Explosive New York Times article: Mary Cain breaks silence about NOP

Yes. Where are the parents?

As a former All-American DI distance runner and married to someone who ran in high school for the same coach as Alex Efraimson, we are still living with the some results of a running coach over-training and setting weight goals for her as a teenage girl. 10+ years later, my wife is still dealing with after effects of her coach berating her about weight. "You won't be fast enough unless you hit this weight" The only way she could hit that weight was by not eating. While not eating she did get slightly faster for a small amount of time, but her body started breaking down and to fix the pain problem her coach had her take huge amounts of ibuprofen to deal with the pain. She developed an eating disorder and an ulcer as a 16 year old girl. She didn't want to talk to her parents about it because she was a 16 year old girl and couldn't truly understand what was wrong about it and didn't want to be on the bad side of her coach. She is just coming to grips with it more than 10 years later and Mary Cain's Story felt so much like her own story it bothered her.

I saw and heard college coaches do this at meets and we wonder why so many young talented female runners have eating disorders and mental (Head Case) issues. Working with a late 20s women and a teenage girl is extremely different. Personally, I think AlSal is pretty much a win at all cost coach. You running bad makes ME look bad as a coach and truly does not care about his athletes as people, but only about how they perform. The weight issue in running, specially for young women, will always be tough subject, but the way that AlSal and NOP handled it truly show his character. Just my opinion on the matter speaking from person experience.

Much like Caitlin Chalk was also sold to Salazar to try and fix her eating disorders, didn't work there either.

But having issues coming in doesn't excuse Alberto from what he did to Cain. In fact if he knew she has issues coming in he should have even been MORE aware that he should do things differently then he did.

"every woman's problem is the fault of men." that's the moral of this story. Men are evil. Women are perfect. If a woman has a problem, it was a man's or the patriarchy's fault. If another woman does something awful to a woman, well that first woman (the abuser) was drove to it by men.

If all men ceased to exist this moment, no woman would EVER have another problem again. It would be paradise. That's what women have taught me.

I hope this women has decided not to pursue a career in medicine and continues to live in her parents home where she can be supervised.

D2 guy here; I feel you. 5"10- 131 and if that scales off you can guarentee I'm on the elliptical that night. I hate it

MasterofNone wrote:

D2 guy here; I feel you. 5"10- 131 and if that scales off you can guarentee I'm on the elliptical that night. I hate it

Get counseling

This kind of emotional abuse from an adult, in a position of near-absolute power over every aspect of a teenager's life, goes far beyond the example of a mean boss.

Athletes do all kinds of things that are painful and destructive to their bodies because a coach tells them so. A lot of people here have been through that as athletes and learned that there are benefits that can come from sticking to a grinding training schedule -- and maybe that's why there are so many here that want to blame Mary for her statements.

But the situation Mary describes is not the same thing as toughing your way through a hard training block, or being told to lose some weight by a coach. It's different because she was young and willing to do anything to please him and improve. He seems to have taken that trust and systematically abused it in a cruel and callous way.

The "she could have left" argument is technically true, but it's not the reality of the situation when a master manipulator is involved. It's like saying someone with an eating disorder could simply choose to change their diet, or a heroin addict can simply choose to put down the needle. Many people can and do have the capacity to make those choices, but others can't. And when they are in a system that is designed to make money by perpetuating their problems they are truly the victims of a vicious system.

Crouse is a gifted writer but if you dig into the background she's very feminist. Not that there's anything wrong with that, per se, but as a writer for the NYT or a big pub you should be unbiased.

Grow up. Nobody has said every problem a woman has is a man's fault. You said that -- now you can stop feeling sorry for yourself.

From what it says here her teammates were jealous of her? She seems super-nice and not a mean girl.

Did she quit her HS team? Might have something to do with it.

Look carefully wrote:

Crouse is a gifted writer but if you dig into the background she's very feminist. Not that there's anything wrong with that, per se, but as a writer for the NYT or a big pub you should be unbiased.

Newspapers are generally biased toward the publisher’s political views. That was the whole point of the newspaper being established. Look up Hearst papers in particular.

jamin wrote:

What's wrong with a coach saying her race weight should be 114 lbs? The other top female midde-distance runners like KK and GD are close to being under 100 lbs.

What do all the SPERGs simplify the story to this basic point and leave out everything else? Can your brain not handle complexity and nuance?

At least you get it txrunnergrl.

I agree with feminists on some things, actually, and disagree with them on others, but he had a great point.

Nowadays as a guy it is tougher than the media portrays.

A lot of the women NOW have the great marketing and middle-class jobs that make America great to raise a family on and men don't, even if there are men at the very very top (which the average man and woman can't related to anyways).

A lot more men are struggling with finding jobs and those that do get them wind up in working-class jobs like janitors, detailers, call-center operators, etc. You also see more female managers, supervisors, etc., then men nowadays. More men take their lives than women and are diagnosed with mental illness, etc. and more drop out of HS/college. More women than men also have BA/BS and even MA/MS degrees now.

While it is truly awesome to have women on equal footing with men in most career fields what I'm seeing is more men are regressing career-wise due to lack of opportunities.

Especially in media, healthcare where women dominate even more than before.

C0l0rado wrote:

Grow up. Nobody has said every problem a woman has is a man's fault. You said that -- now you can stop feeling sorry for yourself.

Says the person who has never been in a relationship with a obsessive compulsive manic depressive woman.

You should try to relax and stop taking this personally. People will disagree with you. Accept it. Statements like yours don’t reinforce your opinion

bleu wrote:

I hope this women has decided not to pursue a career in medicine and continues to live in her parents home where she can be supervised.

Absolute hogwash! She'll be fine. The stuff animal is something that girls do and it makes for conversation, that's why she brought it up.

Teammates were jealous of her? wrote:

https://twitter.com/lizweil/status/1192496477961981952

From what it says here her teammates were jealous of her? She seems super-nice and not a mean girl.

Girls want to group up, not get blown out of the water by their prodigious teammate.

1) What did the boys think of her running with them?

2) Girls were jealous of her? That sucks :(

3) How was she unable to relate to HSers? Was she a Boomer in a Millennial's body? (I am half-kidding). She seems very wise.