Mary Cain Is Taking a Break from the Nike Oregon Project

Lets keep it simple. What has changed in the last year of Cain's life? I think its more of home sickness, and not liking her current living situation. While physical conditioning is important, if she is an emotional wreck nothing will matter.

My guess she moved back home, and will resume training the way she did last year. My hope is that she bounces back, and has a great summer. If she does I see her staying in the NY area for at least a couple of years, until she is ready to handle living on her own.

meh wrote:

2012:

http://www.imageofsport.com/image/19727528

2013:

http://www.imageofsport.com/image/22415323

2014:

http://www.imageofsport.com/image/26000633

2015:

http://www.imageofsport.com/image/28195268

I purposefully chose face shots b/c you don't need to analyze her q-angle or whatever to see that she has grown up a lot in the past year. There will be an adjustment period.

Interesting. From this series she doesn't seem destined to wind up with an adult female mid-d/d runner's body type.

Non disclosure wrote:

Has anyone else considered a more obvious scenario. Her father is a medical doctor. If you were him and heard that Alberto was injecting your daughter with substances that are technically legal in the eyes of the IAAF, but without any medical justification from a medical standpoint, wouldn't you be seriously alarmed about your daughter's safety?

Cain needs to get far away from Salazar. He already ruined Caitlin Chock. None of his former athletes speak well of him. Non disclosure agreements are intended to protect company property not muzzle employees about their time with NOP. Galen Rupp would be an unemployable college dropout without Nike. Does Mr Cain want his daughter to become an empty headed dropout like Rupp in 3 years? Run away, Mary Cain. Save yourself before it's too late!

^^^^^^^THIS

Cain was never injected with anything. Ever. Period. As for former athletes with nothing good to say about Salazar, that's a pretty broad statement. I'd say that you don't know what you're talking about, unless you are more involved than just being an internet reader. Talk to Tommy Ansberry, Todd Lewis, Dan Brown, et al. before you make such silly statements. Besides, what he runs is a business where the performance of his employees determines his own future job/earnings. He's not there to hold hands and play kissy kissy. If it doesn't work out, then it doesn't work out. Plain and simple.

txRUNNERgirl wrote:

umass track wrote:

If you dont think ten pounds of weight makes a difference you're delusional. I dropped 10 pounds of upper body muscle over the course of spring track and the difference was night and day (30 seconds or so in the steeple, not all the weight but definitely felt the difference late in races). And thats going from 170 to 160, which is a much smaller difference than 110-120.

You're talking about a female who is 5'7 and listed at 110 lbs. Even if she went to 120, she's still very thin. She's a professional athlete, not a frat boy who gained a beer gut. Any weight she has gained is there for a reason and if it's not, her training should either burn it off or convert it to useful muscle. What I'm saying is blaming weight gain for someone to be "done" is a cop-out.

Steph, the math is really simple. Let's assume she had a VDOT of 70 (4 flat 1500 meter time) last year. Going from 110 to 120 (assuming none of the weight gain was functional) would make her VDOT 64, which corresponds to a 4:20 1500 meter time.

Of course, you can't tell what someone's weight is by looking at a picture. But you can generally tell if their body composition has changed. That's what indicates that they're carrying more useless weight than they were before.

I agree that it's ridiculous to say that she's done. But it's also ridiculous to act as though body composition doesn't matter. The research shows that it's one of the best predictors of race performance. Every elite says the same thing. Meb says that a big part of his improvement after college (and he was a 4-time NCAA champion!) was dropping weight. Now he travels with a scale. A buddy of mine (you might know him, actually), went from mid 16 minute 5ks in college to 15 flat after college, largely by losing weight. And this guy certainly looked skinny to most people already.

I agree with you about the weight thing. However, I do think that this transition will take some time. Its easier and safer to drop the weight once the body is done adjusting to all the age related changes. Many current elite women were once heavier around this age - Simpson, Rowbury, Hasay, etc.

Many young women who go through this maturation stage don't ever make it to the next level. However, many people don't make it to the next level PERIOD. In Cain's case, I think she has the potential to be fine because she has already been at the elite level, and thus knows what it takes and has the confidence that she belongs there. (As opposed to an 8th grade or HS phenom, who dreams of getting there someday but experiences this setback and eventually fades).

There are a number of reasons that phenomenal young talents don't ever live up to their promise. Some of them are physical, but I would argue that a lot of them are also mental and environmental. To argue that Cain is done because many young girls who have traveled in a similar path before her never amounted to elite athletes is ridiculous. This type of setback was inevitable. It doesn't prove that she is "done" just because it is happening now. Where were all the critics when she was running well? Did everyone really think she was going to continue on that trajectory forever without any maturation, stagnancy or setback?

The odds are against any young runner to make it to the elite or olympic level. However, Mary Cain has the advantage of already knowing she belongs there. Give her a year to work it out.

Lynn Jennings, as I remember the time, also had a slump when she entered Princeton University. Some slump. Afterwards came 9 US XC championships, 3 world XC wins, and an Olympic bronze in Barcelona. Only time will reveal. Pressure and reading articles about her slump are likely the worst things for Mary Cain.

Weight is extremely important but there's still no photo evidence whatsoever that she has put on significant weight. Those photos above prove nothing.

straight talk wrote:

Cain was never injected with anything. Ever. Period. As for former athletes with nothing good to say about Salazar, that's a pretty broad statement. I'd say that you don't know what you're talking about, unless you are more involved than just being an internet reader.

Hmmm, an internet ready makes a pretty broad statement of an "absolute" fact. It is obvious that AlSal never had his athletes inject anything, even though AlSal says they did. That "obviously" never happened.

guys, put up or shut up wrote:

Weight is extremely important but there's still no photo evidence whatsoever that she has put on significant weight. Those photos above prove nothing.

*internet reader*

Jonathan Gault wrote:

The Oregonian's Ken Goe recently published a few articles about NOP's training camp in Park City. The story had a lot of photos and I was surprised that Cain wasn't in any of them. Looks like we now know why.

According to Goe, she's back in her hometown of Bronxville, NY, where she's still training and in communication with Salazar. No word on how long she'll be there for, but Goe said that she is still a member of NOP.

http://www.oregonlive.com/trackandfield/index.ssf/2015/05/mary_cain_takes_a_break_from_t.html#incart_river

As an exceptional prognosticator, I foresee her reevaluating her choice to have gone pro at such a young age and "live" running with NOP and Uncle Al Sal and eventually enrolling in some place closer to home, such as Columbia or Villanova.

"What looked good on paper didn't work as well in practice". Ajee Wilson turned pro but stayed with the same coach, same environment. Alexa has turned pro but kept the same coach.I think they're both at the Pre, aren't they? Ajee is one of the favorites to win the 800 (second fastest PB, fastest SB). Alexa isn't going to win, but has a great shot at being towed to 4:04 and AJR.Living environment, weight gain and so on - these are are things the coach can observe. It's taken Salazar an awfully long time to react to this.

Webbed Up wrote:

Read this article about how Australia brought all their world class triathletes together into a training group and then stopped winning medals:

http://www.outsideonline.com/1968356/great-coaches-are-more-results-theyre-magic

Initially, Triathlon Australia provided peripheral support to athletes who were encouraged to stay in their home coaching settings. But after realizing success, Triathlon Australia shifted to a system that centralized its coaching and athlete development, a move which Hall believes was motivated by an increased focus on the quantifiable aspects of endurance performance, like power, aerobic capacity, and lactate threshold, despite an already successful model of coaching and training. Bringing the athletes to a common training center would allow them greater access to the latest technology and resources. But like many ideas, what looked good on paper didn’t work as well in practice.

This. Regarding 800 dude's post, you can't compare females to males so simply because their bodies and hormones function differently. You tell a 18-22 year old female runner who is already training at a higher level than she did in high school to drop the ~10 lbs she might have gained from her body reacting to this training load while physically maturing, therefore "fighting" her body like Lauren Fleshman said, you walk a fine line of burnout and injury. Why do you think so many girls that were great in high school/college fade out?

I'm not saying weight has no effect on performance, but a *professional* coach/support crew should know how to handle the transition. IF you go back in this thread, my initial post about weight was in response to broken arrow's post which stated:

"I cannot tell by the pictures if she is substantially heavier, however that was my first thought when her times were way off from the past two years. Once a girl becomes a woman and the body changes it is usually game over for fast running past High School age. Only the woman who have naturally narrow hips make it as a distance runner and those who starve themselves usually end up a train wreck because of health/injury issues."

Re: the body issue, it's no secret distance running more or less favors the slight. Obviously there are WAY more successful female college runners who never make it in the pro ranks than who do, many of which the reason can be attributed to body changes. Katie Flood comes to mind. A super gifted HS & collegiate runner who I thought for sure would go pro but whose body changed a lot in her later college years. I'm hoping this isn't a big issue for Mary, but it's difficult to fight genetics in a healthy way.

Re: Ajee & Alexa - they both had a source of familiarity when turning pro, whereas everything for Mary has been new since she turned pro.

My hope is she leaves NOP & transfers to a college closer to home. Obviously she won't be eligible to compete for the school's running teams but she could still train at a pro level with a different coach/group.

It's logical if she already knew that she wasn't going to be competitive on a National/international level.

[quote]alanson wrote:

"What looked good on paper didn't work as well in practice".

Ajee Wilson turned pro but stayed with the same coach, same environment. Alexa has turned pro but kept the same coach.

I think they're both at the Pre, aren't they? Ajee is one of the favorites to win the 800 (second fastest PB, fastest SB). Alexa isn't going to win, but has a great shot at being towed to 4:04 and AJR.

Living environment, weight gain and so on - these are are things the coach can observe. It's taken Salazar an awfully long time to react to this.

[quote]Webbed Up wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Ajee Wilson go through a bit of a slump in high school? Ran like 2:01 as a freshman than was getting regularly beat for a couple years until her senior year.

Seems like this happens to all young female phenoms (and a lot of guys).

I expect Cain to be ok but it may take a while and test her mentally.

Nope. Ajee has improved in the 800 every year since she was a freshman in high school back in 2009. She split 2:00.59 on a relay as a Soph which is what might have you thinking she stalled.

Progression:

2014 1:57.67 Monaco (Stade Louis II) 18 JUL

2013 1:58.21 Moskva (Luzhniki) 18 AUG

2012 2:00.91 Barcelona (Estadio Olímpico) 12 JUL

2011 2:02.64 Lille 10 JUL

2010 2:04.18 Moncton 22 JUL

2009 2:07.08 Des Moines, IA 05 AUG

I can't read all 140 posts, but what if in fact now that Cain is in NY State, she just has John Henwood supervising workouts as devised by Salazar before, while Cain gets to be at home as she wishes.? That might be fine.