Ritz - He finally speaks!

LOL at the comments section

"I had cross trained very hard but you still don’t get the same pounding in your legs."--- Ritz

THANK GOD that someone in the OTC finally admits this! You need pounding practice to prepare for a 26.2 mile race on the roads.

Get off the alter-g, underwater treadmill, and whatever other useless equipment Nike has and get back to regular running.

OP basically just sent the entire letsrun community to post comments on his blog

Been wondering why nobody has told Salazar that Dathan ran 12:56 and 27:22 and 60:00 with this supposedly flawed form. He also took 10th in the Olympics. How much better does AS think that this change would make him?

A 1% improvement would put him at 12:48 if he was in the same shape as 2009. I guess if AS really thinks this is true then at least he is committed. My thought is that someone doesn't run 8:41 when they are 17 and 13:44 when they are 18 if they are NOT ALREADY EFFICIENT.

Also, I have seen enough runners over my life who didn't look very beautiful going down the track but were national or world class.

Is Ritz retarded?

"I came off the race well at least and had good training until the day before Christmas. I was doing a workout back in Michigan (home for the holidays) but it was the first time I had been on a 200m indoor track in probably five years. I think I did a little too much work on the tight turns because after the workout my ankle was sore. I ended up getting an MRI to make sure it was not my Achilles and luckily it was not. I basically strained it though and had to pull out of the XC race in Edinburgh this weekend."

He comes across as a complete moron. Not run on an indoor track in 5 years and thinks it's a good idea to do 7 miles on it? Jesus Christ dude.

Bingo!

horses mouth wrote:

Is Ritz retarded?

try running barefoot

Ritz got 9th, not 10th. What's up with so many people mixing up Hall and Ritz's placings? And "how much better can he get". Well obviously he can (and should shoot to) get a lot better. As in, 1st instead of 9th. The question is how to do so.

LWTW wrote:

He comes across as a complete moron. Not run on an indoor track in 5 years and thinks it's a good idea to do 7 miles on it? Jesus Christ dude.

Exactly. You would be surprised, however, at the number of elites that do completely ridiculous things in training. And it's not as if they're necessarily dumb. It's as if they have the blinders turned on to some aspect of their training, or are so neurotic about one part of it, that they cannot see the consistent cycle of injuries is their own doing. It's a coach's job to recognize and manage this.

A good example would be a runner who consistently gets stress fractures when they run high mileage consistently, but because they are convinced they will not perform well unless they get in 120 mpw, will never run less than this arbitrary number, even when their body needs a rest so that it can recover and make itself stronger. If the coach encourages this behavior...it gets even worse.

Maybe Ritz has some part of his psyche that tells him, "I will not adjust my workout just because it is freezing and raining outside...I will just do it indoors where it is no different...if I adjust this workout, I will lose ground to competitors."

The result of this competitive drive trumping a smart training decision? Injury, inconsistent training, and ironically...losing a lot of ground to the competition.

long dong silver wrote:

Ritz got 9th, not 10th. What's up with so many people mixing up Hall and Ritz's placings? And "how much better can he get". Well obviously he can (and should shoot to) get a lot better. As in, 1st instead of 9th. The question is how to do so.

+1

These two sentiments deserve repeating.

you tell them Nate .

can anyone put me in contact with the coach in the comments? i feel he may be the answer to never being injured again and help me improve my gravity use in running.

look for ritz to change coaches in 2011.

newname wrote:

Been wondering why nobody has told Salazar that Dathan ran 12:56 and 27:22 and 60:00 with this supposedly flawed form. He also took 10th in the Olympics. How much better does AS think that this change would make him?

A 1% improvement would put him at 12:48 if he was in the same shape as 2009. I guess if AS really thinks this is true then at least he is committed. My thought is that someone doesn't run 8:41 when they are 17 and 13:44 when they are 18 if they are NOT ALREADY EFFICIENT.

Also, I have seen enough runners over my life who didn't look very beautiful going down the track but were national or world class.

Changing form is almost never a good idea. Very slight tweaks are okay, as are form drills and working on form during sprints, but to take a guy who's already run 12:56 and 27:22 and is probably over the hump of his career and has a history of injury problems seems pretty asinine to me. Like, full blooded retarded in fact. Just getting in two years of injury free training would probably help more than any change in form. Besides, I thought it was common knowledge that most runners naturally adopt a stride which is most efficient (or close to it) after several years of running. Changing things up is more likely to hurt Dathan than help.

I guess it's easy to bash looking from the outside in, but f*** this seems like common sense to me.

who is the lance referred to in the comment? armstrong?

oy vey wrote:

LOL at the comments section

Wait a minute--Bob Prichard is black?!?

Is me or does it seem like ritz is becoming hypersensitive to injuries. He got an MRI for a sore ankle really? That is just crazy. Take a day off get it massaged. I think anyone would be sore after running 7 miles on an indoor track but did he have to cancel his race?

prima-dona syndrome, starting to believe his own press

Ritz should just build in a day off every week no matter what, perhaps run in the pool. He's obviously still focused on the marathon for 2012, poor guy.