Katelyn Tuohy announces focus to olympic trials

jessen jeffla wrote:

Hasay, efraimson, cranny, Baxter, Cain, rainsberger, etc, etc, etc

0 Olympic teams

Being a hs female phenom is usually bad

I’d argue Efraimson, Cranny, Rainsberger, and Baxter were too young to qualify for 2016 Olympics.

These are the young women I could find born 1990 and later who qualified for championship teams:

Mary Cain (1996) 2013

Ajee’ Wilson (1994) 2013, 2016, 2017 (2015 qualified but did not compete)

Shelby Houlihan (1993) 2016, 2017

Courtney Frerirchs (1993) 2016, 2017

Marielle Hall (1992) 2015, 2016

Abbey D’Agostino (1992) 2015, 2016

Colleen Quigley (1992) 2015, 2016

Jordan Hasay (1991) 2013

Emma Coburn (1990) 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017

Emily Infeld (1990) 2015, 2016, 2017

Looking at the list and going by their HS times, most were not national champs (you can only have so many in one year...) but all were pretty solid runners. I’m guessing the difference between these ‘good’ athletes in HS vs the ‘great’ ones lies in the coaching.

as in phenoms had overzealous coaches with the win now attitude, was the bad coaching... or if these olympians had good coaches in hs they would have been better? Kaitlyn runs a lot, any cross country meet we see her at she runs. The fact that she "doesn't count mileage" should be a concern, she has already expressed how much she works out. Running , lifting, cross training, gym. Her body fat suggesst it is a lot.

Here is a nice article about bad HS coaching an olympian had.

https://www.milesplit.com/articles/222426/gaylerd-quigleys-guide-on-raising-runners-including-an-olympian

I know the purpose of this thread is to speculate if she could make Tokyo, but she clearly stated that her goal is to qualify for the TRIALS, not explicitly Tokyo. The standard in 2016 was 15:25, which is a perfectly reasonable goal that she honestly could've done last year during outdoor if she wanted to.

JO Coach wrote:

Runnerchx44 wrote:

Good point about Cain. In fact, has any HS distance phenom who went pro instead of college actually done well? I cannot think of any.

Does Ajee Wilson count as a HS distance star?

Alexa Efraimson is still running well (no way can Touhy beat her in a 1500). I predict Alexa makes the team for the 1500 in 2020.

Ajee Wilson won a world youth title in HS. She also won the World Junior Champs 800 the summer of her HS senior year. Yes, she counts as an HS distance star. She's certainly turned out better than many of the other over hyped prodigies mentioned on this thread. I guess if you're being technical, you can call her a HS middle distance star because of the lack of XC cred.

For 2020 they will be qualifying for the olympics based on top 3 US runners in the world rankings. So a new up-and-coming runner like her wouldn't be in that top 3 unless she puts up multiple great 5k times this summer and early 2020 season. There won't be the chance of hitting the Olympic A and then having a good day at the trials (the olympic trials won't really even be olympic trials anymore, more of a last-chance meet to improve your world ranking). She'd have to be an established 5k runner running most likely sub 15:00 or for sure 15:05 and that won't happen by 2020.

mo money mo problems wrote:

Runnerchx44 wrote:

I think she will. IMO the 5k isnt so deep that she has no chance. Will be fun to see how she does with competition.

It’s deep enough that she has very little chance.

Agreed. I don't like her chances of running away from all but two of our 5000m Americans by 2020, and I don't like her chances of outkicking many of her counterparts, either. That's not to say she can't run a great time in 2020.

coaching wrote:

as in phenoms had overzealous coaches with the win now attitude, was the bad coaching... or if these olympians had good coaches in hs they would have been better? Kaitlyn runs a lot, any cross country meet we see her at she runs. The fact that she "doesn't count mileage" should be a concern, she has already expressed how much she works out. Running , lifting, cross training, gym. Her body fat suggesst it is a lot.

Here is a nice article about bad HS coaching an olympian had.

https://www.milesplit.com/articles/222426/gaylerd-quigleys-guide-on-raising-runners-including-an-olympian

Good article, very true that too many little coaches try to take advantage of their athletes, they rationalize it all away by saying "i got so and so a scholarship to XYZ school, saved the family many thousands of dollars" so funny. Same guys always use it.

World Rankings wrote:

For 2020 they will be qualifying for the olympics based on top 3 US runners in the world rankings.

For a variety of reasons and much like the qualification for Doha 2019 reverted back to previous incarnations, the same thing is going to happen for the Tokyo Olympics and the same process of marks based qualification rather than ranking will be used.

the rationale police wrote:

coaching wrote:

as in phenoms had overzealous coaches with the win now attitude, was the bad coaching... or if these olympians had good coaches in hs they would have been better? Kaitlyn runs a lot, any cross country meet we see her at she runs. The fact that she "doesn't count mileage" should be a concern, she has already expressed how much she works out. Running , lifting, cross training, gym. Her body fat suggesst it is a lot.

Here is a nice article about bad HS coaching an olympian had.

https://www.milesplit.com/articles/222426/gaylerd-quigleys-guide-on-raising-runners-including-an-olympian

Good article, very true that too many little coaches try to take advantage of their athletes, they rationalize it all away by saying "i got so and so a scholarship to XYZ school, saved the family many thousands of dollars" so funny. Same guys always use it.

Not to take away from the article, because he makes some good points, but then he also says "You may think that my spouse Ann and I have engineered our children to excel at athletics from birth, but I believe that being a great athlete is just a by-product of the way that we raised them as students. "

Then you find out that they home-schooled Colleen to eight grade and that he quit the coaching job at the school he teaches to become her distance coach in high school. Not an unreasonable thing to do since he is already a coach (and it obviously worked out well), but certainly not the indication of a dad who thinks it best to refrain from "engineering" his daughter's success. That part was total BS.

Run Down wrote:

JO Coach wrote:

Does Ajee Wilson count as a HS distance star?

Alexa Efraimson is still running well (no way can Touhy beat her in a 1500). I predict Alexa makes the team for the 1500 in 2020.

Ajee Wilson won a world youth title in HS. She also won the World Junior Champs 800 the summer of her HS senior year. Yes, she counts as an HS distance star. She's certainly turned out better than many of the other over hyped prodigies mentioned on this thread. I guess if you're being technical, you can call her a HS middle distance star because of the lack of XC cred.

Mary Cain also

World Junior 3k champ

US Indoor 1500m title

10th at World championships

I would not say this is a failed career in my opinion justa short one if she were to be done today. Ajee Wilson is hands down the best right now though. Probably our best runner 800-10k in my opinion. A toss up between her and Houlihan with Simpson right there

Hope Cain can get back to where she was.

Indoor? wrote:

jessen jeffla wrote:

Hasay, efraimson, cranny, Baxter, Cain, rainsberger, etc, etc, etc

0 Olympic teams

Being a hs female phenom is usually bad for future Olympic prospects. How have we not remembered that fact? Tuohy is a great hs athlete but that's it and will likely remain that.

I mostly agree with you. My main question then is:

Did these girls ever have a chance?

Was it them being a phenom that caused them to not have a future?

OR for some reason where they just able to burn bright for a short while but nothing they could have done would have changed things?

I just have a weird feeling that Touhy is going to be ruined by "too much too soon". It must be really heady to be a total star with all the attention and huge expectations, but I really worry that she's going to be run into the ground. If she has Olympic-level qualities, which she does seem to have, you would think that she would be at the apex of her career, say, aged 26 to 30 (?).

If I could compare it to marathon training - perhaps reaching a max of 140 miles a week is a good goal, but would you recommend doing that kind of mileage for 6 straight months? At some point, that kind of stress is going to have a negative effect.

Touhy is on an incredible rate of improvement but it doesn't look sustainable over a period of time where she can run her best in her mid- to late-20s. I don't know what her parents and coach are thinking, but I think they're over-cooking this.

She has an incredible gift. Give her some time to grow into the best she can be.

Dwightarm wrote:

Looking at the list and going by their HS times, most were not national champs (you can only have so many in one year...) but all were pretty solid runners. I’m guessing the difference between these ‘good’ athletes in HS vs the ‘great’ ones lies in the coaching.

It is impossbile to figure out how much is coachin versus physical maturity versus talent.

How many Brian Sell/Pat Porter guys run 430 miles in HS off 30 mpw and then stop running? who knows how how any of them would have responded to training. At the othe end how many good runners (4:10-4:20, 900-920) guys at good high school programs then fail to improve since they have already gotton a lot of the benefits from decent training?

Again for fun take a look at the top 20 list from HS and compare that to end of college times. A lot of the names are the same. The order though changes a lot.

She runs low mileage and even if she does 'burn out' before her 20's, she probably wouldn't have succeeded in her 20's regardless.

Not to mention that Claudia Lane is out at Footlocker due to injury. She could've been the first male/female to win 3 Footlockers.

ffttis gGB v wrote:

Dwightarm wrote:

Very interesting. Who of their contemporaries did qualify in 2016?

The other way to think about it who would you pick to max the olympic team. Footlocker winner or places 2-10.

Exactly. It's the classic "regression to the mean" illusion

What kind of attitude is that?

runnerdave wrote:

talking out of your wrote:

She runs low mileage and even if she does 'burn out' before her 20's, she probably wouldn't have succeeded in her 20's regardless.

What kind of attitude is that?

Better than trying to find someone to blame for biological realities that can't be avoided.

What if we look at the best women in the world- are they in their mid to late 20's? (I don't know but somebody out there does).

What were they doing at Tuohy's age? Just holding back and waiting until they were older? Or were they running a lot?

(Not to say all runners must follow the same formula- but what examples back up your theory that she should not train hard now?)

wtfbbq wrote:

I agree with this. MAYBE high 14:50s but not fast enough for team. It’s a pretty solid event right now. Top 5 would be incredible.

Please.

She has two years to improve.

You have no idea what her ceiling in that time will be.