That’s how you medal

March 5, 2015 1:21 PM

...One night in October 2012, while Mary Cain was in bed, the house phone rang. Cain’s mother answered. A man claiming to be Alberto Salazar, the legendary runner and coach, was on the line. At first she thought the call was a prank. But then Salazar explained that he’d recently reviewed the video of her daughter’s Barcelona run. An obsessive about form, Salazar said that Cain’s lower-body mechanics were excellent, good enough to make her the best in the world, but that her upper body needed work. In particular, if she wanted to reach her potential, she needed to keep her left elbow closer to her body, swing it straight, front to back, instead of out and across her torso. He referred to the elbow as her “chicken wing.”
posted by growabrain (33 comments total)

In fifth grade, she ran a 6:15 mile. Cain’s father, Charlie, an anesthesiologist, knew so little about track then that he had to ask Mary’s gym teacher if this was any good.

For reference, when I was running high school track, that was about the qualifying time for the winter track state sectional meet. Phew.

Pitty, though, that the writer decided to throw in this line at the end:

Her legs, stacked with muscles yet wrapped in a silky sheath of youthful skin, are spectacular.
posted by damayanti at 1:33 PM on March 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

I had to look for an example. Here's what she does (last two laps of a mile race).
posted by benito.strauss at 1:41 PM on March 5, 2015 [4 favorites]

About 30 years ago there was an American long distance runner who won a lot of medals, who tended to flap one of his arms when he ran.

Nova (the PBS TV show) had him come into a lab where a bunch of bioengineers analyzed his body and his running style. It turned out that one of his legs was a little longer than the other, and he had naturally come to wave the arm as a way of bringing things back into balance. If he didn't, he would have been slower and it would have cost him more energy to run.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 1:43 PM on March 5, 2015 [6 favorites]

I think the bit about the 'silky sheath of youthful skin' and the other image commentary toward the end are meant to bookend the beginning point about her being an awkward and gangly 15 year old. Her development as an athlete and her body's development are kindof a throughline in the piece.

Articles about runners, especially female runners, tend to focus more on body and appearance than other athletes. I think part of it is that you can only write so much about the act of running versus, say, basketball technique. That and the more obvious reason that they wear a lot less clothing and are in pretty good shape. Doesn't mean it's not a little bit creepy though.
posted by Think_Long at 1:43 PM on March 5, 2015

(Yeah, I flinched at that too. She does have amazing looking legs, muscular with good young skin, but jeez, NYT editors, if you can spend time removing swear word, you can remove borderline purple prose like "silky sheath". Maybe we can consider the odd language to have been noted and continue on?)
posted by benito.strauss at 1:47 PM on March 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

But according to New York State high-school sports rules, a girl can’t compete against girls if she trains exclusively with boys.

Huh?
posted by yoink at 1:49 PM on March 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

In the late 70s(?), I went to the Penn Relays as a spectator. In one mile run, a schoolboy event I think, one competitor nearly lapped the competition. I remembered his name: Alberto Salazar.
posted by Peach at 1:58 PM on March 5, 2015 [8 favorites]

Here's what she does (last two laps of a mile race).

16 years old, and she just flat out found another gear and dropped everybody that last lap. That's staggering. Here's another one where she's in the lead pack in the 3000m, and with 120m left to go, just flat out drops everyone and wins by two seconds.
posted by eriko at 2:02 PM on March 5, 2015 [5 favorites]

In the late 70s, I went to my school district's annual track and field meet as a spectator. In one race, one competitor lapped the competition. I remembered his name: Kiefer Sutherland.

True story. Fucker was fast.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 2:07 PM on March 5, 2015 [17 favorites]

This is a great video. The young woman in red is pushing (but unfortunately trying to pass in the curves), and Mary does something I thought of as "braking their heart" back when I ran competitively. When someone has just pushed their utmost to get close to almost passing you, and you can just burst the tiniest bit, it completely wrecks their confidence. Admittedly, Mary had a monster burst held in reserve for that finish.

Running is as much a mental competition as physical. You can win some races by just screwing with the competition.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 2:15 PM on March 5, 2015 [6 favorites]

I also flinched at the line about her spectacular muscular legs wrapped in silky skin when I read it initially, but I get where the author is coming from. The human body really is amazing -- and it's particularly amazing when it's the body of a young athlete. I think it's the juxtaposition of the power of the muscles of the body with the softness of the skin of youth, skin that hasn't been leathered and worn with age. I do get that talking about the body of a 15-year old girl is fraught with potential landmines, but to me it's kind of like that Sia video with the young girl dancing in a skin-tone leotard. Are we offended by it because it's creepy, or because we are creeped out by other people who will consider it with different intentions? Anyway, I'm glad I wasn't the editor who had to decide whether to keep or cut that line. Because on the one hand, eeeeesh; on the other hand, yes. Yes, exactly, the marvel of this young body, the beautiful mechanical imprecision of it all, and the potential that it holds.

Among Salazar’s gifts, he was especially adept at overriding what Tim Noakes, a University of Cape Town emeritus professor of exercise and sports science and the author of “Lore of Running,” calls the central governor, the part of the brain that tells a person that the body is nearly out of fuel or is building up toxic levels of byproducts like lactic acid and needs to slow down. This system kicks in prophylactically, creating a dire sense of fatigue well before the body will fail. Elite athletes excel at ignoring the signals from the central governor and pushing through exhaustion.

There is a great Radiolab episode that discusses this central governor called "Limits." Very inspiring. The first part tells the incredible story of Julie Moss, one of the first women to race in an Ironman competition.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 2:21 PM on March 5, 2015 [6 favorites]

I remembered his name: Kiefer Sutherland.

True story. Fucker was fast.

So that's how he was able to get around LA so quickly on 24.
posted by kmz at 2:22 PM on March 5, 2015 [7 favorites]

Neat. She goes to my younger daughter's alma mater.
posted by Mental Wimp at 2:34 PM on March 5, 2015

Running is as much a mental competition as physical. You can win some races by just screwing with the competition.

Or by just fooling yourself.
posted by Mental Wimp at 2:35 PM on March 5, 2015

I was sort of interested by the hints, in both the article and the comments, of conflict between Cain and her high school coaches and team. One of the weird effects of having sports tied to school is that it creates some conflicts, I think, when you've got a kid who is just on a different plane from any other high school athlete. Is the point of high school athletics to supplement the whole team's educational experience, or is it to create world-class athletes? There aren't very many other situations where you have perfectly fine amateur athletes training with some of the very best in the world.

I, too, want to know what's up with the rule about girls not being allowed to compete if they train exclusively with boys. That seems fairly stupid.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 2:54 PM on March 5, 2015

I, too, want to know what's up with the rule about girls not being allowed to compete if they train exclusively with boys. That seems fairly stupid.

I wonder if it's to protect the girls' teams. So that a school must, for example, field a women's cross-country team instead of just telling the two or three girls who are interested to go run with the boys for practice.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 2:58 PM on March 5, 2015

yoink, I thought "she can't practice with the boys" was one of those wacky runner's things, like women's records not counting if they run in a race with men because they get the "unfair" advantage of pacing with the men, but it turns out that section 15c (and the note that follows section 15) of the New York State public high schools eligibility standards seems to apply. If she trains on the boy's team then she has to be part of the boy's team and compete against boys.

According to this article, there were apparently mandated practices and so on that had to be taken into account. Key phrase: "Cain stopped training under Bronxville girls coach Jim Mitchell before last winter’s track season and began training under Bronxville boys coaches Ed Stickles and Julio German."
posted by daveliepmann at 2:58 PM on March 5, 2015

Here 's what she does (last two laps of a mile race).

Holy shit. She made the other competitors look like they decided to start walking the last lap.

This just amazes me. When I was 15 I was smoking pot and skipping school. She's getting ready to win the Olympics next year. Looking forward to watching her there! (On TV I mean.)
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:04 PM on March 5, 2015

I saw Keifer Sutherland on Top Gear the other night, and he also won a couple of rodeo roping competitions in the 90s.
posted by Ambient Echo at 3:06 PM on March 5, 2015

Mary Cain is awesome. American distance running is experiencing a renaissance, due in no small part to AlSal's influence. That said, I don't know when we'll be setting world records again. Everything from the 1500 on up is so fast.
posted by persona au gratin at 3:37 PM on March 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

Here 's what she does (last two laps of a mile race).

I said "Holy SHIT" out loud. That's unreal.
posted by KathrynT at 3:44 PM on March 5, 2015 [6 favorites]

Also, lots of runners laughed at AlSal's use of zero-g treadmills and altitude tents and the like. Then Rupp started winning and setting records, and they shut up.
posted by persona au gratin at 3:49 PM on March 5, 2015

A bit more about her relationship with Salazar.
posted by persona au gratin at 3:59 PM on March 5, 2015

Looked it up - it was 1976 and it was a two-mile run when Salazar was a high school senior. I still remember how extraordinary it was to watch.

Alberto Salazar
Wayland (Mass.) High School ‘76
A runner-up in the high school 2-mile run in 1975, Salazar came back as a senior and blazed an 8:53.7, nearly seven seconds faster than the former record and the first Carnival time under nine minutes. His mark has been bettered only once on conversion since the Relays switched to metric distances, and it was a national high school record in 1986 which managed that feat.

posted by Peach at 4:46 PM on March 5, 2015

I don't know when we'll be setting world records again. Everything from the 1500 on up is so fast.

The article touches on it, but the women's distance records are for the most part highly suspect. It's not just that the 1500, 3000, and 10000m records were all set by athletes coached by an infamous EPO-peddler, but they were set in ludicrous fashion--while ordinarily middle and long-distance world records require a highly concentrated effort culminating in an exhausting record attempt with a "rabbit" to lead the runner a considerable part of the way with the resulting run hopefully a few fractions of a second better than ever before, these "records" were set with multiple runners obliterating times in never-before-seen, never-since-seen fashion, and turning around and doing it on consecutive days. The only reason the 5000m record escaped such treatment is that it wasn't run in the 1993 Chinese National Games. So while not as conclusively fraudulent as, say, Marita Koch's 400m record, the smart money is that most if not all of those records are illegitimate.

Which is a genuine shame for women's athletes like Cain. Unfortunately, records are often the only time people pay attention to track--and cleanly beating a huge number of women's records will require an effort much greater than the equivalent effort for a man.
posted by dsfan at 5:20 PM on March 5, 2015 [5 favorites]

Those videos are amazing. She just dials in more power and flows ahead.

Articles about runners, especially female runners, tend to focus more on body and appearance than other athletes. I think part of it is that you can only write so much about the act of running versus, say, basketball technique. That and the more obvious reason that they wear a lot less clothing and are in pretty good shape. Doesn't mean it's not a little bit creepy though.

I don't follow running sports at all, maybe watching an event every few Olympics or whatever. It was a bit startling when I tuned back in after many years of not paying any attention and I saw how small the clothing had gotten. I agree that the language in the article is creepy, but as a total non-participant in the sport, I am not surprised that the reporter was thinking about it; the surprising part is that the editor didn't impose better wording.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:48 PM on March 5, 2015

My daughter is this age and runs these same races: when I told her about Cain's times her jaw dropped, just as mine had.

Good luck, Mary, and keep those knees up and elbows in!!
posted by wenestvedt at 6:17 PM on March 5, 2015

Right, the women's records are chock full of doping. But the best today (like Dibaba) are in another class from the US's best. Just as Geb and Bekele are in another class from people like Rupp and Manzano.

But what US runners are doing today is extraordinary. Much of that is AlSal.
posted by persona au gratin at 7:59 PM on March 5, 2015

My husband had had knee surgery and was using a cane when we went to a heavily attended funeral. A man jumped up to make sure my husband got a comfortable seat. I was later asked if I knew that man was Alberto Salazar. He has a history of being helpful.
posted by Cranberry at 12:03 AM on March 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

Am I the only one who read the description and thought of the very fast but very gawky Chris Froome?
posted by kersplunk at 2:54 AM on March 6, 2015

When Cain’s mother realized the caller truly was Salazar, she felt profound relief. The Cains are practicing Catholics, as is Salazar. Had God sent Salazar their way?

I don't grok this sentiment in the slightest, nor understand why it's in this article. Perhaps if there were some other religious component to the athlete-coach relationship, it would make more sense. If a non-Catholic (or non-religious), world-class athlete had contacted the Cains about coaching Mary, would they have refused his help? Or perhaps they would have felt mere relief and not "profound" relief. Weird.

To be clear, I'm not criticizing the Cains' beliefs (I was raised Catholic), just criticizing the necessity of this particular passage in an otherwise well-written and interesting article.
posted by zakur at 8:52 AM on March 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

If a non-Catholic (or non-religious), world-class athlete had contacted the Cains about coaching Mary, would they have refused his help?

It doesn't imply that they'd have refused his/her help--just that they'd have been a little less prone to speculate that this help was literally heaven-sent. I assume this comes from something the parents actually said to the reporter, and it doesn't seem that implausible a sentiment: "when we realized he, too, was a devout Catholic we felt that we could see God's guiding hand in bringing him to us" or some such.
posted by yoink at 8:59 AM on March 6, 2015

Good luck, Mary, and keep those knees up and elbows in!!

She has way more upper body movement than her competitors. Not sure, but I think that hurts her. If she could control it, she would probably blow them away by even larger margins.
posted by Mental Wimp at 9:36 AM on March 6, 2015