Preface: I obviously put off this post because the weekend wasn’t fantastic, yet I’m also worried that it’s somewhat self absorbed to spend a whole post talking about my thoughts on Sara and Renee’s weekend. Feel free to comment below if this type of post is annoying, inappropriate or just plain boring.
Question: What did I think of Sara and Renee at USATF?
Short answer: a good weekend for Sara, yet we both know she had a really good shot to make the final, but she didn’t. Not a bad weekend for Renee, yet we are both mildly disappointed.
Longer answers: Sara’s second 800m race, the semis, at any championship, was 90% of a good race, yet she let them leave her at 120m (little mistake) and while she obviously had a lot left to bolt from lane 1 to lane 3 in the last 50m, she obviously thought she would just cruise in to get the 4th spot* (big mistake). Good news is I have no doubt that if and when she runs rounds again she won’t have this problem. Sara never made an NCAA final (’07 outdoors and ’08 indoors in the 1,500m); Sara is the same age as the college fifth year seniors; she now gets paid a bit to run; she has a couple more opportunities to run in Europe this summer. Basically, she and I have to consider this season up to this point a success, yet it’s hard to feel that way. But by the end of the week we’ll get back to work and then we both need to put this meet in context and see that her fitness is the best it’s ever been and that she can run PRs in Europe. The simi race is below.
*The athletes were initially told 4 would advance out of each heat, with no one advancing on time. But as you can hear in PA state in the video, that was incorrect and it was really three, three, and two; top three out of each heat and then the next two on time. Martinez advanced to the final because of the incorrect instructions, yet that made it sting a bit more for Sara since she was now the first on out.
Renee’s weekend isn’t as clear cut. She wanted to run the 1,500m prelim and then come back the next day to run the 5,000m final. Without
boring you with details, the two reasons to let he do it were that a) she felt that racing Thursday would calm her nerves before the 5k on Friday and b) I felt that she would recover decently well and that by running 1,500m rhythm the first day 74s and 75s (15:25 and 15:37 pace) would feel better for longer. What I was fairly certain would happen in the 1,500m prelim – especially when I saw she was not only in the 1st heat, but in Willard’s heat – was that it would be slow and then there would be a killer pace shift sometime past 800m. As you can see from these splits, she goes from a 72 to a 64-high in the middle of the race and that’s a skill that I knew she wouldn’t be prepared for as we had focused on shifting pace for the 5k race. Her last 400m split is really a decent 200m split followed by a final 200m where she packed it in. Not good, but not the end of the world…assuming that habit soon ceases.
The 5k? I’ll withhold comment until after the summer and a few more races in Europe, but I will say that I’m confident she can run with the women who as of today don’t get to run in Berlin. I have to be honest that while I feel very good about her general level of aerobic fitness, we’re running out of days to get specifically fit for sub 15:25 running and that we’re also running out of 1,500m and 5k opportunities. But, it’s obviously my job to take the long view and keep the past six months that we’ve been working together framed in the context of a 2012 cycle…as well as a decade more of running, if she’s up for it. Plus, we now knows the benefits to seeing each other face to face at practice vs. email and phone conversations. The reality is that running in the 15:30′s can probably be done via email, yet if she’s going to run to her potential then we’ll need to be together at practice.