Never a Week Off for Elizabeth Leachman

Ever since Leachman went out way too fast and blew up in the mile at the Millrose Games, her coach has been on her case about running as even a pace as possible, and Leachman has been doing a very good job with that recently.

As far as how fast she'll go in the Texas state final, she is certainly capable of running faster than 4:37. But she is trying to triple in the 800, 1600, and 3200, so it will depend on what order the 3 races are in and how much energy she might need to conserve.

I don't think we'll find out how fast she can really run in a 1600/mile until Nike Outdoor Nationals, when hopefully she decides to run the mile instead of the 2 mile. (She is already scheduled to run the 2 mile that week at Brooks PR, so maybe she won't want to run the same event twice in one week.)

The 32 will be in the morning and then she'll have all day until the 800 like 8 hours later. Then the 16 is 3 hours after that. I wonder if skipping the 800 is an option for her team. She could certainly do all three but she would have to really go all out to have a shot of winning the 800 with Conde de Frankenburg who just beat her and Leal and at least one of the Humphries sisters running it (I think Sam is injured?). Would rather see her go all out in the 16. We already know what she can do in the 32.

Personally, I'D rather see her compete in the 800 (and some 400s).

She will learn more from running in competitive races and develop her speed for the long term, than winning races by 20 seconds.

Hopefully she does run a fresh mile at one of the national meets. Otherwise, since she is a soph, there's next year, and next year.😀

The chance of Leachman being a college star are about 20%. That's roughly the amount of top 5 girl high school recruits who excel in college. Another 20% contribute to their college by still running their high school times and about 60% either regress or quit due injury.

It's not an easy process and also not easy to say up front who will make it.

check that. shes in 5A anyway not 6A so less competition.

Leachman is unlikely to beat Conde de Frankenburg in the 800, but I think that Leachman just likes being in some races where she has actual competition. Leachman has been winning the 1600 and 3200 by large margins, but the 800 has several girls that are more or less as good as her. It should be an interesting race.

And for anyone who is wondering, the Humphries won't be racing against Leachman in the state meet because they are in a different division, and one of them is injured anyway.

What you completely overlook is

(a) she is running college times already;

(b) she is on the Valby Training Protocol.

This talented young lady is running herself into the ground because no one is telling her not to. She pretty much coaches herself. She's too immature to know better. Where are the adults in the room. She's only a soph. I hope it doesn't happen but she's headed for a big letdown in the next two years.

Yeah because you're old enough to know she's a generational talent and the case study proves out that she will be fine. Look at the Middle School/Fresh/Soph lists historically for Girls and you will see those girls go on to have phenomenal careers in college: Decker, Hasay, Efraimson, Tuohy, Gregory, Tyynisma, Chmiel, McGee, the list goes on and on of underclassmen who were phenoms and continued. The talent and data pool is set. Leachman will be fine.

Leachman most definitely does not coach herself. Not even close. You just made that up. The fact is that Leachman has both a school coach and a private coach and they are both very involved in her training and racing.

Depends what you mean by "top 5 recruits". The top 5 girls who specialize in the shorter distance races like 800 and 1600 tend to do better in college than the top 5 girls in cross country.

If you look back at the top 5 girls at Foot Locker over the past 20 years, unfortunately the percentage of girls who were very successful in college isn't good.

I agree with "more speed" that trying to predict which of those top Foot Locker girls will do well post-high school is very difficult to do. Natalie Cook did great in college for a few months and then hasn't done much since then because of injuries. Claudia Lane quit running. Molly Seidel won an Olympic bronze medal. The results are all over the place.

Mary Cain.

It will be a tough environment for PR's. Lack of competition in 5A although the argument is she has been setting PR's all year without competition. I think the more important factor could be temps already in the 70's for the 3200 and solid 80's through the afternoon.

Efraimson bad example as she did not run in college and ran slower as a pro than in hs. The others you picked are in the 20% of stars who did make it.

Off the top of my head for Hasay, there was her peer group of Chetelat, Babcock, Scott, Sweinson, Kroger, etc who did not do well. The Touhy/Chmiel group has Baxter, Lane, Murphy, Masciarelli, Bednar, Walters, Ping, Vanderkooi, Ewert, Perez, Riggs and Hart who did not do much. Tyynismaa has had her moments, but also a lot of injury, similar to Starliper, Cook, Moreno, Vanderlende and Dudek. There's also Brown, Hutchins, Dadamio and Thorvaldsen running their high school times.

Just for fun in Touhy's FabFive group at NC State, only Touhy was a college star. Starliper mostly hurt. Walters transferred to D2. Shulz, Hendrix and even Rauber, the following year single recruit, contribute at the back end, but run their hs times.

So that's 1 out of 6. As I said tough for coach to get recruiting right.

Unfortunately, all the signs I have seen indicate there is no long-term future in what we are seeing but they also indicate a very high peak and lots of great times and performances this year and possibly next year. I hope that I am wrong and doing things like tripling at the state meet and competing frequently and the physique are sustainable or they withdraw from that kind of destructive program soon.

Get your general point but Sydney Thorvaldson was 11th at NCAA XC this year and just ran 15:25/32:36 so definitely not running her high school times

True, but she did not come out of the gate on fire at Arkansas. She ran record 9:47 2 mile as HS sr and was sort of 1a/1b with Hutchins in xc. Hutchins ran that 15:34 5000 in high school, and they are both roughly at that mark now still.

As a coach, I'm happy with this type of performer, but it doesn't live up to hype that they will go on to dominate at collegiate level.

tx.milesplit.com

Elizabeth Leachman Workout Wednesday |

Link:tx.milesplit.com/videos/673054/elizabe...

Some takeaways:

Coach was talking about her comparison with Brynn Brown, and about the prediction for Leachman’s 400 time

One guy on the team:
“To me, she kind of came out of nowhere last year. I didn’t know who she was. And she just showed up, outperforming everyone, even us.”

She cares about school too.

I don’t have a milesplt plan. Did they talk about her training?