This thread was inititially entitled, "W&W Kill It at Mt SAC Women's 1500". We changed it as many people might have assumed the OP meant William and Mary.
I wonder how much W&W train with the others or what their training looks like since they also run the 400m and others like Jenks run the 5k.
Can offer some insight here.
Ky Robinson was interviewed on an Australian podcast (Inside Running) back in February.
He was asked about his training.
Within his response, he mentioned that the women use lactate testing . . . finger tip blood draws . . . to gauge their training efforts.
They do this because JJ has decades of data he has collected coaching his female athletes . . . apparently dating way back to the days of Joetta and Hazel in the 1980s.
In theory, this prevents them from going too hard in practice, eventually resulting in injury. Virtually no injuries so far on this school year's xc and track teams, so looks like it's working and the accumulated weeks and months of training are now paying off.
Ky did mention that the men do not use lactate testing . . . he suggested the reason may be that Ricardo Santos/coach has not done lactate testing before so has no long-term database to rely upon.
Are you able to expand on this? Do they draw blood in the middle of the workout? Prior to?
If this is something that truly works it would be revolutionary for the sport. I'm not saying it's not true just that if true this should be shared more widely.
Preventing injuries for everyone no matter the school would mean so much to this sport.
Hardly unusual - just that American coaches have been slow to adopt this methodology. Even a guy coaching his own kids (Gjert Ingebrigtsen) has done it as many have seen from their video series, and a number of European groups/coaches. More American college coaches are now utilizing this to be a bit more scientific about their their training. But it can be difficult to implement for larger groups. One presumes that many, if not most, Pro groups utilize this technology in some fashion.
Don't see it in younger groups (HS, etc.) as the drawing of blood in these age groups (and the size of many of these groups) makes its implementation more problematic.