Just looking through the results of XC this weekend and thought to myself how many individuals, especially freshmen, ran sub par races at Districts versus their Conference meets. My own thoughts are that individuals who don't run well at the end of the season:
1) Don't have the base to survive a season of racing and training
2) Aren't recovering from mid-season races and are dead legged at the season(may be a product of number 1)
3) Hard training isn't throttled back in time to have good races at the end of the season
4) Too many college kids are not recovering on their "easy" days and can't bring it on race day, especially at the end of the year.
Anybody have any thoughts about this issue and what the top level programs are doing to deal with this issue, especially with freshmen or other runners who may not have much of a mileage base coming in?