Below is an excerpt from the Lap Count newsletter, posted with permission. Kyle Merber’s Lap Count newsletter both entertains and enlightens fans about athletes and happenings in our sport.
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From the Lap Count Newsletter
There comes a time during every elite athlete’s career when they’ll be asked what they’ll do when their knees give out, and the topic of getting into coaching comes up. It seems like an easy enough transition for someone who probably wishes they had majored in something other than philosophy and has a half-decade gap in their resume that ostensibly just reads: “exercised often.” But the truth is that many aspects of being a coach directly contradict the things that make an athlete successful.
First off, it needs to be understood that most elite athletes are supremely talented. While having some understanding of physiology is a prerequisite for the role, the things Eliud Kipchoge is capable of are hardly transferable over to another athlete, even a really good one! Pulling from your own experiences as an Olympic-caliber athlete when writing workouts isn’t always a good thing. Saying, ‘this is what worked for me’ doesn’t work for someone else if you’re God’s gift to paved roads and your athlete’s got a case of the bird bones.
Oddly enough, throughout my career, I ran well under a soccer coach, a former decent sprinter, and an old football player. You don’t have to be an elite athlete to become an elite coach.
And while adjacently related, the bigger inhibitor that makes the jump from competitor to mentor difficult is the Venn diagram between being excruciatingly fast and being a tremendous narcissist is almost a perfect circle. Coaching requires empathy and caring about other people more than you care about yourself – something that temporarily gets placed on the back burner in this extremely selfish sport.
After Millrose had ended, I approached coach Dathan Ritzenhein and asked him if he’d be keen to do an interview. After all, his team had just broken seven national records, and look, we pay attention – Ritz interviews do numbers. Of the 45 interviews from this weekend posted on the CITIUS YouTube channel, his has the most views. Ritz is a bit of a celebri-coach.
And you know what he told me when I initially asked? No! Ritz said, ‘this isn’t about me – interview the athletes.’ Only after I told him that we had already spoken with Yared, Ollie, Sage, Mario, Alicia, and Josette did he agree. If you want to know what separates Ritz as a coach from countless others who weren’t even close to as quick as him in his prime, that’s it right there. He’s coaching for his athletes, and the fact that he’s quickly cementing himself as perhaps a better coach than he was runner (which is really saying something) doesn’t appear to even register as a motivating factor.
Being an elite athlete is definitely an elevator to the top of the coaching ring, but it’s not the only way there. Since I am sure a lot of fans aren’t actually aware of the athletic background of a lot of top coaches, I thought it’d be interesting to list off the range of accolades of what America’s professional coaches did before they held the stopwatch.
Dathan Ritzenhein (OAC) – 3x Olympian, Former 5000m American Record holder 12:56
Jerry Schumacher (Bowerman) – 3x NCAA All-American, USATF 1500m 5th Place, 3:39 1500m
Pete Julian (Union) – 2x World XC Qualifier, PBs of 5000m 13:33 and 10,000m 28:05
Alan Culpepper (NAZ Elite) – 2x Olympian PBs of 10,000m 27:33 and Marathon 2:09:41
Danny Mackey (Beasts) – Olympic Marathon Trials Qualifier
Mike Smith (MSE) – NCAA All-American, Marathon PB 2:19:43
Amy Cragg (Puma Elite) – 2x Olympian, World Championship Bronze, Marathon PB 2:21:42
Mark Coogan (NB Boston) – Olympian, Marathon PB 2:13:05
Diljeet Taylor (TME) – NCAA DII 800m indoor runner-up, ran for Gags on the Nike Farm Team
Andy Powell (Untitled) – 4:02 high school miler; member of Stanford cross country team that placed 4th in 2000 at NCAAs
Tommy Nohilly (Empire Elite) – 8:16 steeplechaser, World Champ Qualifier
Joan Hunter (TME) – Masters national champion over 400m and 800m
Stephen Haas (UA Dark Sky) – 13:33 5,000m, 28:21 10,000m
Joe Bosshard (Boss Babes) – 13:34 5,000m, 28:41 10,000m
Amy Yoder Begley (Atlanta TC) – Olympian, 2x NCAA champ, 15x NCAA All-American
