Is Grace Ping Update?

I have nothing against the Ping girls or Ping family. I don't know any of them at all. I don't know how they approach the sport daily or what kind of priorities and level of focus they have on running for the kids.

I do have something against anyone, including coaches and parents, who push too much and too early in the lives of kids. Burnout happens for many reasons and is hard to predict. However, it would appear those who put too much into an activity more often burn out when compared to others.

I do have something against short term gain at the expense of long term development. See Mary Cain and others. The culture in the US in the sport is mostly a high school and college development model. This model allows for a better social development, personal development, and athletic development. Sure you can try to buck this system but you are better off working in this system and the success rate is drastically higher than other models for US athletes in the sport.

Along these lines I think one must be careful chasing records and travelling all over the country to find competition as young ages. The sport benefits those who put time into aerobic development and who have the kind of body type that is most suitable for distance running. Chasing records as kids is usually a byproduct of these things rather than a flat out statement about talent.

I wish the Ping girls the very best. I just hope that their influencers (coaches, parents, ...) don't get in the way of their long term success because they are too focused on the meaningless records of youth athletes.

Lauren Ping pulling away from Lauren Peterson at the end of Ping's 4:50.64 1600 was the Kick of the Week:

https://mn.milesplit.com/videos/372541

Finding one name of a top American in the record books does not make it the rule. Check for the names of the top 20 men and women and you probably won’t find another one. I saw that a guy from Wisconsin won the lottery last week so I guess I should drive to wisconsin to buy a ticket so that I can win also. Hasay is an elite runner who was on a normal glide path at 14 years old. Most age group record holders are chasing records instead of playing soccer or running the 400 on their JH track team. Everyone wants the Pings, Cain, Jenks, Lane, and other early developers to progress but they just don’t. Where were Houlihan and Schweizer at age 13? They were in their backyards chasing the dog and kicking a soccer ball. They weren’t in California or New York competing at national track meets.

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Lottery winner wrote:

Finding one name of a top American in the record books does not make it the rule. Check for the names of the top 20 men and women and you probably won’t find another one. I saw that a guy from Wisconsin won the lottery last week so I guess I should drive to wisconsin to buy a ticket so that I can win also. Hasay is an elite runner who was on a normal glide path at 14 years old. Most age group record holders are chasing records instead of playing soccer or running the 400 on their JH track team. Everyone wants the Pings, Cain, Jenks, Lane, and other early developers to progress but they just don’t. Where were Houlihan and Schweizer at age 13? They were in their backyards chasing the dog and kicking a soccer ball. They weren’t in California or New York competing at national track meets.

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Jordan Hasay had an excellent coach. This makes a huge difference in career trajectories.

Yes, I am in favor of celebrating their accomplishments. The problem is that too many people immediately jump to projecting that young phenoms will be future Olympians.

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Lottery winner wrote:

Finding one name of a top American in the record books does not make it the rule. Check for the names of the top 20 men and women and you probably won’t find another one. I saw that a guy from Wisconsin won the lottery last week so I guess I should drive to wisconsin to buy a ticket so that I can win also. Hasay is an elite runner who was on a normal glide path at 14 years old.

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Both Ping's are coached by Tinman.

He said it time and time again he believes in gradual progression, and wants his athletes to still be able to progress once in college. He will continue to hold back her mileage and progression to avoid another Mary Cain , Alana Hadley, etc.

He said it's okay to push them to a high level in high school (like Hasay did), but always keep something left in the tank. It's likely Tinman didn't use much VO2MAX training with her yet, to prevent early peaking in HS and allow her to maximize long-term development.

If Ping doesn't win all time anymore as junior/senior - that's ok. I would only worry if she doesn't become a top-tier NCAA D1 runner, because that is the goal.

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Calm down..... wrote:

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Lottery winner wrote:

Finding one name of a top American in the record books does not make it the rule. Check for the names of the top 20 men and women and you probably won’t find another one. I saw that a guy from Wisconsin won the lottery last week so I guess I should drive to wisconsin to buy a ticket so that I can win also. Hasay is an elite runner who was on a normal glide path at 14 years old. Most age group record holders are chasing records instead of playing soccer or running the 400 on their JH track team. Everyone wants the Pings, Cain, Jenks, Lane, and other early developers to progress but they just don’t. Where were Houlihan and Schweizer at age 13? They were in their backyards chasing the dog and kicking a soccer ball. They weren’t in California or New York competing at national track meets.

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Whatever happens in years to come, can't we just marvel at some early accomplishments of athletes?

The link above in this thread shows an 8th-grader run a 4:50.64 1600, which converts to a 4:52.33 mile. Tuohy's fastest mile as an 8th-grader was 4:59.93! Whatever Ping's future holds, can't we at least say that (at the moment) she's a very fast middle-schooler?

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LateRunnerPhil wrote:

Both Ping's are coached by Tinman.

He said it time and time again he believes in gradual progression, and wants his athletes to still be able to progress once in college. He will continue to hold back her mileage and progression to avoid another Mary Cain , Alana Hadley, etc.

He said it's okay to push them to a high level in high school (like Hasay did), but always keep something left in the tank. It's likely Tinman didn't use much VO2MAX training with her yet, to prevent early peaking in HS and allow her to maximize long-term development.

If Ping doesn't win all time anymore as junior/senior - that's ok. I would only worry if she doesn't become a top-tier NCAA D1 runner, because that is the goal.

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We will bring these posts up in 2 years when you will have moved on to the next great 14 year old female. But you won’t want to discuss the Pings because they will be injured or have lost their drive. Those are the very symptoms of starting too young but you will twist those as the excuses why they are no longer running well. Bringing foreigners into the discussion is not relevant. Nobody knows why, but more seem to to be able to weather the training for the long haul than Americans can. So where are we on this thread’s arguments? I guess we are predicting how fast the Pings will run in the future. I predict that they will be running 11 minutes senior year and around 17:30 in college. Had they stuck to normal junior high competition, they would have peaked at 10 minutes senior year and 16 minutes in college.

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Somewhat Clueless Coach wrote:

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LateRunnerPhil wrote:

Both Ping's are coached by Tinman.

He said it time and time again he believes in gradual progression, and wants his athletes to still be able to progress once in college. He will continue to hold back her mileage and progression to avoid another Mary Cain , Alana Hadley, etc.

He said it's okay to push them to a high level in high school (like Hasay did), but always keep something left in the tank. It's likely Tinman didn't use much VO2MAX training with her yet, to prevent early peaking in HS and allow her to maximize long-term development.

If Ping doesn't win all time anymore as junior/senior - that's ok. I would only worry if she doesn't become a top-tier NCAA D1 runner, because that is the goal.

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I thought Grace was doing 40 mpw two years ago, which seems excessive for that age, though I'm not a coach? Also, I would agree with the general theme of this board that many (most?) prepubescent girls who are out-training their peers at an early age usually seem to fade away. There is the curious case of Sydney Thorvaldson in WY, who continues to drop some pretty amazing times as a sophomore as she has all through middle school. It will be interesting to see if she enjoys the same level of success in the future.

My interest in this comes only from the standpoint of being a parent to a tweenage daughter who only wants to run. She never took to ball sports because of a congenital eye condition. She was a competitive swimmer for a couple of years, but she started to hate it as she was flogged with constant, daily intervals in the pool. I don't know what to do with her. I let her join a competitive running club, but only under the condition that she doesn't run more than four days per week and continues to swim, at least recreationally, which she has agreed to. Perhaps this is a question for another thread, but what do you do with a prepubescent girl who ONLY wants to run and race and nothing else without hindering her long-term development?

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I think Tinman is a very good coach. The issue though for me is that coaches like that have strong backgrounds in physiology but sometimes lack a strong background in developmental psychology. Same with Salazar. The point being successful training gets you so far but true success also requires a strong psychological approach that is rooted in human development. Kids sometimes appear to being force fed in the athletic world where either their talent or training doesn't match up with their other needs like friends, other experiences and hobbies..... Sure training/mileage is one component that needs to be monitored but chasing around the country, trying to set meaningless national records, etc puts too much emphasis on the sport and the result is often burnout. There should be no rush to success. Patience is a better approach. I doubt that the Ping girls came up with the idea on their own to travel to Carlsbad to run in the 5k or any other high level national class meet. That was probably suggested by parents or coach.

Your math is way off. For every junior high kid running national class times who goes on to do great things in the NCAA, there are 10 who disappear. Fisher and Hunter are 2 great examples of runners who developed at a normal rate. The Pings were running faster 5ks in junior high than those 2 guys were.

Wow, if these little girls can run a 4:50 mile in 7th grade or whatever, JUST THINK HOW GOOD THEY ARE GOING TO BE WHEN THEY ARE PHYSICALLY MATURE!!! After all, most people improve a huge amount from their times in 7th grade. And keep in mind, unlike most child phenoms (well, actually, exactly like every recent child phenom), they (supposedly) don't even train that much, and their parents and coaches don't put any pressure at all on them.

So, being entirely reasonable and perhaps being a little overly conservative, I think that as the Ping sisters get older and gradually begin to train harder, these are the types of mile times we can begin to see:

7th grade: 4:50
8th grade: 4:25
9th grade: 4:15
10th grade: 4:07
11th grade: 4:00
12th grade: 3:55
by the end of college: sub 3:45
by the end of pro careers: sub 3:30

And remember, I'm being conservative in my predictions. I know I ran like 9 minutes for the mile in 7th grade, and eventually broke 5 minutes. That's 4 minutes of improvement. I'm only asking them to improve 80 to 90 seconds.

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I've never seen fast young overachiever girls before wrote:

Wow, if these little girls can run a 4:50 mile in 7th grade or whatever, JUST THINK HOW GOOD THEY ARE GOING TO BE WHEN THEY ARE PHYSICALLY MATURE!!! After all, most people improve a huge amount from their times in 7th grade. And keep in mind, unlike most child phenoms (well, actually, exactly like every recent child phenom), they (supposedly) don't even train that much, and their parents and coaches don't put any pressure at all on them.

So, being entirely reasonable and perhaps being a little overly conservative, I think that as the Ping sisters get older and gradually begin to train harder, these are the types of mile times we can begin to see:

7th grade: 4:50
8th grade: 4:25
9th grade: 4:15
10th grade: 4:07
11th grade: 4:00
12th grade: 3:55
by the end of college: sub 3:45
by the end of pro careers: sub 3:30

And remember, I'm being conservative in my predictions. I know I ran like 9 minutes for the mile in 7th grade, and eventually broke 5 minutes. That's 4 minutes of improvement. I'm only asking them to improve 80 to 90 seconds.

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...are girls like Tuohy. I'm talking about the ones who seem to always appear stressed in interviews (yes, I know everyone says Tuohy's basically shy), who are very cagey when asked about their training/ mileage, or who (like Tuohy) express VERY lofty & immediate goals, such as running the trials for the 2020 Olympics. That latter is the type of thing that I fear can put a severe strain on a young athlete.

I loved every minute when I was in the spotlight at that age. It was the time of my life. The reporters can get a bit obnoxious with there obvious questions, but you learn to have fun with it. Katelynn , who is amazing does a great job staying humble. Anyone who has been interviewed after such an event knows the difficulty to actually try to think, let alone be interviewed and try to sound intelligent. Best thing is to follow an athlete, an easy task today, and look for those signs. If you rely find them, then do try to warn them.

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Loved It wrote:

I loved every minute when I was in the spotlight at that age. It was the time of my life. The reporters can get a bit obnoxious with there obvious questions, but you learn to have fun with it. Katelynn , who is amazing does a great job staying humble. Anyone who has been interviewed after such an event knows the difficulty to actually try to think, let alone be interviewed and try to sound intelligent. Best thing is to follow an athlete, an easy task today, and look for those signs. If you rely find them, then do try to warn them.

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