university running only 20 to 30 miles a week.

That could explain why they only schedule Milighan College and the Appy State B teams and don't list their team competition by name in any of their press releases. Don't worry about being embassared, it appears the coaches and school already are. I can see why.

You can't develope a distance runners talent to it's fullest on 40-50 miles per week, let alone 20-30 miles. Any coach that says or thinks you can is clueless and has no business coaching at the collegiate level.

You're the clueless one chump. 30 miles is enough if it's done right. It has to be quality, that's all. Have you never heard the statement, "less is more"? Just because a team only runs 30 miles a week doesn't mean they are not serious. You just have to believe in what you are doing.

I believe that you would have better luck at meets by visiting the local fireworks store instead of going to practice everyday. If you light a bottle rocket in your rear end every 15 seconds then it might propel you past your opponents.

My coach had Mary Jane Harrelson doing 30 miles when he was at Appalachian State you idiot. She got it done.

Jos Hermens has Geb and Bekele running 120+ mpw. KK's wife has him do the same. El G does 100+. Tergat is above 100. Even the mighty Seb Coe approached or even ran 100 mpw at times and he was an 800/150o runner.

...IDIOT. Congratulations for pointing out a statistical outlier that likely would have been much better with more training.

Gizmo is full of crap. Must be one of the old guys that kicked off the team. Oh 20-30 miles a week is BS.

The truth is...

Is that why Va Tech runners were on the New River trail today doing a 10 miler with some mile repeats thrown in there. Oh yeah and if they followed the schedule they did last week that means they did a morning run to. So 15 today.... I know Atkiss was doing some of his mileage in the high 80's to low 90's.

Also the school has a XC All American and another NCAA qualifier and a couple more All Region Award winners. They didn't have a single women do that in ten years prior to Coach Thomas getting there.

VT doesn't emphasize early meets because they can train harder- just like many top programs. They do have a meet at Penn State coming up for there first big one.

VT is a awesome school and does a great job with LESS than one scholarship on the men's distance side. The women have a few scholarships and have done more. The program had to choose where to put the money. 13th in the nation last year in Track for the men is getting things done.

lol sorry i was away for a while...this is some funny stuff...i'm tempted to print these out and slide them under my ex coaches door. Seriously, one day my friend and i decided we would run with the team on their "distance run"...little did we know they were going to spend nearly an hour doing situps and some freakin quarters on the track ...i'm guessing a warm up or something. I don't know...but anyways my friend and i had already ran 5 miles on our own and were just waiting for them to start...finally they made their way out of the track ....but they were walking...we thought to ourselves maybe they are deciding on the route to run....so we kind of waited there for them on the corner of the street. they proceeded to walk across the soccer field and passed a lake that we have before getting to the street (probably bout half a mile total)... we thought that was weird but whatever...so we jogged down towards them and met them just as they hit the road... so we hit them in stride and were like we are going to run with you guys...only they didn't start running....so we kind of slowed down to like "what are you guys doing?" They kind of looked at each other as if they didn't know how to answer as they continued to walk down the street. Finally the senior on the team finally said well i guess we can jog....then proceeded to think about it and said yeah we can jog if you want...by this time my friend and I were lost...we had no idea what these guys were doing...finally one of the guys said "Already!!!???" Then finally they kind of started jogging very slow...like 8 min mile pace...then one of them bursted out with i thought we were only supposed to run 5 miles. FIVE MILES!!! So apparantly they were going to walk all the way down to a golf course's club house before starting because they didn't want to run more then 5 miles because the coach said so...We were like "are you guys serious? 5 miles?? You race 5 miles...why would your "distance" run be only 5 miles?" You know god forbid they run more then they race. That would just be a waste of time. Thats how corrupted the team has become.

is it longwood? they are not very good

You are wrong wrote:

My coach had Mary Jane Harrelson doing 30 miles when he was at Appalachian State you idiot. She got it done.

Does she train at Virginia Tech any longer under Thomas? I understand she got out of Blacksburg and headed to Tennessee to train with real athletes and coaches.

My observation is that VT has chosen to focus their ample scholarship money soley on international athletes. The national champion from Sweden darn well better qualify for nationals. The world junior hammer champ, should win a national title. Keep them healthy and their talent alone will get them to nationals, but talent alone will not win a national title. The 13th in the nation comment is a bit off the mark for this forum since the points came soley from the throwers. The discussion is about a college team running 20-30 miles per week. No matter what school, that is not enough to get it done. Blacksburg seems a bit uptight about this.

I ran there indoors a number of times. From the indoor track you have to cross the soccer field and pass the on campus lake to get to the golf course at none other than Virginia Tech.

I-33 Callmaster wrote:

In high school we ran:

15-20 miles a week

5 hard days

Same here. In the summer before college, I got up to 35mpw and thought it prepared me for D1 running. I seriously thought the coach was kidding when the 1st workout was an 11 mile run. Being an 18:00prXC high school runner, the 5:50 pace didn't make me laugh though.

Funny it was such a trying time, but that I look back on it more fondly than my best running years that followed.

Harrelson is training in Knoxville with JJ Clark. She left the Virginia Tech program last year. She was very frustrated with lack of improvement in the last 3 years. Thomas will not talk to her these days. She was at VT this past winter and he had her in tears before her race. Classy guy right there. Read my sarcasim in the last statement.

Deffinitely a James DeMarco post.

What exactly is your team doing in their 20-30 miles per week? Can you give a typical week of training (day by day)? I'm very curious.

"VT doesn't empasize early meets because they can train harder - just like many top programs?" - Should I pull up mens regional results over the last three years or so, or just leave that unsaid? They won't even race an 8k till the weekend of pre-nats (I'm sure the PSU field will be loaded that weekend) - are they peaking for nationals?

Tech is a large state school and thus even with zero scholarships they should be able to beat Liberty, or non-scholarship programs such as Duke and JMU. In fact, VMI will probably beat them this year (no knock on VMI they've got a decent young program). I'm not trying to be an ass... ok yes I am, but college athletics is about results. On the men's side, VT hasn't been getting them in the last 3 or 4 years. That's a fact.

I know that one of the better midwest DII schools, Minnesota-Duluth, runs really low mileage----could be 20-30 per week, but probably more like 40.

I'd be interested to hear about their training schedule.

The ACC has Virginia Tech listed as "fully funded" for the women's team (that's 18 full scholarships). The men are listed at 11.3 scholarships (12.6 is the maximum allowed).