I'm a D1 runner but am going to room with a non runner next year, anyone one the same?

I was a 4:08 miler in high school - I had a disappointing college career having run only a 3:42 1500. Who knows? Maybe I wasn't that talented. But I didn't train all that consistently either and rarely found weeks beyond 60 miles a week. And frankly, I likely wasn't as mentally tough as I should have been.

But make no mistake about it - I really enjoyed the non-runners I lived with my last three years of college, and I really became increasingly focused on academics as each year passed (yes, to the detriment of my running, because my academic focus became super intense). I was admitted to an honors program (small and rigorous, and about 10 people) which never before had admitted a scholarship athlete, and it made me really, really work, as well as suffer all kinds of ego damage. But it was worth it - and I ended up doing very well, obtaining the highest honors available. Being integrated into academic life (and my non athlete roommates helped) was a necessity to this kind of success. Was this kind of academic focus and athletic excellence mutually exclusive? Not for everyone. But for me it was to an extent. I only had so much energy to go around, and my talents in some respects were limited. (There will be LR posters here who succeed in both endeavors, likely citing success in a difficult engineering curriculum or something similar - more power to them - I didn't have the overall horsepower in either endeavor without making sacrifices to one or the other). I observed that the athletic scholarship thing works best with people who desire to teach and coach. This is not a knock on teaching and coaching - but they are activities which adapt more easily directly from a college athletic experience.

Thirty years on, do I have regrets that I didn't put more effort into running? Frankly, yes. I run three wimpy miles each day now and think about it. But they really are fleeting. I went on to one of the nation's top ranked graduate schools, and once free of athletic responsibility, did far better than I ever could have imagined. It was a winning proposition - running helped me focus and dispense with fear - and the academic work in the honors program made me very well prepared - more than I could have guessed. I did far better than I ever could have dreamed at a top graduate school - school was like running in that the more one put into it the better the returns which were obtained. My wife, whom I met in college and who never participated in athletics of any kind, thinks my wistful thinking about running is nuts because I have an exceedingly good career, well compensated and with a rich intellectual life that is always challenging, and support and love two daughters who are incredible students (so much better than Dad it is not funny) going to the best colleges in the country. She is right - the running thing in the long run makes little sense except for the very few - and anyone who takes steps to be integrated into the social and intellectual life of any institution and away from the often narrow world of running is doing themselves a big favor.

I do feel for college cross country and track coaches, though. It is absolutely in their interest to keep their charges isolated from the many distractions at a university, and while they by and large are good people who want to see their athletes develop as people, leading a life that is tightly bound up in the running community absolutely works to their benefit in terms of athletic performance. And with pressures like Title IX on guys teams, the pressure to have recruited guys or guys on scholarship perform well is intense.

Very few top high school athletes have people looking out for them in the most mature and caring way possible - I sure didn't, coming from a single mother home - but they sure could use them. The DIII guys often have it right - use the sport to express yourself, have fun at it, and yet know from the get go that there is a life to prepare for out there. Forget the Division 1 ego thing - although I sure as heck had it at the time - enjoy the running thing for what it is.

I know others on this board have had similar experiences. But I thought it useful in this context to relate my own again.