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

I do think where coaches set the bar is significant to how successful a runner will be.

Many coaches look at sports as something kids are doing to check off a box and don't care about performance, only participation. Then they coach as though distance running is where all the non-athletes go and they don't want to hurt people's feelings. They try to make it some kind of non-competitive equality thing and harm the serious athletes. My high school cross country coach was like this (we had a different guy for track).

At the next level, you have the coaches who are only going to give you so much work because they have limits in their minds about what a high school athlete can/should do. They set some kind of arbitrary level as "good" because there is so much underachievement at the high school level. 4:20 has often been a number associated with being considered good. My high school track coach was like this. He was a PAC-10 school record holder in the 5k/10k, had himself run lots of miles in high school and college, and knew how to get fast. But he was holding us back to 'save our legs for college'. I ran 4:20 in HS on 6 months a year training of 30 mpw or less and felt sh!tty about it because I knew I left a lot on the table by trusting my coach.

Then you have the Brosnan types. They know that kids want to realize their potential. They don't set limits on what is possible or what a high school runner "should" be doing. They just apply training principles and let the results work themselves out. Since running is a pretty difficult sport, it takes a great motivator to get enough kids to buy into the program that you'll eventually have a bunch of stars. Pat Tyson was like that.

The "4:20 isn't that fast" thing is true. In my relatively small county, there were always a few guys around who were 4:20ish level on soccer shape or minimal training. I'm a terrible coach and I got a guy like that with 4:23/1:57 PR down to 1:53 with just a couple months of putting in 40mpw instead of 20mpw. He eventually ran 4:11 in college but was the guy who was afraid to run more than 25mpw because he might get hurt.

I ran 4:14 in HS on 30 MPW. I ran on a team that qualified for nationals in college. I worked up to 75 MPW as a senior but never made top 7 and only ran 4:10 even though I always thought I could go faster because I had 10 guys on my team who were faster. I doubt I would have run faster in HS on different training.

No, he was successful in getting more kids to run XC and track and that results in better odds of having talented runners. The runners are not isolated and there’s a 100% chance they’re aware of Newbury Park and how fast the brothers have run. They’re also smart enough to know how fast they need to run to have a chance for a scholarship.

Runners don’t run fast because they have ambitious goals. Early success usually results in runners becoming motivated and they’ll go as far as their level of talent will take them.

When you started running as a freshman did you set a goal for your senior year? I could have shot for 9:00 and I still would have come up 30 seconds short.

He has just a little experience calculating race pace from workouts (e.g. Nico Young's workout prior to running 7:56.97), so I'm comfortable with his estimates, though they're almost certainly not in 13:20 but rather 13:20s, meaning 13:28-29 shape, which is great.

Having examples around you is the key to the whole thing. Brosnan had that with Nico Young, as he has said many times. Very, very few kids will really have the combination of hard work ethic and high ambitions without a genius salesman (Brosnan) and examples of how the plan works from people they look up to and come from the same program (Nico being first in that respect). As for all the talk about recruiting and whatnot, this program was not recruiting the best talent in the entire country, yet it was good enough to beat the whole country in a 5 on 5 xc race, Newbury Park vs. the remaining USA high school all-stars. I hope he can succeed at UCLA. Great academics, great geographic location, but not much of a distance tradition. Running from campus doesn't look good unless they're allowed to run at the two golf courses nearby or the LA cemetery. However, they have absolutely fantastic places to run a little ways north and west in the mountains. There are very few campuses around the country that have that much in the way of mountains within that distance. 2.4 miles from campus to Getty View Park (I don't know if they can run at that park; it's just an example). 5.7 miles and 15 minutes to Westridge Trailhead. There are hundreds of trails to run within 20 minutes drive. By comparison, from the University of New Mexico, it's about ten miles to the Sandia Mountains trailheads and takes about the same time or more.

Not disputing the job he did, but it would really be more accurate to refer to NP as the Youngs/Sahlmans.

The rest of NP was good, but not even close to the level of the brothers. Remember, those other kids were outstanding youth runners in their own right, so not like he created them from nothing.

It hilarious that people believe Brosnan WON'T still be writing the workouts for them

Lol. Did you just compare driving in LA to Albuquerque as if they were the same?

Brosnan says his genius isn’t the plan, but adapting and adjusting on the fly. He claims that he can sense what changes need to be made by watching them warm up. He also would watch the work outs and had a sense of knowing exactly when to modify, cut or stop the workout. If he’s that great, writing workouts won’t be effective without watching them live.

Do you believe everything a coach might say? That part of analyzing what runners look like during warmups is ridiculous.

I checked out the UCLA roster and when he trains runners that ran 9:10-30 in HS into 13:20 guys, I will stand corrected.

I’m completely with you brother on all points. I was simply pointing out what he says and why him writing the workouts wasn’t a factor according to his own words.

Most of what comes out his mouth is BS.

That argument is silly. If you take the Sahlman’s and Young’s away then you have to take the top to families from every program and see what’s left. Besides the fact that Brosnan Also coached Aschbrenner to 8:44, Appleford to 8:52 and Samantha McDonnell ti a 4:38 mile.

NP under Brosnan has been unbelievable.

There have been many great coaches and not only do they not claim to be some type of running guru, they typically compliment their athletes for their dedication. Like some posters on LR, Brosnan believes the success of NP is about him and not the brothers.

Amen! Even when complimenting others, he makes it about himself.

they trusted in me, they followed my plan, they are great to coach because they’ll do whatever I ask, etc.

To further the point, Dev Doshi would be better on a team with the Youngs and Sahlmans and a different coach, than a team where he is the best and Brosnan as the coach. The Youngs and Sahlmans are more responsible for the success of the other kids than Brosnan.

If you take the two families you also need to take the quality of training partners they were to the other runners. This takes from their PRs.

I don't know Steve, but Tanya absolutely knows what she's doing.

If you remove the top 2 families from every team, it actually probably does make a better case to evaluate a coach’s ability. Every coach can get lucky, like German Fernandez’s coach or any other program that has had only one superstar.

Even the second tier kids at NP are once in a generation talents to most HS coaches coming in as 9th graders. He’s been blessed to have a dozen of them.

I don't know that I recognize Aschbrenner's 8:44. It was run at a time trial paced by a teammate under perfect conditions. There is a difference. It was not run in an actual race like a state meet.

To me, his official PR's are 4:16 and 9:05, which are very good as well.