5 years ago Konstanze Klosterhalfen was just the "German Mary Cain." Now the difference between the two is stunning

Agreed. We never really learned what actually caused Cain to completely disappear. Not like she ran and ran worse every time out.

One stayed on the cycle, one didn’t. EOT

Hips

Hips? I mean how big could her hips have gotten? We've seen some women with pretty wide hips run pretty fast. Klosterhalfen has wide hips for her build.

Mary Cain was never going to be this good. With that said, if she didn't have so many injuries and issues with going pro early, she'd be a really good runner right now. Probably at least like Alexa Efraimson. However, time will tell if she can make a comeback or not. I'm rooting for her because why not??

Klojo has found what works for her.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Klojo has found what works for her.

Klojo?

Still making sh!t up eh?

Klosterhalfen = Ectomorph

Cain = Mesomorph

Cain and Koko wrote:

Crazy just how much their career paths have diverged

Wrong. Cain peaked MUCH earlier. Here a list of PRs:

14-years old:

800m

Cain: 2:06

Koko: 2:22

15-years old:

800m

Cain: 2:03

Koko: 2:13

16-years old:

800m

Cain: 1:59

Koko: 2:07

1500m

Cain: 4:17

Koko: 4:26

3k

Cain: 8:55 (adjusted 2 mile time)

Koko: 9:39

Age at first 2:06 800m:

Cain - 14

Koko - 18

Age at first sub 2 800m:

Cain - 17

Koko - 20

Age at first sub 9 3000m:

Cain: 16

Koko: 18

One was a phenom, one was just a talented runner doing low mileage and slowly progressing year-after-year, taking things on at a time. German training system is based on long-term development, that's why Koko is getting consistently better. Cain was completely overworked and overraced at young age, she set her expectations incredibly high for herself and when she stopped winning and stomping every race everyone was questioning her, and she thought to herself "why am I not good anymore? What am I doing wrong?" She lost her drive and passion for running, while Koko might not have had the same success in her teens, she was always getting a little bit more, had far fewer disappointments and kept up her motivation for running.

WinnytheBish wrote:

Mary Cain was never going to be this good. With that said, if she didn't have so many injuries and issues with going pro early, she'd be a really good runner right now. Probably at least like Alexa Efraimson. However, time will tell if she can make a comeback or not. I'm rooting for her because why not??

Mary Can was better. Better at an event which is not Klosterhalfen's specialty.

Cain was a 1:59.xx 800m runner at 16 or 17. Just because Mary Cain was better than all or nearly all US teenage runners 1500m to 5000m was not a good reason to move up in distance. Mary Cain's long event should have been 1500m. Training as an 800m runner as a teenager really made Shelby Houlihan strong head to toe. I wish Cain would have stayed at 800m through her teenage years. Cain and Klosterhalfen are different runners.

Overall you are correct, but Klosterhalfen ran already 2:16.7 @14 (the 9th best mark among the age group in Germany).

It seems she ran this with very low mileage which is also shown by her comparably weak 3000m times at 16 and 17 (9:39, about half a minute behind the best of Reh who is the same age). When they slowly cranked up the mileage she ran 8:53 at 18 and 8:46 at 19.

And unfortunately there are plenty of German teenagers who "don't make it" after pretty good times at 14-18. Although because there is no HS/College running to speak of in Germany not to the extent we find this in the US. And the marks are usually not as good.

That's a good point. Klosterhalfen raced mostly 800/1500 until 17 but when she increased mileage and tried longer distances it emerged that she actually was a long distance runner. The most striking events here were the not quite expected win of the euro u20 xcountry in late 2015 and a 32:24 road 10k in march 2016.

Interesting analysis. 1:59 is extremely fast for a 16 year old girl.

Jo72 wrote:

Overall you are correct, but Klosterhalfen ran already 2:16.7 @14 (the 9th best mark among the age group in Germany).

It seems she ran this with very low mileage which is also shown by her comparably weak 3000m times at 16 and 17 (9:39, about half a minute behind the best of Reh who is the same age). When they slowly cranked up the mileage she ran 8:53 at 18 and 8:46 at 19.

And unfortunately there are plenty of German teenagers who "don't make it" after pretty good times at 14-18. Although because there is no HS/College running to speak of in Germany not to the extent we find this in the US. And the marks are usually not as good.

You are right about her 800m time at 14.

Yes, Koko always ran extremely low mileage. 2016-2018 she ran mostly 40-50 mpw, with her long run being 15k (~9 miles). She ran sub 2 800m and sub 4 1500m off that low mileage. She always had the endurance, so she would go to the track almost every day and work on her speed. This also shows that Magness's "slow twitch runners must do high mileage" is an incredibly flawed concept. She even failed the shot put test multiple times when trying to study sports and was afraid she wouldn't be able to study what she loves - which is kinda insane. A world-class athlete failing the entry-level exam to study sports which any average Joe and Mary can pass.

Salazar surely increased her mileage when she started working with him roughly a year ago, but I doubt she is doing super high mileage now. Reh, on the other hand has been grinding 80-90 mpw for a while now, and repeatedly gets injured (3 stress fractures in a single season! Koko had one single injury in her whole life), so the low mileage approach seems to work very well for her.

Running her 5k time off low mileage means she can improve even much further and will threaten the WR in the next years.

Subway Surfers wrote:

Interesting analysis. 1:59 is extremely fast for a 16 year old girl.

Yes, Cain had an incredibly amount of natural speed. But what Salazar failed to realize was, she was a fast-twitch runner. Cain would do workouts like 10x200 in 27.1 with very short rests without a problem. Koko can't even run all-out that fast, she ran an all-out 300m race at 14 in 44.3.

If any race gets down to a sprint at the end, and the race is slow and not a PR/WR race, Koko will get destroyed.

Now in 800m, both have the same PR - Cain could do crazy 200m repeat workouts, Koko couldn't. Cain had much better speed over 30m-400m. Koko got the body type and muscle fibers to do well at the longer distances (just imagine her running a marathon one day, easily sub 2:20 potential).

But Cain should have sticked to the 800m - she had more speed, but Salazar tried to move her up and let her run higher mileage which destroyed her speed and anaerobic abilities. When someone runs 1:59 at 16 you don't just move her up and train her for the mile or 3k, you turn that into a world-class 800m runner and if she thrives on low mileage, high intensity like Rudisha she should have done that.

Canova said long time ago that "too much mileage is bad for speed based 800m runners"

Armstronglies wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

Klojo has found what works for her.

Klojo?

Still making sh!t up eh?

You do know that according to WADA and other anti-doping investigators that the black market in doping is over a billion Euros annually? (which suggests that the greater proportion of doping transactions are in Europe. Like Germany. ) Also that most doping can't be caught, as it is estimated there are at least a hundred undetectable drugs put there. You also know that athletics has been identified as one of the worst offenders? (All this also courtesy of Al Jazeera.) How likely is it that the losers and tailenders in the field are the only ones doping, and not the winners? If someone is running like they are on rocket fuel (without fear of being caught), they likely are. Really, with so much at stake career-wise, why wouldn't they be?

Apples to Oranges here. Why not compare Cain or Koko to any other 22-23 year old running well on the planet? They were raised on opposite sides of the planet for goodness sake and have had completely different developmental paths. The only thing in common is that they both are white (that’s what you’re getting at) and can say one day that they have run for the NOP. But even at NOP they’ve had different coaches and different programs. Salazar coached Cain and Julian is the coach for Klosterhalfen.

Subway Surfers wrote:

Interesting analysis. 1:59 is extremely fast for a 16 year old girl.

Cain had turned 17 (just) when she ran 1:59.51 at Prefontaine.

Interestingly, the WR's for 800 at this age are both E German (GDR, i.e. likely dopers):

6 1:59.65 Marion Hübner GER 29 Sep 62 Chemnitz 11 Aug 79

17 1:59.17 Birte Bruhns GER 4 Nov 70 Berlin 20 Jul 88

To the extent that you can draw training conclusions from third hand reports about a single athlete's training, this is suspect. One could easily draw the conclusion that it's the mileage that's taking her to the next level, since she was already doing a lot of work on her speed. In any event, the fact that someone runs fast in absolute terms isn't really the question. It's what training they respond best to. Tony Sandoval ran world class (at the time) marathons on 35 miles/week because he was too busy to train more. That doesn't prove that low mileage was the best way for him to train.

Maybe this is how it went. Maybe not. Unless you know these athletes personally, this is a lot of conjecture about the psychology of complete strangers. As for Cain being "overworked and overraced," by all reports she wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary. She wasn't particularly injury prone, and she certainly seemed to be having a great time while she was doing well. It's tempting to create a clean narrative where simple changes in coaching approach would lead to an entirely different career trajectory, but it's also possible that Cain is just a very different person from KoKo and despite her early success, they were always headed in different directions.