What is the secret to Navy's success?
I ran at Navy from 1983 to 1987 (and I really sucked), so things may have changed there, but I doubt it has changed too much. We had Ronnie Harris, Louis Poore, John Lezniak, and Guy Jackson and Jeff Holyfield - all state champs in high school. So the raw materials were pretty good.
Al is still the coach. He had a staple of workouts in x-c that never varied from year to year. There is an article in a recent Runner's World that perhaps explains this, as Rick Salazar, Alberto's brother, ran for Navy (and had one of the top 25 times on the course all time as of 1983, but later was displaced). The article says Al used to talk with Bowerman about workouts. So perhaps Navy had an Oregon connection of sorts.
However, I suspect there was not too much duplication. I've always been interested in what kind of workouts other programs do / did and I never saw much duplication from Navy to Oregon.
I feel I should not share some of the key workouts or what mileage we ran, as that is Al's "work product" and he, not me, should be the one to decide whether to talk about the workouts.
In my opinion, the big reason was and is Navy's history and tradition. When I was there, the football team really sucked and we did well, so we felt great. We expected to run at NCAA finals and we did all four years. We did not thing the other teams were beyond reach. This seems to be continuing, although I do not think Navy has made it to NCAA's in quite a few years.
Also, we ran as a group in the mornings and on weekends. I bet it is the same way still. We ate all our lunches and dinners together, too, at the same table ("team tables"). All the meals were also cooked for us and pretty darn good.
If one wins a letter and scores against Army, one gets to wear a letter sweater every Friday to class to take pride in this.
Running was also a big way to "get away" from being a midshipman, so I think we all looked forward to it (perhaps more than at other schools - but I cannot really say).
We were all on scholarship, so to speak, so we didn't have to stress over financial issues. Al used to criticize this smugness.
We did drink, that's for sure - and probably too much.
Al used to point out that there is no special workout that turns a mediocre runner into a good runner, etc. He said many of the best runners succeed in spite of the stupidity of their coaches. This humbleness about his own methods made me, at least, respect his and realize that races were the thing that mattered - the only measuring stick. I trust his runners have the same approach.
Judging from a post above stating that Navy now has nine guys with sub-9:20 PR's from high school, it appears Al is still doing a good job recruiting.