What's the big deal? Lutz is racing maybe 2 or 3 times more in a season than what you would typically see. In order to run state you have to run district and regionals and to race Foot Locker you have also have to run regional Foot Locker, this has been the norm for 40 years. The only thing different is the addition of NXN so if you're going to bitch about something bitch about how Nike is ruining these kids and watering down the field where there is no longer a true national championship.
I am so thankful that you’ve put this information out there. A few days ago I posted my views on Flotrack, only to get told off, insulted and belittled for expressing what I see, as an inherent discrepancy between what Verzbiscas achieved on Saturday and what others, such as Lutz, were expected to do prior to lining up in San Diego. Each of Lutz’s 10 races preceding FL clearly demonstrates strength and talent at an exceptional level. He is a fine athlete and from what I’ve heard, an affable person. Verzbiscas as well, is an outstanding athlete - on multiple levels and an amenable sportsman with incredible potential. The obvious argument here as I see it, is whether it is fair and even-handed to expect a runner such as Lutz, as well as many of the other top ranked guys (using the Dye Stat top 25 list for example) to have to participate in and complete full seasons - i.e. ten or more races, while at the same time going up against another runner at a national championship who was only required to put out a third or half of that effort over roughly the same time period. When I mentioned this, one person responded, “Well hey, who choice was it to run all those races in the first place?” That seems like a strong argument and a sound retort, however, that really doesn’t answer the question in the end, “Who’s choice was it?”
When is the last time that you turned to your coach and said, “ You know coach, I think I’ll just sit out these next couple of dual meets and give myself a break and to get ready for regionals, districts etc…” It has also been claimed that half of these efforts are nothing more than “Tempo runs” - Give me a break, since when is a sub 15:20 5k for a high schooler, a tempo run? I don’t know about you, but back in the day (and yes, I was a 15 minute 5k guy) I never called the shots, not to mention how selfish it would have made me look in front of my team mates, friends, etc… If I had done that, my coach would have said, “Well, fine then Rambo, give me your spikes and there’s the fricken door!“ Coaches today are especially under tremendous pressure from administration and parents to achieve and perform by squeezing as much effort out of their runners as they possibly can to gain that coveted and precious “ranking”.
Lukas and his coach have timed his season to near perfection. He was not over raced. He cross-trained aggressively to build extra overall strength and showed up at FL fresh and ready to do the business! Lutz, Shrader and others simply didn’t have a chance - that’s not to say that they couldn’t have beaten him, its just that their pathway to the summit was not as streamlined and they were already spent from a long and drawn out season. When I say this, I am not suggesting for one second that every school mandate a requirement that their runners need to participate in a full season of 8 to 10 races plus their regional and State meets, but I think that if FL or NXN were to set a stipulation and mandatory requirement that runners who qualify for their championship events should have run at least (5) competitive races before they toe the starting line, then at least in theory, it should be a move level playing field and less of a “blow-out” which is what we saw! Perhaps if Lutz hadn’t run so frequently he still would have not beaten Verzbiscas (he is exceptionally talented) but at least it would have given him a fighting chance. That whole “Amazing Junior Class” can learn a clear lesson from this; Don’t over race!
All this whining is starting to make Lutz look like a loser and he hasn't said anything.
He got 4th. Good run for him. El Finito.
Leave the poor kid alone.
and how many times did galen rupp race this year?
back to back, dual meets, national champs?
My guess is that if the schedule he received this year were exactly the same, yet had the name salazar attached, that the backlash would be non-existant.
Im sure that MOST of bekele's workouts would win races for all but a handful of elite athletes.
check out: 2 x 5000m on the road. 5 mins rest @ 13:20.
Footlocker Nationals wrote:
There were three guys ahead of him.
But am I right that he "won all his races but one"?
WE could debate this forever (like most things on Letsrun) and I agree that if he had planned out his season ideally (skipped some dual meets or even Invites and skipped NXN) that he would have been stronger at FL.
What would he have gained though? He would not have beaten Verzbicas, I cannot prove that, but Verzbicas won by a bigger margin than anyone in a while. Lutz was :22 behind Verzbicas. Let's say he would have placed second. Is 2nd as a junior THAT much better than 4th?
What would he have lost? He would have lost WINNING the National Championship at NXN.
I say even if you ASSUME the BEST possible outcome (2nd at FL) that he (and his coach) made the best choice.
``
Could you, perhaps, cite that particular research? I'd love to read it. Where did you find it?
newname wrote:
I agree that if he had... excuses excuses excuses... that he would have been stronger at FL.
Nonsense. Maybe he would have been weaker at the Nationals.
Let's say he would have placed second.
Let's say he would have placed 10th.
He would have lost WINNING the National Championship at NXN.
He didn't win any national championship because Nx is a team race, that a few greatly overrated individuals attended.
I say even if you ASSUME the BEST possible outcome (2nd at FL)
The best possible outcome is what he got, 4th place.
give it up already wrote:
newname wrote:I agree that if he had... excuses excuses excuses... that he would have been stronger at FL.
Nonsense. Maybe he would have been weaker at the Nationals.
Let's say he would have placed second.
Let's say he would have placed 10th.
He would have lost WINNING the National Championship at NXN.
He didn't win any national championship because Nx is a team race, that a few greatly overrated individuals attended.
I say even if you ASSUME the BEST possible outcome (2nd at FL)
The best possible outcome is what he got, 4th place.
Yeah, a few greatly overrated individuals!
07 Chris Derrick
Colby Lowe
08 Reed Connor
Jakub Zivec
09 Lutz/Elias/Roas
really overrated!
And the fact you say he didn't win any national championship proves you really are retarded.
Footlocker Nationals
2009
1 Lukas Verzbicas - NATIONAL CHAMPION
2 Matthew McElroy
3 Wade Meddles
4 Craig Lutz
5 Brian Shrader
2008
1 Solomon Haile - NATIONAL CHAMPION
2 Trevor Dunbar
3 Thomas Porter
4 Drew Shields
5 Jakub Zivec
2007
1 Michael Fout
2 Christopher Derrick - NATIONAL CHAMPION
3 German Fernandez
4 Colby Lowe
5 Luke Puskedra
did not qualify
Reed Connor
Elias
Rosa
Furry Finnish Friend wrote:
Lutz is a great runner who had a great season. By better using his time and racing less, he could have had an even better season. That isn't hard to understand or figure out.
I would hope to god if I ever had a kid in high school, he/she wouldn't be coached by you. Are you a coach?
Young runners cannot be compared to the most elite athletes in the world. The goal of a high school coach is to instill work ethic/love of sport into their charges. The time for ultra-specific workouts is not when they are 15-16-17 yrs old. The kids want to race and figure out their current limit. What all your little charts and graphs (figuratively) leave out is that a lot of kids don't even respond to advanced training. But mentally racing hard every week helps them learn actually how to race, it creates that desire to become better. Lutz is now probably all fired up to get back to work for track and then for next season he's going to draw on his experiences from this nxn/fln series to help motivate him through the year.
I do coach and indeed I'm not a fan of "over-racing". But your examples of why not to over-race are ridiculous. Comparing the schedules of someone like Bekele to Lutz is laughable.
Footlocker Nationals
2009
1 Lukas Verzbicas - NATIONAL CHAMPION
2 Matthew McElroy
3 Wade Meddles
4 Craig Lutz
5 Brian Shrader
2008
1 Solomon Haile - NATIONAL CHAMPION
2 Trevor Dunbar
3 Thomas Porter
4 Drew Shields
5 Jakub Zivec
2007
1 Michael Fout - NATIONAL CHAMPION
2 Christopher Derrick
3 German Fernandez
4 Colby Lowe
5 Luke Puskedra
did not qualify
Reed Connor
Elias
Rosa
And he ran a 1:12 half marathon before the cross-country season started. Yes he races too much but this kid is very talented...
Lies Express wrote:
And he ran a 1:12 half marathon before the cross-country season started. Yes he races too much but this kid is very talented...
I could not care any less about what you guys think about how this guy did this year. As far as I know he won every XC race he ran (and maybe all other races?) except Footlocker Finals.
He is a junior in high school. Verzbicas was dominant and beat Lutz by :22. Do any of you think that he would have run :25 faster and pushed Verzbicas or beaten him?
Seems to me that he had an amazing XC season for anyone in any year in history, but an especially amazing one considering he is a junior and only lost to THREE GUYS.
A 1:12 half is exactly 5:30 pace, maybe you guys would be wiped out by that kind of thing, but I ran 10 miles at 5:30 pace nearly every week. Sometimes twice a week. I wasn't close to his level. I was at 9:25 for 3200 as a junior and 9:15 as a senior.
Ritz ran about 12 XC races during the reg season, then two FL races. In indoor he ran 2-3 races at every meet (every week - 3200R, 1600, 3200) and then 3 races in EVERY outdoor meet (6400mR, 3200mR, 800, 1600, 3200 - a different mix depending on the meet).
It isn't that hard. Most good runners from the 60s, 70s and 80s will tell you that they ran more XC races than they do now (we ran 14 races up through State Meet) and 17 track meets (so the potential was there for 17-50 races during outdoor) up through State Meet. Add the Mid-West Meet of Champions, Keebler/Elmhurst meet or Golden West to that total and you would have a long season that stretched from mid-March to late June.
Whether you think it works or not doesn't matter, nor does what I think or what I DID matter. What matters is that Lutz did it and he did it well, stop being such naysayers and complainers.
If he doesn't end up being 13:20/27:40 material in 5 yrs it won't be because he ran 2 extra XC meets and a half-marathon in the summer.
Get over it and stop micro-analyzing the lives of people who ARE super-successful.
Well put.
[quote]newname wrote:
If he doesn't end up being 13:20/27:40 material in 5 yrs it won't be because he ran 2 extra XC meets and a half-marathon in the summer.
I don't know what a typical schedule or optimum one these days. Apparently they don't run 1-2 dual meets and an invite like we did every week way back. High school kids train like college guys more with less mileage I guess. That's probably due to smarter and more educated coaches.
Also you don't see the 1600-3200 double anymore. It almost looks like those guys are ducking guys, like they are afraid to lose a race. I like that Lutz did both races. It shows he's not afraid to lose or run in a less than advantageous condition.
Out of curiousity I checked my old log from 1984. That year it shows 6 indoor races, 40 outdoor races, a 10k and a 5k road race, 4 5000 meter races for Junior Olympics, and 18 cross country races including Kinney regional and final. That's a total of 70 races.
My freshman year of college it dropped down to 17 races for the entire year.
I don't think the op was talking about races overall, he's just questioning the consecutive weeks of regional and national class meets. I say race as many of these races as you can. Like someone said, if he's going to be a great runner in the future this sort of thing isn't going to wipe him out. Its not like a world class guy running 10k road races and marathons all year against world class comp. Yes, there is a dnager of overracing then.
It cracks me up when these high school kids talk about needing a month off to recover after cross is over. THe 30-40 miles a week and 3 mile races can't be putting that much stress on them.
When I was running in high school, I was in the same district that Lutz runs in now.
In fact, Marcus (his high school) was just a few miles away from mine, went to numerous meets there, lots of fond memories. Coach T has been coaching at Marcus for many years and I can say with absolute certainty that he cares immensely about his athletes and knows an incredible amount about track and field and in particular distance running. Craig may have had the most national exposure thus far, however, Marcus xc and track athletes are not new when it comes to sucess. Multiple state champions, team championships and more. That program is a wonderful thing for hundreds of athletes... and I mean hundreds each year. I remember seeing two or three buses of Marcus runners at each XC meet!!! Now only think of their track team!
Coach T knows what he is doing, and Lutz and his family, I am sure have done their research as well.
A couple of extra races will not kill him or his future career and it is evident that he loves the sport and he loves racing. He will have plenty of time in college/university to sharpen his racing skills and the types/amounts of meets he attends.
He has also been racing in summer track meets since middle school and his dad coaches a highly successful developmental xc program for middle school kids now.
I think he will be fine :)
Really, let high school kids be high school kids.
That's what I'm saying as well. He's in high school; he wants to race. He's not injured and he's not injuring himself, so let him race. High schoolers don't do cross country to run workouts. They do cross country to compete. Sooo, let him.
midwesta wrote:
That's what I'm saying as well. He's in high school; he wants to race. He's not injured and he's not injuring himself, so let him race. High schoolers don't do cross country to run workouts. They do cross country to compete. Sooo, let him.
I could have sworn he was injured both freshman and soph year of track.
I'm certain his soph year he had a stress fracture.