Maggie Vessey runs 4:30 1500 in third heat of men's 1500 at UIW

Very important: use the pool to develop the spinal engine oscillation linkage between the shoulders and hips (Serge Gracovetsk, The Spinal Engine). Run forward, run backward continuosly (25 yd fwd, 25 yd bkwd). Open the hands to increase resistance and DRIVE relentlessly. Work hard to get your backward time for 25 yd within 2-3 seconds of your forward time. My time per 50 yd avg for a 3 hr workout is 55-60 sec/50yd. Best is 50 sec. When ready to up land hill repeats length, rather than do 30 sec fwd/30 sec bkwd, do 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 min fwd, with 30 sec bkwd recoveries. A 3 hour hard pool run can elevate my resting heart rate (40 bpm) to 72 bpm for 8 hours, and 60 bpm for 36 hours, and I am never sore.

a girl wrote:

in high school i ran 4:30 off 30 miles a week. maggie's a major slacker and doesn't understand what will bring her consistency in meets

"How did I know you ran a 4:30 mile in high school? That's easy. Everyone ran the mile in 4:30 in high school." --Frank Shorter

I had some strange PRs in HS.

My 400m PR was 50.89

My 800m PR was 2:02

My 1600m PR was 5:04

My 5K PR was 17:03

Yes I am a dude.

She probably does need a little more distance training in her tank before running much faster than that BUT the wind was killer strong at that point of the day. If you look at various gusts at that time period in the jumps, you can see that readings were anywhere from 0 to 4.0 to 6.0 and it would change direction... so, if you were counting on it being at your back on the backstretch, sometimes it was, sometimes it swirled and hit you in the face! It wasn't a pleasant day to race in ANY race. It's true what someone else said earlier - they did have people running the 100 and 100 hurdles into the wind! They had cameras set up on both ends, but didn't switch it directions on those races??? Doesn't make sense. Almost like why even bother racing unless you just need to practice beating people and don't care what the clock says. Maybe that was Coach Monday's intention with Maggie... just get her out there racing... maybe working on some sort of strategy... practice passing... practice getting out of being boxed? Who knows. Good place to try it out, in some little unknown meet where she could go unnoticed (though if that was part of the plan, we can see that didn't happen!).

It was so funny to watch her battle it out with that guy at the end of the race. She was just passing dudes up and the look on their face was priceless.... and I would love to help Ms. Vessey with her endurance also.

Any pics or video?

The way that running conveniently lends itself to performances being heavily based on raw, objective data (i.e., times and distances) often leads otherwise smart people to say dumb things. Comparing a 1:57 run in what is obviously's someone's target event on a favorable day at a key time of the season to a 4:30 run in a mixed, off-target race in March at some hick college meet on a windy day makes as much sense as looking at a 3:50 miler running a 2:31 marathon, like Steve Holman did, and immediately whacking off to the conversion tables that indicate just how badly Holman underperformed at 26.2 miles. Actually a better comparison would be going bananas if a guy who runs 13:30 at the NCAA level at Stanford tries his hand at a very hilly 10K road race in July and doesn't quite break 46:00. In reality the two performances aren't necessarily that disparate, but more importantly maybe the guy got a free trip and was asked by his sponsor to show up and at least mail it in, or told to tempo through the thing by a coach.

This place is great for its token "Sure we don't have all the facts" concessions that are immediately followed by conclusions based on the same shaky half-baked assumptions that posters openly say they'll avoid. Marvelous!

Hasn't Vessey recently switched coaches and upped her mileage?

not that disparate wrote:

If you think those are closely related then you must be Vessey's coach.

Good point. I meant 15K.

If, as people suggest, she's not doing enough base-type work, then maybe someone here can come up with a better plan than Greg Brock. Apparently MV does 3 x 48 minutes a week at 85% of heart rate maximum because she hasn't yet been able to run more than 25 or so miles a week. So believe it or not the Letsrun readership has not broken brand-new ground in suggesting that this athlete aim for some aerobic work.

I doubt that we are going to see her get back to 1:57 without Greg.

Its just a hunch on my part, but I think Maggie Vessey would probably run a lot slower if coach Monday cut her legs off like she threatend to do if Maggie ran a stupid race.

I just don't think a prosthetic leg would help Maggie, and her performances would probably fall off. Im just happy that Maggie listened to her coach, and we didn't have to witness the amputation of Maggie's legs.

In interview she said her coach would break her arms and her legs if she got gapped in her race. Sounded like it was all in fun!

http://www.flynnsports.com/speaker/4227-Maggie-Vessey/video/449690-Maggie-Vessey-201-3rd-800-2011-NB-Grand-Prix