Katelyn Tuohy's 5000m ceiling looks like only 15:00s

The fair point is that Tuohy who turns 21 next march is past the age of a teen/HS phenomenon. She is running among the best times of US collegians of any time and very respectable times compared to professionals several years older. So we can conclude that she is not a burnt out HS phenomenon. Neither is she stagnating (like Efraimson who ran around 4:05 for several seasons but never beat her 4:03 she had run at 18).

So let's just bracket what Tuohy ran at 16 and think what a 20 yo 4:06 15:12 woman can realistically run in a year or two.

I did list recent young HS running phenoms who went to college but didn't achieve the same success they had in HS. If you are fan of the sport, you would know that Tuohy is an outlier in the list of young HS running phenoms.

Here is a list.

Tuohy, Cain, Effraimson, Murphy, Rainsberger, Donaghu, Thorvaldson, Hutchins, Oakley, Brown, Hatton, Meier, Bos, Belf, Dudek, Hart, Masciarelli, Lane, Rohrer, Frazier x 2

She had an off day AFTER a long cross country season and STILL ran 15:15... I think she's doing fine. Clearly she and her coach know what they're doing.

Huddle: 1500m 4:08.09, 5k 14:42.64

Sisson: 1mile 4:38.49, 5k 14:53.84

Flanagan: 1500m 4:05.86, 5k 14:44.80

Checks out

There is a New York Times article about Tuohy, "America’s Next Great Running Hope, and One of the Cruelest Twists in Youth Sports".

Tuohy's physique changed, she is no longer skin, muscle and bones, she matured and is now in a bigger body, the body in which so many young High School running phenom talents succumbed to. Tuohy embraced being strong, I watched an interview of her saying, to be a fast runner you need to be strong. She'll be alright. She'll be proving doubters wrong for a very long time. She has always been built different mentally and emotionally.

That NY Times article already went home devastated. Simple fact is there have been elite US women runners who emerged at young age and just kept getting better. Tuohy was already not supposed to PR from high school or AA in college or win any NCAA titles. And some point are people going to trust their eyes or continue with the same preconceptions.

The list of runners who were mediocre in HS and stayed mediocre is much, much larger

I'm going to enjoy dunking on this silly hot take sometime in the next two years. Putting my marker down now.

Nico is slower now than in the spring. He clearly is going the wrong way. Probably will not be breaking 14 by the end of senior year.

Sounds stupid right? About as stupid as predicting Tuohy future performance off this race. I expect both of them are pretty happy to be in near PR time and getting a qualification time out of the way.

Most of us know to rely on facts rather than our desires. The facts say that that young American phenoms do go on to be world class. But you already know that. You are just afraid that saying it will somehow cause it to happen to your girl.

Nobody is doing that. we are telling you what is likely to happen based on the thousands of runners who have come before her and every race that she has run. Regardless of what she ran in this race, I would predict that she will never be national class and certainly not world class. I guarantee that if Vegas established a lifetime over/under, it woud be something like 14:55.

The improvement comparison talk is stupid because they are asking katelyn to drop the same seconds as mediocre hs runners. If that is even possible then shed be top 10 or top 5 fastest woman in the world at 5000m because im pretty sure her 15:37 is the world record for 15 year old girls.

lola

the hs phenom runners who have come before her in the ncaa never ran 4:06 and 15:14 at age 20, nor won 2 national individual titles, 2 national individual runner up titles, 2 national team titles and 1 runner up team title at 20 years old.

so you cant conform her future over data that she has already broken from

I looked briefly and found that in the history of the world I could only find 3 women who have run a faster 5k indoors than Katelyn Tuohy and accomplished that feat at a younger age. These are Meseret Defar, Tirunesh Dibaba and Yasemin Can. Please check me on this, perhaps there are more.

KATELYN TUOHY IS GOING TO BE THE FIRST WOMAN UNDER 14 MINUTES

A team title sure makes me believe that she can break 14 someday.Cain is the greatest high school runner all time. Effraimson is was faster than Tohy.

katelyn will get her form back once she recovers from the grueling xc season, she never trained to have this form, its her natural form

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