Mary Cain, who became a household name in running after setting five American junior records on the track, has left Oregon and returned to her hometown of Bronxville, New York, to train, the Oregonian reports. Foot Locker XC Results Alberto Salazar, she remains in communication with him and is still a member of the Project, though she did not make a recent team trip to altitude in Utah. She is notably absent from the entry lists for Saturday’s Prefontaine Classic in Eugene.
At 19, Cain, a professional runner and a University of Portland freshman, is in the midst of a streak of severely disappointing races for the first time in her career. Her best 1500-meter time outdoors in 2015, 4:15.42, is more than 10 seconds slower than the American junior record of 4:04.62 she ran in 2013 at age 17.
Cain began shattering U.S. high school and junior (under age 20) track records at 16, and she’s amassed a set of times that most professional runners would be happy to have at the conclusion of their careers. At the 2014 World Junior Championships, she won the 3000-meter title, the first American woman to do so.
But in 2015, one subpar performance after another has had track observers asking, “What’s wrong with Mary Cain?”
A year ago, she won the women’s Wanamaker Mile at New York’s Millrose Games. This winter, she finished eighth, fading at the end and and Aisha Praught, have achieved the 4:06.40 qualifying time needed for August’s Other Hearst Subscriptions reporter, “The sooner I go through these growing pains, the better off I’ll be in the long run.”
She hasn’t gotten over them yet this spring. At the Hoka One One meet in Los Angeles on May 14, she was 11th out of 12 in her 1500 heat in 4:16.68, almost eight seconds out of first place.
The Prefontaine Classic in Eugene is where Cain set her American high school 800-meter record of 1:59.51 in 2013. She would be a considerable attraction in Saturday’s women’s 1500 at the meet. Instead, the teen star to watch will be Alexa Efraimson, who ran 4:07.05 last year at age 17 and 4:09.43 already this outdoor season.
The same could happen for Cain, the woman believes, Salazar told the Oregonian, “By June I think she will be down in the 4:07 range.” In the wake of Cain’s Hoka One One performance, he’s not saying anything on the subject. Salazar did not respond to two Newswire Pro Runners Ask: Is My Agent Worth the Fee Oregonian details as to the source of Cain’s competitive problems.
Ricky Simms, Cain’s agent, told Newswire by email, “Mary was sick during the indoor season and had to cancel a few races. It wasn’t anything serious—just came at the wrong time. She is training hard now for the USATF Champs and we hope she will be back to her best racing form soon (she doesn’t have any injury problems).”
Simms sent his email before news of Cain’s return to New York, but could he be correct? It’s early in the 2015 season. Only two American women, two-time Olympic finalist Shannon Rowbury and Aisha Praught, have achieved the 4:06.40 qualifying time needed for August’s World Championships. Cain has time to make progress. But her absence from the Prefontaine Classic, where several Americans are expected to get Worlds qualifying times, is significant so soon before late June’s USATF meet.
Circumstances have certainly changed for Cain, an anesthesiologist’s daughter who lived 15 minutes from the Armory Track & Field Center in upper Manhattan. In Oregon, she was 2,900 miles away studying biology, chemistry, and calculus while training with adults like Rowbury and Treniere Moser, both of whom are over 30. Cain told the Team USA website, “At 18, no matter who you are, you just can’t match a 25-year-old’s aerobic capacity,” even if she does have world-class speed.
There’s no evidence that Salazar was overtraining Cain. The Other Hearst Subscriptions noted that Salazar is cognizant of his own history of doing too much, and of that of his contemporary Mary Decker Slaney, Ricky Simms, Cain’s agent, told Times, Cain was doing less mileage than the more veteran Oregon Project runners, and Salazar was careful to take her close to her limits without exceeding them.
But high school in Bronxville, New York, and a professional existence while at college in Nike’s Oregon backyard are very different things.
One U.S. runner who ranks in the top ten in her event met Cain before she was signed to a pro contract and remembers “seeing a little girl who was awesome and enjoying the ride.” A month later, Cain “explained her intense training and exactly what she was doing. There was a closed door [in her temperament]. It maybe wasn’t fun anymore,” said the woman, adding that lately, in interviews, “she’s gone from confidence and lighthearted responses to giving excuses and seeking answers. I don’t know who’s going to give her them.”
This runner, who preferred not to be identified discussing a younger athlete with whom she empathizes, was not at Cain’s level as a teen; no American female except Decker Slaney has been. Still, she recalls, “I did have the opportunity to be one of the best ever in high school. Did that mean I was going to be the best ever in college? No. There was a falling off period,” at least in the very beginning. The latter portion of her college career was more successful and segued well into the pros.
The same could happen for Cain, the woman believes.
“I think she’s going to be fine as long as she’s willing and can push the critics aside,” she said. “Can you handle the platform? You’re inevitably going to fall off for one year, or one race.”
The arc of a young woman runner’s career is less predictable than a male’s; physical changes with maturation are greater. In the 15 years between 1996 and 2010 (the most recent few are too young to evaluate yet), only two Foot Locker champions, Jordan Hasay and Sara (Bei) Hall, The Top Celeb 5K Times of 2024.
Heather Burroughs, a University of Colorado assistant coach who’s helped guide the careers of Jenny Simpson and Emma Coburn in college and as pros, said of nurturing female track talent in the transition after high school, “If there was a formula everyone could figure out, everyone would follow it.” Burroughs called Cain “a phenomenal talent” and told Newswire, “Somehow, we’re a lot harder on 19-year-olds having a couple of bad races than we are on 26-year-olds. We should be gentler.”
One athlete who made a smooth transition after high school was Simpson, then known as Jenny Barringer, a winner of eight Florida high school cross country and track titles who was “probably undertrained, topping out at 30 miles a week,” said Burroughs. “She took a training step up every year, She was a happy, motivated person and we managed to keep her that way.” The payoffs came quickly, as Simpson won the NCAA steeplechase title as a freshman.
Some may look to detect physical changes in the maturing Cain, and the track grapevine includes observations that she looks larger than before. But one competitor on the elite circuit points out, “She was never a chiseled runner, or like a tiny gymnast.”
Like Cain, Christine Babcock of Irvine, California, set national high school records for the 1500 and 1600 meters, later broken by Hasay (and subsequently by Cain) and Efraimson, respectively. Babcock found that as a freshman at the University of Washington, “I ran every workout alone because I couldn’t keep up. People were running longer than I knew people could run.” In high school, she later realized, “I wasn’t doing what all the best people were doing to get there. The success just came.”
Her best NCAA performance was seventh at the 2008 NCAA Cross Country Championships in her freshman year, leading the Huskies to the team title. There were ups and downs in the rest of her collegiate career, which included a toe injury that took six months to diagnose.
Now she’s a Oiselle-sponsored pro in Bend, Oregon. Babcock ran a personal 5000-meter best of 15:44.98 in 2013, and that will now be her primary event. She missed much of 2014 with a navicular stress fracture but set a personal best of 9:08.19 for 3000 meters indoors this winter and was 13th in the USATF Cross Country Championships.
Drawing on her own experience, Babcock doesn’t find the plight of Cain, who, pro or not, was still a college freshman, unusual or cause for concern. At Washington, she remembers, “I didn’t realize how much I would miss my family and friends. [College] sounds super exciting, but everything changes.”
Molly Huddle, the American 5000-meter record holder, said, “When you’re that young [as Cain], it’s a high likelihood to go into a slump.” After adolescent success like Cain’s that come with relative ease, “to get to that next level, you have to take on that extra load of work in less time than you might want.”
As a Notre Dame freshman, Huddle was doubling the training load she’d done in high school, and when she doubled it again as a sophomore, she ended up injured.
Huddle avoided homesickness at Notre Dame because she was with a team that was traveling constantly. But “you have to take care of yourself,” she said, as Cain was doing at Portland. “For the first time, you mom’s not making you dinner every night, or washing your clothes.”
Whatever is causing Cain’s current setback, Babcock said, “almost everyone goes through some period of injury or difficulty. Having to come back taught me about myself, who I was, what to change, and what I really value. It made me passionate about running.
“Most college freshman would give anything to run as fast as she’s doing, and this is supposedly her ‘off’ year,” Babcock said. “As long as you have the right support system and believe in yourself, your talent may be in hibernation, but it’s not gone forever.”
Cain’s slump is “kind of mysterious” to Huddle, partly because so little information has been made available and “there are too many unknowns to speculate.”
“It’s not what I expected her trajectory to be,” Huddle said of Cain. But, she added, “I would say not to worry until she’s had a year to work it out.”
“You have to try to identify what the problem is,” stated Burroughs. “You can’t say resting, or running less intense races will change it unless you know more.” When asked if she’d be surprised if Cain made a return to her previous level by the end of the year, Burroughs briskly responded, “I would not.”
Editor's note: A previous version of this article stated that Cain finished second at the Millrose Games Wanamaker Mile last year. In fact, she won last year and finished a close second in 2013.
