Galen Rupp's first ever race? How'd he do?

I recall an interview where Salazar describes that the soccer coach came to him because his freshman was knocking off 200's in 30-32 seconds for a set of ten or so. Salazar had him jump into a race and he ran about 17:00 if I recall correctly. So he was playing soccer and XC both as a freshman.

That's funny because it wasn't long ago he outkicked Lagat in the 5,000 with a final 400 of 52. Maybe that was a dream........ but no doubt that doesn't count because he wasn't running against the kenyans......lol

JerseyTrash wrote:

He got out kicked in the last 300m like always.

Just discovered that the DYESTAT statistics are still available. Rupps time are quite consistent within each year and certainly shows progression:

http://dyestat.rise.espn.go.com/search.jsp?name=Rupp%2C+Galen+%282004%29&athID=19193&school=&schID=&meet=&meetID=&meetLoc=&locationstateD=&eventSearch=&col=&colID=

ireallylikerupp wrote:

I do run run run wrote:

Junior: Wins state XC, 6th at Nationals, runs 3:53 1500, 8:10 3K, 14:20 5K

And if by 6th you mean DNF, you would be correct.

Right, as a Junior, Rupp was 6th at West Regionals, and then DNFed at Nationals:

But, by track he had won Gold at the Pan Am Jr. games, despite only having been 2nd at USA Jrs. behind a college freshmen who I don't think ended up medaling.

I remember racing against Rupp in maybe 1999(not positive) at JO's in Reno. He was 2nd I believe.

I was a Senior and he was a freshman in the Mount Hood Conference. I know he ran at least one XC race his freshman year as my mom met his mom ended up talking about us. He was far enough back that I didn't notice him, besides at that time he wasn't on anyone's radar. In track I started to hear about him but never raced him. At our duel meet I ran the 1500 but opted out of the 3k because we had a big meet coming up that weekend and my team was so far ahead we didn't need the points. He did run the 3k and won probably around 9:30 I remember that it was good for a freshman but not great. At districts he was the fastest in the slow head of the 1500. Salazar wanted him to be in the fast heat but the meet director said no he hadn't run fast enough that year. He ended up easily winning the slow heat (somewhere around 4:15) while top 9 in the fast heat were all under 4:10. That first season he had just started running and was just figuring things out and realizing that you actually have to run to get better. He started taking things more seriously in track his freshman year and then took off that summer between freshman and sophomore year by actually training hard and smart.

Yes because a 67 year old Lagat has the speed of the 1500, 5000m double power Lagat that doubled at the WCs.

Rupp was notorious for being out-kicked in his early days.

He also got out-kicked by quite a few people in the Olympic 5k and by at least 1 other person in the Olympic 10k.

I don't see why everyone is so worried about a Olympic athletes first time running, its hardly a good gauge for what happened later in their careers.

jsjs wrote:

If he wasn't running world class times, the he didn't have world class talent at the time. Talent is a performance level.

Talent is not performance level. If talent was just performance level (ie, times), then we wouldn't have a need for the word "talent."

There are different ways talent can manifest itself, but on a high level (and in the context of running) talent is the ability to run a certain time with a certain level of training.

So, especially in the case of a kid, you can have world class talent, but not run world class times, because you have not started seriously training yet.

If Bekele stops training completely, he might be a 15-minute 5k guy. That doesn't make him any less talented, talent doesn't go away. Talent is not performance level.

hayward102 wrote:

That was the only 800m race he ran all year. It was in a dual meet and he won by 8 seconds. He also won the 3k that meet pacing some teammates with a 9:38. In Oregon the meet schedule goes 800m, 200m, 300h, 3k. He also wasn't known for going all out in small meets. It's safe to say he could go faster than 1:59.7.

Thanks for the info/explanation. Now it makes sense.

O.o wrote:

I don't see why everyone is so worried about a Olympic athletes first time running, its hardly a good gauge for what happened later in their careers.

O.o - I don't think anyone is "worried" about it, but it's a good curiosity question - you know the kind of thing to find out on message boards. And it maybe be useful for some young runners to know as they assess their level of early progress in comparison to try and determine if they have a chance to later progress to that level.

I don't have a lot of time to do research, off to work. Galen ran his first race in the fall of 2000, as a freshman, at the Junior Olympic Association meet in Oregon. He qualified for JO Regional Championships and came up to Lower Woodland Park in Seattle, placing second. He later went on the place 2nd in the Youth Division at the JO National Meet in Reno, Nevada.

To my knowledge he didn't run a race prior to the Association meet. Alberto talked him into spending 5 weeks after soccer was over to focus on running, and see how it went.

Obviously it was a great idea.

Was the regional race won by Matt Frerker? I remember that one, since Matt won by a lot.

FirstXC wrote:

I don't have a lot of time to do research, off to work. Galen ran his first race in the fall of 2000, as a freshman, at the Junior Olympic Association meet in Oregon. He qualified for JO Regional Championships and came up to Lower Woodland Park in Seattle, placing second. He later went on the place 2nd in the Youth Division at the JO National Meet in Reno, Nevada.

To my knowledge he didn't run a race prior to the Association meet. Alberto talked him into spending 5 weeks after soccer was over to focus on running, and see how it went.

Obviously it was a great idea.

Here's the Regional 2000 result:

1 502 Galen Rupp MAC/Portland TC 1 13:43.1

2 96 Alex Chohlas-Wood Rain City Flyers "A" 2 13:50.8

3 381 Jeffrey Randall Track City TC 13:53.1

http://www.pntf.org/results/2000/XCReg_M3Youth.htm

physically improved wrote:

wakey wakey wrote: And we're still waiting for message board rat-azzholes like you to grow up...

Poor little wakey wanker. Nothing to say about your hero. So ready to accuse every no American who runs fast as a doper. Rupp is pure as the driven show. Next time, when you talk about your hero, Rupp, keep your pants on.

I also highly doubt that Rupp was focused on running a good 800m time. I would be surprised if he all out raced the 800 more than once his senior year.

Just read 14 Minutes by Salazar. He got Rupp off a soccer team and threw him into an XC meet his freshman year. ~16:40 IIRC on a few weeks of training

Flo'da boy wrote:

I don't know Rupp but I remember Solinsky saying his first cross race in high school (I think 9th grade) was somewhere in the 19s for 5k

i beat solinsky by one or two seconds in the 1999 wisconsin XC state meet. I ran 16:37. He was definitely a freshman.

Don't know about his times, but guessing there were a lot of DNS and DNF results then, as now.

confounding the wise wrote:

Flo'da boy wrote:

I don't know Rupp but I remember Solinsky saying his first cross race in high school (I think 9th grade) was somewhere in the 19s for 5k

i beat solinsky by one or two seconds in the 1999 wisconsin XC state meet. I ran 16:37. He was definitely a freshman.

That was the last race his freshman year. The original quote stated it was his first race his freshman year.

Idiot.

Bobloblaw wrote:

physically improved wrote:

Poor little wakey wanker. Nothing to say about your hero. So ready to accuse every no American who runs fast as a doper. Rupp is pure as the driven show. Next time, when you talk about your hero, Rupp, keep your pants on.

I also highly doubt that Rupp was focused on running a good 800m time. I would be surprised if he all out raced the 800 more than once his senior year.

Musta struck a nerve with your highly dainty and sensitive self.