RunningLane Track Club, MileSplit, long-time distance coach and more. Practiced law 24 yrs. K-State letterman back in the day. Opinions my own.
Olathe, KS
Joined December 2013
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With the start of a new school year and XC season, this is a good time to reflect on my essay about the best way coaches and parents can help their athletes and children. Stop plowing the road for them and light the way from behind.
ks.milesplit.com/articles/23…
This is nuts. There are some many layers of insanity to this that I don’t even know where to start. “Most expensive rosters” for unranked teams.
💯.
In my opinion, if your school bus has the only 3 kids who’s parents didn’t come to the game, on the return home… you have a culture problem.
Ride the bus home with your team.
Laugh with your friends and enjoy the time together, win or lose.
Help coaches put equipment away.
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Wonderful advice.
Protect your peace. Filter what you consume.
Ask yourself one question about every page you follow:
What does this content give me?
If the answer is outrage, hopelessness, anger, or fear, feelings you don't want in your life, the fix is really simple:
unfollow, mute, unsubscribe from pages that make money from the negativity they bring to your life.
Can you imagine being the poor sap on the next treadmill at Planet Fitness just trying to get in his/her 20 or 30 minutes of cardio while this cat runs 30 miles with the speed pegged? 😂🤯♥️
I love that the fastest marathoner in America does 30-mile runs at sub-5-min-mile pace on a treadmill at a random Planet Fitness in Ohio. … letsrun.com/news/2026/10/aft…
100% this.
This is the time of year when talented first-year runners start getting me in trouble.
Not because they're doing anything wrong.
Because they start showing me what they could become.
And my coaching brain immediately starts thinking: More. Faster. Let's see what happens.
Then I have to remind myself that their lungs aren't the only thing adapting.
Bones, tendons, ligaments.
All of it is still learning how to handle distance training.
Sometimes talent gets ahead of durability.
They might be fit enough to handle more before their body is ready to handle more.
I can probably get more out of them right now.
Doesn't mean I should.
Better to be patient this year and build three great years than squeeze everything out of year one and pay for it later.
Still doesn't make patience any easier when the kid can really run. 😂
In my 48 years in the sport, I’ve never heard of an Achilles rupture in a marathon.
🚨 An Update on Tigst Assefa's Condition 🚨
Monday - Tigst Assefa had a successful surgical procedure performed on her right Achilles tendon following a complete rupture in the closing kilometers of the Berlin Marathon.
Gianna Demadonna, Assefa's Agent, told Liam Tharme of The Athletic that Assefa will rest for two months, undergo a rehabilitation program and hopefully start walking in the third month.
If the timeline persists, Assefa could start running after that third month.
Assefa was on pace for a World Record in the Women's Marathon in Berlin before she visibly began limping with 2K remaining in Sunday's race. She gritted her way to the finish, despite obvious pain, crossing the line in 2:11:04, the world third fastest performance all-time.
#BerlinMarathon
📸 Getty Images
The first time I encountered this, I laughed because it was such an absurd question to me that I thought it was a joke. When I realized they were serious, there were some blunt conversations with the team about the difference between a sport and an activity.
I have apparently developed another controversial coaching opinion.
If you join the cross country team, the cross country meets are mandatory.
I know.
Pretty extreme stuff.
And if there is a club soccer game scheduled at the same time, we are still going to expect you to be at the XC meet.
Apparently this requires explanation now.
What surprises me more is the outrage this generates.
"You mean they HAVE to go?"
Yes.
That's how being on a team works.
We practice so we can compete.
The meets aren't optional bonus content you unlock if nothing better shows up on the family calendar.
I didn't realize "athletes are expected to attend competitions" had become one of my hottest coaching takes.
But here we are.
I don’t know who needs to hear this but STOP USING AI FOR WRITING, ESPECIALLY TO START THE PROCESS!! If you use AI “just to help me get started and give me some ideas,” you’re skipping the most important, even crucial, step in good writing - THINKING! I don’t care if it’s a work report, school essay, or email to Aunt Sally, learn to sit with the discomfort of not knowing what to say or how to say it. That space is called “thinking” and we have far too little of it being done today. As the old saying goes, good writing is good thinking. You can’t farm that out without dumbing down both yourself and your writing. AI is fantastic for fact checking, grammar/punctuation cleanup, etc. in the latter stages but using it early in the process runs a huge risk of it becoming a crutch rather than a tool.
Rod Murrow, JD retweeted
For my endurance athletes: New standards for Ferritin test when diagnosing Iron deficiency.
It used to be if Ferritin was over 15 ng/mL, you were considered "normal."
Now:
For most adults: 30 is the new threshold.
For high-risk groups, it's 50.
Rod Murrow, JD retweeted
Alabama just had a 24 year old Kenyan "freshman" woman win the SEC 10,000m championship. She was beaten in the NCAA Championships by a 25 year old Kenyan "freshman" from Iowa State. Univ. of Texas @ Austin recently added a 25 year old Kenyan as a "freshman." His half-marathon time is faster than the U.S. record. Texas Tech recently had a 28 year old Kenyan "freshman" on its squad.
💯
If the proper protocols for replay weren’t followed then the FBS Oversight committee should overturn the result of the game and make Western Michigan the winner of the game against Michigan.
Period. End of Story.
Saying “hey they got it wrong, but we won’t fix it” only makes it worse and is a slap in the face to the fans of football everywhere.
Rod Murrow, JD retweeted
Males have multiple physiological advantages over females in sport and it isn’t just one variable. At puberty, multiple systems change simultaneously:
• Greater lean muscle mass, especially upper body
• Larger bones and greater skeletal dimensions
• Longer limbs and greater leverage
• Higher hemoglobin and oxygen-carrying capacity
• Larger heart and lungs
• Significant differences in strength, speed and power
• Higher ACL injury risk in female athletes
These differences compound, which is why the performance gap can be roughly 10% in some events and dramatically larger in others.
