Katelyn Tuohy’s season over

Better safe than sorry

Thought #1. Anytime a teenage woman doesn't PR in a given year, I get VERY, VERY worried. Actually I probably get worried if it's male or female but very worried if it's a woman, and that was certainly the case this year.

Thought #2 is it's good they shut it down. I mean she's only going to get discouraged that she's nowhere close to her pbs from last year.

HEre is an article that the quote above comes from:

PS. Anyone know why she pulled from the 1500 of the state meet? That is odd to me.

rojo wrote:

PS. Anyone know why she pulled from the 1500 of the state meet? That is odd to me.

Sinus infection.

rojo wrote:

Thought #1. Anytime a teenage woman doesn't PR in a given year, I get VERY, VERY worried. Actually I probably get worried if it's male or female but very worried if it's a woman, and that was certainly the case this year.

Huh? Isn't it pretty much the norm that about of high school girls DON'T PR every year? If not 50% then I'd guess easily 30-40%.

I don't see it as a reason to get VERY VERY worried.

Maybe I'm out of touch and some current high school coaches can chime in. I might be way off here, but here's my view.

I'd be more worried about a girl obsessing over PRing every year leading to unhealthy training and nutritional habits than I would about a girl who is not PRing every year.

I think for the most part, if a high school coach can get a runner through high school healthy, positive about running, and with enough of a mileage/speed work built up to be able to adapt to college training their freshman year, they have done their job. If the girl also gets faster every year, then great.

In general, I think there should be improvement, but I think it might make more sense to view it as an improvement over 4 years, rather than a year-by-year linear progression.

I think this is great for her long term and great that her and her coach realized there was a problem and decided to rest a bit.

Very worried because girls often progress at an unusual rate compared to men and many, after puberty, don’t ever touch their PRs again. Even if those PRs are from sophomore year. This is a big worry to me as well. She is quite possibly just burnt out. Hopefully she gets better next year but there is a very real scenario where she never gets better, or gets a little better but never runs what we all thought she could based off of her sophomore times.

Pretty good point. All things being equal in terms of training, a male should get better every single year just going through puberty. But girls don’t really tend to do that. In fact, just from thinking about the girls who were monsters as freshman and sophomores when I was in high school, a lot actually get worse as they get older. Most average girls I think tend to get better year over year, but they aren’t running crazy times or anything. I think most girls that are exceptional at a young age (8th, 9th, 10th grade), actually tend to get worse or stay stagnant after they get into their 11th and 12th grade years. It’s hard to maintain that kind of level once you start becoming a woman instead of a girl. The increased body fat, wider hips, etc (which is a good thing for healthy women) just don’t allow it most times. I can think of plenty of girls from when I was in school that were absolutely studs running crazy times at little 8th and 9th grade twigs, then puberty starts to come around 10th grade and they just don’t get better or get worse. But like you said, if they can get through high school healthy with good training, a good college coach can bring them back to a high level once they are used to their mature body, just takes some time to get used to

she said in her interviews that next year she will be taking a much easier course load next year and that this year was particularly hard because she loaded up on APs. She also just took AP exams and either has or will be taking finals so I wouldn't read too much into this.

HS athletes not PR’ing for a full year is a decent point/concern. But didn’t she run 9:01 Indoor? So she’s really just had a few months without a PR. Plus, to be fair, it’s hard to run 4:33 (Mile), 9:01 (3k), or 15:37 (5k) when you’re crushing everybody.

you want to have shorter seasons, before you are fully grown.

and even then you want to go maybe 10 weeks max for a season.

no college season plus us champs plus europe.

forget about it.

if you do college season and then go all the way to the olympics.

then you are ruined for years.

you can do 6 weeks spring, train a month and come back for 5 more weeks in summer.

check out how nick symonds worked it.

Girls don't go through puberty in 10th grade, or very very seldom do (that's more likely to happen in 6th than 10th).

She did PR this year. She had an amazing cross country season where she said personal records as well as National records. And she had an amazing winter season where she set a personal record as well as a national record in a 3,000

And this spring was probably her toughest academic time of her High School career so it's no surprise that she wasn't quite as fast

Everyone's thinking it I'm just saying it wrote:

Looks to me like she put on the freshman 15 a little too early.

Don't act like you are some kind of hero because you say, "what everyone is thinking." This poor girl could read these forums and enough with real issues because of you.

Some great posts so far.

1) Yes, it is good to end the season early. Things weren't going too well and nothing is gonna magically change in the next weeks, better write it off and focus on next year where she can crush again.

2) Yes, it's good for her long-term development. Getting 2-3 more "bad" races would be very bad mentally for her. Coaches know what they are doing.

3) I don't think the exam have much impact. It's what the other poster said - growth & weight. She gained a lot of weight, which slows her down considerably in anything >800m. She could try to run a 400 or 800m PR at this point, as she is even more muscular now and has more strength.

Most people get worried that it's just another Mary Cain. You need to stop worrying and support her instead, Katy has achieved phenomenal things so far and will keep doing so in the future.

Girls don't go through puberty in 10th grade, or very very seldom do (that's more likely to happen in 6th than 10th).[/quote]

Actually, it is very common in female distance runners at the elite level to go through puberty much later than usual due to stresses associated with training load/volume, low body fat preventing mestuation from starting etc.

Hejendo76 wrote:

Yep. Tuohy has shut down her season. Thoughts?

Excellent move to shut it down, there is nothing for her to prove with another meet, in fact you could say that for all the top runners going this weekend and for the juniors, it isn't going to change their recruiting status regardless of what they do at the three meets this weekend. Touhy is doing what some others should be doing. As far as you weight weenies go, her size is a good sign of a healthy runner. Katelyn Tuohy would school most people on this board about high-quality distance running and what it takes with training and nutrition.

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