Lauren Fleshmen: NPR Interview

I haven't followed Lauren for years but a quick google search says she was coaching for 8 years https://littlewingathletics.org/coach/ Did she have any success as a coach and produce any promising female athletes compared to other athlete-turned-coaches like
Ritz or Solinsky?

The latest mainstream conversations has been more about actual biological males competing as Transwomen more so than the conversations about Intersex individuals. Two totally separate topics that is frequently misspoken under the same umbrella.

Rojo -

I highly encourage you to listen to or read her book first before you interview her. I listened to her book in one day because it’s her voice reading it and it’s compelling (& I’m not part of the Fleshman fan club). I also listened to her interview after. The interview actually had very little to do with her book. She maybe talks about trans issues in sports in two paragraphs at the most? It’s really not a topic in her book. She mentions trans issues and intersexuality in a kind of vague, sweeping way. I think NPR just grabbed some hot button issues and went with those. I was a little disappointed because I feel like that’s what the general public will think she focuses on.

As a female athlete who was at Cornell while you were a coach, I have a lot of respect for you and I also think you’re in a position to shine some light on women in running for your big following of mostly men here.

I found myself sometimes crying in deep understanding while listening to her book, and I am not that crying type. It’s so relatable for female athletes, at all levels, but especially the rising stars and elites. I really do think it’s hard to understand from a guy’s perspective. Think about all the phenomenal high school talents who never make a mark in college. It doesn’t have to be that way. These teens, the media, and their coaches don’t understand the natural changes that happen to the girls’ bodies around 16-20 and how to accept instead of fight the changes. If you can understand the female performance plateau, then you can just ride it out and understand that as part of the process. Instead girls eat “healthy” which we all know is a euphemism for disordered eating. Then they get trapped in a cycle of the female athlete triad, RED-S and stress fractures and they are never able to reach top form.

I was one of the top high school middle distance runners in California in the early 2000s during my entire high school career. In college, eating disorders were rampant and acceptable because they were disguised as healthy eating and mostly kept from coaches. I looked around and saw super skinny girls running fast and so I copied suit and I couldn’t get out of the restrictive eating pattern. My college career was wasted by injuries and frustration. I am not saying this is everyone’s experience but it’s extremely common.

I hope you’re able to read her book and interview her. I also hope you can support a better way for our young female talent.

-MM

Again, she hardly touches on trans issues in the book. My take from listening to the interview is both Terry Gross and Fleshman knew they had to touch on this topic in fresh air (I.e. how can you possible write a book about women and not talk about the elephant in the room…). Lauren answer to me was very prepared and canned. “We have to acknowledge sex-based differences while making space for inclusion.” She really didn’t have any hard and fast position at all.
let’s not miss the point of The book…trans activism was not even in the slightest to focus.
Read the book, and then come back.

P.s. she mentions letsrun in her book, so you should definitely read it 😂

As a non-coaching male myself, I agree 100%.

He won't

No

The great strength of Terry Gross as an interviewer is an uncanny ability to make her guests comfortable exploring difficult subjects and playing the part of "devil's advocate" without coming across as confrontational. She guides her interviewees without getting in their way.

I'd love to see LetsRun do more interviews and have better access to elite athletes and coaches, but they need a change in attitude to get there.

On a tangential topic, I find it annoying that certain threads are limited to registered posters only while it is not the general policy of the board. It implicitly acknowledges that bad actors are a problem for the board (and social media in general) while only caring about the issue on the owner's preferred topics. This is not unrelated to getting access to elites.

Is this as cringe as listening/watching a Kara Goucher interview?

I've followed LF for a long time. As far as I know, she's never openly criticized Vin. Her and Jesse did a podcast about eating disorders and they talked about the hypercompetitive environment at Stanford, and JESSE talked about how this fostered disordered eating amongst that group of men (that included Gabe Jennings...but he didn't say that, I just know he was on the team at that time). Vin was their coach, and I personally always wondered just...what impact leadership had on the environment.

Lauren has been critical of Nike, but when she was one of their athletes: she defended them. Their practices and policies.

I know that other Nike athletes will NOT speak up at USATF athlete meetings bc USATF and Nike are entwined and so saying anything goes against their own interests and can be harmful to them.

Lauren also expressed surprise when she realized other governing bodies had multiple sponsorships: usa swimming has like 3-4 I think and that diversifies the voices and allows the athletes more choices and representation at championship events.

She comes off as smart, but also...idk kind of a know it all and you real8ze quickly..she doesn't.

I appreciate this response, it answers pretty well what I was wondering. I have a similar impression, sort of an ivory tower type. It's easy to throw darts at decision-makers when you have never had to call the shots. I'm no Nike fan, either, but they didn't get to their spot at the top without risk and disregard. Like you said, when she was with Nike she had nothing bad to say about Nike, and then after she left Nike she had bad things to say about almost everyone except her direct associates from her time with Nike. It fits the script and comes off as lacking the ability for sharp self-criticism and self-awareness. Per Vin at Stanford: what you don't actively oppose or prevent, you allow. It was pretty easy to see what sort of environment Vin wanted at Stanford with his financial aid office shenanigans, and Fleshman clearly was drawn to that. Maybe she didn't understand the costs until she was in-house and saw how the sausage was made. Vin was also very much an active player in USATF, and while he may have done much good in his time there he also didn't act to shut down and throw out a lot of the crap players and decisions within. My impression is that he went along with those warts and turds to get along and accomplish his personal goals. That's the reality, and I get the necessity yet Fleshman always spared Vin any criticism when he was in bed with the rest of them. Just didn't seem balanced or honest enough.

What parts did you feel like she was a know-it-all? I feel like it could have taken that direction, but I personally didn’t find her book smug at all. Also, I really enjoyed how she portrayed Vin. She clearly has a ton of respect for him but also acknowledges his limitations as a male coaching females. She talks about how much she learned from him when she started coaching.