Nico Young has regrets about 10k debut: "I wish I was a little bit more daring and went earlier"

Nico 3rd at the trials, punch this ticket.

I think 3 can break away. Woods, Klecker, Nico. Abdi in the 5

🐟er?

Shameful that you are allowed to post here.

I mean the dude is like 47 it would be awesome to see him make his 6th Olympic team in the 5,000m!!!!

He is going to win it!

I have seen his workouts and with a proper m, targeted taper phase I think her can run as fast as 32:23.

Klecker? No.

"Smith credits his upbringing at Newbury Park, where he became one of the nation's best distance runners under coach Sean Brosnan, even with his senior year of track wiped out by the COVID-19 pandemic. Young came to Northern Arizona with the 'mindset of a professional athlete,' Smith said. Even as a freshman at NAU, Young was pushing the program's standard of excellence. 'He raised the game for everyone,' Smith said."

Sean Brosnan fans stay winning. The mindset that Brosnan got his athletes to adopt was why they were so successful, not because he just happened to get a bunch of the most talented kids ever. That's also why we're seeing so many HS/NCAA kids run so fast. The shoes help, but the kids at Arcadia last year had the shoes. The real difference maker is that more and more young athletes are training more seriously from a younger age.

And a Nico Young 10k comment from me wouldn't be complete without a Galen Rupp comparison. I've said for years that I don't think Rupp is close to the most talented American of his generation. What are the chances that AlSal just happened to be coaching at the same private catholic school that the most talented runner in the country was going to? Slim-to-none. Rupp isn't one of the most talented US runners ever, and neither is Nico. What set Rupp apart was that he started training like a pro at age 16 and never stopped. Nico has been doing the same thing, although he's getting the benefits of training with the best 5k/10k coach in the country, living year round in the best training location in the country, and better shoes.

Matt Withrow crushed Galen at Footlocker in HS. If you're my age (or under the age of 30 really), the only reason you know who Matt Withrow is (and let's be honest, you don't) is because he beat Rupp at Footlocker. This is while Rupp has AlSal coaching him, and he had some sort of Nike backing too (although I don't think he was getting paid by them). Rupp then ran a HS record of 13:37 that didn't get broken for 20 years. I think Withrow ran like 13:25 as a true freshman at Wisco. Fun fact, he's the guy Jerry redshirted the year that Wisco lost NCAAs with the 'dream team', and his career was hampered by constant injuries. Schumacher has achieved great things with his training method, but Withrow is one of those what-ifs where you wonder what could've been with a coach less reticent to individualization.

Nico has been all in on doing high quality training for close to 8 years now. Nuguse went from a US team challenger to a 3:43 guy in a year when he went all in. He's on a different level than Nico or Rupp. Hobbs Kessler started training seriously as a junior in HS with one of the best coaches in the world, and he ran faster than Nuguse's NCAA record while in HS. He's on a different level than Nico or Rupp. Heck, German Fernandez got 6 months of healthy training under him and set a CA state XC record that none of the NP athletes could break over the course of like 6 years. He was on a totally different level than Nico. I'm starting to think talent has more to do with how quickly you can reach your ceiling, and less to do with what your ceiling is. Obviously, most people can't run sub-13 no matter how much they train for it, but I bet there's way more than we think right now.

Bonus hot take: I don't think Jakob is the most talented guy either (definitely more than Rupp, but a rung below a Bekele or El G), he's just been logging high quality training for more years than anyone else.

I really don’t agree with a single thing you said. I don’t know how you can believe mindset replaces talent and training. Did you run competitively in school? The only way to improve is by increasing fitness. Positive thinking won’t result in a 3:55, 13:35 or wins at NXN. What exactly does Brosnan do that makes you think he is, bar none, the greatest HS distance coach ever and can convert 8:50 runners into HS legends? Is it not possible that he was blessed with 5 kids with the talent of German Fernandez? Young was successful from the beginning in the NCAA, but the other NP guys have struggled a bit.

Rupp and Young are extremely talented and are among the top 5 distance talents in U.S. history. Kessler is more of a middle distance and not a comp for Rupp and Young. A runner’s ceiling absolutely defines talent. What else is there? No, there is not more than we think about distance training.

Withrow beating Rupp is irrelevant in judging Rupp’s HS career. Fernandez finished 3rd at FL and then had a one of the greatest track seasons ever.

You point out that Kessler and Fernandez ran extremely well with minimal training, but, oh by the way, Jakob makes up for less talent, by having had such an early start to training. We’ll never know, but I think Jakob would be just as good if he began running as a freshman at an American HS with a good program.

Great take, would give you multiple upvotes if I could.

Meh, we all believe that in the weeks/months after a big PR. Might end up being his lifetime best.

Very very good post, that is what I have been saying for years.

”I'm starting to think talent has more to do with how quickly you can reach your ceiling, and less to do with what your ceiling is.”

For that part, it is just that there are a lot of different types of talent, some people have high floor and high ceiling, some people have low floor but high ceiling, some people have good natural speed, some people naturally have the ability to get a lot of training in without getting injured, etc.

A lot of people in the running community seem to think that being talented is having high floor and being able to run fast on very low mileage. While that is one type of talent, it isn’t the only one, and what makes a great coach is partly the ability to identify the talent in your athlete and bring it out.

From what I have noticed, the athletes who quickly get close to their ceiling and are typically called “talented” are also the type of athletes that tend to get injured a lot and can’t handle so much training. On the other hand some people need years of consistant hard work, but they don’t get injured so much and their body handles the load pretty well, so they can reach the same level as the “talented” athletes after some years of good training.

I think what will be cool about Nico as a pro is I think he will be one of the most fearless guys on the circuit. You see it with Luis Grijalva what an asset it can be if you are willing to mix it up at the front in stacked races instead of waiting back (apologies to Klecker, Grant, and Woody) and hoping to sandbag as high a place as possible. Even more so than Luis who will go to the front and mix it up without picking it up, I can see Nico actually dropping the hammer in these races from further out (800+). Obviously within reason, but you've seen guys like Kejelcha and Aregawi be able to run away with DL races at times. Obviously it takes supreme fitness, but it also takes the willingness to take a swing. Kejelcha and Aregawi so far have been too scared to do it in a global final and it's bit them. I'd love to see Nico progress because I can see him breaking open races. I don't want to sound like a neanderthal and say he's Pre hammering from the gun, but he does have the potential and willingness to race in a bolder fashion than anyone else we have.

Mindset doesn't replace talent or training, but it absolutely impacts it. That's like saying "Sleep doesn't replace running workouts and eating well". Like, no, it doesn't, but good sleep makes a massive difference. All the top runners constantly talk about how important their mindset is to their performances. That's what Kipchoge's whole "No human is limited" is about. A while ago, when Chelimo said that medaling in the Olympics is only 75% physical, and 25% mental, it's because your mindset can absolutely be the difference between a medal and 8th. When athletes move from HS to NCAA competition, or NCAA to national competition, or national to international competition, you always hear them say "I'm trying to remind myself that I belong here, and I can compete with these guys", or something similar. If your goal is to run your own race because you don't think you can win, you won't win 99% of the time (1% being Boston 2018). Similarly, if your goal is to run 4:20 because 4:20 is fast and good enough to win, you'll train to run 4:20, race to run 4:20, and be satisfied once you run 4:20.

When you think x time is fast, you're limiting yourself. Hence Kipchoge's "No human is limited" mantra, and Brosnan's "4:20 isn't fast" mindset that he gets his athletes to adopt. That's one thing that sets Brosnan apart. I know he also did a mile repeat workout where he marked it like 3s too long, so the kids were actually running 3s faster than they thought they were. He didn't tell them until they were done, and his specific stated reason was to get them to realize they can run faster than they think they can, and that they're mentally limiting themselves. This was in an L&L video I'm pretty sure, so even when they were literally the best 3-4 guys in the country, they still had mental barriers for themselves, and Brosnan was still getting them to break those mental limits.

Some of the other things I remember about Brosnan that shocked me (particularly as a high schooler) were that he'd sometimes hold 2 or 3 practices a day, because sometimes kids would need to take a test or do something after school, so he'd hold a practice before school started so he could be there when those kids did their workout, and he'd hold another at the normal time. That was crazy to me. Also the month at altitude over the summer. My team did a 4 day XC camp over the summer which was awesome, but not even close to what they did. Also, they did an hour (maybe longer?) warmup routine with all sorts of stuff before they ran workouts. Also pulling kids out of a workout if it looked like they were going too hard. My HS coach was also big on the mental barriers thing, but his way of getting us to break them was by making us finish out the workout lmao.

And something he talked about a lot was that it's so important to get your athletes to buy into the system, to trust you, and to build a culture that makes the athletes push each other to be better. He said the first guy to buy in was the most important one, and even though he only ran like 9:20 or 9:40 or something, he's the one that made the rest of the team realize what they could do. He's not unique at all when it comes to saying the team culture is important, but the extent to which he got his kids to buy in, and to push each other, is unfathomable to me based on my HS experience. HS kids making sure to eat well, sleep well, run consistently, and pushing their teammates to do the same is completely different than what my HS had, which was really just about giving it your all while you were running. We had a very strong team culture focused on working hard, but it didn't really extend to stuff off the track.

No, it's not possible he had 5 German Fernandez level talents at the same time. Nico, Colin, Lex, Leo, and Aaron all got 3-4 years of largely uninterrupted healthy training with a group of national-caliber athletes (besides Nico), targeted GF's state record multiple times (effectively with pacers), and still missed it. GF got healthy for a couple months and blitzed arguably the strongest CR in the country, and he was really young for his age. He ran a WJR in the indoor mile the next year, then broke that WJR by 1.5s, and won an NCAA title as a freshman. Tbf to Nico, he would've won a title his sophomore year, and was 4th in XC as a freshman, but he had 4 more months to train for it (at altitude). And Lex ran 7:57 as a junior, but he didn't run faster. Still, you're looking at completely different levels. GF did finish 3rd at FL, but I heard that he was sick. That's different from Rupp, who had a good race, but just got beat by someone better. Especially when Rupp was training like a pro with AlSal.

When I was talking about talent, I meant I'm starting to think the difference between people's ceilings is way smaller than I thought it was. There is a lot more to talent than your absolute ceiling. Some people need way less training to run the same time, or some people can handle more volume than others, or some people have more natural speed. But those might be more malleable than I thought, too. Look at Geordie Beamish. He won NCAAs in the mile, and he only ran it because he didn't qualify in the 3k/5k. He said he had been healthy for a couple months for the first time in years, and was only running a few days a week. He was injured a lot starting as a pro, and spent a lot of time running like 40mpw. But he finally fixed his form, got healthy, started logging 100mpw, and now he's a World Champ. That's someone who's super injury prone, but super talented. With a slow, careful, methodical approach, he was able to get to the point where his body could handle the training he needed.

My guess is there are a lot of people who we think are just genetically injury prone, but in reality, they just have some muscle that isn't strong enough, and it cascades into a bunch of other problems. I know I had shin splints and I thought I was just injury prone, but I started running some barefoot, which changed my form and strengthened my calves and foot muscles a ton, and now it's not an issue.

Also you're not just arguing against Brosnan here, you're arguing against Mike Smith too. The first part of my post is a quote from Smith crediting Brosnan, saying Nico came in with a mindset of a pro athlete, and he raised the bar for the whole team. Sounds like exactly what Brosnan said about needing 1 kid to fully buy into your training so that the rest can see what's possible. Seems to me like the best coaches and the best athletes recognize the importance of an athlete's mindset. Sounds to me like you don't really know what you're talking about.

Thanks :)

I agree, but seeing Beamish this year has made me think on it some. I'm thinking a lot of the athletes who get injured a lot and can't handle a lot of training may just need to take it slower and build up their supporting muscles/fix their form. I think Beamish said he had a really aggressive forefoot strike which put a ton of strain on his calves. But now he can handle 100mpw, as opposed to only a few days of running back in college and when he started as a pro.

It could also be why guys like Hocker were so explosive out of HS. Hocker won FL running 40mpw. Maybe if he'd been training harder, he'd have gotten stuck in the injury cycle, but since his body had time to get used to training without forming any maladaptive traits. I know Beamish, Morgan McDonald, and Rupp all talked about your body compensating for your weaker side after an injury and it leaving imbalances that end up with you getting injured again. I haven't thought about it much, but I thought it was an interesting idea.

Neither does he, he's actually really chill and quiet in real life.