German Fernandez... just not the same runner any more

long dong silver wrote:

Folks like Rupp, Hall and Solinsky make the progress they make because of lots of miles over several years

Oh, like Wheating.[/quote]

Wheating has succeeded at 800/1500 without too many years of consistently high level, progressive training.

Therefore it cannot be true that consistently high level, progressive training has been a significant factor in the success of Rupp, Hall and Solinsky at 5000, 10000 and marathon distances.

QED.

Here we go again wrote:

long dong silver wrote:

Folks like Rupp, Hall and Solinsky make the progress they make because of lots of miles over several years

Oh, like Wheating.

Wheating has succeeded at 800/1500 without too many years of consistently high level, progressive training.

Therefore it cannot be true that consistently high level, progressive training has been a significant factor in the success of Rupp, Hall and Solinsky at 5000, 10000 and marathon distances.

QED.[/quote]

Look at guys like Willis, Gregson, Andrews, Rizt etc they have time off for injury and come back quick and in form...

All this talk of stepping stones, progression etc etc is bollocks, it has been years since GF ran a PR or showed improvement, this shows he was either near his maximum potential then or someone very very ignorant in is advising him. He was coming back from injury when he ran 3:55.... even at his best he was coming off a short build up.

Stop fooling yourselves with this freshman nonsense, yes he ran fast then, but something seriously is wrong now.

He is fine. Leave the kid alone. He is running. Learning. Running. Learning.

I say this, German is coached by a smart coach. He is a smart kid. In a few years he will move up to 5k and break 13 minutes :)

Geez. The crowd can really turn on a kid can't they? You all need to apologize.

German has talent..but I believe his high school mileage and chasing JR. records burned him out..it was too much for him at such a young age and now he has to pay the price for it..I also believe that he is being rushed into hard training over and over again and his legs cannot handle the work..His coach needs to back him off, rest him, work on his base again and get him ready for 5,000m..the kid still has hope, but not much left..his fire is gone and I think he needs to stand up to his coach and say he needs rest..Just like Dathan, he just needs rest, a full recovery from so many comebacks

you're either under 18 years old or you voted for obama.Am I right?

numiler22 wrote:

German has talent..but I believe his high school mileage and chasing JR. records burned him out..it was too much for him at such a young age and now he has to pay the price for it..I also believe that he is being rushed into hard training over and over again and his legs cannot handle the work..His coach needs to back him off, rest him, work on his base again and get him ready for 5,000m..the kid still has hope, but not much left..his fire is gone and I think he needs to stand up to his coach and say he needs rest..Just like Dathan, he just needs rest, a full recovery from so many comebacks

he didn't run high mileage in hs. nor did he run much speed under 30s/200m.

just remember before you slate dave smith that the guy took tom farrell to being a 15.04 guy to a 13.26 in 2 years. just think about that for a sec

German is in a tough position right now, he is running mediocre (for him). He is not running terrible, nor is he turning heads/ But if we take a look at our current crop of top distance runners, they have all had rough times in their NCAA careers:

Ryan Hall - Very fustrating times at Stanford. Big breakout finally in his SR year. Huge pro upside

Teg- Lots of injuries (with his same coach btw). Huge breakthough post-college

Webb- Hard to say his NCAA career was a total bust since it was so short, but he has definitely had ups and downs. But 3:46 AR at the top, struggling to break 4:00 at his bottom.

Giving up on German is unfair because no one really knows how this kid will run over the next five years. Rather than trash him, how about hoping for one of our biggest talents to succeed? Are people capable of being optimistic on this board?

1. I am not 18, and i did not vote for Obama

2. I stand corrected on the mileage, what I meant some of the workouts were crazy long and his recovery was too short

3. He does have a good coach, but he is coaching German now. Every runner is different from the others. He has done well with the rest of the OSU team but German has either not joined the program or does not fit Smith's coaching methods and that is killing him.

German is from California and moving to Stillwater, OK is a massive change. I do not know what is wrong with him, but he or his coach need to get him back on track, and I say it is recovery and a new start up.

This makes a lot of sense. In high school German obviously spent too much time learning to win and didn't learn how to run in the pack. Now he must learn to run in the pack. Once he has that down, I've heard Smith wants him to focus on learning to finish DFL.

******************************************

It's all in the plan. A couple of years ago Dave Smith stated German needs to know how to race. Now he is learning how to race. He sits in the pack, and as he stated after Stanford he is not sharp yet, and is learning to be in the pack. All you that have slammed him for being a front runner are now slamming him for learning how to run in the pack, which he will do when he gets to the international level. Smith know what he is doing. I still believe German will shut all you naysayer up come NCAA'S just as has done in the past.[/quote]

Why hasn't flotrack tried to chase him down and ask him what his thoughts are, how his training has been going, etc? I would be interested in hearing from German about what he thinks is going on. Is he frustrated? Satisfied? Right where he thinks he needs to be? Behind? How would he compare his fitness today with during cross?

People can come on here and say that 8th in cross wasn't that great, but people, it was. No matter how talented you are, 8th at Nationals is pretty impressive. Everyone in the top 30 is probably a sub 13:45 or a sub 3:43 runner... and German is not right now. Everyone in the top 10 (other then German) is probably a sub 13:30/sub 3:40 runner... except for German. Why?

Florunnerdude wrote:

Why hasn't flotrack tried to chase him down and ask him what his thoughts are, how his training has been going, etc? I would be interested in hearing from German about what he thinks is going on. Is he frustrated? Satisfied? Right where he thinks he needs to be? Behind? How would he compare his fitness today with during cross?...

Dude, you really think that Flotrack does hard hitting interviews? You really think that German or his coach want to lay it all out for folks to see?

C'mon Dude.

swummer wrote:

This is somewhat unrelated, but at the same time pretty related.

I go to OSU. I was walking to the cross country course today and Kirubel Erassa and Ryan Prentice (at least, I think it was him. I didn't get a good look at his face) ran by. I heard Ryan say to Kirubel "This program f***in blows. When I got here, I was the 8th man on the team. It f***in blows, man." as he ran by me.

Now, I am a big fan of the OSU xc team. And I don't want to believe it. But to hear it from some of the runners themselves was disheartening. Maybe the last two championships were short term successes and the program isn't as sustainable as everyone hopes.

I went to OSU and knew several of the guys on the team. Everything I heard was that Dave Smith only cares about his top 1-3 guys and pretty much runs everyone else into the ground. Since he has 20 guys, he just runs everyone to death hoping that a few will survive and will be better for it. Regardless of their national titles, you might want to look at their team as a whole and their runners' consistency. I haven't checked conference results in a while, but I know about half their team (HALF THEIR F***ING TEAM) DNFed at conference a few years. Please explain to me how there isn't a problem with a program when that happens.

I also know that Dave bitches his runners out if they get injured, and also "punishes" some runners if they have a bad race by making them do a workout until they're hitting 2:40s for 800s. While I was there, it just seemed like a nightmare, and no one I talked to had much of anything positive to say about Dave. Obviously the program is working for some guys, but it's not working for the majority.

Live and learn I guess. It's a shame GF didn't go to Stanford or Oregon, but it's possible he'd be no better off even if he did. Best of luck to him regardless.

What I got from this post is that you went to OSU but were not good enough to run for them. Nothing wrong with that... I wouldn't have been good enough to run for them either (or I would have been one of the scrubs)... but you were an outsider looking in man. You don't know half as much as you think you know.

hmmmmmm wrote:

What I got from this post is that you went to OSU but were not good enough to run for them. Nothing wrong with that... I wouldn't have been good enough to run for them either (or I would have been one of the scrubs)... but you were an outsider looking in man. You don't know half as much as you think you know.

I'm just going off what guys told me, and it came from multiple guys. If it was one disgruntled runner, that's one thing, but having 3-4 different guys tell you the same thing lends a little more credence to the claims.

Actually it's not "odd" at all......what would you rather run if you weren't in shape, a 10k or 1500? I have no idea how many months or weeks he has under his belt, but it's not many. A hard 10k takes a ton of fitness and strength where as a guy with his talent can fake a 1500 and still run fast. I suppose Dave is giving him race experience while he gets in shape and not destroy his confidence by putting him in a 10k where he would get burried right now. Same goes for the 5k. I just don't think he's ready to run a fast 5k. So you sharpen your speed and improve your kick while you build fitness and slowly build into the longer races. Pretty logical if you know much about running fast!

JJ Good Times wrote:

Actually it's not "odd" at all......what would you rather run if you weren't in shape, a 10k or 1500? I have no idea how many months or weeks he has under his belt, but it's not many. A hard 10k takes a ton of fitness and strength where as a guy with his talent can fake a 1500 and still run fast. I suppose Dave is giving him race experience while he gets in shape and not destroy his confidence by putting him in a 10k where he would get burried right now. Same goes for the 5k. I just don't think he's ready to run a fast 5k. So you sharpen your speed and improve your kick while you build fitness and slowly build into the longer races. Pretty logical if you know much about running fast!

if you are right that he is not in great shape yet, yes, I agree - but the guy took 8th in the nation at NCAA XC at 10k in November. It is 6-7 months later now - clearly his training was decent before NCAAs, then there was winter, then there was spring...seems like that is enough training to do a 5k at least.

But correct me if he was hurt again over the winter.

Florunnerdude wrote:

Everyone in the top 30 is probably a sub 13:45 or a sub 3:43 runner... and German is not right now. Everyone in the top 10 (other then German) is probably a sub 13:30/sub 3:40 runner... except for German. Why?

Really? That seems a little fast. I still think 8th was a good performance.

Wise Ass wrote:

Wise Guy wrote:

...It is way too soon to right Fernandez off!

True. True. But not to soon to write him off!

But not "too" soon to write him off. Wow.