Kathleen Thompson

[bantazmo]

Some of you might know this young lady. She is a freshman and pretty studly. She is from Missouri and can be noticed by wearing the all yellow outfits at the USATF nationals and AAU nationals. Today in a workout she ran a 5:29 mile then ran about 4 800s and 6 400s then finished the work out with a 5:39 mile. With those two miles is it safe to say she could run a 11:09 in the two mile???!!! If so please tell me what I have to expect for the future. This way I can start setting things up now. Please give me the heads up! Do not be afriad to tell me the hard cold truth. Thanks for your time Ryan Banta

[SteveIsham]

Ryan,

My daughter, Ashley, has had the the pleasure of running several national AAU races (1500m, 3000m, and XC) with Kathleen through the years. They just ran against each other in two races in New Orleans a couple of months ago. Kathleen is a very talented runner with a strong race sense. I've seen her put out some very gritty performances with great results. I don't know about her prior training, but she certainly races well and seems to have a great enjoyment for the sport. Ashley definitely keeps Kathleen on her "radar" and is pleased to hear about her HS running. What school is Kathleen running for now?

My suggestion is to work to keep things fun and challenging for Kathleen. She may benefit from extra work than typical freshman runner, since she has been running a while and she is further along in the adaptive process in regards to running and training. With youth, proper adaptation is always key to long term success. I'd say that you should expect great things from her and plan to race her in some high level meets (Footlocker, Nike Outdoor Nationals, etc.) because she's been running national level meets for years on the youth circuit and can handle the environment well. She certainly has the ability.

Tell her that Ashley from Texas (yellow singlet and blue shorts) says "Hi". Best of luck to you and Kathleen.

Steve Isham

[bantazmo]

I have been waiting for Kathleen for a while. She runs at Parkway Central High School. I am her track and field coaching in the spring. Right now she is running XC with my distance coach who is the head XC coach and having a very good year. She has been learning a lot and showing some improvement from meet to meet. I plan on her at least running the freshman mile at Nike Outdoor and she plans on running foot locker this fall. From that it all just depends on her development

[jaguar]

What was her recovery?