Track & Field Report with legendary head coach Pat Henry in-studio

During Tuesday's edition of TexAgs Radio, Texas A&M track & field head coach Pat Henry joined in-studio to share his thoughts on the Maroon & White's performance in the Charlie Thomas Invitational, Devon Achane's fast weekend on the track and more.

Key notes from Pat Henry interview

• The Charlie Thomas Invitational was a good competition for us. We improved in a number of areas. It's that time of the year when the cream starts rising to the top.
   
• Devon Achane ran 6.71, and he has only run two or three 60s in his life. It comes down to your reaction at the start. He ran well, and then he got caught sitting and lost in the final. He's learning every day.
   
• Lance Broome improved his time in the 200m, and he improved his record.
   
• On the ladies' side, we got better at the 200m with Laila Owens and the 400m with Charokee Young and Tierra Robinson-Jones.


• Across the board, I thought we had a good meet. We have a new high jumper with Bára Sajdoková. Heather Abadie has been very consistent in the pole vault, but she can't quite get over 14 feet. That's a challenge for her at the moment.
   
• Achane has leaned up a little bit. It doesn't take much for a guy like that. Four or five pounds of change helps him quite a bit. From the training, he'll lose that as a result of just being on the track every day, preparing to run on meet days.
   
• I don't want Bryce Foster to lean up. He's a big man. It's all about timing. You can't walk over and throw a shot put. You have to time up your release, what you're doing in the back of the ring and moving through the rings. It just takes timing.
   
• There are a few things I pay attention to, and team rankings are not one of them. You want to see that the group of athletes are performing well together, but I spend my time looking at who has qualified at this point because the top 16 go to the indoor national championships. That helps me put certain people in certain events at certain meets. We'll do things differently from time to time.
   
• I don't think athletes are better suited for indoors vs. outdoors. Some will run 60m better than 100m because they can apply their explosion a little differently. Some athletes can be successful at 60 but not 100. For every other event, the application is about the same indoors and outdoors.
   
• The size of the track is a dictator. We run every indoor championship on a banked 200m track, just like ours. They run qualifications on different size tracks. This is a result of poor leadership. I think we're behind in our thinking. There are enough 200m bank tracks that we should only run qualifications on those 200m bank tracks. The world championships require times run on banked tracks. The NCAA needs to make some changes. To run a 200m race on a 300m flat track is different. The bigger the track, the faster a human can run. The 200m track is a standard indoor track around the world. Nobody thinks about running on a different size track except in the United States at universities.
   
• This was the first time I could put a healthy men's 4x400m team on the track, and we ran very well. It showed. We're within a half-second of everybody in the world right now. We won by three or four seconds at this meet. Our guys ran as good as they could, and I'm really happy with that group. We're still rotating a couple in and out to find our best four. On the ladies' side, we haven't found our 4x400m team yet, and that probably won't happen until the SEC Championships in a couple of weeks.
   
• Cutting off time varies with every individual, and it differs with age. The individual that only runs on Saturday or Sunday, I think you have to be careful. Watch what you're doing and be very conservative in what you're doing because running one time a week does not bode well for getting better. Consistency of training is key. Running three times a week is closer to getting better, but it's still not enough.
   
• There's a good day and an off-day mentality to running. It's such an individual situation that I have to look at people as a coach and understand their capabilities before telling them what's best. If you can get out and run a couple of times a week, you have to supplement that with things you do in the weight room or flexibility training. Many people make the big mistake of touching their toes and starting their run. That's where they get hurt. It might work in the short term, but in the long term, you're in trouble.
   
• If you're going to run for 30 minutes, you better spend 15 minutes of that time getting loose and warming up. I am not a proponent of not warming up, but you can read literature and have it convince you of anything. Those people who are not active in their flexibility program are most likely to get hurt.