Mary Cain's running career is going nowhere

She "leaned in" - uggh! That inclines me somewhat to believe Salazar did little wrong with respect to her weight and that Mary is caught up in women's empowerment tripe.

I began reading this with some interest but realized it was repeating itself, over and over, and skipped to the final paragraph. I always thought she made a poor decision to race pro and attend U of P to begin her post hs career. Just should have gone to a good school with a well developed track program and enjoyed her time. I think she'd be in much better shape and frame of mind today.

I struggled to read it as well. I thought it was the font.

Many teen phenoms do not reach the next level, not only in sports but in academics and other fields too.

For those unfamiliar with the expression "lean in" it comes from a best selling book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_In

I thought he had a change in position due to the chemical issues, not anything to do with this. But I'm not up to date on it.

AlSal took way too hard of a hit for what happened to her.

Seriously, keep it on your side of Generation X as well, but I digress.

Cain was great in hs. She's not so great now. Tracksmith is for wealthy, preppie New England choades. Their products are dumb and no one needs them. Surgery is hard. Recovering from surgery is hard.

Am I missing any salient takeaways?

high school xc coach wrote:

AlSal took way too hard of a hit for what happened to her.

Yep. He will get all the blame when most of not all of it rests on her. Ironic considering how she sees herself as this big feminist yet when confronted with failure she's a femme fatale. Not her fault she was just listening to the big mean man.

Title should read “went nowhere”, because it’s all over for her, I think

Anyone with half a brain knows that Salazar isn't 100% to blame and nowhere has she 100% blamed him. Seriously why post hate on here?

Who cares if going pro was a bad decision for her?! At least she had the balls to go for it and gave it all she had. It's in the past now. I'm looking forward to how she performs this year and in the future--would love to see her get close to or beat her PBs.

1) salazar didn't lose his job because of her. did somebody say that?

2) Salazar didn't get 100% of the blame for her. did somebody say that?

he did get WAY too much blame for her. She scapegoated him hard. She's not a bad human being, but has been a little bit spoiled and probably has no clue of that.

It's fair to say Salazar's reputation took a bigger hit from his alleged "fat shaming" of Cain than it did from doping.

high school xc coach wrote:

1) salazar didn't lose his job because of her. did somebody say that?

2) Salazar didn't get 100% of the blame for her. did somebody say that?

he did get WAY too much blame for her. She scapegoated him hard. She's not a bad human being, but has been a little bit spoiled and probably has no clue of that.

It's odd to me that although Salazar is a villain on LR, many posters blame Cain for what happened. It's a fact that running at too low a weight resulted in her suffering five stress fractures. She claims Salazar pushed her to lose an arbitrary amount of weight. If that's true, Salazar is responsible for ending her career and it's irrelevant whether peopke like Cain's personality.

I dunno why anyone would have thought there was anything to learn from an article written by Cain about running.

She has an immense amount of talent, and under both NOP and tracksmith (despite being called an "amateur"), she has had access to more resources than any club athlete could dream of her entire life. Yet she churns out subelite results.

I'd prefer to read something from a girl who ran 12 minutes for 3200 in HS and has improved to be a 16 minute 5km runner - I bet she knows her body better and understands running training a lot more than Cain.

Not Sheryl Sandberg wrote:

She "leaned in" - uggh! That inclines me somewhat to believe Salazar did little wrong with respect to her weight and that Mary is caught up in women's empowerment tripe.

Very true. It seems like Cain wants to blame her sh!tty pro career on sexism - remember the "this was a system built BY MEN and FOR MEN" quote from her documentary? - and not on the fact that she probably overtrained and high school and poor decision making.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

high school xc coach wrote:

1) salazar didn't lose his job because of her. did somebody say that?

2) Salazar didn't get 100% of the blame for her. did somebody say that?

he did get WAY too much blame for her. She scapegoated him hard. She's not a bad human being, but has been a little bit spoiled and probably has no clue of that.

It's odd to me that although Salazar is a villain on LR, many posters blame Cain for what happened. It's a fact that running at too low a weight resulted in her suffering five stress fractures. She claims Salazar pushed her to lose an arbitrary amount of weight. If that's true, Salazar is responsible for ending her career and it's irrelevant whether peopke like Cain's personality.

Seems as if much of what you believe as "facts" are, in fact, opinions.

high school xc coach wrote:

1) salazar didn't lose his job because of her. did somebody say that?

2) Salazar didn't get 100% of the blame for her. did somebody say that?

he did get WAY too much blame for her. She scapegoated him hard. She's not a bad human being, but has been a little bit spoiled and probably has no clue of that.

it man wrote:

It's fair to say Salazar's reputation took a bigger hit from his alleged "fat shaming" of Cain than it did from doping.

Maybe I'm in the minority here but I had completely forgotten about his fat shaming of Mary Cain. What sticks out in my head are the doping allegations and crossing the line in terms of that. He sounded like he wasn't the most noble coach based on those allegations alone.

rede da arteecal wrote:

SDSU Aztec wrote:

It's odd to me that although Salazar is a villain on LR, many posters blame Cain for what happened. It's a fact that running at too low a weight resulted in her suffering five stress fractures. She claims Salazar pushed her to lose an arbitrary amount of weight. If that's true, Salazar is responsible for ending her career and it's irrelevant whether peopke like Cain's personality.

Seems as if much of what you believe as "facts" are, in fact, opinions.

Her having five stress fractures is an opinion?

SDSU Aztec wrote:

rede da arteecal wrote:

Seems as if much of what you believe as "facts" are, in fact, opinions.

Her having five stress fractures is an opinion?

More weight = more stress = greater likelihood of fractures

Salazar was not wrong in monitoring her weight and trying to influence it, as it is one of the principal variables tied to performance levels at the highest rungs of the sport. Arbitrary or not, that is the coach’s job and it is an art rather than science.