Claudia Lane posts nice update

Does anyone know if she is going to race this season?

Do you not get that she is done? She will never race again.

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Memory Lane wrote:

Do you not get that she is done? She will never race again.

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Yes I can and I do.

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dieter escobal o'casey wrote:

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Memory Lane wrote:

Do you not get that she is done? She will never race again.

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How do you know this? Can you predict the future? You would make a lot of money if you could.

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Claudia Lane is/was nothing like Mary Cain. She never came close to Cain's's times and Claudia was doomed to fail from the beginning. It's rare that someone with such flawed running technique could succeed for as long as she did. Cain had terrible arm carriage, but that wasn't going to injure her. Claudia had the heaviest foot strike I have ever seen. She was so far back on her heels she almost ran in a seated position and it was painful to listen to every step she took imagining what she was doing to her bones, joints, ligaments and tendons. Someone should have done something instead of just letting her beat her body to death. She was a stress fracture/reaction waiting to happen and when it did, she didn't have the proper mechanics to compensate afterwards and it started a snowball of other injuries.

Don't believe me?
Watch and listen.
Turn your sound up.

https://www.flotrack.org/video/5838697-workout-wednesday-foot-locker-champion-claudia-lane

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Bad Form Kills wrote:

Claudia Lane is/was nothing like Mary Cain. She never came close to Cain's's times and Claudia was doomed to fail from the beginning. It's rare that someone with such flawed running technique could succeed for as long as she did. Cain had terrible arm carriage, but that wasn't going to injure her. Claudia had the heaviest foot strike I have ever seen. She was so far back on her heels she almost ran in a seated position and it was painful to listen to every step she took imagining what she was doing to her bones, joints, ligaments and tendons. Someone should have done something instead of just letting her beat her body to death. She was a stress fracture/reaction waiting to happen and when it did, she didn't have the proper mechanics to compensate afterwards and it started a snowball of other injuries.

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LateRunnerPhil wrote:

I agree with you, but it's also incredibly sad that most high school coaches don't notice errors in running form and tell the kids how to correct them. Claudia had an incredible VO2MAX as I said - she looks like she is sprinting at 70-72s pace whereas all other girls run relaxed with proper form yet she was miles ahead of them in races.

If Tinman or any other coach would have had her, she would be competing with Katelyn Tuohy now (who had a great coach in HS). It's just sad that such a great talent with great attitude and mental toughness got ruined by bad coaches before her career even started..

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So what, most HS girls and many fast females in general have ugly form. It couldn't have been that inefficient if she won Footlocker and ran 9:57 with that form. The LAST thing they need is a Salazar-type coach yelling at them to "fix" their footstrike or arm carriage. The fact is most women get slower around 18-19 due to hormonal changes and there's not much you can do to avoid it.

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Hardloper wrote:

So what, most HS girls and many fast females in general have ugly form. It couldn't have been that inefficient if she won Footlocker and ran 9:57 with that form. The LAST thing they need is a Salazar-type coach yelling at them to "fix" their footstrike or arm carriage. The fact is most women get slower around 18-19 due to hormonal changes and there's not much you can do to avoid it.

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Hardloper wrote:

The fact is most women get slower around 18-19 due to hormonal changes and there's not much you can do to avoid it.

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Hardloper wrote:

So what, most HS girls and many fast females in general have ugly form. It couldn't have been that inefficient if she won Footlocker and ran 9:57 with that form. The LAST thing they need is a Salazar-type coach yelling at them to "fix" their footstrike or arm carriage. The fact is most women get slower around 18-19 due to hormonal changes and there's not much you can do to avoid it.

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LateRunnerPhil wrote:

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Hardloper wrote:

So what, most HS girls and many fast females in general have ugly form. It couldn't have been that inefficient if she won Footlocker and ran 9:57 with that form. The LAST thing they need is a Salazar-type coach yelling at them to "fix" their footstrike or arm carriage. The fact is most women get slower around 18-19 due to hormonal changes and there's not much you can do to avoid it.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ0MHzhfIaY This video shows her form and the one of other HS girls. You can see how much more energy she is wasting compared to her competitors. Her stride length barely changes, even at high speeds she is only using cadence to become faster - that only works up to a point. Enough to win in HS, in college, not so much anymore.
She also went out in 67 and got closed in pretty hard in the end. Her coach never taught her proper pacing, even in the workout Wednesday she went out in 67 first lap that was supposed to be a 75.

Yes, she was much faster than other girls, but that's because she had better genetics (in her case, higher VO2MAX). She had like the engine of Katy Tuohy, but with terrible running form. Katy did strength training, lots of drills to work on her form and her coach knew what he was doing, even holding her back in a 5x1k workout that got filmed for Flotrack.

A proper college coach or elite coach like Salazar would have fixed her form issues with drills and technique sessions in a few weeks/months. Lots of girls improve their form drastically when they get to college and better coaches. However, Claudia's dedication to the sport was soo big, she trained hard, ran higher mileage and ended up severely injured. Her running form worked as long as her mileage was low (30 mpwish) and she was very light, but when she became heavier and progressed her mileage her biomechanical flaws destroyed her feet and legs.

Like in Europe, talented HS runners need to get in contact with top level coaches. Her coach at "Malibu High" was completely overwhelmed with a talent like Claudia and not able to progress her through her body changes and get her ready for a great career in college. It's just sad to always think about "what could Claudia have been.." if she had a proper coach who is experienced with elite runners, changed her form and prevent injuries and appeared as a strong runner on the college scene.

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What a small world, I was also thinking of the Mastalirs before I read your post. It's a totally obscure reference for 99.9% of the people on this board, but an interesting one. For those who don't know, they're twins from California who ran 4:04/8:44 1600/3200 in high school in the 1980s. My most distinct memory of them in high school was standing on the track during a smaller meet and having them run by in a race that I was watching and being shocked by how hard their feet were slapping the ground. My coach commented on it too, saying something about them eventually being beatable with heavy pounding like that. He was right, though Brooks Johnson was also hugely responsible for their lack of progress in college.

You and I must have crossed paths at some point.

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SDSU Aztec wrote:

I don't think it's so easy to change someone's form. She runs the way her body was constructed. Salazar tried to introduce more knee lift to his own stride but failed to do so. The Mastileers also pounded the track the way Lane does and did not improve in college.

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was there too wrote:

What a small world, I was also thinking of the Mastalirs before I read your post. It's a totally obscure reference for 99.9% of the people on this board, but an interesting one. For those who don't know, they're twins from California who ran 4:04/8:44 1600/3200 in high school in the 1980s. My most distinct memory of them in high school was standing on the track during a smaller meet and having them run by in a race that I was watching and being shocked by how hard their feet were slapping the ground. My coach commented on it too, saying something about them eventually being beatable with heavy pounding like that. He was right, though Brooks Johnson was also hugely responsible for their lack of progress in college.

You and I must have crossed paths at some point.

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SDSU Aztec wrote:

I don't think it's so easy to change someone's form. She runs the way her body was constructed. Salazar tried to introduce more knee lift to his own stride but failed to do so. The Mastileers also pounded the track the way Lane does and did not improve in college.

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Such is the american style of distance running, we try to power through bad form with talent and end up burning out or getting injured. Coaches rarely try to improve athletes form of athletes so we get these people running inefficiently with good enough v02 max to power through.

I didn't see that DMR, but Paul was in fact the 800m leg. He was tall and lean, not nearly as heavy relatively-speaking as the Mastalirs. Despite the pounding, Eric ran a 14:01 5000 on the track early that summer in addition to his earlier 8:44...what a stud he was. And Mark of course still has the second fastest time ever at Balboa Park if I'm not mistaken, top 3-4 for sure.

Anyway, getting a little off topic from Claudia Lane here.

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SDSU Aztec wrote:

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was there too wrote:

What a small world, I was also thinking of the Mastalirs before I read your post. It's a totally obscure reference for 99.9% of the people on this board, but an interesting one. For those who don't know, they're twins from California who ran 4:04/8:44 1600/3200 in high school in the 1980s. My most distinct memory of them in high school was standing on the track during a smaller meet and having them run by in a race that I was watching and being shocked by how hard their feet were slapping the ground. My coach commented on it too, saying something about them eventually being beatable with heavy pounding like that. He was right, though Brooks Johnson was also hugely responsible for their lack of progress in college.

You and I must have crossed paths at some point.

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SDSU Aztec wrote:

I don't think it's so easy to change someone's form. She runs the way her body was constructed. Salazar tried to introduce more knee lift to his own stride but failed to do so. The Mastileers also pounded the track the way Lane does and did not improve in college.

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I saw them run in the DMR when Jesuit set the national record at UC Davis. I didn't feel the ground shake from where I was standing but you could sense how hard they striking the track. I believe Paul Thomas ran the 800 and he was another big guy.

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Bad Form Kills wrote:

Claudia Lane is/was nothing like Mary Cain. She never came close to Cain's's times and Claudia was doomed to fail from the beginning. It's rare that someone with such flawed running technique could succeed for as long as she did. Cain had terrible arm carriage, but that wasn't going to injure her. Claudia had the heaviest foot strike I have ever seen. She was so far back on her heels she almost ran in a seated position and it was painful to listen to every step she took imagining what she was doing to her bones, joints, ligaments and tendons. Someone should have done something instead of just letting her beat her body to death. She was a stress fracture/reaction waiting to happen and when it did, she didn't have the proper mechanics to compensate afterwards and it started a snowball of other injuries.

Don't believe me?
Watch and listen.
Turn your sound up.

https://www.flotrack.org/video/5838697-workout-wednesday-foot-locker-champion-claudia-lane

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Form like that isn't good, but it doesn't guarantee injuries like you say. My GF has similar form, actually worse, and she's been pretty much injury free her entire running life running a ton of miles and now nearing 40.

Your girlfriend probably doesn't run the same pace the she did. The combination of the form and the speed is the problem. You can jog 8 minute pace with almost any form and not get injured.