German Fernandez likely to race Championship 800 this year

Dammmmnnnn Nostradamus, let German get through 2010 healthy and fit, then one season at a time.... whats this 2025 shtuff and 10000 meters??!!?? Do you got his marriage and first born arranged as well??!!?? "Geez German I had you mapped out to be married and 2 kids by 2020, you have failed me with your playboy ways and nailing all that International tang, and running that ocassional 800, i knew Coach Smith would lead you down the wrong path, Dammmmnnnn you Coach Smith, Dammmmmnnnn youuuu!!!"

Smith said he agrees German will eventually be a 10000m and marathon competitor, maybe in 2020 or 2025.

'The speedwork will do him good. None of us knows what his distance will be as a pro.'

Agreed and if you don't get speed when you are young, you never will

Fernandez has got class & I'm sure his coach knows exactly what he is doing

ukathleticscoach wrote:

'The speedwork will do him good. None of us knows what his distance will be as a pro.'

Agreed and if you don't get speed when you are young, you never will...

Running a few 800s is not going to have any impact whatsoever on GF's speed.

It may, however, help him a bit with race tactics - in a crowd, with people who are better than he is at that distance. I'm pretty sure that's what Smith has in mind and what he said in his interview.

Now that I think more about it, you might look at it from the scenario of what is best psychologically, too. German's what, 19, maybe 20? Based on the XC season, he wasn't 100% for whatever reason: he's not going to run 3:56 out of the gates this indoor season- likely wouldn't sniff 13:25 either.

Maybe Smith is being smart and taking off the pressure to live up to his (and everyone else's for that matter) expectations. He's going to let German try an off-distance so he can set some PR's- doesn't matter who you are, setting PR's is pretty awesome, builds confidence, motivation and a belief that what you're doing in training is working.

Running some 800's is simply Smith's way to put German in a win-win scenario.

A: he's not going to get ripped by anonymous letsrun posters when he runs 4:03 and

B: no matter how he does in the 800's, it's going to be a fun experience, he'll have 1:4x to his name and he'll earn some PR's in the process.

That doesn't sound like such an awful thing to me in the whole scope of a career.

Smith watched Alberto pace Rupp through an 800 meter regimen, so he decided to copy the success that resulted for Rupp. Problem is Smith doesn't know what he is doing. Rupp had a fabulous over-distance base, complementing it with 800 meter workouts was the perfect scenario. Smith doesn't get it, and this is part of what is ruining a potentially fabulous career for young German. I'll predict right now that German will get his ass kicked and his mind further confused when he hits the outdoor season. Centrowitz and Wheating have the huge advantage of being coached by a guy (Lananna) who actually knows what he is doing, and is not experimenting or copying someone else without knowing the why. I predict both Centro and Wheating will crush Fernandez, who will then declare that he ran injured, and that was why he sucked again. It is a shame that such great potential is being pissed away at OSU under Dave Smith.

^ this

Einstein had some ability to understand what he read, I'm guessing. No one claimed that Smith held him out for six months so that he could run some 8's. My point was that Fernandez could not have been getting that much base work in the summer and fall, because he ran very poorly, despite the fact that he has shown on multiple occasions that he can run very fast on quite limited training. Hence, he must have been injured much of the time.

Running a few 800s will not in itself improve his speed much. Training to run those 800s will improve his speed, and running those 800s will have some physiological and psychological effects for his fifteens and higher races, in that he will be capable of running, say, fifty threes or fifty fours back to back, and will know that fifty eights feel easy.

Hmmmmm, wasn't Wheating and Centrowitz both injured for NCAA's last year, stress fractures for both wasn't it??? jus sayin',and using letsrun message board intellect to full effect, if Smith is incompetent for having an injured Fernandez, wouldn't this make Lananna twice as incompetent with two injured Athletes that run basically the same events??!!?? just sayin if it works for one its gotta mean the same for the other??!!??

Smith is pretty explicit in his reasoning, last year Fernandez employed no subtley of tactics in his racing and got away with it because he was just better..

To get in races at the Regional / Conference level where he is up against guys better than him, he needs to go down to 800m, doubtful he could get it at 5km or 10km...

This Fernandez desperately needs, he needs to be taught a lesson from his stupid front running.. otherwise we will have the same situation we had with Webb, the most talented guy in the world but with no idea how to race, and a fat lot of good that is.

Yes... and your D1 coaching job/NCAA team title is where?

German is a sophomore in college, and he is only dedicating one season to some 800's. Everyone is making a big deal out of this. He will have at least 15 more years to develop his aerobic system. Let the guy do whatever he wants while he is young. One season of speed isn't going to destroy his future in the longer distances.

gunjk wrote:

This Fernandez desperately needs, he needs to be taught a lesson from his stupid front running

Yeah how stupid of German to run even pace in all his races that he did well in, breaking the high school two mile record, winning the ncaa 1500 from the front, leading all the way, how foolish of him.

I am sure that Dave Smith will teach him to run from way in the back.

-- good thinking there einstein

'Running a few 800s is not going to have any impact whatsoever on GF's speed.'

Well it's not going to make him any faster for the 100m but it will make sharpen him up (ie make him faster) over his main distances 1500m + from my experience

Nobody going to venture a guess on his time?

Smith fits LBJ's statement of many years ago. Johnson while President said, "I could walk across the river (likeChrist) on the surface all the way across, never getting my shoes damp." "The next day the headlines would read, JOHNSON CAN'T SWIM." Smith is the same. Does not matter what he does, or has done by the way, in the end he will get the same headline.

The man of the future wrote:

German is a sophomore in college, and he is only dedicating one season to some 800's. Everyone is making a big deal out of this...

I think that you are right. People really shouldn't be making such a big deal of this. In addition, I did not take from the Smith interview that German would be dedicating his season to the 800. It only sounded to me like he'd run it a few times, not that he would necessarily train for the 800 or focus on that distance in competition.

For UK coach - I don't have any more insight into GF's 800 capability than you or anyone else but since you keep asking for predictions I'll throw this out. I have not seen anything from GF that indicates much top end speed - only a remarkable capacity to crank out 65s (or 59s for the shorter distances). My guess (and it's just a guess) is that he'll be around 1:50 (1:48 - 1:51).

ukathleticscoach wrote:

Geb's best for the mile is 3:52.59 and German ran 3:55.02 not 3:56 At least get your stats right.

That stat may be right, but it's misleading. It implies that at his best Geb was a 3:52 miler, when that's not the case. The man ran 3:31.76, he was a 3:48 miler. (This is ignoring the fact that the 3:31 was run INDOORS. We can only speculate what that would be outdoors.)

good thinking there einstein wrote:

Yeah how stupid of German to run even pace in all his races that he did well in, breaking the high school two mile record, winning the ncaa 1500 from the front, leading all the way, how foolish of him.

I am sure that Dave Smith will teach him to run from way in the back.

-- good thinking there einstein

Good on ya mate, you think German is going to lead gun to tape in an Olympic final? Do you want his High School and College records to be his crowning acheivment.. Smith knows that German can't run like he does at the international level or he will get pegged, so he needs to learn that sooner rather than later.

So Smith does not know what he is doing? Assuming you know this for a fact, then it must mean you are going there.

In this case, you can't know if Lananna knows what he is doing.

I seriously doubt you know anything about Smith, Lananna, German, Rupp, or Salazar. For all any of us know, Germain should have been a 3:59/13:35 guy last year and Smith turned him into a 3:55/13:25 guy.

Maybe Rupp should have broke 27:00 last and Salazar is getting the worst out of him.

What is truly sad is message board posters speculating about something they know nothing about.