Nick Wade Nearly Breaks 4:00 for the Mile

Confused about this as well.

Regardless, two other guys nearly broke 4 at Spire. Were they all in the same heat? If so, they must have closed fast because the article makes it seem like he ran alone at the 1200m mark.

EPIC.

Great story by RRW Junior Editor Chris Lotsbom about Cornell's Nick Wade who nearly broke 4:00 for the mile today (3:59.998 to be exact).

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2013/02/for-cornells-nick-wade-journey-to-sub-four-becomes-wild-ride/

We edited the first post to link to our hosting of the RRW story as it includes a funny picture of Wade, Rojo and JK.

so he DID run a sub 4 mile

LetsRun.com wrote:

We edited the first post to link to our hosting of the RRW story as it includes a funny picture of Wade, Rojo and JK.

So what you're trying to get people to realize is that Nick Wade is a lot better now (at least at the mile) and a lot less consistently injured, now that Rojo's not his coach?

Is that the point of your trying to bring it back to yourself as much as possible?

Also your "corrections" were not correcting anything. At the time of publication, the stat about top 20 was correct, according to TFRRS, and the other bit you changed was just a different way of saying the same thing(more precise than the author's choice, admittedly).

Why oh why, Brothers Johnson, do you feel the need to self-insert so very often?

He was leading from 800m to the end but finished in lane 2 on the last straightaway. If he stays in lane 1 he runs 3:59.95 or faster for sure

http://www.flotrack.org/coverage/250465-2013-SPIRE-D1-Indoor-Invitational/video/692862-M-Mile

Also, that does seem a little sleazy that one of the Brojos would link the picture in to try to connect themselves with this guy's achievment

Sleazy??? Hardly

The three plus years of progression under Robert (including this past XC seasons) could be argued as the major factor to Wade's sub 4 mile.

Robert and the new coach, Zeb Lang, are friends. Lang was an assistant under Robert for a couple years. Wade is obviously friends with both of them. Guarantee that nobody's toes are being stepped on. Nothing wrong with a slightly funny picture being linked.

Looks and sounds an awful lot like claiming credit for someone's achievement when you make a point of adjusting or adding to an article ONLY to say "by the way, the owner of this website was this athlete's coach previously," as though correcting some oversight of the writer. it wasn't in the article because it is in no way relevant, and shouldn't have been added in as a pseudo-clarification.

And, before you start giving Rojo credit for Wade's "development," for the record, Nick Wade under Rojo:

2010:

800- 1:49.81i; 1:49.67

1000- 2:23.99i

mile- 4:20.69

1500- 3:51.70

2011:

800- 1:50.92i; 1:50.03

1000- 2:23.66i

mile- 4:13.99

1500- 3:49.12

2012:

800- 1:49.92i; 1:50.29

1000- 2:26.22i

mile- 4:17.92

1500- 3:51.36

He was also frequently injured or off for whatever reason at championship meets the past 3 years, which I'm pretty sure are the races you're supposed to peak for.

So, again, Wade's progression from HS, when he ran :48.9, 1:52.66, and 4:24.0

In order from HS-Fr-So-Jr:

800

1:52.66 - 1:49.67 - 1:50.03 - 1:49.92

1000

none - 2:23.99 - 2:23.66 - 2:26.22

1500/mile (all converted to mile using Purdy)

4:24 - 4:11.17 - 4:08.36 - 4:10.80

So, you take an 800-1500 runner with 48.9 400m wheels who obviously didn't work on strength much at all in high school (48.9, 1:52.66, 4:24 PRs show an obviously huge defiency moving up, as you might expect from many HS guys), and you get him to run more.

As you would expect from ANY 48.9/1:52 runner who goes to college and puts in some more miles and better training, he improves noticeably in his first year, running 1:49 and 4:11c, but neither of those improvements are anywhere near out of the ordinary. And then he almost completely stops improving for the rest of college (until now).

And Rojo is bragging about this why?

Yes, he improved noticeably in the 1500/mile distance from HS to college, but if you couldn't get a 1:52 hs guy with a mid d focus to run a 4:08 equivalent in two years of training, you'd be just about the worst coach ever. That's nothing to brag about, let alone call "development" (in Rojo's defense he didn't call it that, but someone above did.)

I mean, hell, Wade's HS 800m pr is worth a 4:13 mile, so of course by running two more years (and a little more volume, workouts), he was going to be able to run 4:08. But we want to brag about that?

Why?

Nothing to see here.

Wade's been stagnant for 3 years under Rojo, but has always been an obvious talent. Did you not notice he's barely improved at all since his FR indoor campaign? Huge talent, almost no improvement until now.

Whatever the reason, that's nothing to really brag about for his previous coach.

More power to Wade though, who has always seemed like a very nice guy in my encounters/racing against him. He's obviously very talented and it's nice to see a noticeable improvement after so long.

Good guy.

Edit it again. 3:59.998 < 4:00.000

Its only "non sub4" by application of the criteria arbitrarily decided upon.

What the heck is the point of this post? Improvement isn't always linear. You don't just train well for a few months and run 3:59

Get a life and once you get go do something positive with it. Your comments simply show how ignorant of a person you are.

The point was merely that it seems a bit disingenuous to give Rojo the credit (or let him claim it) for coaching this athlete. Rojo had 3 years to coach this athlete and did all right; he was what he was. Now he's better, and Rojo apparently wants everyone who reads an article about this athlete to know that HE was Nick Wade's coach. To which I'd respond, he WAS. Now, when Nick ran 8+ seconds faster than ever previously at that distance(equivalents included), Rojo is NOT his coach.

He left Cornell and should stop taking credit for their occasional successes accordingly.

Annoyedagain wrote:

Get a life and once you get go do something positive with it. Your comments simply show how ignorant of a person you are.

Ignorant of what, exactly?

Lang is 10x the coach rojo was. That much is clear - too bad he didn't show up 5 years ago.

To be fair, Lang was an assistant under Rojo and one would assumed learned much of his training methodology from Rojo's (Kellogg's) techniques...which to be fair again are not all that different than the techniques of other good coaches who came before Rojo/Kellog, but I digress.

If Cornell's success continues with some sense of progression, what that'll really mean is that Lang is the far superior manager of people and personalities, and I've heard nothing positive about Rojo's ability to interact with people. This from someone who ran frequently against Cornell and other NY area teams.

But I wouldn't call the team's overall success (at least in the mid d races, where they seem to excel at the moment) a whole lot more impressive than last year. Seems like last year they were running very well at 800, while this year they are putting up more impressive numbers at the mile, but hard to say if its a lot different.

Either way, I hope Lang will stop using the "we don't recruit the same amount of talent as top schools" excuse that Rojo relied on for years after realizing he was going to fail in his promise to create an NCAA qualifying XC team year in year out.

Because there's no reason Cornell shouldn't be able to compete with (or beat) some of the teams that have qualified for NCAA cross in recent years. Princeton doesn't have any scholarships either, after all. Nor does Dartmouth. Nor did Richmond.

Plus Cornell gets some decent talent -- it just always seemed like Rojo did a better job coaching the guys who came in with worse marks, and the better HS number guys never did much, for whatever reason. May or may not have been his fault. Lots of factors at play.

Be as that may, the point that is being made is that Rojo did not step down until after this past XC season. Even if Lang is a great coach, its disingenuous to give him all the credit for the seniors running great times right now. 3.5 years of Robert's training is what got them to this point.

Additionally, my understanding is that Kellogg is still there, and he really is the coach behind the scenes.

I pretty much said the exact same thing above, Pints.

But you also can't really say a runner developed under a certain coach when he stagnated and ran the same or worse times for 2-3 years.

Maybe it was the training during those years that made him suddenly a 4:00 miler, but if the training was that great maybe he also should've been injured less and getting faster, not slower.

There's a lot of variables here and I just think a former coach jumping in to claim credit rings as rather selfish. So I was pointing out that Wade really hardly developed at all under Rojo, at least as far as empirical data shows.

And yes, I realize that long term development and empirical data might not always mesh up, but there's no better way to judge such things. You don't get called a 4:00 miler when you're running 3:50 1500s just bc you're training really well, do you?

I didn't think so.

Regardless of who coached Wade when, I just think it's petty and attention-seeking that Rojo had to insert himself. He's not the coach now and should back off and stop trying to get people to pat him on the back.