What is happening at Stanford?

You undermine your "regression" argument by citing Galen Topper as the Stanford frosh record holder.

Nolan Topper set that record last year. . . he has yet to debut for Stanford this fall . . . but was the team's alternate (#8 runner) at last year's NCAAs . . . he was pictured in preseason IG workout posts so may be recovering from an injury.

Galen has never run a 10k track race and has yet to break 14 in the 5k . . . and is significantly the slowest of the twins.

Per their public IG posts, Ky put in approx 115 miles thru the first 7 days of October . . . while Cole logged approx 95 . . . both their highest weekly mileages ever.

Pretty clear that Ricardo Santos/men's coach is taking a "contrarian" approach to this fall's season by emphasizing training to the point where the VA & Nuttycombe meets were virtually meaningless workout races.

As such, Ky is the only one talented enough to actually be race competitive at this point.

If one or two runners bomb out . . . that's on them.

However, if virtually the whole team bombs . . . that's a systemic issue . . . which has happened twice now . . . indicating a training program which is sacrificing the regular season for post-season success . . . the opposite of what happened in 2022.

Reserve judgement on Santos and the team until after Pac-12s . . . which will be an historic swan song race which Stanford, OR, WA, CO will dearly want to win.

What is happening at Stanford?

OR . . .

What is not happening at Stanford?

Coach Prime is asking the same question right now.

I am a fan of high mileage, but I don’t understand why some coaches think that the time to maximize mileage AND intensity is in the middle of the season. July, August, and September are perfectly good months to train.

The Norwegian system loads up from October to May and then doesn’t stress mileage as much during the competitive season. And Jakob doesn’t show up to his early races running at the back.

Giving a fit, healthy, high-mileage athlete a single super easy day should be enough to let them produce a B-race. I think we can all agree that Stanford standards, this one was an F.

They need to work harder

But internationally he's chosen to represent G.B.

funny, watching Charles Hicks YouTube, Jerry has him doing 70 minute tempos often. Similar coaching approaches?

Graham Blanks of Harvard University won the race. Does he lack a "superior intellect," not care about a "good education" so he can graduate, not care about getting a "good job" and "mak[ing] a difference in the world?" Further, Harvard, as an Ivy League school, does not give athletic scholarships, whereas Stanford does, and I presume that many, if not all of the Stanford XC runners are recipients of an athletic scholarship. Your explanation, dear Karen, doesn't fit these observations.

I don’t think you can criticize the us kids. More so the international kids are phenoms who do well under any system in spite of coaching. This is definite example of a team that gets great athletes because of the name but very little progress. At Iona was the Kenyans that brought success…

Maybe they went into the meet in the middle of a hard training block so they could see how they compete when they're down.

Maybe some injuries. Maybe a slip during the race. Maybe they tempoed.

USA has 300million+ inhabitants. One would hope that the top us runners would also be phenoms.

Of coursecares about his education and a job. That is why he is attending Harvard as opposed to NAU or Arkansas or Oregon.

The problem is all the kids are not fully committed. Other schools MUST succeed at running or it's off to some crappy 9-5. This is all they have. Stanford kids are either all rich or have the degree they think will make them boatloads of money (newsflash: it doesn't, look at recent grads of program). It's a shame that's what the program has become.

19 teams beat Stanford. 99% of the kids on those teams won't get a pro contract yet they ran well. They will graduate amd head off to a 9-5 job.

Yes, that is true. I meant in a mindset way while they are in college. Stanford makes people question running and not go all in because they see the level of wealth and power they can achieve. So, they go all in on neither running nor academics/career and fail at both.

Athletes at NAU, Arkansas, Oregon and many other schools also care about their education and future employment. They just didn't have the grades to get into Harvard.

Generalize much? Yeah, there may be some athletes who so ignore their studies and focus on running that there future career prospects are limited. But surprise, some of these so-called less rigorous schools actually graduate runners who get into good professional schools and have wonderful careers.

More American runners right now are competitive for NCAA xc titles than they have been for decades. Charles Hicks identifies himself with Great Britain because of his childhood there but he is a native Floridian and his family has deep roots in Florida; he trained in the U.S. from middle school on and has remained in the U.S. Stanford has had a lot of success with many of the guys listed in this thread. Cole Sprout has track times competitive with Ky Robinson, for instance. He has run very fast in xc before; he has also had injuries. DiDonato and Burke have run very fast in xc before. Right now, all but Robinson are running poorly. But this coaching staff has had success with individuals before and they are adjusting to their peaking the athletes early last year by training through October. Judgment day will be at the end of their season.

There is an illusion that going to Stanford, Harvard or any top school automatically leads to jobs with boatloads of money.

It helps, but you still have to have a plan, get the right internships and interview properly. Without the plan,it's easy to muck up the sure thing.

That said the top school still gives you an upside in a relaunch of your career from grad school.