Mary Cain is a Fragile Flower

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American track athlete, Mary Cain, in a recent New York Times "Equal Play" video

See the end of this post for the text of today's recent New York Times "Opinion" piece by Mary Cain. Click the link to the NYT site to view the video.

Mary Cain, 23, is an elite American runner who started winning national races while still a teenager. After graduating high-school she joined Nike's famed Oregon Project under world-renowned runner and coach Alberto Salazar.

While with the Oregon Project Cain had a number of good races, but many felt that she hadn't lived quite up to her potential; her personal best times all date from 2013 or 2014.

It is not unusual for teenage athletes to fail to live up to their potential. Elite distance running for both men and women is incredibly competitive, and athletes of any age gain or fall back relative to their peers for a variety of reasons.

But Mary Cain now alleges that it was the Oregon Project that was responsible.

This of course may very well be true. Even the best coaches or training regimes may not be right for everyone. While Salazar and the Project had a number of apparent successes, training world champions Galen Rupp and Mo Farah, among others, they also have had their share of disappointments or "failures" including Mary Cain.

The Oregon Project was recently forced to shut down amidst blood-doping allegations, and Salazar has been suspended from coaching for four-years. Salazar and other principles have denied the charges.

Salazar may be guilty of involvement in blood-doping. Or not. But as a younger athlete he was a hero - arguably the greatest runner the United States ever produced. See an earlier post I wrote about his extraordinary story - When a Catholic Gutted it Out to Win the Most Exciting Boston Marathon in History.

Now Cain is alleging that she was physically and emotionally abused by the coaching techniques of Salazar and others with the Project. She was "weight-shamed" and an extreme emphasis on being thin led her to break five bones. She became emotionally distressed due to the abusive atmosphere and began "cutting" herself. Salazar, she claims, was indifferent to her distress. She told her parents and they urged her to take the next plane home. And so on.

She also claims that the Project was tailored to men and the requirements of men's bodies and was indifferent to the different requirements of women to the point of being physically destructive.

Salazar has denied most of her specific allegations.

I have absolutely no idea whether those claims are true. I certainly wouldn't be surprised to learn that they are at least half-true. Nike's Oregon Project, even before the recent scandal, had a reputation for being incredibly intense, with elite athletes living and eating together in a quasi-artificial and high-pressure environment. Nike and Salazar wanted to win. Many of their athletes did win and win big.

Nike (and perhaps even Salazar) may not exactly have had the overall "wellness" of their athletes in mind. Or not. Again, I have no idea.

But one thing I can be fairly certain of is that Nike or Salazar would not have intentionally trained its male or female athletes (each of whom they spent a great deal of money on) in a way calculated to destroy their ability to successfully compete. That's just common sense. Of course, they may well have simply erred or misjudged the best training methods for one or more of their runners. It happens, though, again, keep in mind that the entire point of the project (with its high monetary costs) was geared towards winning.

But here's the point. Elite coaches for elite athletes always make extraordinary physical demands. Depending on the sport, some of these demands may even be "damaging" in to the emotional or even long-term physical health of their athletes.

Also, some coaches are bastards.

Whether that's "right" or "wrong" is not the point.

Men, and more and more recently, women have been experiencing all of this since competitive sports were invented. But in most cases for, unless one was living in a communist country, there was always a sort of solution: If you don't like your coach, if you feel that he or she is not right for you for whatever reason, find another one. At the extreme, if you're on a team or whatever and switching coaches is not an option, then stop competing.

I'm not trying to sound like a tough guy, here. Bad or bastard coaches have ruined careers, as well as other things. I'm against this.

Or you might just have a non-bad or non-bastard coach who is not right for you.

And of course, illegal drugs, blood-doping and other sorts of cheating have been a scourge in many sports (though in fairness, it's very often the athletes themselves, not the coaches, that drive this).

Also, of course, I'm talking about adult athletes, not children.

Mary Cain, an adult, albeit a young one, chose to stay with the Oregon Project for years, even when it was allegedly prescribing for her illegal and physically damaging drugs. It didn't work out for her, competitively and (she now alleges) emotionally or physically. But now, at the precise point that Salazar and the Oregon Project have been cast, rightly or wrongly, as the bad guys, she's jumping on the bandwagon.

They harassed me. They abused me. It's sexist. It's their fault.

They weight-shamed me.

I'm a "strong woman" say some who are not.

But of course the vast majority of elite female athletes are strong women.

Brigid Kosgei, who in the most recent Chicago Marathon beat the 16-year standing women's marathon record by 81 seconds, is a strong woman.

Emma Bates, the 1st-place American (4th-place overall) in that same race is a strong woman. With a time of 2:25:27 she would have beaten the male winner of the 1948 Olympic Marathon by 7 minutes.

Manuela Schaer won the female wheelchair category in 1:41:08. She would have beaten the top men's wheelchair time just a few years ago. She is a strong Swiss woman.   

Mary Cain is a fragile flower.

From the New York Times, 10/7/19:

Opinion 

I Was the Fastest Girl in America, Until I Joined Nike 

Mary Cain’s male coaches were convinced she had to get “thinner, and thinner, and thinner.” Then her body started breaking down. 

By Mary Cain 

Mary Cain became, in 2013, the youngest American track and field athlete to make a World Championships team. 

“Equal Play” is an Opinion video series showcasing the insurgent athletes who are dragging women’s sports into the 21st century. The article below is by Lindsay Crouse. 

At 17, Mary Cain was already a record-breaking phenom: the fastest girl in a generation, and the youngest American track and field athlete to make a World Championships team. In 2013, she was signed by the best track team in the world, Nike’s Oregon Project, run by its star coach Alberto Salazar. 

Then everything collapsed. Her fall was just as spectacular as her rise, and she shares that story for the first time in the Video Op-Ed above. 

Instead of becoming a symbol of girls’ unlimited potential in sports, Cain became yet another standout young athlete who got beaten down by a win-at-all-costs culture. Girls like Cain become damaged goods and fade away. We rarely hear what happened to them. We move on. 

The problem is so common it affected the only other female athlete featured in the last Nike video ad Cain appeared in, the figure skater Gracie Gold. When the ad came out in 2014, like Cain, Gold was a prodigy considered talented enough to win a gold medal at the next Olympics. And, like Cain, Gold got caught in a system where she was compelled to become thinner and thinner. Gold developed disordered eating to the point of imagining taking her life. 

Nike has come under fire in recent months for doping charges involving Salazar. He is now banned from the sport for four years, and his elite Nike team has been dismantled. In October, Nike’s chief executive resigned. (In an email, Salazar denied many of Cain’s claims, and said he had supported her health and welfare. Nike did not respond to a request for comment.) 

The culture that created Salazar remains. 

Kara Goucher, an Olympic distance runner who trained with the same program under Salazar until 2011, said she experienced a similar environment, with teammates weighed in front of one another. 

“When you’re training in a program like this, you’re constantly reminded how lucky you are to be there, how anyone would want to be there, and it’s this weird feeling of, ‘Well, then, I can’t leave it. Who am I without it?’” Goucher said. “When someone proposes something you don’t want to do, whether it’s weight loss or drugs, you wonder, ‘Is this what it takes? Maybe it is, and I don’t want to have regrets.’ Your careers are so short. You are desperate. You want to capitalize on your career, but you’re not sure at what cost.” 

She said that after being cooked meager meals by an assistant coach, she often had to eat more in the privacy of her condo room, nervous he would hear her open the wrappers of the energy bars she had there. 

A big part of this problem is that women and girls are being forced to meet athletic standards that are based on how men and boys develop. If you try to make a girl fit a boy’s development timeline, her body is at risk of breaking down. That is what happened to Cain. 

After months of dieting and frustration, Cain found herself choosing between training with the best team in the world, or potentially developing osteoporosis or even infertility. She lost her period for three years and broke five bones. She went from being a once-in-a-generation Olympic hopeful to having suicidal thoughts. 

“America loves a good child prodigy story, and business is ready and waiting to exploit that story, especially when it comes to girls,” said Lauren Fleshman, who ran for Nike until 2012. “When you have these kinds of good girls, girls who are good at following directions to the point of excelling, you’ll find a system that’s happy to take them. And it’s rife with abuse.” 

We don’t typically hear from the casualties of these systems — the girls who tried to make their way in this system until their bodies broke down and they left the sport. It’s easier to focus on bright new stars, while forgetting about those who faded away. We fetishize the rising athletes, but we don’t protect them. 

And if they fail to pull off what we expect them to, we abandon them. 

Mary Cain is 23, and her story certainly isn’t over. By speaking out, she’s making sure of that.

UNBELIEVABLE: Eliud Kipchoge Unofficially Smashes Marathon World Record, Narrowly Missing 2-Hour Barrier, as Part of Nike Breaking2 Project

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Eliud Kipchoge relaxes after crossing the finish line

A few minutes ago, 2016 Olympic Marathon Gold Medalist Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya, unofficially smashed the marathon world record at a Nike "Breaking2" run on the Formula One race track in Monza, Italy.

Two other runners, Lelisa Desisa of Ethiopia and Zersenay Tadese of Eritrea, also competed in and finished the run, though falling many minutes short of Kipchoge's time.

Kipchoge ran 2:00:25, 2 minutes and 32 seconds faster than the official marathon record of 2:02:57, lowering the fastest marathon time by more than 2%.

Percentage-wise, it's the greatest leap in marathon times since Sergei Popov ran a 2:15:17 in 1952, bettering the previous mark of 2:18:04.

However, the time will not count as an "official" world record, as, among other things, it featured a rotating group of pacers, jumping in and out, in "arrowhead" formation in front of the three runners.

Most world-class marathons now feature pacers, but they must start with the other runners.

Nevertheless, Kipchoge's effort was an amazing performance that shocked many observers.

The aim of the Nike Breaking2 project was to apply state-of-the-art scientific analysis to train a small group of elite runners to try to break the 2:00:00 marathon barrier. Among other things, a revolutionary new type of shoe was designed. While the "goal" was to run a sub two-hour marathon, I suspect that very few believed that could actually be achieved or achieved now. Kipchoge came close, staying on two-hour pace for more than half of the race.

While many (including me) were skeptical of the effort at first, Kipchoge's incredible time indicates that it's very possible if not probable that Kipchoge or another runner will soon break the world record in an official race. And the two-hour mark, formally thought of as an almost mythically unachievable mark, now actually seems within reach.

In an interview after the race, Kipchoge was asked how it felt to have put himself only twenty-five seconds away from a sub-two-hour marathon, the 32-year-old Olympic champion graciously turned the question around and said that the world was now only twenty-five seconds away.

The Barkley Marathons: A Legendary Race and a Fascinating Movie

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Gary Cantrell

The Barkley Marathons, one of the world's most grueling ultramarathon trail races, takes place every spring in Frozen Head State Park, Tennessee. An award-winning documentary on the event - Barkley Marathons: The Race that Eats It's Young - was released in 2014. For the fun of it, I've bracketed some facts on the race and the movie with the words from an old Appalachian Bluegrass song. This version of I Feel Jesus was written in 1962 by Frances Reedy and recently recorded by the contemporary folk duo, Anna and Elizabeth. It very fittingly ends the film.

Ooh ooh ooh, my my my, I feel Jesus shut up in my bones.

• Barkley Marathons was co-founded and designed by trail runner Gary "Lazarus Lake" Cantrell in the early 1980's.
• Cantrell claims to have gotten the idea for the race when Martin Luther King assassin James Earl Ray famously escaped from a Tennessee maximum security prison in 1977. Ray kept searchers looking for 54 hours but only travelled eight miles.
• Cantrell gets hate mail from people thinking he is a James Earl Ray fan. Actually,  he thought Ray was a wimp for only getting eight miles. He felt participants in his race could do much better.
• One bit of the race actually follows a sewer/stream that travels under the prison.
• An "ultramarathon" is any race longer than marathon distance - 26.2 miles.
• The Barkley distance is at least 100 miles. Some think it's closer to 125. No one knows for sure and Cantrell changes the route slightly each year.
• These 100-125 miles are run through remote Tennessee woods and mountains.

It's Holy Ghost power shut up in my bones. I've got the one desire to make heaven my own.

• The race is five loops of 20-25 miles each.
• You have 60 hours to finish all five loops.
• Finishing racers run the equivalent of two ascents and two descents of Mount Everest.
• Out of 1000 competitors in 30 years, only 14 have ever finished.
• In some years, no one finishes.
• It took ten years for anyone to finish.

Ooh ooh ooh, my my my, I feel Jesus shut up in my bones.

• The first two loops are clockwise. Depending on the circumstances, this means one is probably run in the light and the other is probably run in the dark
• The second two loops are counter-clockwise.
• The first place runner (if any) after four loops decides whether to run the last loop clockwise or counter-clockwise. The second place runner (if any) must run in the opposite direction.

Well, it'll make you happy, it'll set you free, It'll make you love your neighbor, it's a work of charity.

• In the film, Cantrell comes across as a sort of benevolent/sadistic Santa Claus figure.
• He has created a unique mechanism for entering the race. Anyone can apply by paying a $1.60 application fee. But you must also write an essay and fill out numerous forms. The criteria for selection is not transparent.
• Only 40 per year are selected.
• One of them is designated the "human sacrifice" - someone who Cantrell feels has absolutely no chance of completing even one loop, even though they might otherwise appear to be in good shape. He's always right. The "human sacrifice" shown in the movie was a Navy Seal.
• If you're chosen, you receive a "letter of condolence."
• At check in-time, you must bring a license plate and a "gift" for Cantrell. The gift has varied from a white shirt, to socks, to a flannel shirt - whatever Cantrell thinks he needs that year.

Ooh ooh ooh, my my my, I feel Jesus shut up in my bones.

• The race has no preset start time. Rather Cantrell blows a conch shell at a surprise point within a 12 hour period. That signals that the race will begin within one hour.
• The actual race begins when Cantrell, at the start line, lights a cigarette.
• Very few even finish more than one loop.
• If you finish three loops, it's called a "fun run."
• As each competitor stops or gives up, a designated trumpeter plays "Taps."

It's resurrection power, shut up in my bones. It's got the same power to raise Jesus from the tomb.

• There is no chip timing. GPS is banned. You only have a compass and a map. Every few miles in the loop, there is a pre-placed vintage paperback in a plastic bag. You must tear a page out of each book (corresponding to your race number) to prove you have stayed on the course. After each loop you give the probably crumpled pages to Cantrell who verifies them by lining them up on a stone wall.
• The legs of most competitors are usually completely bloodied by a particularly hostile strain of Tennessee bramble.
• After each loop, you can eat, rest, tape your blisters or sleep. almost no one sleeps (if they get that far). The leading runners usually spend no more than a half hour "in camp."
• The course record, set by Brett Maune in 2011, is 52:03:08 - an average speed of approximately 2 miles per hour.

Ooh ooh ooh, my my my, I feel Jesus shut up in my bones.

• "Barkley" is a Tennessee farmer and friend of Cantrell. He is amused that the race is named after him.
• The movie is absolutely brilliant. I highly recommend it, whether you are a running enthusiast or not. It chronicles the 2012 race in which there were three finishers - a record.

Ooh ooh ooh, my my my, I feel Jesus shut up in my bones.

Here are a few trailers for the film - the full version of which is currently available on Netflix - as well as a short additional video featuring the mischievously charming Cantrell discussing why no woman has ever completed the race (although a number of women do compete every year), and a YouTube audio clip of I Feel Jesus.

Gary Johnson is Fast

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Gary Johnson, age 63

Yesterday, I piled on Libertarian nominee for president, Gary Johnson, for his "what is a leppo" gaff. I do not like Johnson very much, at least as a political candidate. Among other things, he has taken a number of positions in his current campaign that are more leftist than libertarian. It is still not clear to me whether this is because he is an "idiot" -  not really understanding what libertarianism is - a fraudster - using libertarianism as a cloak to mask what is really more of an anti-christian agenda - or an opportunist - believing that by making certain concessions to the non-libertarian left, he can pick up some of their votes and therefore break through the traditional libertarian ceiling of 1% of the vote.

But in this post I want to discuss another aspect of Gary Johnson.

Whatever else Gary Johnson might be, he is the fastest marathoner of any nominee for president or vice-president in history. He is also probably the fastest marathoner of any candidate in history - counting the major Republican and Democratic primary candidates in the relevant elections.

Johnson may be even faster in the triathlon. I don't know triathlon times that well, but he could also be the fastest triathlete.

Here's a list of famous election candidate marathoners and their times. Johnson is at the top. Not only is he faster, he's way faster:

Gary Johnson: 2:47:27, Fiesta Bowl, 1984
John Edwards: 3:30:18, Marine Corps Marathon, 1983
Michael Dukakis: 3:31:00, Boston Marathon, 1951
George W. Bush: 3:44:52, Houston Marathon, 1993
Sarah Palin: 3:59:36, Humpy's Classic Marathon, 2005
Paul Ryan: 4:01:25, Grandma's Marathon, 1990
Mike Huckabee: 4:37:29, Marine Corps Marathon, 2005
Al Gore: 4:58:25, Marine Corps Marathon, 1997

Source (this list also contains the marathon times of other famous people and celebrities).

Notes:

1. Nice job by Dukakis in 1951.
2. Palin's Humpy's Classic Marathon, now called the Big Wild Life Runs Marathon, is in Anchorage. It had the smallest field of any of the above, with only 203 finishers in 2005. At the age of 41, Palin finished 15th among 62 women.
3. While running for vice-president in 2012, Paul Ryan claimed he had run a sub-three hour marathon. This was subsequently determined to be a fib. The truth is he never even broke four hours.
4. As the article below states, Gary Johnson also got his time wrong - he actually ran a minute faster than he claimed.

And here's a neat recent article from Runner's World:

Presidential Candidate Gary Johnson’s Impressive Running Past 

Watch the Libertarian candidate appear on “Colbert” in his running shoes. His speedy marathon PR justifies the footwear choice. 

You likely know that Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was fleet of foot as a youngster. He has claimed a personal best of 4:37 in the mile. 

But another candidate, whose campaign is gaining steam, is no slouch himself. 

“Any day that I am not campaigning, I train an average of two to three hours a day,” Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico and the Libertarian candidate for president, told Runner’s World Newswire by email. “Campaigning 6 a.m. to midnight—[training is] not happening, although I walk as often as is possible.” 

Johnson appeared on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert last week, sporting a pair of Nike Zoom Air Pegasus 32 running shoes—footwear highly unusual for a man seeking the highest office in the land, but completely appropriate for a lifelong athlete. 

It hs been widely reported that Johnson is into extreme and endurance sports—he has climbed Everest and competed in the Ironman World Championship at Kona, Hawaii. But he was a speedy runner. In an email, he listed some of his best efforts at various distances: 

“For starters—best marathon time, 2:48, Fiesta Bowl, 1984. Best 10K, 33:45. Best Olympic triathlon, 1991, 2 hours. Best Ironman Hawaii, 10:38, 2001. 16 marathons (Boston 2002 3:13ish). Leadville 100 mile run.” 

A search for results from the 1984 Fiesta Bowl didn’t yield Mr. Johnson, but we did find a 29-year-old Gary Johnson from Albuquerque, New Mexico, who ran even faster—2:47:27 at that race in 1982. 

And Boston’s official results have the then-49 year governor running a chip-timed 3:11:11 in 2002. 

We also found results to support his Leadville performance. In 1989, he completed the rugged 100-miler in 29 hours, 45 minutes, 9 seconds.

In Rio, the American Marathoners Ran Faster, Virtually Everyone Else Ran Slower - Why?

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Paula of Brazil (15th) was not having a good time  

At the recent Olympic marathon, the two American-born athletes ran PRs, beating their previous best times by about a minute each. Galen Rupp, finished 3rd in 2:10:05 (previous PR: 2:11:13) and Jared Ward finished 6th in 2:11:30 (previous PR: 2:12:56).

Every other top ten finisher ran slower, sometimes dramatically slower than their PRs. Elide Kipchoge of Kenya finished 1st in 2:08:44 (5:39 slower than his PR of 2:03:05). Feyisa Lilesa finished 2nd in 2:09:54 (5:02 slower than his PR of 2:04:52).

The next ten finishers included 5 sub-2:10 marathoners. None of them did that in Rio.

Two Kenyans and one Ethiopian failed to finish in Rio. They had previous scorching PRs of 2:06:13, 2:03:51 and 2:04:24.

Before the race, on paper at least, it looked as if the Americans had no chance. But virtually all of the top runners had disappointing performances in terms of time.

Except for the two leading Americans.

Consider:

What explains this?

I really have no idea. But let's look at three possibilities:

1. The humid conditions were brutal. Only the Americans were ready for this. Undoubtedly, the Americans trained very well (more kudos to Rupp's coach, Alberto Salazar). But all the top runners are relatively wealthy professionals with top coaches who, among other things, anticipate the possibility of varying race conditions. Most of these runners train on multiple continents. This explanation does not seem satisfactory to me.
2. The pace over the first-half was slow. Thus, PRs were not in the cards for most runners (the reason Rupp and Ward ran PRs was because their PRs were relatively slow coming in). Indeed, I think each of the top 10 finishers ran a negative split (their first half was slower than their second half). But of course, this doesn't explain why the initial pace was so slow. Rupp claimed that his strategy was largely just to hang on to the favorite, Kipchoge for as long as he could. That sounds like a pretty good strategy to me, if you're Rupp. But why did Kipchoge and the other East Africans set such a slow pace at the beginning? It strikes me that if you are 7 or 8 minutes faster than, say Rupp, you want to take advantage of that over the full length of the race. The last thing you want is to have a 10,000 meter champion still with you with 10,000 meters to go. I'm not claiming Kipchoge and the other speedsters did the wrong thing. Obviously, they're smarter than I am when it comes to pacing. But I simply do not understand their strategy.
3. The Americans were simply hungrier than the others. The Olympics are now the one international race where there is no monetary reward. All the other top runners (outside of the Americans) have successful careers where they make hundreds of thousands of dollars by finishing well at other races. So, perhaps from the point of view of one of these professionals, if things are not going perfectly at the beginning of the non-paying Olympic race, why kill yourself by going fast and thereby perhaps messing up your performance at the next paying marathon? Indeed, this might explain why the three super-fast East Africans dropped out. (My point is not to be critical, only to understand.) But again, this doesn't really explain why the fast guys didn't make more of an effort to set a faster pace at the beginning, or why more of them didn't try to hang on for a Silver or Bronze. Even the pace in the second half of the race was slower than many of them had run before. 

Again, my intention is not to be critical of anyone, least of all the superb East Africans.

But I do think it's a puzzle.

Does anyone else have any better explanations?