The BTC Ladies had a bad showing

rojo wrote:

but where is houlihan wrote:

On the positive side, Kate Grace has seamed to find a new spark in her career after leaving Bowerman.

1) Kate clearly didn't thrive under the BTC

2) No offense to Kate but Jerry is trying to coach people to win medals.

I think it's kind of misleading to imply she's' a lot better now than under Jerry. She ran 4:02 under Jerry. When you are losing to Katie Snowden in a 1500 and running 4:03, you aren't exactly marking yourself as a medal contender.

3) Might she make a team because she's not wit the BTC? Yes. But I imagine Jerry thought "to be able to run x, you've got to be able to do y" in practice and it didn't work out.

He said “find a spark”, in no way did they imply she is a lot better now than she was under Jerry. She was flat there and seems to have found what she had before joining bowerman.

Did Shelby start training for the 10k when the schedules were released? How different is Jerry’s 10k vs. 5k training?

Also, to the posters doubting Jerry’s prep for USA’s : what usas on the track has jerry not had his horses ready to go? Give it a rest, they had an awful meet and the top guns didn’t race. They never have raced much. No more, no less.

rojo wrote:

but where is houlihan wrote:

On the positive side, Kate Grace has seamed to find a new spark in her career after leaving Bowerman.

1) Kate clearly didn't thrive under the BTC

2) No offense to Kate but Jerry is trying to coach people to win medals.

I think it's kind of misleading to imply she's' a lot better now than under Jerry. She ran 4:02 under Jerry. When you are losing to Katie Snowden in a 1500 and running 4:03, you aren't exactly marking yourself as a medal contender.

3) Might she make a team because she's not wit the BTC? Yes. But I imagine Jerry thought "to be able to run x, you've got to be able to do y" in practice and it didn't work out.

A 4:03 is a good performance for Kate at this point when you factor in that her training has shifted back to being more 800 specific. She NEVER should have been trying to qualify at 1500, she's just not built that way. As her speed and kick come back, her 1500 time may suffer a tad but hopefully she will be able to bust out a 1:57 for the trials. I am betting on Athing, Ajee and Kate to rep the RWB in Tokyo. Raven is not going to be in the picture. I really wanted Kaela Edwards to show some promise but she has gone the other way since leaving Team Boss.

Please don't forget how poorly Bowerman TC performed at World XC in Aarhus in2019.

If you're going to bash Jerry & the BTC women for a poor outing, consider they were not the only ones having poor races:

Team Boss came down from Crested Butte @ 9500' with mixed results: great races from Emma, Dani and Kate . . . however, 27:58/Morgan McDonald is well off his best while 4:10/Cory McGee is almost as bad as Sinclair's 4:12.

Team Julian came down from Park City @ 8000' only to get a 4:09 from Rowbury while Hull's 4:04 was ok but still 4 secs off her pr. Efraimson either DNFs or DNSs from her 800 race while Brazier is added to the 800 field but DNSs.

Even 4-flat Jemma Reekie clunked a 4:05 after looking so good last week in the 800 at the Golden Games. (Hats off to Laura Muir for have 3 really good/great races on her US tour and for blowing away Purrier & GDS today in the 800.)

I would love to have a reporter talk to Jerry, Joe and/or Pete to get their reasons why their athletes were all over the map this weekend. Doubt that will happen, so we just have to assume that some people need more rest after coming down from altitude or just need a significant taper after any hard block of training.

I think Emily had her 2nd vaccine shot so might have been the reason for the DNF.

It had been reported that Shelby was doing the 1500 at the trials. Is she thinking of the Sifan Hassan double?? or switching to 10k. This seems strange.

elemenr wrote:

She still gets a pass in my opinion. She probably hasn’t done any hard training and probably has had some bumps because of it. surgery like that takes a whole lot of time. .

She has been training with the rest of the group ... so I guess depends on what your definition of hard training is.

I think the takeaway here for most if not all of the bad performances is that Schumacher got the recipe wrong and sent them down for this meet a bit wiped out. Saw a comment earlier that Infeld only had three days notice she would be racing - not sure the reasoning behind an impulsive decision like that? Hard to understand the point of going through all the travel, etc to run slower than your 10k pace for a 5k.

The first rule of USA running, You can't criticize Jerry or the Bowerman group " especially doping innuendos.....a list is being made for anyone who was disparaging on this post. beware!

Bower Man wrote:

If you're going to bash Jerry & the BTC women for a poor outing, consider they were not the only ones having poor races:

Team Boss came down from Crested Butte @ 9500' with mixed results: great races from Emma, Dani and Kate . . . however, 27:58/Morgan McDonald is well off his best while 4:10/Cory McGee is almost as bad as Sinclair's 4:12.

Team Julian came down from Park City @ 8000' only to get a 4:09 from Rowbury while Hull's 4:04 was ok but still 4 secs off her pr. Efraimson either DNFs or DNSs from her 800 race while Brazier is added to the 800 field but DNSs.

Even 4-flat Jemma Reekie clunked a 4:05 after looking so good last week in the 800 at the Golden Games. (Hats off to Laura Muir for have 3 really good/great races on her US tour and for blowing away Purrier & GDS today in the 800.)

.

This post masquerades as analysis but you clearly did not watch the race or did not engage your brain while doing so.

McGee's 4:10 and Johnson's 4:12 were run in totally different ways and mean totally different things. McGee stuck her nose in it but rigged badly over the last 300 meters - you could see her grimacing and tightening up coming into the bell. Johnson on the other hand was never in it, was out the backdoor immediately. Johnson's result seems to fall in line with a young 8/15 athlete getting destroyed by heavy training at altitude, especially given the recent good run over 800 you worry less about this. McGee on the other hand, after an initially excellent return to form her first year in Boulder, has not looked good subjectively this year, first getting lit up by Heather Maclean indoors and not closing other races well this outdoor season.

Efraimson should probably be excluded from the discussion as her body has changed, which is fine.

Your comparison of everyone's performance with their PR is incorrect. Hull is opening her season (minus a rabbiting gig a few weeks ago), and this is May on a high school track with bricks for a rail not a magical night in Monaco in August. How close was Muir to her PRs? Context is important.

Bower Man wrote:

I would love to have a reporter talk to Jerry, Joe and/or Pete to get their reasons why their athletes were all over the map this weekend. Doubt that will happen, so we just have to assume that some people need more rest after coming down from altitude or just need a significant taper after any hard block of training.

Coaches in our sport feel that they are entitled to ignore basic questions and inadvertently allow for fans to make the worst assumptions about their athletes. This is why pro sports require mandatory press conferences. There’s a likely a simple explanation for all this but you know, nobody cares about properly growing the sport.

Jerry: “I can simply put out a statement but I’m going to hide like I always do.”

Well you’re always a winner in my book if you can do the other activities in excellence too. Who knows then you might even come back overcome your challenges and win by a large margin, in which case there’s a strong correlation so you know make it count along all the factors.

emr0129 wrote:

Yep you’re right. The one I’m most surprised about is Marielle Hall… she seems to be digressing. Why did Emily DNF?

Digressing? Do you know what that word means?

You make a great point. I thought the results across the board from virtually everyone - even people like Ben True who trains largely by himselves - were slower than expected. I mean there is another thread asking about the Beasts. All of the groups came up short.

You certainly don't want to back off training 4-5 weeks from the big dance. As a result, virtually everyone was slower than expected.

A grade: scott (3:36), centro (3:35 and strong win), fisher (3:36), ahmed (closed 5k in 3:01)

B grade: Thompson (3:37 in main event)

C grade: Derrick 28:30, Tuntivate 3:50

Notable DNS: Lomong

Just a hunch... Jerry knows much better how to train his athletes to be ready when it matters.

rojo: in one post questions where all the BTC athletes are (shelby, lopez, karissa... etc).... 5 posts late is pointing out that jerry "is trying to coach people to win medals."

I might eat these words, but the olympics start in July. Maybe there's some thought process to not forcing it in May for the folk that you would absolutely consider olympic medal threats?

Lots of people underachieved for sure as Bower Man mentioned, but that doesn't quite cut it for me as an explanation. Reekie has an off day - 4:05, but she still was *in it* and greatly positioned with 100 to go before tying up. Others have mentioned McGee.

But man, Infeld DNF, Fraser a full minute off of her PB, Hall a minute off of her PB. All of them beaten by Gwen who in her own words switched off with two laps to go.

Put another way - the women's 10000m winner from Friday, closed the second half of the 10 in about 15:24. So an athlete most people on this board haven't heard of, Seccafien, ran the back end of her 10,000m faster than any of the BTC women did their 5ks in last night. Like it's one thing if Gidey, Hassan, or Tseguy does that, but when you can't match a 5k split of a runner I'm sure all the BTC athletes would hope to be racing then I think it's fair to ask what on earth is going on.

The other question is why the massive gaps and inconsistency? She's not on the level of Muir or Purrierz but GDS has quietly had a solid 7 days - 4:00.6 and 2:00.03 (PB) are very respectable season opening times. But then the rest of the women yesterday.... I imagine her looking back to the rest of the team as being like Troy returning with the pizza to the room on fire in that episode of Community.

And on the men - Ahmed toys with the 5000 field, Centro returns, men go 1, 3, 4, 5 but then Tuntivate runs 3:50, Derrick 28:27, and Lomong DNS'.

What do you do as Schumacher? Things are clearly going quite well for some, while disastrous for others.

It's a bit disingenuous to claim Schumacher is only interested in training people for medals. He's a US distance coach, how many medals could he seriously expect even from the most talented group of athletes in the country? Houlihan and Centro are decent shots but after them, everyone is a long, long shot (even Houlihan is looking a long shot with the supreme talents of Tsegay, Hassan, and Kipyeogon around and Muir looking ominously consistent). Schumacher's goal is to get people on the team, which is all anyone can really expect from a mid and long-d team.

sub sub elite local hobby jogger wrote:

emr0129 wrote:

Yep you’re right. The one I’m most surprised about is Marielle Hall… she seems to be digressing. Why did Emily DNF?

Digressing? Do you know what that word means?

In this sense “drifting or diverging” go look up the word. It has other meanings besides used as “but I digress” .. glad you were able to extract the point of the thread though, interestingly poor performances from these elite women is nothing compared to you having to use a thesaurus.