Lindsay Scherf racing marathon one week post-NCAAs??

What is wrong with Sherf? Has she been injured? I would think she would be one of the NCAA's best this yr and has really just done nothing. Popped a race here and there but bombed at all the championships. Does she over train/under eat?

I ran a marathon after x-c my sophomore year. I haven't gotten injured, at least not yet. So Scherf's plan seems quite reasonable to me.

Tom

I definitely think it is not a good idea for a college runner to do a marathon while they are in college. Most of the people that replied on here have no idea what it takes to compete at the college level, especially as a distance runner with a cross country, indoor track and outdoor track season to try and run well in. Throwing in a marathon on top of that will not benefit her in any way and will most likely hurt her in terms of her summer training. She needs to take a short break after a long season and then start building her miles up for the cross country season next fall. You can start running soon after finishing a marathon, but it takes more than just a few days to fully recover from a marathon, so why would you do that to yourself after a long track season and a cross country season not too far off. You really can't compare this to runners that are out of college and do road races and one or two mararthons a year. There is just such a difference in the training and racing that goes on for a collegiate runner. To those that have said they did do a marathon while in college and that it didn't hurt them, how do you know it didn't. Maybe you didn't get hurt, but it doesn't mean you were running up to your potential.

Also, a collegiate athlete as competitive as Linsday is will push herself much harder in the marathon than the typical person will that competes in marathons. I suspect her recovery may take longer, especially after her first ever marathon.

Maybe she\'s trying to run a trials qualifying time before she graduates. She\'ll graduate in the spring of \'08 and the trials are in the summer of \'08. I think she can definitely run it in 2:45 or whatever the time is.

This is usually a concern but I believe she has been running enough miles to easily run one and not get hurt.

At the risk of speaking too much at length about other athlete's personal lives and guessing their thoughts, I do believe this to be an interesting point that she hinted at in her interview:

Her choices aren't necessarily a surprise given her success in HS running and then choice to attend an academically challenging undergrad institution... with D3 athletics.

I'll grant you that Williams is the best D3 athletic school, as evidenced by their collection of Sears awards, but that doesn't place them in the top-10 liberal arts every year.

My point is that I think her reasons for attending Williams are the same ones governing her postgrad prioritites.

Wrong

Wrong

Wrong

Wrong

Not only wrong, but dumb too.

Wrong. Yoda says "What a pussy approach to running, you take"

IT WILL TAKE LONGER THAN WHAT? AN UNDER-PREPARED, OVERWEIGHT GALLOWALKER?

AT ANY RATE IT IS A MOOT POINT BECAUSE I THINK SOMEBODY SAID SHE'S NOT RUNNING.

Lindsey's sub-par NCAA 10K performance was do partly to being somewhat overtrained and more to getting blood blisters on her feet at the two mile mark. She used new shoes, same model as she had been using all along, but the '06 version of that model had some slight changes that Lindsey was not aware of. But even without this blister problem, Lindsey realizes she probably would not have run much better than 33:30 for 4th place.

After a discussion with her new coach, she decided to cancel her Marathon debut and take a full month off with no running. She also overtrained for indoor NCAAs and now realizes she was pushing the max training envelope a little too far. Her new coach seems extremely knowledgeable and is working out a training plan that should give Lindsey a good chance of achieving her high short and long term goals. With a new coach that will provide more control and oversight, Lindsey might do exceptionally well next year.

Yes, Lindsey was going to do Grandma’s to get some marathon experience before the Olym. Trials (early ’08?). She also wanted to get the funded “A” standard to get to the trials, and hoped to run near 2:33 to surpass the American junior record of Jenny Spangler (2:33:52). But Lindsey is not a Junior runner this year because she turns 20 (in Sept.) before end of this year. However Lindsey would have been younger than Jenny Sprangler who set the AJR under the old definition which allowed one to be a junior up to one’s 20th birthday.

she made a smart decision which looks especially prescient given the pretty tough conditions out there today..

Another good distance career down the tubes. Run a couple years in college to make the new coach look good, find out the opportunities after college are very slim for women and become just another former distance ace doing just enough to be competitive at the local level. Nobody in america cares about 5k and 10k runners. The marathon is where it is at.

If she is going to take a month off anyway, she might as well run the marathon while she is in great shape.

A friend - I highly doubt it. More like acoach or adad, but not afriend.

To "bum", I guess the one thing I can say is you have a good name for yourself. Not real intelligent on distance running however. Collegiate runners should absolutely not be running marathons while in college and it has nothing to do with having a pussy approach to training. Let me guess, you are a runner that is constantly trying to do stupid things in training, are constantly injured and underperforming and wondering why these guys that don't train as hard as you are beating you. Being tough does not being better. You definitely need to be tough as a runner, but it helps to have some brains to and understand running a bit, which you don't seem to have those brains.

I just noticed a couple of typo's in my post, I guess I don't have the brains for writing clearly.

NCAA fan-I'm going to respectfully disagree with you based on both my personal experience as a college athlete and as a current coach. Mostly I disagree because you are making very broad statements ("Collegiate runners should absolutely not be running marathons while in college") that may apply to some/most college runners but certainly do not apply to all college athletes. Everyone's strengths, goals and abilities are different.

As a college athlete, first a Nordic skier and then starting junior year an XC runner, I started doing ski marathons as a sophomore (50k). These were at the end of our preseason camp and before the start of college race season. My ski results after my first ski marathon were about 5 levels higher than they were before. I also feel that knowing what 2-3 hours of hard racing felt like made my transition into the 8k's/10k's of XC running a lot easier than it would have been. Now, I never had any talent so I was never going to be a fast guy, but starting XC as a 20 year old I never had any lack of confidence that I could make some people hurt out there because I certainly wasn't going to fade over 28-35 minutes. As a runner I didn't do my first marathon until after senior year XC season but I remember it feeling like an obvious next step. What's to say that Scherf doesn't feel the same way? Unless you have inside knowledge about someone you just cannot say that what they're doing is right or wrong.

As a current coach (runners and skiers) I would say that over the years probably about 50% of my athletes race a marathon before they graduate. Of last fall's roster 2/3 have raced marathons or halfs. Of last winter's ski roster 1/2 have raced 50k (and they all had real good results). I don't coach our Women's XC team so not positive on the stats but it looks like 5 of 13 have raced at least half marathon, and 3 of the 5 freshmen from last fall just ran a May marathon. We don't have Track (well, Track Club but that's not the same) so that changes things a lot. I'm sure if we had to get up for 2-3 "peak" XC races in the fall plus 4-5 "peak" Track meets winter/spring we'd have different priorities.

We are a distance based training system, but we are absolutely not just training college kids to get ready to run/ski marathons after college. We deal with injuries like any other program does, but I don't think we see any higher incidence of injury due to our kids running marathons. In fact, I think that because we don't over do the speedwork we tend to get more long-term development out of our runners.

I'm not sure the argument has been made on this thread that too much too soon leads to burnout, which I hear a lot from other coaches, but our grads would disprove that. Over 70% since I started coaching have raced a marathon, and somewhere between 75% and 90% of my grads continue to be active in racing. In fact, out of our small DII program I've had 3 grads from the last 5 years who have cashed decent checks out on the roads.

From my experience as an athlete and a coach, it isn't "racing a marathon" that makes a college runner (substitute skier and it's still valid) better. It's "doing the training to race a marathon" that makes one a better runner. I can say without hesitation that I have not had a single runner or skier in my programs who was a worse runner after their first marathon than they were before.

I'm curious as to why you are so adamant that college runners should "absolutely" not be running marathons while in college. Personal opinion? Or anything to back that up? Just curious.