Tuohy to race 5k

Yep. What gets me arguing is when people are pretending that an athlete that showed no remarkable talent throughout a long college career not merely improves at age 26 but can now suddenly run a time no NCAA runners has touched in history. It is not going from 15:42 to say 15:15 or 15:10. This is now magically being able to run 14:45. I mean, come off it. And there are plenty of US pros with the same m/o. To use the deflection de jure, it would be like Patrick Tuohy suddenly running not merely a good college time, but 1:44. Again, I have no real problem with pros doping, particularly when faced with shameless East African dopers who do things on a much more blatant scale. But when people cite athletes who are clearly at least likely microdosing to criticize a clean athlete and pretend that such a performace jump is natural to bury the clean athlete, that is bush league. For the record I do not believe KT should try to compete clean as a pro bc it is impossible. But saying she has peaked or cannot improve when we know exactly why pros improve in this sport is dishonest. Give epo and steroids to a halfway decent college runner and they will improve massively. Look at Houlihan, who is one of the few we know about.

So with Katelyn you either believe she started doping as a 7th grader (lol), or is doping now but explicable cannot improve despite this, or that she is right now trying to compete clean but still has the chance to fully commit to being a pro if she chooses. I take the later view. Still if you want to believe in the magic late bloomer gene, OK.

4:00 is a big jump. 14:50 is possible but I don't see 4:00.

I'll buy that. She's at 4:06 and still likes running 1500/mile, plus working hard on speed for the better distance close.

4:00 seems like a big juicy target, but 4:04 and 4:02 certainly more realistic steps on that journey.

You forget that Emily Mackay

a) had a plethora of health issues in her late teens and early 20s and has only been able to be consistent in the last couple of years

b) Attended a school that isn't wasn't in a particularly competitive conference (America East) in comparison to a lot of other conferences in XC/track (ACC, SEC) at the time she was on the team. Her high school was also in one of the less competitive sections of New York State

c) is in her early-20s, but approaching the age where development fully stops.

Katelyn is simply on one of those natural plateaus women get in their teens and early 20s. The body does not fully stop developing and changing until the mid-20s, and natural dips and plateaus are as a result quite common. Women peak in their late 20s and early 30s when their body is fully done growing and changing composition, before aging-based effects begin to kick in. Maybe give Up to Speed: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes a read and then start reminding people that women do not have a linear progression the way men do and to not judge a cis woman on a male model when they give Tuohy flak on experiencing one of those natural plateaus instead of denigrating other athletes that have either entered the peak age range for women or are in the performance jump period between dips and plateaus

Oh. We are on late bloomers and magical plateaus again. Lol. Kt breaks the record for reaching mythical plateaus. Yes, that explains it like it did for Houlihan. Lots of similar bs back then too. What's fascinating is we saw that massive corrective example to this nonsense, and it still gets recycled like it never happened. Then again, it took about a thousand Kenyan doping busts before people here began to question the natural born runner fable. So not surprising. Also stop treating Binghamton like it was the sisters of the poor. Not to pick on anyone, but I just pointed out a massively suspicious example, but one that fits the Houlihan patterrn to a T. If you want to keep peddling claptrap about delayed latent talent and late bloomerism over a much more likely and tested explanation, by all means.

"Mythical plateaus." Sooo, you don't think Tuohy is going to improve anymore, then, even though she is still several years from peak age? Is that what you are implying? She's been running her college times, not any faster. Normally being stuck in a particular time range for as long as she has would be considered a plateau. Have you suddenly decided she's peaked already, despite being only 22?

I should also note that pros that have passed the typical late 20s to early 30s peak years such as Kara Goucher, Sara Hall, and Lauren Fleshman all experienced dips and plateaus in their times in high school and college, and yet they ultimately went on to become Olympians after their "mythical plateaus".

He finally came around to admitting that she is washed up.

You missed my point. People have been making the same claims regarding Tuohy for 9 years, that she would succumb to some biological curse reserved for female runners. The NYTs wrote a whole article about it when she was a high school sophomore. And as I recall the founder of this site her junior year started a thread pronouncing his concern, that high school female runners that do not improve going into their senior year have allegedly peaked and would be biologically shortcircuited. How did that work out?

I do agree that runners, if they are natural, have plateaus. And injuries. What I take issue with is the myth that the massive post college improvements we typically see with US pros is part of some latent biological development. I think it is 100% chemical, befitting a doping sport. At some point, and rather quickly, a clean athlete will hit a seeming wall, and will appear to stagnate compared to the dopers bc it is inevitable. They reach the limits of natural talent, and cannot compete against epo. That more than anything is what I think Tuohy has encountered. No point trying to compete clean in a dirty sport, but that's her choice.

So basically what you are saying is that since your girl toy Katelyn Tuohy turned out to be a mediocre professional, with a broad paint brush you will call EVERY professional faster than her a cheater and a doper.

Now you get it. But while she was winning in HS and college, she was clean. If she runs 14:20, he will say she is clean.

What I am saying is that pro running is a doping sport and absolutely that every top pro runner is doping. If that offends you, too bad. We know that virtually every pro cyclist was doping in the epo era bc the lid got blown off with scandals. We know that a very high number of baseball players doped to compete in the steroid era because the scandal broke. We know from the endless doping busts that top sprinters are doping. We know that the Kenyans who dominated the sport are doping based on a wave of busts. We know the Chinese doped and the Soviets based on subsequent revelations. But still, despite the magic pill being readily available and still very hard to detect, US pros would never? Lolll. Get real.

So why is that difficult for you? Bc you want to deny it? One day maybe the lid gets blown off this sport similar to what happened in Kenya, and the next Shelby pulls a Landis. I can wait.

So yes, when you are able to suddenly run in the 1440s, you are plainly doping. In the 1420s, radioactive. In the 1400s, an outright farce. Every clean athlete will plateau competing with doping. Fact of life.

No. It would be amusing regardless.

How fast would a woman run if they doped but woukd run 15:40 without doping?

Epo is very powerful. I would say that a 15:40 runner doping unfettered would run 14:20s. We saw this directly with the Chinese. Runners with zero pedigree suddenly curbstomped everyone. Armstrong was taking steroids but became aware of epo when Italian clients of Dr. Ferrari started destroying him. Therein lies the whole problem. The drugs are supercharged.

I forgot that Mackay is 26.

She was 24 years old running 4:08/ 15:14 and in two years has dropped to 3:55/14:45 so I suppose anything is possible for Tuohy as well

What are your thoughts on Tuohy running the 8:35 out of nowhere? Was she doping at the time?

High school 3000m record. U20 3000m record. Runner up in ncaa 3000 season before. Finally fully recovered from surgery. Yep, out of nowhere. Lol.

2020 9:32

2021 8:54

2022 8:59

2023 8:35

2025 8:47

One of those is not like the others.