Mary Cain DNF

3 pages for a DNF. Wow. This takes the phrase 'Great White Hope' to a new level!

Off the Salazar juice.

The race was too fast for someone coming back from a long time off. She will be fine.

She started- I watched the race.

The winning girl ran 15 sec PR. I never heard of her until. Looks good too.

Dr No wrote:

Obviously not in any kind of racing shape.

She didn't look good. I remember watching her in high school- her stride as long and fluid and she flew.

Her stride was short here and she just didn't look good.

I don't think they thought this race would be so fast.

Go Mary Go

It seems like you guys here at let’s run get excited when someone fails. Especially when a “former” bad ass female runner fails. It’s like a broken record... “too many miles too young” blah blah blah.

I hope she comes back better than ever and proves you guys wrong. Go Mary go! Don’t stop!

Pump yo brakes, son. I'm NOT rooting for her (or anyone) to fail. She has achieved times ai could never dream of. I wish her the best and want her to do well but just dont see it happening at this point.

With a pr 13 seconds off the leader she should have gotten into a race that was around 910 to 920. Two years is an eternity and workouts alone will not do.

She needs to fire her management team (if she has one). Poor race to come back at, and she wasn't ready for it.

Mary Cain’t

Javman wrote:

how many of you turds on LetsRun can run 5:05 right this minute.

Mary will be fine. What's not fine are the despicable people that comment on LetsRun.

I think that the comments about Cain today -- on this and the longer, earlier thread -- have been remarkably civil. Your comments, however, have ranged from wrong, to ignorant, to crude and insulting.

Avocado's Number wrote:

Javman wrote:

how many of you turds on LetsRun can run 5:05 right this minute.

Mary will be fine. What's not fine are the despicable people that comment on LetsRun.

I think that the comments about Cain today -- on this and the longer, earlier thread -- have been remarkably civil. Your comments, however, have ranged from wrong, to ignorant, to crude and insulting.

I'm not rooting for her or anyone else to fail. Mary Cain ran some remarkable races at a very young age. It's interesting to me to see if she could come back to a high level. My criticism of her weight was a reaction to just seeing her standing at the starting line. She is getting some very poor advice or isn't really serious about resuscitating her career to show up looking like that. Perhaps a negative comment regarding weight shouldn't be posted. It's arguable. What isn't arguable is you don't see runners in the lead pack of a distance race with a physique like hers.

Les wrote:

Terrible miscalculation by Cain's coach. Cain obviously could not have felt confidant going in having not raced for two years. If he told her she was ready she clearly discovered she wasn't only a couple laps in. Her confidence in herself is going to be even worse now and she is probably not too confident in her coach either. If her next race turns out like this one did, this could be the end.

I seriously doubt they traveled that far without having done some tempos or something to gauge her fitness. Most likely she was ready to go and probably had a case of the nerves. Unfortunately when you DNF, it becomes easier to do it again when things aren't going well. Unless you are hurt, you should always finish to at least establish a baseline, also, you don't want to disappoint the sponsors who most likely paid for the trip. With that said, whenever I had a long layoff, that first race back was usually rough, but things would slowly turn around. Right now her body looks like a D3 athlete, she probably was not ready for D1 level of competition.

The live stream of the entire meet is here (womens 3000m at 2:16:20).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o01gEIlxrA

Can't really figure this out. No way they let her race without gauging her fitness and thinking she'd be in the ballpark. But she just did not look like she was in good shape. Seems that most of the top finishers had PRs and you can sort of see it in their physique that they were race ready. They were all very lean but Cain really is carrying extra pounds. Disclaimer: if she was a civilian there would be no question that she looks great but racing a sub 9, 3000 -- she'd have to lose 10 lbs at least. Wonder if we'll see her in another race. I certainly hope so.

oh my god thank you

I think her body type has always been like that. kind of a female bob kennedy.

Why did she put herself in this situation? I mean, sub 9:30 would have been amazing for her. She could have started with a local North American race. Perhaps, simply rabbit a 9 minute 3000m.

Now she has put herself in a corner. I think that she even has more European races planned. What a disaster.

But "talent never goes away"....I read it on LR so must be true. Hahahaha.