps as you say, embellished) in RWTBuffs. That is all.

Ignorance is bliss

Injuries don't happen overnight, they usually accumulate over time. There is no way to tell that "the injury happened during base training". If you understand basic human physiology and cell chemistry, stress related injuries build over time, reduction in bone density, stress placed on bone or muscle OVER TIME.

And, a femur fracture in a male is rare. The femur bone is the strongest and longest bone of the body. You gotta really put in some effort to break that one, and I would wonder what Ritz's overall bone density is - considering how frail he appears.

Yes, injuries happen to all runners. 98% of them are training error, eating disorders, impact fatique, structural imbalance. The other 2% are genetic or freak accidents, like tripping over something and breaking a bone.

Gee, I wonder how many miles a week he was running???????????

Webb would eat way more all-you-can-eat shrimp dude!! NO CONTEST