Why Were Collegiate Times in the 1990s So Slow?

Regarding the OP's UO discussion:

In the mid-1980s a couple of my (all-American) D3 athletes graduated and went out there to train in that atmosphere. They learned a lot and got a chance to talk with many people and observe the Orygun distance guys' training up close.

They said that only one guy consistently ran at the paces he was assigned--not the (alleged) "top" guy, either--and he was the only one who made all-American.

May 27, 2001. Alan Webb ran 3:53.43 as a high school student and inspired a generation of Americans to run faster.

It was slow for elites as well. Just slow everywhere. And I believe a lot foreign standouts were doping heavily back then. Top college kids now are training smarter and running even more miles than the pros did back then. I'm not downplaying what the pros did back then. The right training method back then wasn't as high volume/quality as it is now. I think the shoes also got significantly better. Not just the carbon-plated flats but the trainers are simply better. You can run more miles while beating up the leg less.

I ran for a good D1 program as a walk-on in the late 2000's/early 2010's, and this was pretty much my experience. Racing every session and tempo-ing the "easy" days in between. To be fair the easy days probably were easy for the top guys, but they weren't for me. I did improve in college, but was horribly inconsistent. I'd run a big PB in the mile, then run 10 seconds slower the next week. If only I knew then what I know now...

The days of “train smarter not harder.” The hardest run I’ve ever done was a 10 mile recovery run on a Friday my freshman year (mid-90s). Only time I’ve ever peed blood afterwards. Guys just hammered each other in every single workout while running low miles.

Fair enough! But this is their point exactly!

If you weren't "really good" like Keska or Davis, you were running too hard to try to hang with the top dogs. You can blame the kids for that (normal behavior) or you can ask yourself why the coach allowed it. You can't just let 90% of your team plateau as training fodder for your top two guys. That is bad coaching.

If all these guys started college as under-trained kids with 1:54 PRs in the 800, they should not have left college as 1:50 runners (for example). Considering how hard we all ran day in and day out, something was off with the training program.

College coaching at the time was mostly horsesh*t. A few exceptions.

Plain and simple.

I didn't start running until the mid-2000s, but down here in Australia we still had quite the hangover from the 90s. Lots of coaches still trained athletes the way they'd learned in the 90s; and some local coaches I know still persist to this day.

Anyway, my first coach gave us 3 x hard interval/repetition sessions per week; all of which were at 3k pace or faster, with the lion's share at around 800m pace.

We did absolutely no threshold training - I don't think my coach had even heard the term "lactate threshold".

Mileage was low. For years I thought that mileage was the cause of my many injuries, until I stopped running altogether, picked it up a few years later (with a far less intense schedule) and had multiple year stretches without so much as a niggle.

Graduated in 1995.

XC Did plenty of 1:40+ long runs and threshold workouts. XC did a lot of fartlek on the grass and hills. The sport is similar today. XC-Express was the weekly results, rankings, etc.

Track was very different. The indoor tracks we competed on were nothing like today. The gold standard was a 200m flat track with a real track surface. We ran on everything from a 12 lap to the mile track, a lot hard rubber multi-purpose 10 lap tracks and tracks with very tight turns built to fit a building. Today there are 200m banked or oversize tracks all over the place. And shoes were pretty basic. The Nike pegasus was the trusty training shoe and spikes were pretty basic. Beat the heck out of your calves.

Mt. Sac was the only real super meet. No Stanford, etc. KU Relays, Drake Relays, Penn Relays and Texas Relays was the show. Watching a sub 4 was pretty cool.

1992 and 1996 Olympic Trails standard and field sizes.

1992

Marathon 2:22.00
3000mSt 8:48.64/36
800m 1:49.10/32
1500m 3:43.50/36
5000m 13:58.00/36
10000m 29:10.00/24

1996

Marathon 2:22.00
3000m St 8:45.10/36
1:48.40/32
3:42.00/36
13:50.00/36
29:10.00/24

Honestly I think a lot of people underrate this kind of stuff. Seeing Rupp, Fisher, Jakob, Kerr, and other um... let's say Western runners succeed is a pretty big factor. It's helped break the East African mystique and end the myth that you have to be an East African to have any real success in this sport.

We didn't run enough. When Grete Waitz at running camp told me to run twice a day and told me that a 5 mile run in the morning was a warmup, I finally got it and became decent. I was a mediocre D3 runner, but I feel she probably is responsible for at least a minute off my 5k time! Such a eye opening time.

I wish I had had a similar experience early on. I eventually "got the memo" and ran more miles in later years, but at 18-22, I thought that a fast 7 miler was enough. And it was enough to tire me out because I was running it with teammates who were better athletes than me. So buy doing 7-10 miles a day like that (including our three super hard days), I was exhausted but only running like 60 miles a week.

The population of USA has increased by about 30% since 1990. That will put more competitors at every level, while the NCAA championship 1500m final remains at 12 runners. This could be another reason for the increase in quality at the top end.

Similar timeframe and I trained this way essentially through all of HS and college. My biggest breakthroughs in my career were 1. early in HS before I realized how talented I was and started running myself in the ground and 2. after forced rest from injury/illness. It's funny, I had by far my best year of running when I was coming off a serious injury and illness the spring before and my coach intentionally held me back to avoid aggravating anything. That was the breakthrough year which led to the "best summer training of my life" which began a subsequent year of incredible pain and injury haha.

This was more or less my experience in high school running in the mid 90s. Even as one of the fastest girls on the team, we raced every interval on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I would be so wiped out that I actually crashed the car on the way home one day. But our total mileage in track season (distance) was like 20 miles a week, a bit more in cross country. I was never super talented, but I'd still like to know what I could have accomplished on 40 miles per week and more targeted speed work.

I would be very consistent running on my own all summer, no speed work of any kind but lots and lots of hills in the mountainous area I lived in, and show up at the beginning of cross country as the fastest runner on the team and then barely improve or even get slower throughout the season.

The training was three hard interval workouts (one on hills, one at 1km, one flat at 100) with a fast not so long long run somewhere in between and low overall mileage. We all lived this. Coaches preached quality and intensity over distance and volume and no one questioned it because except for the older coaches who all sounded like old men shouting at clouds.

I think that is a good understanding of the philosophy of American endurance training in that era. You will also note the decline in quality long distance times at that juncture. Even for marathon training the thought was 90 miles a week was enough. I recall it well as a coach during that period.

I was in the same boat. I graduated HS in '86 and ran in college the next four years, and all my training was just like everyone has described. It was HARD, I mean gut busting race pace, getting dizzy and going into "oxygen debt" . I don't ever remember actually running intervals at my 5k race pace. We were always just scorching it.

In the 80's and 90's the training of the 70's was mocked, that's when the term "junk miles" originated. The general idea was that Long Slow Distance Running just makes you a Long Slow Distance Runner.

I wish I could have run now with better training, more volume, less puking in the grass, grabbing on the fence after each rep type of work. I know I left a lot of good races out there on the practice field.

Thanks for mentioning "junk" miles. I had almost forgotten that. It was used for anything below tempo pace ..