Woody Kincaid- Jerry (Schumacher) told me "I think you're throwing away your career by leaving"

Wrong.

Flagstaff is nice. Eugene is a poophole.

I didn’t start the thread to stir up shit. I was very impressed with Woody’s run and what he said after. I also am very impressed with Jerry as a coach.

I knew this quote was a fascinating quote that people would be interested in.

I also specifically included that Woody said he was open to going back to Jerry.

Woody said the quote. I don’t make it up or take it out of context at all.

People were talking about it to me at the armory today. If I don’t highlight 90% of them don’t know about it.

the fact this thread has 6 pages shows I was right.

Did you guys know people say things when they’re upset? Sometimes they don’t mean them. Sometimes they do. Crazy. I know. Imagine all the things you thought and said every time your S.O. leaves you.

I think one of the big factors is btc doesn’t race much. They didn’t race this weekend! How many times did woody even enter a race that went sub 13 other than his first 12:58 and this one? Has he ever been in a sub 13 race he didn’t win? I know he got dropped in Olympics but it was brutal heat, and tripped in wcs. When your just racing one time qualifier for the 5 and one for the 10 the us champs and world/Olympics your not giving yourself a lot chances to get get good times or big time tactics. Hopefully woody and other Americans actually race some diamond league races and move towards a 2:22ish last k thats required to win a medal. If GF doesn’t race any diamond leagues and finishes 4th to 7th at wcs again I think he should change his racing schedule.
I think this performance speaks a lot of varying training stimulus. Bowerman brought him up to a top level, but a few months of different stimulus obviously helped. Maybe doing threshold by himself actually allowed him to run below his true threshold and not push into higher lactic are chasing Bowerman guys. Bakkens threshold paces even when he ran 1306 were surprisly slow. For threshold pace if your running 5s per mile too fast be 5s a mile too slow your going to not improve as much. The nature of threshold is to get close to the inflection point but not past, that’s the magic of it. I wish gault would ask more training specific questions vs politics. I for one am curious about the training details. I really appreciated in his interview that he spoke of running as a job, because it is, if he runs 1310 it don’t mean sh!t anymore. He knows he has to improve to keep his career going and he did so kudos. I hope he shares more about his training with the public eventually. And let’s face it as a pro runner part of your job is an entertainer , I would love to see all these great athletes race twice as much.

John Walker ran his 5000m PR at 34.

Sarah is one of my favorite journalists . My take on the interview was that Woody has not publicly discussed his dad dying and it had been more of a private thing he dealt with.

I guess there had been an obituary and RW updated it’s article but if there was any more acknowledgement than that I am sorry we had missed it .

German MF Fernandez

Jerry seems to be doing just fine. Moh Ahmed did great at Olympics, Grant Fischer had a great year last year, and he was selected for arguably the premier coaching job in the sport.

got the backing off maybe the most powerful person I the sport too - Phil knight .

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The Woody quote: "Jerry (Schumacher) told me 'I think you're throwing away your career by leaving" is jarring.

Clearly the case of an employer/boss not wanting an employee to leave. The way they try to get their point across is to make you feel small/of little value or worth. I'm glad he's betting on himself & hope he chooses a training environment that he wants to be in.

There are so many other ways to convey to an athlete that you want them on your team -- maybe just try saying that.

people comparing Jerry and mike's situations just don't get it. Smith is based at NAU, and anybody going to him understands that. Jerry just uprooted a team of dozens and forced a move into a tiny little podunk college town. Many of them adults with FAMILIES.

and the shelby thing. ridiculous.

both great coaches, btw. different strokes for different folks, as far as the differences in their coaching goes.

Glad to see Woody being so open. Jerry Schumacher can f**k right off, great to see Woody shove his American indoor record up Jerry’s a**. Jerry’s a bully and a generally an unpalatable human being.

Jerry is exactly like Alberto, that's why they hated each other. And why they worked for Nike. These are some bad guys.

Let's stop the "training on his own" bit. Not too much training done after the long summer season, he just followed his normal fall build up with the "same" workouts he used with Jerry, maybe a bit more quality. He starts with Mike Smith's group in January which obviously helped. I believe the change of environment and a fresh start were most responsible for his performance. It looks as though he's found a group and coach that works for him. Maybe being out of Grant's shadow has made a difference.

Hope to see him continue to run well.

There’s a contraction of “you are” you should consider using.

You are 100% right that's the whale in the room.

Uprooting an entire adult team and their families based at sea-level to move to another sea-level locale 100 miles away? That's not a coach being honest with themselves about helping their athletes achieve absolute maximum potential.

I don't mean to knock Jerry, as life is complicated and he was likely pressured to take the Oregon job so is making the best of a less-than-ideal situation.

Mike Smith putting himself in an environment that is conducive to peak performance for endurance athletes is a show of competence.

Well, Eugene is more than twice the size of Flag. Better running and training facilities than in Portland. Pretty good environment for runners. People are acting like Nike campus is the perfect setup but it’s been pretty rough, especially when Hollister was torn up, and then Jerry having to build a training room at his own house because Nike facilities were closed. It’s only 90 minutes from Portland.

But these athletes aren’t even home half the year. They’re at altitude or on the road racing. The idea that Jerry imposed some sort of hardship on their families that wasn’t already there is kind of ridiculous. I mean, Courtney’s husband is working at UO now. Who is it that has family that’s more inconvenienced by this move than by stints at Flagstaff and Park City and in Europe? And my understanding was that people could stay based in Portland if they wanted.

Sure, there’s adjustments and it might not work for some people but in terms of geographic moves balanced against training priorities this is pretty minor.

Woody said it was a lot of things and he might even end up back with BTC. I don’t know why people are trying to turn it into a soap opera.

He didn't though, he was doing double threshold 3 times a week on his own. He even brought up how this was different from BTC training of 10 mile single threshold sessions

It’s also a bizarre assertion because the no. 1 critique of Bowerman/Jerry is is it’s not individualized/tweaked to fit athletes’ situations. Serves the seasoned and fully fit while discarding the injured, not ready, or on the downside. Sure he could follow Jerry’s “principles,” but not just hanging onto Grant/Moh as long as he could before aborting the workouts would be a large departure. So breaking up his sessions and running at the pace he believes is best for him (and not Grant/Moh) is a major difference from Jerry. That’s not even getting into if he picked Mike Smith’s brain while he was solo, which I suspect he did.