Edit, actually, six years ago, Cranny would have been a year older than Valby’s current age, but the part about Cranny being a 9min 3000m pro-athlete back then is correct.
Cranny also had an academic workload in college...
Edit, actually, six years ago, Cranny would have been a year older than Valby’s current age, but the part about Cranny being a 9min 3000m pro-athlete back then is correct.
Cranny also had an academic workload in college...
Cranny is going to be 29 in May, so she graduated college as a 23 yr old? (I didn’t check.)
Unfortunately, Valby's mechanics just aren't great for producing enough force into the ground to develop any real speed and power. She has monster aerobic ability, but she will never be a contender on the track. The marathon would suit her so well, but like most of these athletes, they want to spend years on the track chasing something that will never materialize and think they can just move to the marathon around age 30 or so. Her coach is doing her a huge disservice by telling her that she has track potential. Not even in the 10,000 will she ever sniff a medal. Top world class runners can close a sub 30 race in 60 seconds. Her mechanics just won't allow that. If you watch the first 4-5 laps from today's race, it looked like she was running all out to be able to keep up. It's just not sustainable and as we saw, it leaves her with nothing at the end. Let's assume she has the same amount of gas in the tank as everyone else, her foot speed just isn't there.
In the 3000m today at NBGP, two of her three slowest laps were in the final two laps of the race. This is pretty common with her and it never seems like she has a kick. This was fine in college when she was so much fitter than everyone but every pro race is a kickfest these days and you need to be able to close crazy hard to win anything significant.
Can she develop a kick? I don’t know, but a move to the roads would be difficult because of her low volume. Thoughts?
She ran a PB.
She ran against pros.
It's indoor.
All of the USA professional track athletes you root for didn't beat all of the pros in their first professional race.
Haters please… She just started her pro career with a great performance and 3rd place. It is extremely premature to say that she will never win medals in track and field. How did it go for Rupp in his first Olympics? and he was already more experienced. I believe she will improve a lot in the next 2-3 years and I won’t be surprised if she wins a medal in the next Olympic Games.
Um, Cranny grew up in Colorado. Research shows that "native" altitude dwellers have the greatest advantage, even more than those who move there to train.
"An individual's adaptation to high altitude depends on whether he or she is a native, resident, or visitor to the area. Natives of areas with high altitude have a larger chest capacity, more alveoli, more capillaries that transport blood to tissue, and a higher red blood cell level. In contrast, the resident or the individual who stays at a high altitude for months or years makes a partial adaptation. His or her later adaptation includes the conservation of glucose, and increased number of mitochondria, and increased formation of hemoglobin."
-- From "Principles of Athletic Training" 18th edition, William Prentice
Your point?
BTW, for a little bit of perspective, Cranny is going to be 29yrs old in a few months, so she has been training as a pro for some 6 years, at least. She was a 9min 3000m runner six years ago when she was Parker Valby’s current age.
And Cranny, although she grew up in Colorado, moved to sea level for several years attending school at Stanford, then lived in Oregon several years running for BTC, before relocating to altitude last year. So again, it’s not clear what point you were trying to make, since it didn’t contradict anything I said.
Haters please… She just started her pro career with a great performance and 3rd place. It is extremely premature to say that she will never win medals in track and field.
Maybe somebody would like to do the research to look into Valby's fastest final 200 and/or 400 in any race.
My guess is one of her fastest closes was the final 200 at the 2024 NCAA Indoor 3000 at 33.7. Her last few laps were 34.38/33.45/33.14/33.47/33.72 to finish in 8:41. She just did not run races to finish with a fast last lap.
The fastest I ever observed her run was the start of a 1600 m leg on a DMR when she went out in something like 31/32 for 63. She finished in 4:35. That was 2 years ago I believe.
Haters please… She just started her pro career with a great performance and 3rd place. It is extremely premature to say that she will never win medals in track and field.
She's never winning medals in track and field.
Nor is almost every other USA track and field athlete…
It's not in any way a hot take that she won't ever win gold in outdoor world final. That is the expected outcome. I'd give less than 50 % chance that she will achieve a medal.
I have nothing against her personally. Just making general prediction considering how hard it tends to be to medal in international final.
She clearly needs to start doing some 1500ms and working on that for a season. Her last lap of 71 seconds is horrid. Like every other pro, you should be able to find some sort of pick-up in the last 200m. To not be able to sustain your average lap pace (68.5sec) is abysmal. Needs to try some races where shes not just in the pack being towed but actually at the front pushing for a win to see if she has any ability to drop people because that finishing pace is extremely concerning. If no improvement soon, will be times to go for the steeplechase or trail running
She clearly needs to start doing some 1500ms and working on that for a season. Her last lap of 71 seconds is horrid. Like every other pro, you should be able to find some sort of pick-up in the last 200m. To not be able to sustain your average lap pace (68.5sec) is abysmal. Needs to try some races where shes not just in the pack being towed but actually at the front pushing for a win to see if she has any ability to drop people because that finishing pace is extremely concerning. If no improvement soon, will be times to go for the steeplechase or trail running
Honestly, we all know that Valby has no speed and has never had much of a kick. If you can't run much under 60, if any, fresh, how are you going to close in 60 like the best pros at 3k? For her, it's a major challenge to run any lap much under 67. What speed training and form coaching, ideally, would do for her would be to allow her not to redline at 8:30 pace, leaving her fresher for the final 400, but also to allow her to shift gears at the end with greater speed reservoir and fitness. But there is no reason to think that she won't improve a lot as a pro. This was her first pro race and she dropped her pr by over six seconds from 8:41 to 8:34.95 at a relatively weak distance for her. Her best shot right now is to make 10k teams and she has enough strength for that. To make future 5000m teams, she'll need 14:30s capability and I think she will be ready for that next year. This year, 14:40s will be there for the taking.
Based on her 3k/10k times, Statsgangsta's calculator gives a decent estimate for her current 5000m and marathon here, I think. Against the calculator, I don't think she could break 4:30 in the mile right now but I'd bet she'd run between 4:29 and 4:33.