Colin Sahlman may not race for NAU in 2022 - "It's probably on the more unlikely side that we are putting him out there."

I say this with the utmost respect, Mike Smith is not a saint and he wants to win the title. If he thinks Colin can help him do this, he’s running. If Smith is holding him out, then it’s because so far he’s determined Colin is not ready to meaningfully contribute this season. If the latter is Smith’s assessment, then holding him out makes a lot of sense for a variety of reasons. The trade off would be loss of experience versus avoidance of injury, extra time to acclimate both physiologically and mentally, reduction in pressure and expectations. When you are billed as a superstar the pressure and expectation to crush it from the jump can be debilitating and has to be managed. Slowly building comfort and confidence is critical.

He may have academic goals that are best achieved by rs this fall, I don't know. Maybe I'm getting too old but can't we let kids be college freshman without the pressure. A x/c team title is not that important in the scheme of things to sacrifice the well being and health of someone.

Full disclosure, I hated cross but liked track back in the day

This. Smith did his undergrad work in psychology. He is very acute to the mental process each individual athlete has. Thus a big reason for his success, especially with guys who could easily be head cases. Let Smith work his magic.

I predict Colin is on his way to UCLA right now.

These are different times with super shoes, better training, more time trials, etc. His HS teammate Nico ran 13:24 in his first year of college (13:11 in his second) and Sahlman was arguably even better than him in HS. It's definitely not a given but I'd say it's more likely to happen than to not.

I predict Colin is on his way to UCLA right now.

rojo ya know the difference between Smith and you? He actually thinks these things thru (you call it "overthink", but I'm pretty sure it's just "think"). That, and the 4 NCAA XC titles.

Smith also didn't rule out Sahlman racing, he just stated he was going to be cautious and put the athlete first. He's not yet ready to commit to racing a member of the team who has been on campus for 3 weeks. Makes sense to me.

Same basic logic holds if he is their 8th guy. They have 4 returners who are all Americans. They have Quax and raff who have both run nationals (granted not very well). Prosser and Nyoak are sophs with decent openers. Keyes, le roux and puffer also looked decent in that 4.5m race.

We will know a heck of a lot more after the cowboy jamboree and nuttycombe about what type of shape people are in. If Salhman is in 1330 shape then nope they aren't going to have 7+ guys in front of him. If he is more like 13:55, then it is possible.

He better hope holding back Sahlman and potentially giving up a national title this year is worth it, because Stanford is going to be favored for the next few years with the Youngs + their young core.

It's Stanford. You can say the same thing about just about any year and they will find a way not to be competitive...

Henz ran 3:38 last summer.

He is doing well for Harvard this fall

Is he beating everybody?

Far from it

Colin would do well as well, but remember that 131 NCAA guys ran sub 8min for 3000m last winter.

There are a lot of fast guys

It’s probably on the more unlikely side that I will ever post anything worth reading…you see how utterly meaningless this language is and of course my post is too.

This is underselling him quite a bit. He ran 8:33 in HS while leading the last mile of his race (7:57 conversion). Throw him in a fast heat BU meet with competition and he's probably ~7:52 or so, which 50 NCAA runners ran last year. 22 of those were listed as Seniors on TFRRS (unsure about covid eligibility) so thats maybe 30 guys or so. Add a full year of training/development + altitude and hes easily capable of being top 20, if not better.

But as others have said, Mike Smith has pretty clearly earned the benefit of the doubt with athlete development so I trust his judgement here.

These kind of arguments drive me crazy. Everyone ran what they ran. He’s not “probably” anything other than what he actually ran. You could justify why every other runner could have run faster if there was some condition that would have played out different in their races or if they would have only got into some other race, blah, blah, blah. Your times are your times and so are everyone else’s.

What a weird thing to get worked up about. We are literally speculating on what somebody could hypothetically run, the entire point is "probably". And ignoring the fact that he was a HSer in a HS race compared to College kids in a college race is also bizarre. If you don't want to speculate, then simply don't respond its a simple concept.

Nobody is saying his PR is 7:52, relax.

Did you speculate what the other 131 that broke 8:00 could hypothetically run?

Maybe he has been ill or had a minor injury. There was no bio as late as the end of August, I think, and he didn't feature in any stories, so either Smith wasn't no pressure on him, like Nico, or he wasn't able to keep up with the lead group just yet with the altitude adjustment and the higher mileage. He may have been in 13:30 or better shape in outdoor track, considering that Lex ran 13:43, and that Brosnan said the twins were in 13:20s shape in the summer, but he would still need months to adjust to altitude (despite the stints at Big Bear), mileage, much longer workouts, and faster training partners. By November, however, he should be ready to contribute, just as Nico did. After all, this is a guy who ran 14 on a 5k xc course.

Smith wants no pressure on him.

No. 13:40 AT BEST last year.

One of the twins went 13:44 in a perfectly paced race. Has Sahlman ever shown to be :14 better than L/L over 5000m? No.