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

I grew up in NY (couple years older than MC, but my sisters ran too and they were closer to her age). Mary's high school is very good at running and their coach is really good too. He is highly respected in the running world and has coached a lot of great runners. Mary was different though, she was not just a "good runner." I can definitely see that girls on the team could have been jealous of the attention Mary got because the hype surrounding her in high school was crazy intense. If (and clearly I don't know this for sure) Mary came across to them as being "too good" to run with them then I can see why there was tension there. Also for the posters above saying that Mary was smarter than her teammates I really doubt thats true. Lots of those girls end up at great colleges and I don't think Mary was smarter or more mature than them, just a better runner...

The interesting observation I've noticed over the years is that extremely talented 16/17 year old females that went backwards by age 23, all went on birth control pills. Just an observation.

#metoo Goucher just stop!

https://www.instagram.com/p/B4qKp-VjN8p/?igshid=144flxpsqpgfu

This happend to me and my room mates daily at Western Carolina University.

Been There. wrote:

MarathonMan411 wrote:

but how many people would find it inappropriate if a male coach and male runner had that same discussion? It probably wouldn’t make the NY Post if a male coach yelled at a male runner that he gained 5.

I would. Because I've been there. Body shaming, public humiliation, unhealthy relationship with food. I don't know the statistics, but this problem does exist on men's teams. It existed on mine. It was equally physically and psychologically damaging, though men are perhaps less likely to admit a problem due to cultural norms of "sucking it up."

When a coach, male or female can clearly see that the performance of an athlete, male or female, is being negatively impacted by weight gain and not inform that athlete...I find that inappropriate. Part of having respect and confidence in a coach is knowing they are doing their best to help you succeed and is open and honest with you. Please tell me what you are supposed to do when you know an athlete needs to lose weight?

ameoba alert wrote:

TrackCoach wrote:

Please tell me what you are supposed to do when you know an athlete needs to lose weight?

shove a sock in your cakehole

1. dont weigh an athlete in front of their peers

2. dont yell at them and publicly humiliate them because of said weight gain

3. suggest they speak with the highly qualified nutritionist that you have hired to work with your athletes

Not that difficult, scary if you're an actual track coach.

ameoba alert wrote:

TrackCoach wrote:

Please tell me what you are supposed to do when you know an athlete needs to lose weight?

shove a sock in your cakehole

Or public shaming the teenager maybe? If you are lucky, she'll start crying and later cutting herself.

That'll teach her, and then she'll respect and obey you forever, and will finally take her diuretics and whatnot.

A coach shouldn’t have to tell an athlete to lose weight. Do you tie their shoes at the starting line.

skeller15 wrote:

I've read most of this thread but not all of it so forgive me if these things have been discussed.

1) Why didnt Mary Cain just continue to be coached by her high school coach? Bronxville has been strong in middle distance for a long time. Her coach got her down to 1:59 and 4:04 so he must know something.

.

She started working with Alberto in 2012. Salazer was the one who took her from being a 4:11 runner to a 4:04 one. Go back to 2012 and 2013 and read about how Cain gives all the credit to AlSal. How much her high school coach had to do with her during those last 2 years isn't something I have seen published.

The move to the Oregon project was obviously a disaster. Could that have been predicated before hand? Not really. Lots of kids go to college and fail to improve also. Or look at all the kids that leave college and then fail to match their previous highs (see Andrew Wheating among a zillion of others).

About the best thing you can say about AlSal in this is that he is clueless about the issues woman have with weight and is an old school no nonsense couch. At worst he is an abuser. I sort of wonder about the stuff we are missing. Where did 114 come from. Did she way 115 when she joined the program and was up to 125? Had she always been 125 and he wanted her to lose 11 lbs? Some combo? From what I have read about AlSal, I doubt it was an arbitrary number. I am sure he had some scientific stuff (which might have been crap) backing it up.

That's because BCPs are often prescribed to regulate (or re-start) your menstrual cycle. Instead of thinking the athlete is underfueling/overtraining, which is the actual cause of period loss, low bone density, stress fractures, etc., they slap a band-aid (BCP) on it. Well if that starts her period, everything's fixed right? Nope.

dadsfadsfdasfdsafdas wrote:

[quote]skeller15 wrote:

About the best thing you can say about AlSal in this is that he is clueless about the issues woman have with weight and is an old school no nonsense couch. At worst he is an abuser. I sort of wonder about the stuff we are missing. Where did 114 come from. Did she way 115 when she joined the program and was up to 125? Had she always been 125 and he wanted her to lose 11 lbs? Some combo? From what I have read about AlSal, I doubt it was an arbitrary number. I am sure he had some scientific stuff (which might have been crap) backing it up.

The only science I see is that her health was deteriorating trying to reach that number.

From what I've seen, Salazar is not an expert on many things, but claims to be. He has gotten by through surrounding himself with "yes" people.

114 is just under BMI 18 in her case, 115 just over. Both is underweight of course.

Dril wrote:

txRUNNERgirl wrote:

A) It shouldn't be up to them.

B) He likely didn't treat all his athletes the same, so they might not have seen it. Just because they didn't doesn't mean it didn't happen to her.

Did you even read the transcript or watch the video? One of the allegations is that they WEIGHED in front of everyone. There was also an incident where he berated her for gaining 5 pounds in front of the team after a poor race.

Holy smokes, dont comment if you cant bother to educate yourself on the material.

Is being weighed in front of everyone a problem? I was on a college team where boys and girls were weighed daily in front of each other before and after practice and weighted recorded in a journal. We were also all timed in front of each other during workouts, we even ran races in front of crowds who all judged our performance and cheered louder for the winners than all the others.

txRUNNERgirl wrote:

Subway Surfers wrote:

The interesting observation I've noticed over the years is that extremely talented 16/17 year old females that went backwards by age 23, all went on birth control pills. Just an observation.

That's because BCPs are often prescribed to regulate (or re-start) your menstrual cycle. Instead of thinking the athlete is underfueling/overtraining, which is the actual cause of period loss, low bone density, stress fractures, etc., they slap a band-aid (BCP) on it. Well if that starts her period, everything's fixed right? Nope.

Interesting trg not trying to sound chauvinistic, this is obviously not my area of expertise but in short my observation was bcps tended encourage the retention of fluid and I could never fathom people like Salazar pushing them for the opposite reason. I was always staggered by Mary Decker's bcp excuse for her testo reading. Take care, peace.

Subway Surfers wrote:

txRUNNERgirl wrote:

The interesting observation I've noticed over the years is that extremely talented 16/17 year old females that went backwards by age 23, all went on birth control pills. Just an observation.

That's because BCPs are often prescribed to regulate (or re-start) your menstrual cycle. Instead of thinking the athlete is underfueling/overtraining, which is the actual cause of period loss, low bone density, stress fractures, etc., they slap a band-aid (BCP) on it. Well if that starts her period, everything's fixed right? Nope.

Interesting trg not trying to sound chauvinistic, this is obviously not my area of expertise but in short my observation was bcps tended encourage the retention of fluid and I could never fathom people like Salazar pushing them for the opposite reason. I was always staggered by Mary Decker's bcp excuse for her testo reading. Take care, peace.[/ quote]

I know you weren’t being chauvinistic. I was just adding context for the many young female burnouts we see (myself included). I don’t know if that’s why they were pushing her to get on them, but she said she broke 5 bones, so guessing that’s the reason - artificially “fixing” bone density/period loss.

BCP are also used to not have a cycle (don’t take the blanks). They also cause water gain. I never knew anyone who ran faster on the pill. Many females don’t menstruate during race seasons but will start again (if they are not caloric restricted) in the off season. Healthy fueled bodies won’t suffer from osteoporosis. Form, shoes etc are also causes of fractures. So was Cain told to take them in the off season? More likely they are used as a masking agent.

The BCP has side effects. Why? They don’t protect you from STDs or HPV. Maybe for fibroids or PCOS but otherwise no.

bleu wrote:

BCP are also used to not have a cycle (don’t take the blanks). They also cause water gain. I never knew anyone who ran faster on the pill. Many females don’t menstruate during race seasons but will start again (if they are not caloric restricted) in the off season. Healthy fueled bodies won’t suffer from osteoporosis. Form, shoes etc are also causes of fractures. So was Cain told to take them in the off season? More likely they are used as a masking agent.

The BCP has side effects. Why? They don’t protect you from STDs or HPV. Maybe for fibroids or PCOS but otherwise no.

You don’t get stress fractures without first having low bone density, and that’s not caused by your shoes.

Precious Roy wrote:

Salazar came to Houston with Galen and Kara in 2011 to heat acclimate for WCs in Daegu. Word from people at the workouts was that Salazar was brutal, especially with Kara. He kept called Kara fat and was ripping her to shreds during the workout. I thought it was pretty well known that Salazar was a win at all costs coach and NOP was an environment where only the strong survived.

What I really find odd is how Salazar was so very careful bringing Rupp along. In interviews, Salazar would say that he has to treat Rupp with kid gloves because that kind of talent rarely comes along in the US. But with Mary it seems like Salazar treated her like E. African coaches and agents treat their athletes (i.e. train and race them into the ground to see who can survive).

Trying to get caught up in this thread so not sure if anyone has posted the same thing as I’m many pages behind.

I remember hearing how Rupp would never amount to anything from other guys who trained with him and were in the Oregon Project or had been in the Oregon Project because the workouts were so hard and Alberto was going to burn him out. Galen was breaking junior records and some of the pros told me he was going to be a short term flash in the pan because no way could a kid that young be pushed that hard in workouts and have long term success.

False! An athlete does not have to have low bone density to get a stress fracture. Yes, low bone density is one reason but many females and males develop stress fractures with normal bone density.