German was extremely overtrained in high school. Anyone with a brain can see that he was very close to his full potential in high school. He ran 4:00 and 8:34 on the same day....impressive but DUMB. It takes a toll on your body.
You'd have to be an idiot to blame Dave Smith.
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hurrikane wrote:
German was extremely overtrained in high school. Anyone with a brain can see that he was very close to his full potential in high school. He ran 4:00 and 8:34 on the same day....impressive but DUMB. It takes a toll on your body.
You'd have to be an idiot to blame Dave Smith.
He ran 60-65 mpw in HS and missed most of his junior year due to injuries. His HS experience was the opposite of what you claim.
hurrikane wrote:
German was extremely overtrained in high school. Anyone with a brain can see that he was very close to his full potential in high school. He ran 4:00 and 8:34 on the same day....impressive but DUMB. It takes a toll on your body.
You'd have to be an idiot to blame Dave Smith.
No way -- his 13:25/3:55 the next year shows he was still quickly improving. He just wasn't able to string together much consistent training after that year, but again his 3:34 1500 shows he wasn't close to tapped out in HS.
hurrikane wrote:
German was extremely overtrained in high school. Anyone with a brain can see that he was very close to his full potential in high school. He ran 4:00 and 8:34 on the same day....impressive but DUMB. It takes a toll on your body.
You'd have to be an idiot to blame Dave Smith.
Does someone want to bring this joker up to speed?
Heard Verzbicas had a bad biking accident in training and sort of left the sport after that--at least on a professional level
Lots of misinformation on this thread. As a guy who coaches in the same league as Riverbank and considers their coaches to be friends, I can assure you guys a few things
German trained and raced extremely hard in high school
German was often injured in high school
Not winning FLN was really the only blemish on his senior year.
Since most of his college/pro career is easily accessible, I'll focus on what he did prior. This is done from memory from 12-16 years ago, so excuse if the details are off a bit.
Fall, FR - Played JV football, Riverbank is terrible at football.
Spring FR - Ran 4:34 in his first competitive mile ever, after training for 3 weeks at the end of JV basketball season. Ended up at 4:22 and 9:40ish for the season
Sophomore year - Was not going to run cross. Coach saw him around town prior to the start of school and talked him into coming out for the team. Mileage around 35. Won the division 4 CA state title in 15:12. Placed just out of a qualifying spot for FLN. Ran with the lead pack (Acosta, Coe, et al, until about a mile to go, couldn't hang). Played JV basketball and tore his meniscus.
Sophomore Track. Meniscus injury went undiagnosed for most of the season. He'd run for a week then take 3 weeks off. Won all 3 distance events at league finals, then had surgery on the meniscus one week later.
Junior Year. Didn't start running again until October of his Junior year. Placed 2nd in D4 at the CA state meet in, I believe, 15:34 off of about 6 weeks of running.
This was probably the start of German thinking of himself as a runner rather than just as a kid who runs track and cross in addition to his other sports. This is also conjecture on my part.
Over the winter, he decided to focus on running. He started building his miles up. By January he was running 12-14 miles for his long runs. Entered the Davis Stampede half marathon with his girlfriend. After running the first mile in slower than 6:00, he decided to speed up. Ended up catching the leader by 10 ish miles. Looked at the guy and asked, "how long is a half marathon"? Went on to win in, I believe 1:09. There was a great thread on here by the guy that got second. After that, he developed shin splints (possibly undiagnosed stress fracture, stress reaction. Spent most of his Junior track season on the bike. Got healthy enough by the end of the season to win the Sac Joaquin section meet in 9:13 then place 3rd at the state meet in 9:08 on a hot afternoon. A week or two later, he ran 4:13 at Golden West Invite.
Summer prior to senior year. Since he missed most of his junior year of running, he mostly kept training after Golden West. He was able to stay injury free for his entire senior campaign and this is when he burst into the national consciousness. In late July, he entered the Wharf to Wharf road race, where he placed 6th or 7th running in trainers and holding his ipod, running right around 30 flat for 6 miles.
His coach was a big believer in pace work. Someone posted on here earlier that "his training wasn't that hard, he never ran faster than 30 seconds for a 200" That may be true or it may not be, but by August he was running workouts such as 20 x 200 in 30 seconds with a 30 second recovery jog.
He opened the cross country season of his senior year with a couple of high 14s for the 5k. This included a 14:44 on the course we use for our league meet, which it turns out is actually 3.17 miles. I don't believe that they ran him in any of the big high school invites so he hadn't really "taken many scalps" leading into the post season so there was some skepticism about how good he actually was. At our league finals meet, I was riding lead bike. His shoe came untied before the 800m mark. His coach happened to be standing there and told him to go ahead and tie it. He stopped, tied his shoe and kept on going. Even 800 in, nobody caught him during his stop. I believe he finished in 14:47. He then jogged through the chute, put on his trainers, and was out on the course running a tempo effort 5k (which he finished in the low 16s.)
When he announced he was going for Marc Davis's record Woodward Park course record, most people were skeptical. Davis was quoted in the papers saying that when he ran the record, he had gone out too fast (I believe 4:29) and that if German wanted the record, he needed to not go out too hard. I believe Davis's course record was 14:38, which was run under perfect foggy conditions at the Kinney (pre foot locker era) regional meet (pre Mt SAC). German went out in 4:24 and went on to break the course record by 14 seconds, despite running in warm conditions in the last race of the day. Won FLR over Puskedra the next week then had a rare off day at FLN to take 3rd.
I actually think that his course record at Woodward was the most impressive meet of his high school career. Marc Davis was a 2 time Olympic team member and tons of other guys (Meb, Ryan Hall, etc...) never even broke 14:50 on that course. I thought that Nico Young had a shot at the record this year. He got perfect conditions at the state meet, very similar to when Marc Davis ran in '87. Young finished in, I think, 14:29.
During the off season between cross and track, he won USA Juniors, taking some revenge on Chris Derrick, who had beaten him at FLN. He ran OK at worlds and then his coaches pulled him from the Arcadia lineup as a precaution because he was pretty fatigued after coming back from worlds.
German tripled and quadrupled at almost every dual meet that year. He broke 9:00 for the first time at a super low key invitational. He ran 8:53 as part of a quadruple that first saw him run 4:15-4:18ish, 1:57 ish, and then split 53 on the relay leg of the 4x4.
He quadrupled at our league finals meet running similar times on a dirt track on a hot day. Then doubled at the SJS D4 meet. If I remember correctly, he ran 4:07 and 8:4x. He actually ran a little slower the next week at the Sac Joaquin masters meet before going to the state meet where he ran his 4:00/8:34 double.
Say what you want about his high school coaches running him too hard or too easy or Dave Smith ruining him. I don't really want to debate that. I do know that for his style of running (a kid that loved to just run even splits), his HS coaching was perfect.
Ho Hum wrote:
hurrikane wrote:
German was extremely overtrained in high school. Anyone with a brain can see that he was very close to his full potential in high school. He ran 4:00 and 8:34 on the same day....impressive but DUMB. It takes a toll on your body.
You'd have to be an idiot to blame Dave Smith.
No way -- his 13:25/3:55 the next year shows he was still quickly improving. He just wasn't able to string together much consistent training after that year, but again his 3:34 1500 shows he wasn't close to tapped out in HS.
He probably could have run around 13:30 in high school based on his solo 3200 that was his 3rd race in 2 days. His 3:34 is a meaningless one-off in a rabbited race that doesn't matter. His next best time was 3:37. His freshman year 1500 PR was the 3rd fastest of his entire career.
hurrikane wrote:
SDSU Aztec wrote:
He ran 60-65 mpw in HS and missed most of his junior year due to injuries. His HS experience was the opposite of what you claim.
That's also not high mileage. From what I've heard German's training was pretty moderate - not hammering all the time. However, I only have 3rd hand (or worse) knowledge. Only German knows how hard he trained in HS.
What I do know is that he ran extremely fast from a very early age with little training (at least what we call training). 4:21 as a Freshman. 15:15 as a So. All while participating in other sports.
What I heard is that he had structural issues which caused him to be injured a lot. At the end of his Pro career, they tried to keep him on "marathon" training. Meaning less tempo work and no speed work. That seemed to help, but without speed work he could not compete well on the track.
That's not low mileage. If you hammer every run and every workout at 40 miles per week, you can still burn out. Why do you think he was injured all the time? It was the overtraining, you idiot!
hurrikane wrote:
Ho Hum wrote:
No way -- his 13:25/3:55 the next year shows he was still quickly improving. He just wasn't able to string together much consistent training after that year, but again his 3:34 1500 shows he wasn't close to tapped out in HS.
He probably could have run around 13:30 in high school based on his solo 3200 that was his 3rd race in 2 days. His 3:34 is a meaningless one-off in a rabbited race that doesn't matter. His next best time was 3:37. His freshman year 1500 PR was the 3rd fastest of his entire career.
Did you ever run a meaningless, one-off 3:34? A 3:34 is a 3:34; no one carried him on their back.
Didnt German run his record solo?
And didn’t LV run his at pre?
WWLS.....what would Lydiard say...........
"Past training and race times are all water under the bridge......going forward he should train 8 months or with high mileage at an easy pace, with a smattering of interval workouts and races to maintain interest, the old run for fun........until he enters the competition phase --- which is a two or three month series of races pointing toward each years big one."
Talent doesn't die, but desire does.
streak wrote:
To me it always looked like he gained weight, but people don’t seem to notice it for some reason. If he had been a hs girl phenom it would have been discussed ad nauseam.
Agreed. Looked stockier while with Bowerman.
Here is his 3:55
Too bad he was a great talent. Many times these guys get burned out injured or both. Happens in almost every sport. Too bad
Time trial
I honestly wonder if German Fernandez was the most talented runner ever to live. He basically did what he did in his freshman year of college in his second year of running. He seemed a whole other tier of talent above guys like Rupp, Tegenkamp, or Ritz who ended up running in the 12:50s for 5000m.
michael furey wrote:
I honestly wonder if German Fernandez was the most talented runner ever to live. He basically did what he did in his freshman year of college in his second year of running. He seemed a whole other tier of talent above guys like Rupp, Tegenkamp, or Ritz who ended up running in the 12:50s for 5000m.
It also makes you remember how the ability to stay healthy and train is a talent too.
At some point raw running talent only gets you so far and you need to be able to train for years consistently to be one of the greats.
wj29s9hh wrote:
Seems like a lot of kids sacrifice longevity and running fast into their 40s and 50s for running a few seconds faster when they are in HS and college.
.
Competitive athletics is all about saving it for Zurich?