Allie O DNS in Final

Calling other people's post stupid shows immaturity but whatever. Allie's best track days, and times are behind her. And its a valid point that she couldn't face the fact that she qualified on time and last to get in ad probably would finish as an also ran.

she had to try to cram so much fitness in at the last minute because she didn't heal well from her tibial stress reaction(s). instead of being a professional with sense, she (likely from a combination of stubbornness and bad coaching) kept doing these all out stationary bike workouts and uphill treadmill runs which obviously still overloaded her system which had already indicated it needed a break after the Mesa half marathon when the injury first occurred. thus, those injuries took twice as long to heal as they should have (she says as much in the videos).

I’ll say it, allie appears to be more happier w Lauren Gregory than spencer in these recent videos.

i mean they are just beyond annoying, O and Gregory. Spencer loooks beyond annoyed. Wonder what’s going on.

Although I agree that she has the potential for more steeplechase success, I disagree that Roche aided her 7th place finish at the Oly Trials. Look at her workouts leading up to the final - some were idiotic. She did well despite, not because of, him. Nor do I buy the lack of barrier drills this year - if she was so fragile she couldn't do them, then she shouldn't have maintained her aim at competing the event. There are other coaches out there who could provide psych stability/support while also enhancing race performance.

All these comments that "she was overcooked" and "her coach sucks" and "if she couldn't hurdle she shouldn't have competed" are based on nothing but speculation or plain dumb or both. That and there's so much Roche hate on this board that that's got to be part of it. I already said I have no idea if Roche is a good coach or not, but I follow Allie pretty closely and her training looks like someone who has a significant ED/injury history and who is trying to run track and trails. I'm not a huge fan of trying to do both (think she should focus), but who am I to judge. The variation in training probably increases the chances she stays healthy.

If Emma Coburn was coming back from a stress fracture, only started running 6 weeks ago and said that she didn't hurdle much in training because she was being cautious with the injury, no one would second guess that. In that situation, you know that the hurdling is a physical stress and a risk, so you're going to save the pounding for the meet itself and hope for the best. Nothing unusual in that in the slightest.

We have no idea if she was overcooked physically. Occam's razor. The most obvious reason that her prelim wasn't very good is the injury. She's just not fit.

So many jaded children on this thread.

1. Why Allie dropped is nobodies business but hers.
2. For those who follow her YouTube channel it's fairly apparent she just hasn't been healthy for long enough post injury to regain the fitness required to compete at the level she wants to. Nothing else to read into it. She needed more time, sadly that wasn't her reality.
3. She gives so much to the running community and is an exceptional role model for young women coming up in the sport. This gives her a hard pass in my book. Being a decent human and positive influence in an often toxic sport is something we need more of.
4. Once again LetsRun message board bringing a total lack of empathy to the table.

AllieO and Spencer are interesting. Gregory is incredibly annoying. Can she speak a sentence without giggling.

I wouldn't word it this harshly but, in general if she wishes success in the steeple, there needs to be a focus on the event or even simply racing on the track to be successful at it instead of skipping around.

She's also been injured during the last few months which likely didn't help.

Sure but first how about you explain why you clicked on a thread with a quite obvious subject line if you didn't want to join the fray?

She will indeed give a thorough explanation. The algorithm says it will generate a ton of traffic on youtube.

I believe her socials stated "I felt completely empty. I wasn't nervous, excited, anxious, unsure, or scared, just devoid of emotion." So essentially she didn't race because racing didn't sound particularly attractive to her. A day later she is hanging out on Cape Cod with Spence.

Isn't this is kind of her actual job along with pumping monetization and random products via YouTube, yet she blames not wanting to race as the reason she didn't race. So 99% of people should not show up to work tomorrow because they feel empty about their jobs?

Some people would give their left teste to get an OTQ bib (in my mind the marathoner equivalent) so to skip the USATF finals in your best event because you don't feel like it, really? Or you know you are finishing 10 / 14 or worse (including an understandable DNF due to a tough spill).

People follow the media for inspiration, also, and it's hard not to feel bad for them for watching a pump and dump episodic build that ends with a meh don't want to do this.

Oh and didn't she take a spot from the next female competitor since she was a late scratch? Not sure if this is the case or not but that would really poor form.

But her job is not to run. It is to sell products to people on youtube. And that she will do. And that will pay for her hobby that is to run from time to time.

I'll say one thing , she is fearless, if you seen on her trail races, she puts it all in on those down hill parts............not afraid

Hence why it said: along with pumping monetization and random products via YouTube.

If you look it up she's dropped countless videos hyping the race. There is a trend among fitfluencers (which I wouldn't consider her to be bc her accomplishments are leaps and bounds beyond that) where they set a ridiculously lofty goal, get a large circle J going with a series of drops that would make Netflix blush, then fall well short either by design or by sheer likelihood only to to, as others note here, burn that story for even more views. Wash rinse repeat.

Your comments are misdirected. Last year, she wasn't training for the trails during her Oly Trials build - my comments addressed that time period. And the workouts I condemned were overly hard (and the wrong kind) relative to the proximity of the race - so the goal obviously wasn't to keep her "healthy" in the avoid injury sense.

As to the prelim being poor, your proffered injury explanation is disproven by her faster performance just two weeks (or so) earlier with no competition. That said, she was ill thereafter, so that could have been a factor, despite the lack of any such reference in her final workout video.

Are you one of the guys who posts constantly on the Roche thread? Cuz you're really working hard to make a point that isn't there. Meaning that Roche may be good or bad but it's impossible to judge so far based on Allie O if you're being rational at all. Here's what I know: she ran a lifetime best of 9:21 in 2024 at her most important track race of the year. So what makes you so sure that he's a bad coach and that her PR was in spite of him? Other than disliking Roche? What evidence is there in her running history that she was capable of running faster?

Also, genius, temp in Eugene was 89F at race time. It was much cooler in Portland. Plus sounds like she was sick. Difference in races was 5 seconds, so it wasn't night and day different under the circumstances. You're reaching so hard you're not being objective.

From what she was saying about her workouts and overall feelings in the past few weeks and specifically what she said about "functional overreach" it's pretty clear she was overcooked. What do you think "functional overreach" means? If it were the right amount of fatigue, she wouldn't have talked about it that way. Everything about what she said she was feeling physically in videos the past few weeks is what anyone who has experience being overcooked has felt. (Maybe you've never been overcooked.)

The time she ran in the prelim wasn't really telling. Like you said elsewhere, it was hot, and more importantly, she was only 3 seconds back of this-season 9:08 performers. What was much more telling was that she couldn't get an auto qualifier, was dropped by several women with slower PRs when normally, she always has a good finish when fit. I didn't actually watch that prelim, but that result tells me she has lingering fatigue. . . overcooked.

Talk about hurdle training and her being too short are distractions. She's never trained hurdles much when she was winning 3x NCAA titles and is mostly a natural at it having raced hurdles in middle school. If she doesn't get the timing right in the first race of the season, that's easily correctable. It's not the main issue.

Temperature isn't as big of a factor in the steeple as with the longer races - 89 and low humidity isn't that daunting.

I've never posted in the Roche thread - don't care about it/him as a general matter.

What makes me sure he isn't that good of a coach for the steeple? Putting aside that he wasn't a steepler himself and never ran competitive track in school, and even ignoring her running trail races instead of track races leading up to Nationals, having her do VO2 Max work a few days before the big race says it all.

What evidence is there that she could run faster than 9:21? She ran 9:26 in 2021 - 5 years later, she's only 5 secs better despite being in her prime running years of mid to late 20's? You tell me.