OSU and the "Vacuum Season"--how it went wrong

Excellent post by the OP, captures exactly what I had thought about OSU the whole season.

To the guy who said that OSU's 5-6-7 ran terrible... how do we know that? The vacuum isolated them from having to run balls-out during the course of the season. Maybe, as it turns out, they're just not as good as many people thought they were (probably including themselves and their coach). Because they never faced a deep and highly competitive field with the expectation of running all-out, they never saw how good/bad they really were and never got the experience of hurting and feeling shitty and having to press on and compete and put it all on the line. In my opinion, which includes plenty of NCAA meets, there is no substitute for that.

How is this year different from how Ok State prepared for the 2007 XC nationals?

People are quick to point fingers now because many of you feel 'cheated' in some way that YOU didn't get to see OSU 'all-out' at Pre-Nats or Jamboree or Regionals. Many of you are upset because YOU wanted to see stellar times by the young guns. But that is not the way OSU has done things in the past. So why would they change the stradegy this year.

In fact, I think this is the first year in the past 4 that OSU has bombed (considering 8th bombing it).

2008 they finish 8th after being considered a contender

2007 they finish 3rd after being ranked 10th

2006 they finish 10th after being ranked 15th or 16th

2005 they finish 8th after being ranked 18th coming into the championship

2004 they finish 30th similar situation to this year in that their #1 drops out, as well as their #2

Even the best plans don't work every year. And always remember, no one has ever made a statue of a critic.

mouthrunner wrote:

Excellent post by the OP, captures exactly what I had thought about OSU the whole season.

To the guy who said that OSU's 5-6-7 ran terrible... how do we know that? The vacuum isolated them from having to run balls-out during the course of the season. Maybe, as it turns out, they're just not as good as many people thought they were (probably including themselves and their coach). Because they never faced a deep and highly competitive field with the expectation of running all-out, they never saw how good/bad they really were and never got the experience of hurting and feeling shitty and having to press on and compete and put it all on the line. In my opinion, which includes plenty of NCAA meets, there is no substitute for that.

Point 1:

Here are their 5-6-7's places from last year: 21-53-56, all raw scores. Considering all of them placed more that 70 places behind last year we can assume they ran poorly. More history, the #7 was 70th in 2006, the #6 has been all over the place, from 56 to 246, so maybe he's just inconsistent. #5 has only run NCAAs once, but 21 is a good indication that he should be placing higher than mid-120s.

Point 2:

You really think that the runners at Oklahoma State somehow forgot how to run 'balls-out' because they didn't race enough this year? After a base building session have you ever forgotten how to run faster than easy pace? Not only that, workouts teach a runner how to run while in debit or in pain, not only races. But all-out race efforts take more out of your 'tank' than do workouts (to an extent). Since the NCAA requires X # of meets to be DI eligible why not run some as controlled efforts?

I disagree.

Iona had a big day. Ledwith 3rd? Khadroui top 10? Those two guys hadn't run like that all season, let alone in the past. I think Iona had a surprise finish. If they hadn't run the way they did, and Fernandez hadn't gone down(i know this is super-conditional) Ok state would've wound up 2nd, which is right where a lot of people expected them to finish. Don't diminish OK state's efforts just because another team made an extraordinary effort.

Also, didn't every other top-10 contending team basically do the same thing that OK state did? Many top 10 caliber teams purposely hold back athletes or hold back putting forth a full squad for one reason or another only because they want to save those athletes' efforts for a bigger fish down the road. We've seen Wisconsin, Oregon, Stanford, Iona, Arkansas, and other teams do this before, this season included.

I would not say that what the Cowboys did at regionals was the wrong thing to do, at all. Why take the green light and hit the gas in your first 10k of the season a week out from the most important race of the season, another 10k albeit? Why blow their loads on a regional race that doesn't really matter if they win or lose, because in the end, at NCAA's, they wouldn't really be competing against those teams anyway. Minnesota? Tulsa? No where near Ok State's league. They ran smart. They ran to win without expending more than necessary energy so they could save it for the future.

And to play more devil's advocate, talking about how Ok State dodged running their full squad in one race at Pre-nat's, that also keeps other teams out of the dark, not just themselves. And the runners OK state ran in the open race, Fernandez, Kosgei, and Lowe, are strong competitors anyway, with maybe the exception of Lowe. I wouldn't think not running Fernandez and Kosgei in the white race would seriously affect their and their team's chances of racing competitively when it comes to the big races. Guys like Fernandez and Kosgei are fierce competitors, there's no doubt about that, so not running them in an early season trial run of the national course isn't going to hurt them in the end. There's no vacuum, just smart planning and bad luck.

The OP has a point and a valid one.

There is no substitute from running in hard races that matter. If the ducks race portland once a season they have a decent measure of where they are at (and vice versa for portland) let alone stanford.

Ok. State dodged the bullet and inflated their reality. The way to learn to deliver at NCAA's is to deliver at something that matters with strong competition at some point in the season.

And spotting the ducks that much margin is pretty amateur. You have a squad with 5 all americans, two of which are olympians, and the two who were not yet all american had top 10 finishes in the best conference in the NCAA. These guys can most likely run faster over the last 5K then yours, so why give them a huge spot over the first 5K?

I'll admit that Ok States top 3 had made a valiant effort to move up and if German had finished they would have looked good, but not better than the top 2 teams. I think coach smith should have had his guys committed to racing for the win if they thought they had a shot rather than running their butts off while staring at the backs of the majority of the field. Letting everyone get in front of you doesn't allow you to run slower, it means you have to run faster.

Colorado used to do that because they can't start fast at altitude. It worked a few times, not others but it was probably their best strategy. Against the old stanford teams or the new oregon teams that doesn't work.

Too many miles on grass and not enough miles on the crete. End of thread.

Maybe it would have helped Colby Lowe to have run in the real race at prenats so that he could have experienced a national class college race before nats.

1) Last year's results are fairly well correlated with how they should do this year, sure. However it's easy to lose 70 places-- that's only what, 30 to 40 seconds? Well within the usual range of performance for a 10k cross.

2) Why did they run terribly? Perhaps some of it was lack of experience racing hard in a highly competitive field. Since you're asking me, after a base building session I need lots of workouts AND a few hard races before I'm ready to race well. I think it's good to do an all-out race effort, but that's just my opinion.

It is certainly not asking too much to ask an athlete to run hard 3 times in a cross country season (Pre-Nats or Big Invite, Conference, and Nationals). If anyone disagrees with that, then we'll just have to agree to disagree.

irun wrote:

I disagree.

Iona had a big day. Ledwith 3rd? Khadroui top 10? Those two guys hadn't run like that all season, let alone in the past. I think Iona had a surprise finish. If they hadn't run the way they did, and Fernandez hadn't gone down(i know this is super-conditional) Ok state would've wound up 2nd, which is right where a lot of people expected them to finish. Don't diminish OK state's efforts just because another team made an extraordinary effort.

I totally see where you're coming from regarding Iona's outstanding performance. I'll admit that the fact that they and Oregon ran well is no reason to call Oklahoma State's performance bad. And as a few others have pointed out, it just comes down to a few guys having a bad day. Nationals is a shitstorm, and there are countless possible reasons for why a team could have a bad day. I'm just trying to suggest what I see a potential reason in this case. Regarding other teams holding runners back, or previous OSU teams doing this--I agree that this is common practice, but as I've said earlier in the thread I think this year was different regarding the degree of it. Last year's OSU team still had all their guys hammering conference and regionals, most at chili-pepper too, and they ran most of their top guys at pre-nats (not in the open race). The difference between limited exposure and no exposure is what I'm trying to get at, and why I called it a "vacuum."

Also, to the people who apparently hate me for posting my opinion, I just want to say that I'm not trying to pretend like I'm an authority. I'm just a huge fan, and I'm really interested in this stuff, and I thought that other people might find it interesting to agree or disagree. Clearly a lot of people have their opinions about the season, why can't we all discuss them? I'm not on here bashing anyone, I'm just presenting my opinion, and I wouldn't presume to give advice to Coach Smith. Debating and predicting and speculating is part of the fun of being a fan.