hank moody wrote:
Oregon Guy wrote:
She flatlined because her HS coach was no good, in fact awful.
She has the talent to run 3:55 or faster, watch what she does with good coaching now. She will make the Olympic team. She should have made this move years ago.
Hickey is not an awful coach. That's a ridiculous comment. Pete Julian is fantastic; between Julian and Alexa now having a group around her, I do think she may see massive improvement. I do hope this is the case.
All of that said though, Hickey is a very competent coach.
I guess I need to explain the full story behind Alexa here.
Yes, Hickey is actually a great coach. He isn't the typical "HS coach who got extremely talented runner and became known despite being a standard bad HS coach", but is actually someone who knows his stuff. He did a great job developing Alexa.
But what you are missing - Alexa joined Nike LONG ago. Hickey wasn't running the training/coach as a "one-man-business", he was often consulting with other coaches at Nike (like Salazar and Julian) and forging training plans with a lot of input from different coaches/sides.
Similarly, Alexa lived in Portland with the college team for many years and had access to all the Nike facilities in the area. It's not like she just trained at home from her parents home in Washington all the time and now gets another boost due to superior facilities - she always had them!
So this is more of a "mental" change. Officially being coached by one of the "Great Coaches", officially training and being on the same team as Koko and other world-class runners will make a difference. But there won't be any new "super workouts" or drastic changes in training that will elevate her to a much higher level, as I said before, Hickey has been consulting with Nike coaches all the time anyway, and in case you didn't know - Hickey was actually employed by Nike after Alexa got sponsored.