Legalizit & Stepay what do you think....?

Go to

www.mensracing.com

under Editors Pick and read

about the program Mr. Brown is trying to get underway.

It seems to be well thought out; however, do you think

it will work?

Vipam

Interesting that you would ask my opinion given that I'm no expert, and I'll just go with that you asked me simply because I post frequently and have opinions.

Here's mine:

I don't think his vision will work. Of course money isn't the answer for everything, and I will say that throwing money to help develop athletes is helpful, but I don't think his program goes far enough.

He wants high school kids to skip college and develop outside of college. The problem with that is that a college scholarship is worth a lot of money. Even for those who are super elite on the college level, that elitism lasts at the most 15 or so years after graduation, and then you've got to find a real job (see Steve Holman and Jon Sinclair). Having that education for the second part of your working life is important and worth it. Elite baseball players can make it work because there we are talking about HUGE sums of money and signing bonuses that are more than a million dollars even for unproven talents. For these runners, money has to be an issue. They have a life to lead, and I'm sure they don't want to HAVE to work at Wal-Mart when they are 85. If the U.S. could somehow fund a real money machine where a very elite few were chosen to train for the Olympics and World Championships and these athletes were offered a substantial amount of money (Webb money at a minumum) to make it worth their while, then I think there would be some interest. Even then, many would still opt to head to college, and the program would have to be successful pretty quickly to get a higher percentage of elites to choose it over college.

At some point though, someone needs to take a bold step to get something accomplished, and we obviously need to do something different. Unfortunately, it might take someone with an interest in distance running who has serious money (less than Bill Gates money, but enough where they could fund it forever and not run out) who wants to fund a program just to see what might happen.

Anyway, that's my view.

"After coaching Olympic and World Championship athletes, I think I know what I'm doing." Dick Brown said. A short time later he followed that up with, "In distance running, our system uses up the runners rather than develops them." Interesting.

He may be somewhat successful, but nothing spoken of is ahead of our time, and because of this the athletes will not be ahead of their time either. There are too many flaws. Riverside/San Bernardino county has horrible air, and more people are projected to be moving out there in the next 16 years. They would be better off starting up their own self-subsistence community in a location where the air was pristine, the land was cheap, trees were a plenty, nearby river to swim against etc. Dick Brown might want make the 120 mile trek from Eugene to go check out Breitenbush Hot Springs. That place or same idea of self sustained community, has incredible potential as an olympic training center.

8 years of commitment to something that is not necesarily perceived as spiritual is too long to be asking of anyone under 40 - 50. A spiritualy based camp would do better, as not missing workouts, eating strict diets, manifesting the mind, etc is easier to do when their is a cause greater than your own.

It's also too much money to spend on too few athletes, even if that 58 second quarter quote was a typo and they meant 48. They'd be better off going ultra low tech, shift the athletes to an era where time is irrelevant. That's when the training that is ahead of our time would begin. Well I feel like an ass for using my time to knock someone else's vision, so I won't go on, what is yours Vipam?, honestly.

I am hopefully at best!

Vipam

you are hopefully at best?

I haven't posted on the forum before, but I feel like I have something to add to this discussion....hang with me while I add my two cents on this.........I've had the opportunity to speak with Dick Brown about his program.....the 58 second quater is not a typo. I'm paraphrasing here, but essentially what he is looking for are (high school age) kids with decent natural speed. In his opinion he can train a naturally fast runner to run longer, but not a naturally slow runner to run faster (fast and slow being relative). He is acknowledging the fact that genetics/natural ability need to be factored into the equation when you are considering whether someone has Olympic medal caliber/potential. In plain English, what good does it do you to get to the last lap of an Olympic/World chamionship final in a distance race and not have the speed to kick with the best in the world? Go back and check (as Dick has) and see how many of those races are won by the man/woman with the most raw speed......I thnk he would ideally like to begin working with the kids at an even younger age (see Eastern Bloc approach), but understands the difficulty with the American cultural landscape in doing that. He believes that he is faced with a huge obstacle in trying to convince the parents and the kids to commit to such a program at an even younger age. When I pointed out the obvious flaw in that argument to him i.e. tennis, gymnastics, basketball, figure skating, etc. he pointed out to me that THOSE sports had the promise of REAL money being earned and thus parents would gladly kiss junior bye bye and send him/her off to train, There currently is no pot of gold at the end of the distance running rainbow in this country (i.e. organized professional "league") that entices parents and kids to aspire to distance running fame and fortune. Until such a thing exists he (and all others) will have to work with what they have. The lure of a college scholarship is no longer the big payoff for many other sports/athletes, but it is for running. Unfortunately, that very structure/system is what contributes (not solely) to the demise of our running talent in the US. He's done a good job of studying the characteristics of all world championship and Olympic medal winners over the past century and knows the "typical" age / traits that they possessed at the time of their success. Combining talent and a thoughtful, long range training program may very well lead to some breakthrough performances by male and female American distance runners in the next decade. Also, his program is designed so that these kids will in fact be getting a college education. However, because of the demands on their time to properly train it is going to take them 6 years to get their degreees it rather than the usual four. Besides, who the heck said four years was the magic number to begin with? By taking six years the kid will have less demands and stress on his/her time (trying to juggle studying and running) and will end up getting an education that they can fall back on once they are finished with their running career. I personally agree that too many talented (high school) runners are ruined by the ridiculous meet scheduling (read over racing) and "coaching" practices in the USA. When you think back on how many of us had different coaches for XC, indoor and outdoor track you soon realize that anyone with talent had the deck stacked against him/her from the get go. How many of your coaches actually knew what they were doing? How many of us had a year round training/racing "plan" that developed our talent?I wish Dick the best of luck and would like to see more people taking a fresh, long term approach to nuturing distance running talent in this country. It's time to take a new approach at solving an old problem.

I should have pointed out in my first post that the 58 second (or better) quarter Dick Brown is looking for is for a FEMALE runner coming out of high school. .... sorry about that....

that was a real decent post you made there, i'll bump that.

It seems like a novel idea, although at first I thought that the athlete would be required to cough up the $450,000. Can you imagine? That would work really well...

Here's mine!

Monty