#30 Ed Eyestone - From being an Olympian to Coaching Them, Elite Marathon Training Philosophy, What's Difference in Today's Era of Running and Training

Coach, I wanted to ask you...

I wanted to ask you a little bit about that specifically.

Cause like, yeah, you mentioned there's, there's always another Roy link letter in the, in the Hills of Utah on the high school level.

I follow high school running a lot.

Cause I coach a lot of high school athletes.

Like Utah is just producing an incredible amount of, of talent from, you know, Harriman where Rory went to American fork where Clayton went and Casey went.

What do you think it is about? And from my understanding, those two schools are pretty close together geographically.

Like, What do you think it is about that area that just seems to be a pretty constant pipeline of national class runners at the high school level, college level, and professional level? You're talking the Rift Valley of the

United States, right? Rift Valley.

It's definitely produced some good ones.

And I think, you know...

Great things come together.

It's kind of a perfect storm of of of endurance athlete environment.

I think you got the altitude to start with.

You got good kids, you know, great family support.

Not that that doesn't happen in other places, but kids who that aren't afraid to, you know, work hard and are coming from families where often they've got a support from a mom and dad.

And again, you see that around the country, certainly.

But here in Utah, I think it's and it's kind of cool to run here, too.

I think that there's been enough success that's come from this area, you know, from those that's that it's kind of a cool thing and it can become a national sort of thing.

So I think we're seeing athletes identify, you know, at an earlier age, not that there's a lot.

I mean, there are some age group stuff taking place, but generally in high school, maybe junior high, where it's kind of a cool thing to run.

You're getting support from their families.

I know that when my own girls came through, they weren't amazing runners, but those that were athletically inclined, I kind of said, listen, you got quality kids in cross country because they're not prima donnas.

They know the value of working hard.

They know the value of setting goals, all of those things.