IS OAC DONE?! Alright armchair coaches, let’s hear it. Why did OAC underperform tonight?

I disagree with this. They always go hard indoors. Yared ran 7:28 a year ago, at this meet, and ran 3:43 in the mile 8 months later. Based on his 7:28, you’d think Yared would have broken 13. In Nico’s post race interview, he said he was ready to run under 13 after he ran 7:37 in December. So the hype for Yared to break the WR was understandable. Maybe they have changed their training, it doesn’t look like it based on Strava. They always run pretty well from January to September.

Too many marketing decisions clouding the coach's thinking at OAC

I Little Red Wagon full of Oly qualifiers and Beamish blasted the NZ national record. Wish I could be that “over” the next time I race.

Not that surprising, Klecker hasn’t really done all that much track work

Nuguse can ran about 8 seconds faster than Young in the mile. Young is way more suited for 10k while Nuguse is for 1500.

The problem is if you listen to theirTMZ Style podcast they treated this race like an interval workout they treated 1205 like a tempo run.

I need to see less “clever” workouts from him. The session of 2ks at half marathon pace alternated with 1ks at 5k pace is NICE, as are some of his other track workouts…but I need to see more STRAIGHT UP workouts like 4 x 1200 at 3:09…or whatever. Stop BSing around

agreed 100%

Yep, low 13’s in January indicate retirement for OAC!

no one cares what you do in January of an Olympic year. just stay healthy and build towards the summer.

qualifying marks are all that matter from now until May.

kudos to everyone who ran fast though!

Side note-I wish kleck McDonald and raess took the xc route for 10k qualifying though. sub 27 is a giant ask even when very fit

They are doing the same workouts they did last year. Which are mainly Alberto’s old workouts that Dathan has kept in rotation. Not every meet is going to produce a 10/10 result.

That is a good interview. Nuguse didn’t even really want to run the 5000.

In maybe the closest comparison that has ever been possible between 2 world class 5k fields, we can directly compare OAC's performance to the best 5k group in the country, who raced 2 minutes after OAC on the same track, through 3k at the same pace, with very similar winning times.

Yared had a good race imo. His first 5k in years, he doesn't like the distance, and he still ran one of the fastest US times ever. 13:02 is a super solid time, especially for a miler. Also, reminder that Jakob opened up 2022 with a 13:02 Soundrunning 5k. Beamish ran 13:04, a huge PB for him, and the Oly standard. He's one of the best kickers in the world, so if he's getting super fit, he could do a lot better in the steeple this year. He seemed always get dropped before dropping a huge kick last year. Klecker running 13:06 has gotta be a disappointment. I don't know if it was just an off day, but when the pace picked up, he vanished. McDonald running 13:07 is awesome. He's been stuck in an injury cycle for years, but he is crazy talented. Idk if he can make a big jump in the next 2 weeks before Millrose, but if he stays healthy, he's gonna make a huge leap this year. Definitely not a good day from Jonas, not sure what happened. Mario definitely didn't have a good race, but he was out of it so early, I think he decided he didn't like the 5k, and he's gonna stick to the 1500, so nothing to worry about there.

So for OAC, Klecker and Jonas had bad nights. Beamish and McDonald had really good nights. Yared was good, but not mindblowing, and Mario wasn't really bad, he just didn't like it. On Coffee Club a while ago, Olli said his (college?) coach told him about the 1/3 rule, which was that 1/3 of the athletes in a race will have a great race, 1/3 will have ok race, and 1/3 will have a bad race. OAC followed that rule to a tee here, for whatever that's worth.

To compare to Mike Smith's athletes: Nico obviously had the race of the night. Nur had an ok race. He qualified, but he wasn't contending for the win, and he got crushed by Nico. Kincaid ran 13:15, which is pretty awful tbh. He did have 2 college kids run 13:16 going 1-2 in the open 5k (win by 8s), which must be really good races. I remember when Tyler Day ran the 13:16 NCAA record, and yesterday Mike Smith had 3 kids run faster than that. Colin Sahlman also won the mile in 3:53, which may have been the 2nd best race of the night.

So if we limit it to the invite 5ks, Mike Smith's guys had 1 great race, 1 ok race, and 1 bad race. It actually follows the 1/3 rule too. Weird. If you open it up to the other races, he had several more great performances.

If you put Colin in the 5k, I don't think he has a great race. If you put Mario or Yared in the mile, I think they have really good races (at least winning). Basically, part of the reason Mike Smith had a better night was because his athletes were trying to run as fast as possible in their main distance. OAC had milers and steeplers in with their 5k/10k guys. I also think the college kids are a bit further along than the pros, hence why Nur wasn't going for the win, why Woody wasn't ready, and why the pacing was way too slow for an AR. So I think the fairest comparison is between the 2 fast heats, and in that comparison, OAC athletes didn't run any worse than Mike Smith athletes. They both had 1/3 great races, 1/3 ok, and 1/3 bad.

Please tell us more.

January of an Olympic year for athletes with medal aspirations. Same reason we aren’t seeing much from Jakob and others. Injury/burnout/overtraining risk isn’t worth a fast time at a meet no one’s gonna talk about 2 weeks from now

No reason to be overly fit. I think everyone knows what they are doing.

Uppercase key jammed or you just yell all the time!

Have you not seen the many posts in this very thread pointing out that OAC is doing the exact same training as a year ago?

Training that led to insane times in January '23.

Take out Romo and recognize that only the guys with year-round raw speed hit the standard (Beamish and Nuguse)-The folks probably better suited for a 10K missed it. Klecker was 12 seconds behind last year's race, but look at Woody. I'd bet they tweaked a few things to push back the season. This is great for their rankings, and Klecker and McDonald will almost certainly get the standard (or 10K) in the next half-year.