Beamish injured again

I like the coffee club guys but I was surprised they all got contracts through 2028. I mean will Ollie Hoare for instance be a factor at Olympic level in 3 years time.

And no one has brought up Alicia Monson. What has happened to her? I've seen a few of Morgan's workout videos with Dathan and they seem a little over the top.

post #13

I think the brand likes him too though. Extending him is probably about the positive attention he and the podcast bring, as well as showing loyalty. They do have some NIL deals (Rocky Hansen), but I think they knew they won’t be in the mix for the big-money guys like Strand, Nathan Green et al.

You are CRAZY if you think Nuguse's workout is harder. 2x800 in 1:49 is INSANE, especially with tough reps before it.

Yes 4:59 for a 2k is fast but it's his 3k pace. Remember - he's a 3:43 miler too so coming through 1600 in 3:59 is a breeze.

Let's not pretend like Ritz is the only coach who has injured athletes. Mike Smith has FAILED to keep Rupp healthy. Woody - Injured. Grijalva - injured. Even his own WIFE has been really injury prone.

I mean at the end of the day, On is paying them to sell shoes. Their value just because they have fans (both personally and from the podcast) make them way more valuable than someone who's at an equivalent performance level but without much presence online.

On probably paid Zendaya more for her On ads than any one running athlete for an entire year

Imagine being a fragile athlete already, not training for months…not racing for months…then you do two hard steeplechase races in 3 days. Now tell me, how smart is that really?

Take out the sub-5 min 2k and you basically just have a 7k threshold session with some 200m strides at the end. That's not a particularly difficult workout.

The 2k is obviously hard, but it's 1 rep with 5 minutes recovery either side.

Jakob's session is far more difficult. The slowest pace he's doing is at the pace of Nuguse's 2k, and then he's drastically ramping it up from there. He's effectively doing 4.8k at or much faster than the hardest part of Nuguse's workout.

He said he didn’t feel good after the first steeple. Athletes know their bodies better than the coaches. Why didn’t he opt out of the second race. These are grown men not high school kids. Man up.

I'll tell you exactly why

1) As an athlete you always want to race and convince yourself you can race even if you are hurt. Nobody ever wants to concede that cavity in their tooth is a problem until it needs a root canal.

2) As a coach, it takes a lot of maturity and humility to see/hear of an athlete of yours hurting and pull them from a race you were responsible in preparing them for which is essentially an admission you f-d it up. The amount of coaches that go by this "fingers crossed they can juuuust get through this one and then I'll fix it" mantra - even at the pro level, is scary. You want the best case in point ever? Donovan Brazier and Pete Julian at the 2021 Olympic Trials which cost him massively in his career.

3) Many agents are honestly terrible and care only about a return on their investment, even if it is only 15% of a couple of thousand euros appearance fee (and a lot of the time it's not even that). So when you are contracted and obliged to manage Beamish and he's always on the shelf, him just getting a few races to justify your investment becomes a reason to not get involved for the good of the athlete, as wild as that sounds too.

If I was ranking it, it absolutely falls on the coach first and foremost. The agents are by in large fairly passive - they do not whats going on but not on a granular level. The athletes are the athletes - they never want to concede something is wrong and have to operate with a mindset of wishful thinking just to survive in this brutal sport to begin with. But the coach is the guy closest to the athletes, gets to observe them at least in training and should be smart enough to take bits of feedback and understand what is the right thing to do or not. Dathan does not have that intuitive sense it seems and that's arguably more important than just writing up double threshold workout and holding a stopwatch because to be perfectly honest, almost anybody can do that.

Funny how Dathan's athletes are following the same path as Dathan. Oh well...

Race plan did make sense as it simulated semis & finals in Tokyo, which is why Geordie did it.

As well, those were his first Steeples of his 2025 season, having switched from the Steeple to 5000 at Sound Running's Track Fest to protect a sore ankle Geordie revealed was diagnosed as inflammation treatable with a cortisone shot.

Geordie frequently mentions how few Steeplechase races there are in DL & CT meets. Thus, he has to take advantage of the high-quality few on the calendar.

Unfortunately, thigh soreness cropped up in training just before his Euro trip -- and, apparently, he didn't tell anyone about it. And now is paying for it.

Seems very similar to Grant Fisher's femur stress reaction back in 2023. Soreness occurred in practice leading up to USAs, decided to race anyway, finished 4th in the 10,000 then bailed on the 5000, thus no Budapest WCs. Following MRI revealed the reaction. Cross-trained in Park City for 3 weeks, joined up with his BTC crew in St. Moritz, resumed normal training, then eventually ran his 7:25/3000 AR in Eugene mid-September. Even though all ended well, this incident was the final straw cementing Grant's decision to leave BTC for his present living/training setup.

All this to say, Geordie should be back to regular training in August and ready to go for Tokyo WCs a month later.

However, does he learn from his past training mistakes as Grant has done? The next time Geordie -- or any of the OAC crew who all have suffered from injuries (save Ky!!) -- have a lower body soreness, will they err on the side of caution and DNS a meet or two -- as Grant recently did @ Philly GST due to a minor hamstring issue now in the past?

From having watched a few years worth of Coffee Club pods, it does sound like Ritz has come around a bit on threshold training, offering this option to those willing. Ollie & Morgan have said they like it. However, apparently Yared does not, wanting to keep to his more traditional high-intensity work. And, he's the Golden Goose of the team.

OAC today is the reincarnation of BTC from 10 years ago. Big distance team, comprehensive support structure, well funded, highest profile in the US, so receives the most scrutiny. Every little niggle, every bad race, every DNS draws attention.

Not pointing fingers. Athletes are ultimately responsible for their own health. Communication between coach and athlete on this subject has to be synchronous.

Now 5 years in, all the OAC veterans are sticking with Ritz and the overall program. Thus, they must find their living/training environment ideal or close to it, willing to risk the red-line training most seem to do.

They started toying with double threshold. Probably not a good idea in hindsight. Especially for Beamish.

Right. But of course that's irrelevant if he doesn't even make it to Tokyo because of injury, or shows up in the exact same circumstances as Paris and get's bundled out in the heats.

There is also a difference between running a heat in Tokyo, getting on a bus back to the hotel, resting a day, getting a bus back to the stadium for the final a day after that and what he just did (even if a Stockholm to Turku flight is only 2 hours).

Either way, you're wanting to emulate at least in principal what would be the hardest 3 days of your season, and it's the first series of races back after yet another injury? Sorry I don't buy that as logical or smart on any level.

Ollie needs to quit finishing last!

I feel Beamish should can steeples and do 5000m, not like he'll medal in either so stick with an event less probable to injure.