Yared: Memo regarding Coach Ritz

Yared's tactics (I have no idea about his current training) seem to be suspect. Racing out front so hard as a frontrunner in a final was puzzling. Also, I've always thought he had difficulty if he didn't move AT LEAST with 400 to go, since he's never seemed to have that quick burst, and I think he's been in a bad spot late in several recent races.

All that said, he seems to need a reset, not with a different coach, but to regain an insatiable hunger for competition. I've seen this with runners over the years. Sometimes you need to stop, reevaluate, and start all over. I hope he gets it figured out. I'm a big fan.

Honestly, I think he just needs to peak later. EVERY time someone has a great indoor season, I just wait for them to get stale half way through outdoor. It amazes me to watch this over and over again in college and pro ranks.
Take it easy. Great indoor campaigns do not lead to great outdoor campaign. Peak correctly!

The one thing that is a true giveaway about someone's knowledge (or lack thereof) of elite training and racing is being overly critical and quick to pull the rip cord when things don't go right, or how they should go. Ritz is not the problem, and Yared isn't the problem, THERE IS NO PROBLEM! Yared has had great success under Ritz, he damn near broke the world record in the mile, he's an Olympic medalist, and has run incredibly fast times. All of the sudden the Monday morning armchair quarterbacks are chiming in on how he needs to change his training, and that his coach doesn't know what he's doing, etc... Anytime you have a major championship late in the season (September), the yearly training and racing schedule are difficult to manage and not only require a lot of patience, but a lot of luck. Staying sharp through intense training and intense racing while at the same time not getting injured is tough. Simply put, Yared just wasn't hitting on all cylinders when U.S.A Champs came around. He failed to make the team, and then had to go "All in" with DL races. I think it wore on him mentally. He and Ritz will look back on this season, make the necessary adjustments and will be just fine. Jakob is in the same boat, an injury ruined his season, not his career. Even if he wins world champs this year, he'll be the first to tell you that he wouldn't want a repeat of the past year. The one thing I can assure you, both Yared and Jakob learned a lot, and will be even better than before.

Grand Slam disrupted the outdoor build-up for Yared enough to reduce his peak to a 3:28-29 level, enough to win a DL again and to contend on multiple occasions, but not enough to front-run to the USA team or to win the DL final. Ritz's stuff works in the short-term but obviously breaks down a lot of guys with too much hard interval work. Nuguse has been the exception but it can happen to him too. In this case, skipping doubles at early meets might have been all he needed to thrive in the late season when it really counts.

and who exactly are you and what have you done? What is your solution? two guys haven't panned out? There is not one single coach with a 100% success rate. Yared is still seeing success. He is just being beaten. That's the sport.

Are you serious? Everyone from the casual fans to his competitors knew he was taking that race from the start and most expected at least 1:54 through 800.

It obviously needs to be reevaluated now, but “puzzling”?

And Hocker

Needs to peak later.

He was in WC shape at the Prefontaine Classic and has since faded. Grand Slam track didn't help either, doubt his fast but limitted indoor campaign had much effect.

I like Dathan & the whole OAC operation. I think he's a good long-term pick-up and On was smart to jump on him early in his coaching career. However, while he has a good sense of the within season workout architecture overall, I wonder about a coach who doesn't have experience guiding the broader arc of an athletes career.

Looking at Oli, Alicia, Morgan, George, Mario, Klecker, it seems like they get good (at some point[s] / when healthy) but it seems like there's often a bump in the first 1-2 years you're with the group then plateau or regress. It was cool to see the fireworks earlier than expected in many of their careers, but hard to not think the peak would be higher and a more encouraging process if it was a more gradual ascent.

Thanks for expressing this more succinctly than I did originally. I think the kernel of my question was, I think looking at Dathan’s previous coaches, and some of the information Garnered from Coffee club discussions and workout videos, there is a pretty high interval intensity and frequency. And I think high interval training, yields a lot of improvement quickly, but as noted throughout the thread, after a year or two, there’s nowhere to go without the strength component coming along, and the possibility of injury seems elevated as well.

I just hope someone has Yared’s ear, so he thinks about the big picture, and pushes back if necessary and tries to formulate something that will help him over the next 3 to 4 years

Maybe this is a lazy answer on my part, but I believe Yared will be good no matter what situation he's in. He might be better off somewhere else (like with Mike Smith for seemingly everyone), but I feel like what did him in this year was not qualifying for worlds at USAs. Now I get it that sounds obvious and stupid, but I mean it more in the sense that the US system is set up where you have to essentially peak twice: once for USAs, then hopefully for worlds or the olympics. If you qualify you can take some downtime then sharpen up again for the global championship. The wild card option is great on paper, especially given how tough it is to make a US team given the current depth (or really any year when you combine the stress, etc.), but you'll more than likely be so fried by the time the diamond league final comes that there's almost no hope. That definitely happened with Yared and Hoey as well. Could it be argued Ritz cooked him too early? Well I guess, but I think it more came down to unfortunate tactical errors on the day (i.e. The US 1500 final), and then truly just not being able to sustain another month of that peak sharpness to get it done in the diamond league final.

While I agree that Ritz and his notebooks of old school training are not the height of scientific training, you have to remember that he also has Hudson’s influence, hopefully more so than Salazar. Sure Yared may be in need of a different stimulus, but a lot would be seen differently had he not pooped the bed at USAs. He did not need to be the rabbit for the strong field at the final. He has shown he can kick off not leading the pace. He messed it up and then had to rely on too much racing to get to Tokyo. Starts with the tactics not the fitness.

I don't understand why anyone would want Ritz as a coach. As a runner, he spent more time injured than almost any runner in history.

Beamish has been an injury liability since NAU. He ran like 3 days a week at one point.

Yes. And they signed him knowing that. McDonald was injury prone as well. So what do you do? Keep flogging them in the hope they adjust or adjust to get them to the line?

I don’t think this has anything to do with ritz. Yared didn’t look great in the grand slam format and then ran a poor tactical race at USAs. Then had to race 3 diamond leagues in 3 weeks to try and make worlds.

100% Indoor is great but if you’re going to have a full racing schedule indoors similar to outdoors youre also going to have to fully commit to hitting the reset button at some point to rebuild your base.

Some ppl seem to have a good approach to this while it seems like others ‘run out of base’ by the time July rolls around.

That might need to be only adjustment especially for Nuguse seeing how under Ritz he’s run some pretty crazy times/performances. Maybe he should follow the Hocker/Kerr model and at least play footsy with the 5000 if only to have a requirement to keep a base longer through the competition period