NYtimes article about california girl who crawls across finish, team wins championship

I've heard of people crashing and burning like this a lot. I have never heard of anyone having any serious long lasting affects from it. Stop being a drama queen.

Even if the girl did not finish her team actually would have still won... barely though.

not to piss on their parade, because it was a great story given what the coach has been through, but...

university high is division V. there's a lot less depth in the very small schools race. had this been DI or II, the same dramatic finish for a team title might not have been possible.

I could have predicted the letsrun messageboard response before clicking on this thread. The usual dingbat know alls who have never blown a race.

All I can say is that if you've never gone beyond your limit in a race you have never pushed yourself to the limit. THis girl pulled herself inside out for her team and on the day it didn't work out..she miscalculated her effort by a few hundred yards and imploded. I'd rather have a kid like that on my team than the one who always finishes fresh as a daisy.

THe beauty of running versus any other sport is that we intentionally inflict pain on ourselves. Our biggest competitor is our own unwillingness to endure anymore. THis kid showed she could push it to the limit, take it, get knocked down, and get back up.

Knowing Jim Treacy and the kind of man he is, I'm not suprised to see these qualities in his runners.

This thread is the reason so many of us don't want to bother coming back to Letsrun.

But we do, so let's all STFU and get over it. Not a single person who bashes the poor girl is being serious so this thread has turned into an epic 10/10 trolling effort.

Wow, guys! Really??

Why so harsh on the high school girl? She ran hard, something went wrong, and she gave it everything she had to finish for her team and coach.

I saw the same thing happen in high school. Our team's top runner, after having just won conference and having set a new conference and school record was looking like the most likely contender for the state title. We were also hoping for our first team championship in school history.

The state meet started and our top runner was running in a pack of 3 (where she should have been). I was behind her in 5th or 6th place. I saw her start to fall behind the pack around 2.5 miles. Then I noticed she was sort of shaky, jogging so slow that it looked like she was jogging in place. I passed her, as did others, and everyone could tell something was wrong. We tried to encourage her, but she looked pretty disoriented. I finished in 3rd and my teammate in 4th. We turned back to see her, waited nervously for a little while, and when we finally saw her near the finish she looked awful. Within 10-20 meters from the finish line, she fell down. Her mom rushed out to grab her, but someone (i don't remember who) encouraged her to crawl across. She did crawl across the line to score for our team, & without her efforts we would never have won our first state championship.

To this day I don't know what happened to her during the race. She was running a reasonable race and then just broke down physically. It happens sometimes.

Anyone remember the great high school runner Danielle Tauro or the Footlocker Champion Julia Stamps? Sometimes shit happens. But, good for those who do what they can to finish for the team.

I know it meant a lot to us at the time to have that State Championship. Not many of us went on to superb college or professional running, including our collapsed teammate. Having that 1st championship victory meant a lot to our beloved coach, too. He could not have been prouder. As it turned out, he died some 5 years later of a heart attack.

Hey Suzy favor did everything right up until the olympics. Isn't running until you collapse what made Salazar a legend?

Backdraft wrote:

She's been the top runner for the past 2 years so she should know what to do when it comes time to race. And your telling me that she did everything right up until this one race? Its the most important race of the year. You better be making sure your doing everything right the week before a race like that.

Im not bagging on the girl good for her and all but she only got the attention because she fell (3 meters from the finish line) and crawled in. I ran my regional race on a broken foot (obviously unknowingly, just knew that it felt like a thousan knives were stuck in my foot the whole time) and finished in 17:18, I would have made it to state if I was in any of the other regions unfortunately for me, mine had the most depth.

This is way more inspirational than anything I've ever seen though

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xIzuyjCcZk

Look- I had a sister like this- it was the last 12 stages of the crucifixion every race. All for attention. I too thought of barringer and Hamilton, where basically if they couldn't do what they thought- they were "dehydrated". What happens is that women have these things called emotions that can and do often go haywire. They do have a problem but it's mental- no fault of their own.

Look athe finish line of NCAA xc and compare the runners across the line in men's bs women. Women are falling over like flies, left and right.

Human nature.

I thought it was awesome!

Ok, if we're actually going to attack this issue in a logical manner, I don't think it's all that similar to Jenny B. Watching that NCAA race, I honestly didn't care what happened to her because I was praying that someone would find a way to beat her. If there is a God and He/She answered my prayers...that's pretty shitty, dude.

But look at the way Jenny continued encouraging her breakdown after the race. A candid interview in her hotel room afterwards where she told us...absolutely nothing? Everyone applauded her honesty in that moment, and while I thought it very brave of her to address "something" so quickly after a massive failure, uhm, she didn't tell us what that something was. In my opinion, (and I admit I may very well be wrong) she was simply draggin out the spotlight because she realized somewhere between GO! and collapse that she didn't want to hurt as bad as she was in that race.

This California issue is nothing remotely close.

Shalane imploded a number of times early in her career, but eventually seemed to overcome this. I would like to hear what she has to say on the topic.

EOD wrote:

It always amazes me when people label stupidity as inspiring. Running like that HURT her team. They would have done better if she had run intelligently, and running like a moron almost cost her team the title.

I'm guessing from your post that you are either a troll or you didn't read the NY Times article. Probably both.

As the article states:

Last weekend’s state meet in Fresno took place on a rainy, unseasonably cold morning. Reynolds, who was fighting a slight cold, was unaccustomed to such low temperatures, and said she might have misjudged how much she needed to drink.

What we have is a young runner with an amazing spirit who has yet to figure her body out.

these pics tell the battle. Particularly the last one, showing the trail etched by hr shoes as they dragged across the line:

Yessirree wrote:

20secs to go 2 yds? An experienced distance runner? Just imploded? Is any more known about this incident?

Geez if this is what do, I'm glad I'm not a coach of girl HS runners .

I'm glad you're not the coach of anything.

So she collapses 2 yds before the line OF ALL POINTS IN THE RACE. If its not psychological, whats the odds of something physical hitting right there. Dehydration? Hahahahahah there are some true idiots here. Just another drama queen.

a couple points:

chill out on the girl. she is a teenager. everybody has bad races from time to time and if you race enough in your life there will be one or two were sh*t just hits the fan. it happened to this girl on this day. what is remarkable is she just didn't give up.

also, the media and the coverage isn't just about her.

there are really three stories to this:

(1) the girl crawling

(2) the coach dying of als.

(3) this state championship was university hs and the coach's 8th state championship -- making it the most team championships in california xc history.

put all three together and you have a made for tv movie. it makes sense that this is being picked up by the major media outlets.

add to that the fact that university hs is one of the top ranked hs in america in terms of academics with a tuition of $30,000+ per year. the parents that send their kids their literally run the country and have all the connections in the world. it would be a huge surprise if this story wasn't picked by a couple major news papers.

The facts wrote:

As the article states:

Last weekend’s state meet in Fresno took place on a rainy, unseasonably cold morning.

Someone needs to tell the NY Times that Fresno is always (California) cold this time of year.