CoachB wrote:
Lots of misinformation on this thread. As a guy who coaches in the same league as Riverbank and considers their coaches to be friends, I can assure you guys a few things
German trained and raced extremely hard in high school
German was often injured in high school
Not winning FLN was really the only blemish on his senior year.
Since most of his college/pro career is easily accessible, I'll focus on what he did prior. This is done from memory from 12-16 years ago, so excuse if the details are off a bit.
Fall, FR - Played JV football, Riverbank is terrible at football.
Spring FR - Ran 4:34 in his first competitive mile ever, after training for 3 weeks at the end of JV basketball season. Ended up at 4:22 and 9:40ish for the season
Sophomore year - Was not going to run cross. Coach saw him around town prior to the start of school and talked him into coming out for the team. Mileage around 35. Won the division 4 CA state title in 15:12. Placed just out of a qualifying spot for FLN. Ran with the lead pack (Acosta, Coe, et al, until about a mile to go, couldn't hang). Played JV basketball and tore his meniscus.
Sophomore Track. Meniscus injury went undiagnosed for most of the season. He'd run for a week then take 3 weeks off. Won all 3 distance events at league finals, then had surgery on the meniscus one week later.
Junior Year. Didn't start running again until October of his Junior year. Placed 2nd in D4 at the CA state meet in, I believe, 15:34 off of about 6 weeks of running.
This was probably the start of German thinking of himself as a runner rather than just as a kid who runs track and cross in addition to his other sports. This is also conjecture on my part.
Over the winter, he decided to focus on running. He started building his miles up. By January he was running 12-14 miles for his long runs. Entered the Davis Stampede half marathon with his girlfriend. After running the first mile in slower than 6:00, he decided to speed up. Ended up catching the leader by 10 ish miles. Looked at the guy and asked, "how long is a half marathon"? Went on to win in, I believe 1:09. There was a great thread on here by the guy that got second. After that, he developed shin splints (possibly undiagnosed stress fracture, stress reaction. Spent most of his Junior track season on the bike. Got healthy enough by the end of the season to win the Sac Joaquin section meet in 9:13 then place 3rd at the state meet in 9:08 on a hot afternoon. A week or two later, he ran 4:13 at Golden West Invite.
Summer prior to senior year. Since he missed most of his junior year of running, he mostly kept training after Golden West. He was able to stay injury free for his entire senior campaign and this is when he burst into the national consciousness. In late July, he entered the Wharf to Wharf road race, where he placed 6th or 7th running in trainers and holding his ipod, running right around 30 flat for 6 miles.
His coach was a big believer in pace work. Someone posted on here earlier that "his training wasn't that hard, he never ran faster than 30 seconds for a 200" That may be true or it may not be, but by August he was running workouts such as 20 x 200 in 30 seconds with a 30 second recovery jog.
He opened the cross country season of his senior year with a couple of high 14s for the 5k. This included a 14:44 on the course we use for our league meet, which it turns out is actually 3.17 miles. I don't believe that they ran him in any of the big high school invites so he hadn't really "taken many scalps" leading into the post season so there was some skepticism about how good he actually was. At our league finals meet, I was riding lead bike. His shoe came untied before the 800m mark. His coach happened to be standing there and told him to go ahead and tie it. He stopped, tied his shoe and kept on going. Even 800 in, nobody caught him during his stop. I believe he finished in 14:47. He then jogged through the chute, put on his trainers, and was out on the course running a tempo effort 5k (which he finished in the low 16s.)
When he announced he was going for Marc Davis's record Woodward Park course record, most people were skeptical. Davis was quoted in the papers saying that when he ran the record, he had gone out too fast (I believe 4:29) and that if German wanted the record, he needed to not go out too hard. I believe Davis's course record was 14:38, which was run under perfect foggy conditions at the Kinney (pre foot locker era) regional meet (pre Mt SAC). German went out in 4:24 and went on to break the course record by 14 seconds, despite running in warm conditions in the last race of the day. Won FLR over Puskedra the next week then had a rare off day at FLN to take 3rd.
I actually think that his course record at Woodward was the most impressive meet of his high school career. Marc Davis was a 2 time Olympic team member and tons of other guys (Meb, Ryan Hall, etc...) never even broke 14:50 on that course. I thought that Nico Young had a shot at the record this year. He got perfect conditions at the state meet, very similar to when Marc Davis ran in '87. Young finished in, I think, 14:29.
During the off season between cross and track, he won USA Juniors, taking some revenge on Chris Derrick, who had beaten him at FLN. He ran OK at worlds and then his coaches pulled him from the Arcadia lineup as a precaution because he was pretty fatigued after coming back from worlds.
German tripled and quadrupled at almost every dual meet that year. He broke 9:00 for the first time at a super low key invitational. He ran 8:53 as part of a quadruple that first saw him run 4:15-4:18ish, 1:57 ish, and then split 53 on the relay leg of the 4x4.
He quadrupled at our league finals meet running similar times on a dirt track on a hot day. Then doubled at the SJS D4 meet. If I remember correctly, he ran 4:07 and 8:4x. He actually ran a little slower the next week at the Sac Joaquin masters meet before going to the state meet where he ran his 4:00/8:34 double.
Say what you want about his high school coaches running him too hard or too easy or Dave Smith ruining him. I don't really want to debate that. I do know that for his style of running (a kid that loved to just run even splits), his HS coaching was perfect.