The fact that German Fernandez held the U20 WR until this past weekend is truly remarkable

Correct.

It's unreal really how good he was. The guy FRONT ran a 3:55.0 mile at his conference meet. No rabbits. No super shoes. If a rabbit is worth 2 seconds and shoes worth 2, that's better than Myers' new record.

We talked about his run extensively on the podcast which just came out:

https://podcast.letsrun.com/episode/5ab08dfa/conner-mantz-guest-tuohy-myers-scorcher-valby-s-pro-debut-ncaa-mile-record-in-jeopardy-

Basically, Jerry was and isn’t the type of person to adapt training around an injury prone athlete.

Alberto would have alter-g’d and aqua-jogged half of his mileage…Probably could have extended his career a little longer.

You must be young. He got injured bad at NCAA XC and he was basically never the same since. Jerry took him after he was basically done. Kind of like how Alan Webb joined Bowerman for 5 minutes.

Where are they now? Athing Mu

Some of this post is good. Some of it is trash.

1) Injury prone in HS so most of the blame is genetic.

2) Mentally, I'm not sure if he was strong enough for big moments. Although to me a big part of the mental side is often deep down physical in nature. I mean the guy had no problem winning the 1500 as frosh. But if your body is fragile, deep down the athlete may not believe 100% even if the coach thinks he's ready to go.

3) The Salazar slurping is unwarranted. Did Salazar save other teen phenoms like Franklyn Sanchez, Mary Cain, and Caitlyn Chock? Answer is a big NO!

Sadly Chock and Cain ended up in near suicidal positions.

No indication German couldn’t perform in big spots.

Salazar definitely would’ve got him right.

Mary Cain & Chock both had mental issues related to weight.

Rojo, check the tape. Not only does the onscreen clock read 3:54 flat (3:54.01 half a stride past) as he crosses the finish line but I timed it from the video and got 3:53.99. Convince me that the official time of 3:55.02 is correct. I think it's one second off, a misreading of the photo.

At the World Junior xc champs in Amman, Jordan, on a rough, hilly course in 2009, German was 11th (Chris Derrick 15th), first non-East African competitor over 8k in 24:13. Ayele Abshero won in 23:20. The top ten was composed of nine Ethiopians or Kenyans and a Ugandan, and several more East Africans were between Fernandez and Derrick (later part of the 2013 US world cross silver team medal). Considering the likelihood that many if not all were age-cheating and/or doping in that era, this was quite the accomplishment. Most recently, Leo Young was the top American in 16th at World Junior xc in Australia.

'1:55/4:05/8:45 in two hours at SJS masters'

No wonder he got injured

Is a 22-year-old out of college really “done”?

Look at Geordie Beamish: Mike Smith limited him to no more than 4 runs a week for a while because he was so injury prone. Now Ritz has him working with a physio and a lot of prehab. He has him up to 6 days running and he’s still making teams and performing well (yeah I know he is injured right now). If Ritz was like Jerry, he’d have Beamish trying to hang with Klecker in workouts.

As a Spanish guy born in 1996 I didnt know about German until I got here. That race was a thing of beauty. Now I seem to understand the hype. One of the most impressive races I ever seen

This is part of the enigma of German. When he was healthy, he could do stuff like this and look unstoppable. He was basically healthy through his 2007 xc season, 2008 track, and 2009 NCAA xc season until the NCAA championship where he went down with an achilles injury. Still he seemed to bounce back for early indoors and ran his incredible mile and 3k. But then he was hurt again and didn't run the NCAA meet but he did manage to come back for world junior xc, even though I remember reading he was wearing a boot in Jordan before the race. He managed a full 2009 track season but that was his peak. Every season after that was injury plagued and he didn't reach full shape. Somehow he managed a 3:34 1500 in 2012 after graduating but this was a false as his time with Bowerman was pretty rough. I think what ultimately happened was that he had finally reached the point where the training needed to get to the next level was too much for his body. There was probably a solution with cross training or something but maybe that didn't work for Jerry.

Also, based on his Athletic.net profile he never did the supposed triple mentioned above. it shows a 4:07/8:45 double at SJS masters but his only triples were at TVL league meets where he ended with a 1:55/4:14/9:09 triple. His coach Bruce Edwards talks in interviews about holding German back in training and that's where the quotes about him not running faster than 60 for 400 in practice comes from. Edwards also said his training was basically straight from Jack Daniels' book and involved a bit of biking, paying attention to subtle things to make sure German wasn't getting injured. This training produced that incredible 4:00/8:34 double at state but Edwards admitted that German had a lot of room to grow because they had been conservative. Dave Smith definitely explored some of that growth but it seems like German's body just didn't cooperate long term with the higher training volume. I'm still hoping the coach who coached in their league chimes in to shed more light on this because he would have seen German's progression firsthand and knows Coach Edwards personally.

German's Athletic.net profile as source:

athletic.net

German Fernandez - OK Track and Field Bio

German Fernandez - OK Track and Field results and photos on Athletic.net

Open link

I was the same year as German in HS and followed his results closely ever since he ran 4:22 as a high school freshman. A lot of people have discussed his injury history and it is true that he was not consistently healthy his first 3 years of high school. When he did show up to race it was always incredible. For example when he won the Division 4 race at the CA XC championships as a soph (2005), he did so in 15:14 dismantling second place finisher and future Footlocker Champ Chad Hall (yes, Ryan's brother) by 37 seconds. It was the second fastest time of the day across all divisions a second ahead of that year's Footlocker Champ AJ Acosta. Incidentally, the fastest guy that day was Div 3 winner Michael Coe who later pushed Fernandez to the line during his 7:47 indoor 3000 in 2009. German basically disappeared after that race because of an injury and didn't resurface at a high level (although he was second in the D4 race the following year in a much slower time and ran 9:08 as a junior in the state final) until his senior year in XC. Then he went on a tear that has already been discussed between fall of 07 and spring of 09.

I do have a couple of fun Fernandez stories one is first hand the one comes from a friend but is very much in line with what I saw:

At the 2008 CA state meet I showed up early (I was running the 3200) specifically to watch German run the 1600. It didn't disappoint as he ran 4:00 collapsing at the finish. I remember being impressed by how evenly he ran, basically 15.0x for each 100 the whole race. A friend and I who were in the 3200 were encouraged by his collapse at the finish thinking that he may have worn himself out. We both thought we were in 9:00 shape and that if he was tired he might be vulnerable. When we went to the warm up area we saw German and his coach out there and his coach was throwing him football routes in place of a normal warmup. It may have just been a fun way of doing strides but it intimidated the sh*t out of me that he seemed to just be playing around. We all know that the story ends with him running 8:34 wire to wire but how casual he was about the process was pretty fun.

I heard from a friend that ran against him in SJS that they were at an XC meet. There was a pickup soccer game going on in a field adjacent to the start of the XC meet and apparently German jumped in and was playing pickup soccer until the starter began to gather runners at the line. German calmly jogged off the soccer field to the start of the XC race, won the race by nearly a minute and then went back to playing soccer. I am not sure how true this is but it speaks to how nonchalant he was about the sport in high school.

Lastly, I had a college teammate who grew up down the street from German in Riverbank and her dad told us that he played pickup basketball with German frequently. Apparently he was totally humble when it came to his running and was shy about discussing his accomplishments, however, he was an incessant sh*t talker on the basketball court.

It really is too bad that he couldn't stay healthy.

Germain is a rare talent. For you young bucks in 1977 Niall O’Shaughnessy then a 21 year old miler racing for Arkansas ran 3:55.4 solo at a dual meet in Columbia Missouri on a 200 meter flat track solo.

Back then crappy shoes, tracks, nutrition, etc. was a rare talent as well.

I’m convinced we all have a biological clock that varies from person to person. You never know when your competitive time is up.

One reason I always check out threads on German is because there are so many cool stories about him. His results and lore make him such an interesting runner. It's stories like that guy posting about him running the Davis Stampede and starting it as a training run but then he picks it up and wins it after asking the guy "how long is a half marathon?" Or the story about his league meet where his shoe came untied 800m in and his coach told him to stop and tie it. German stopped, tied the shoe, wasn't caught, and finished sub 15. I've heard reference to some legendary workouts and training runs in Stillwater, both on these boards and even from Dave Smith himself, but I haven't ever read/heard specifics. What I'd also like to hear about is his freshman year track season at Riverbank because his PRs are listed as 2:05/4:22/9:51 but I have to wonder how seriously he was running these races or if this was just conditioning for other sports. I know Bruce Edwards wasn't coaching him for that season and didn't get to work with him until the start of school that following fall so German would've been all talent, as it doesn't seem like the Riverbank track coach at the time knew as much as Edwards about running an athlete like Fernandez.

Jeff never ran at Woodward park. They didn't have a California state meet until about 10 years after he graduated from high school (Woodward park is the state meet course). Also, no post season races like Kinney, Footlocker, or NXN existed back then.

That's what I had thought. It's a shame that Jeff was just 1 year away from Kinney in 1979 so he could've had a lasting mark at both Woodward for the regional and Morley Field. It's also a shame that German never came down south and made his mark on Mt. SAC so these two never got a comparison point at xc. Still, 8:36 and 8:34 show just the talent of these guys. I'm pretty sure Jeff still holds a course record at Crescenta Valley park that gets run pretty often and German may hold his state records for years to come. Just goes to underline how special these guys were, even if they never made the jump to the Olympic level.

I'm the "Coach from the same League" No time right now, just killing time until my next class starts in a few minutes.

German was undoubtedly the most talented HS runner that I've ever seen and likely will ever see.

I still see him periodically, as his youngest sister is a senior at Riverbank. He's a cop in Santa Cruz and looks fit as hell. When I asked him if he was running anymore, he just laughed and said he golfs a lot now.