Nico Young runs 4:10, 4:16 in practice!!!

Han Solo wrote:

Not hating on Nico, I’m sure he’s going to break all kinds of records this season.

Lucky for some of these guys they’re moving onto great college coaches who know what they’re doing.

Anyone who thinks Brosnan isn’t in this for his own personal agenda has their head in the sand.

It's impossible to judge a coach's motivation and why they are in it. There is no coach who would admit to being involved with kids for their own interest and not the kid's best interest.

However, there are things to pay attention to that might give you some insight into how the coach views themselves and their motives.

1)The number of interviews they do.

2)When articles are published about one of their athletes, how many times does their name appear?

3)When they are interviewed about a runner's performance, do they give credit to the athlete or say the athlete was successful because they had faith in the coach or listened to the coach?

4)When their team is celebrating a victory or some accomplishment, are they in the pictures or videos? If so, are they in the background or front and center, holding the trophy, etc.?

5)When talking about their coaching, do they talk about their credentials and why they are such a great coach or do they give credit to the kids and those that help them?

They can't control all of these points and none of these points by themselves tell you everything about a coach, but all together, they can paint a picture of their motives and what they view as important.

round and round wrote:

As a coach, i would have preferred to see a 4:16 followed by a 4:10

The coach sort of explains that. He wanted to simulated the 3k going out fast so those first laps being 62s was planned. If it makes sense is another thing. Kid should be aiming to drop right to back for the first half dozen laps.

I assume they only post the stupidly hard workouts and that the other ones are more normal. I am guessing Nico will handle these workouts a lot better than their 4th and 5th guys:)

Yes, “without pacers”. It’s very hard to absolutely bury yourself running alone, especially in practice. Even if he ‘raced it’, that means he basically time trialed 3 miles worth of effort. How many high school coaches have had athletes run the 1600 and 3200m in dual meets where the athletes ran solo- winning the race by a hefty margin? The answer is almost all of them. You can argue about how it’s different with the rest and all that, but in reality, it’s pretty dang similar. Obviously you can’t do these workouts 2-3 times a week, 50 weeks a year, but they don’t do that. It’s okay to run HARD sometimes; and it’s FUN to run hard sometimes; especially in the long stretches of no races.

*Btw, the 3k is a VO2 Max dominant race. If you want to run your fastest in that specific race, you have to do VO2 max work... not every workout.. but 10 days out is pretty textbook.

*His face looks stressed all the time. That’s just how it looks. He has weird head movements that make his form appear to seem awkward. But watch him from the hips down. He gets great hip extension, great heel recovery, great knee drive while keeping a negative shin angle, and he strikes the ground directly beneath his center of gravity. The only issue is his right foot externally rotates at footstrike. His left arm crosses-over his midline of his body fairly significantly as this happens (his right arm doesn’t cross over as much). I’m not sure which one causes the other, but that could be smoothed out a little bit. Overall though, the dude executes the most important aspects of stride mechanics pretty well.

Lastly, how many people know how many hours Nico slept? What about what he ate/eats? What about his mindset before/after the workout? Is he dealing with girl problems, school stress, family drama? Is he stressed about a race against the pro’s? These factors all play a a significant amount in ‘burnout’ or overtraining- probably more than the individual physical workouts themselves. Remember, coaches train humans- not machines that have to follow a perfect formula. If you don’t know Nico, and you don’t talk to him and assess his physical, emotional, and mental status every day, you can’t accurately comment on if this workout was ‘good’ or not. It’s a fun video, he’s fit, be excited to watch him. The end.

There are a lot of people who think like this and close to none of them have actually coached anyone who has reached the national level. It’s easy to blame the high school coach in this manner and think ok they must be running 60-70+ miles a week and/or doing tons of hard speed workouts but it’s just not the case a lot of times. You could have a kid not improve because they grew up in Socal and then move off to Washington, Oregon, DC, Boston, etc and suddenly it’s darker and or wetter than they are used to for months at a time. That can really throw someone off. Or they put on 10-20 pounds and it only helps them in the shorter distances they don’t even race. Or they aren’t used to doing tons of speed work and then go to a school where the coach says the training is tailored to each individual but actually that’s total horse sh.t and only said to help recruit them so they get pounded with tons of speed even though that was never their strength and never will be.

Moving away to college means your entire life changes: your friends, your teammates, the type of training you do, your diet, your sleep patterns, having a roommate all of a sudden, being able to get blackout drunk without mom or dad knowing, etc.

One of my friends went to Jesuit a while back and was national class. He went off to Arkansas and ran like trash but it wasn’t because of his high school coach, it’s because he drank more alcohol than one should be able to without dying. If I blamed anyone in that scenario it would be his dad that was an extreme disciplinarian and didn’t let him be a kid at home so he went nuts in college.

If Nico runs 3:57i , 7:54i and let’s say 28:27; will he entertain turning pro instead of going into the meat grinder of the NCAA and Smith’s NAU ..?

YMMV wrote:

1) Nico is an aerobic beast. I think that sub-4:00 is a bit of a stretch for him, but sub-8:30 for the full 2M is as good as good as done. Possibly sub-8:25. That is 4:12/mile which he practically averaged without pacers for a three mile session

2) No coach should be expected to coach for the level above, IF they can deliver at the current .

lol sub 8:30 for a high schooler is never "as good as done."

one person has ever done that, ever, and that one person won like a bajillion national titles and is the only nxn/fl winner, was a sub-4 miler, etc.

^ wrote:

If Nico runs 3:57i , 7:54i and let’s say 28:27; will he entertain turning pro instead of going into the meat grinder of the NCAA and Smith’s NAU ..?

From what I have seen, Mike Smith's training is very sustainable. Not a meat grinder at all. Highly aerobic, shorter rep speed work that doesn't kill runners. The mileage volume is incredibly high.

With Smith dipping his toes into coaching pros with the best American distance runner ever right now, who's to say he wouldn't be willing to continue coaching Nico after college? I think Nico will stay in the NCAA ranks and if the relationship with Smith is good, he'll stay in Flagstaff and help form a group similar to the small pro group Wetmore has going.

He seems to be thriving in the meet grinder of high school.

It wouldn't pay enough.

That school looks real diverse...

This. Exactly. This might seem like the minutiae of the workout to non-coaches, but it's precisely what makes me unsure of NBP as a program.

What are you unsure of? As long as they get really good runners to go there, they will be really good.

Caruso > D. Rose! wrote:

corn puddin wrote:

1. his mechanics are very similar to Jim Ryun.

Ryun was definitely better at the bobblehead than Young.

Anyway, Ryun did some pretty epic workouts in high school as well, right?

Here on letsrun it is important to remember that no new young runner is allowed to be as good as the all time greats. Inherently, the all time greats are better because they happened first, especially the ones that happened way first, like in the 60s and 70s.

The workout. The kid doing the workout. The stardom aspect. The exposure. The things that I think many experienced coaches on this thread would have changed.

Please read more carefully. This was in the latter part of what I wrote:

But I'm also not necessarily talking about specific individual athletes as much as I am a coach's overall record. I'm betting we can all name a few high school programs that have kids and teams at or near the top year in and year out but who overall develop poorly or not at all later on.

That's not so hard, is it? Of course there are individual circumstances. My point stands, and my point is correct if you read it all together.

Those comparing him to Jim Ryun are pretty off-base. Jim Ryun had tremendous speed. 46.5y relay on a very wet 440y track after a 3:55 mile. Young does not appear to have great speed. He looks to be a 5000m guy and up. Very nice stride, arms are problematic and awkward. He will excel at Northern Arizona under a very different training regiment but with year-round altitude training. The emphasis on higher mileage with lower intensity and lots of strength will suit him well. He will not maximize at the mile but he will be a great 5k-10k and xc runner and go 13:10s at NAU.

As for Brosnahan's Newbury Park program, he is doing tremendous things. Freshmen running 64s for 10x400m (4:16ish equivalent mile), a national team title, an individual title, a second guy in Aschenbrenner who might run 4:05-4:08 outdoors, and a large number of very fast people in the pipeline, including two Young(er) brothers, I think. I see the coach continuing to build this team for several years before moving to the high major college ranks, or even coaching pros. One thing for him to consider, though, is that you can only do so much of this kind of high intensity training with a lot more than race volume at race pace.

The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades wrote:

fromtheboards wrote:

there are none, Brosnan is new

Huh? He's been there four years. There are no runners who have graduated that he's coached in the past four years?

Wasn’t his first year of coaching NP when Nico was a freshman? If so, Class of 2020 that did CC at NP all 4 years (Nico, Jace, etc) would be the first NP class to be coached by Brosnan for 4 years.

So, only his coaching for 4 years should count? None of the underclassman he is coaching are doing well because of his coaching?

He has had 3 groups of seniors go through his training. Granted, the first year only had him for a season, but I would imagine he's had an impact on the past couple of year's graduating runners. Several of those runners were varsity contributors in XC the past couple of seasons (one of which made NXN and won a state title).

If only those count who have been through his program for 4 years, how can anyone claim he should get any credit for freshman running 10x400 in 64?

It’s easy to find top HS programs with kids who often don’t improve in college just like it’s easy to find horrible teams where nearly everyone that continues running improves.

My point is most runners don’t improve after high school so of course it’s easy to pick on the high schools that send lots of kids off to run in college.

Maybe you could point out a few elite high school programs where nearly all the kids improve in college and then we can take a look at what it is they are doing.