you can almost never assess a miler's true 400 ability in high school. My best kid ever has an open PR of 52.xx from a soph dual meet. first meet of year.
Senior year, he had several 50 low splits on 4x4...that is with starting leg, so 50.xx was a given.
Last meet of the year, he popped a low 48 FAT relay leg (3rd leg this time). That was the first FRESH 400 he had ever run. Without that opportunity, I would have forever said that he had 50.xx 400 speed in high school. Though I always thought a 49 split would happen given the opportunity, they are what they run, and a 48 low was never predicted.
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I'd be shocked if they didn't actually have any conversations with his coach or with him about training and racing. What, would they not answer if he asked them how to approach a big race? They probably bring their athletes to altitude camps. Wouldn't he come along with them? Wouldn't he have soaked up vast amounts of wisdom about training and racing from family conversations, even ones between the parents at the dinner table? Didn't he watch many UO/UW practices and meets over the years? But even without all that, you'd expect him to be really good at the sport with a father who ran 4:02 in an era where only a handful in the country broke 4:10 ever year and a mother who is also talented, and so he is.
What they said is they don't have a hand in training him. I wouldn't be surprised if they talked to the coach about his training/coaching philosophy when Owen joined, and I'd rather expect they did, liked what they heard, and didn't bother him about it again.
Does UW do altitude camps? They might I really don't know.
Maybe the parents don't talk much about training and racing at the dinner table. My parents never talk about their jobs at the dinner table (or if they did I wasn't listening). Beyond a funny story, or a coworker that's making them mad, work doesn't come up much at dinner. Do you think 12 year old Owen Powell was enraptured, listening to his parents at dinner talk in detail about training for their athletes? Do you think his parents were coming home from a long day at work, sitting down for dinner, and then talking training philosophy instead of asking their son about his day? I think it's more likely that the Powells talked about other things at home, and Owen didn't pay much attention to the conversations about running.
He could've watched UO/UW practices, he says his parents took him to Hayward every weekend as a kid. But I think it's more likely he did what most kids do when their parents drag them along to a sports practice they're not a part of, which is do anything else. I don't think Owen was out there at 11 years old with a stopwatch, taking splits, or paying attention at all. I don't remember a single thing from my siblings' soccer/baseball/karate practices from when we were young. I was on the playground, or killing time with other kids who got dragged there with their parents.
Would you expect him to be good at the sport because both his parents were? Yeah. Not sure what your point is there lol.
Once he started taking the sport more seriously, might he have started asking his parents for advice on how to approach a big race? Maybe. Definitely possible. I kinda expect that the first thing his parents would've said is "Have you talked to your coach about it?" though. I'm sure they would've given him some advice if he really wanted, but I suspect it's not all that different from what his coach was telling him. And even then, advice for approaching a big race is a far cry from having a hand in what workouts he's doing when, which is all I'm saying isn't hard to believe.
His coach did a brilliant talk at the Washington State XC & TF coaches convention. The kid has a bright future ahead of him. She hasn't been overworking him at all, he has incredible talent. I came into the presentation thinking it was going to be about "how I get my workouts from the Powells". Turns out the coach is a real student of the sport, comes at it from a different angle than most. Talked about threshold, CV pace, tempos etc. It really shows since she has been there the entire Mercer Island team has developed incredibly well.
The Young twins only ran like 60 mpw senior year. so they probably ran around 50 most of hs.
They had great recovery, good coaching, good motivation.
They still burned out.
This is retarded. They're doing fine at Stanford. Not everybody takes it to the next level. And it is still too soon to say, they've had a decent indoor season this year.
I find it very hard to believe that two great coaches have zero involvement in their son's training. Especially considering he just ran 3:56 indoors...
I don't. I remember talking to agent Tom Ratcliffe about his son Thomas - same thing.
Do you have kids? They don't really like to openly listen to parents. Smart parents will let the coach handle it.
XC skiers and swimmers train for hours every day as teenagers and they don't "burn out".
As an XC skier I will note that it is non impact. I was doing 2 hours of ski sessions+12 hours(at 10 MPH) of skiing on the weekends in HS and was fine. If you think a HSer could do that with running than I don't know what to tell you.
Same thing for swimming and cycling which I did less of but still more than I could ever handle with running.
What I'm saying is that anyone who thinks they don't play a huge role in his training doesn't understand the dynamics of a household the way a parent does.
I find it very hard to believe that two great coaches have zero involvement in their son's training. Especially considering he just ran 3:56 indoors...
I don't. I remember talking to agent Tom Ratcliffe about his son Thomas - same thing.
Do you have kids? They don't really like to openly listen to parents. Smart parents will let the coach handle it.
You didn't. But you were really immature(you still are). And of course you don't realize how bad most coaches are. There are still plenty of teams that race 2-3 times a week. Now they likely don't do the races all out but still training is always a better way to get faster.
I actually didn’t know that anyone thought he’d burn out
Ya probably not burning out. But he’s probably got less room to grow than a lot of other high schoolers. But 3:56 is a great place to be even if you’re near your peak. I imagine he’s doing pretty high level training and doing all the little things, there won’t be much to add at “the next level” that he’s not already doing.
Rojo I would just like to point out that there is a difference between being “closer to one’s peak” and burning out. I do believe, without any evidence, that this kid is likely closer to his peak than most elite HS runners because of the advantage he has of consulting with his parents. Having said that, he is already so good that if he improves even a moderate amount he is a contender for US global teams. I did not intend to imply that he would burn out, but rather that he may have some intangible benefits built into the cake already, but of course he also has good genetics for running. And it seems pretty clear that one would have to be a moron to believe that his parents never discuss training with him.