And running wise they are the#3 or #4 running program in the state right now.
And running wise they are the#3 or #4 running program in the state right now.
The course out here in Sac is very flat and fast
True but still ranked behind 75 other D1 schools and it is the best of D2. Most D2 schools are terrible. Average ACT at Adams is 20. NAU is about the worst in D1 at 23.
Canada has a D2 OLYMPIAN who ran 10.15, 20.59 and 47.30 why didn't he go D1?
He obviously was too dumb to get into a decent school.
wat wrote:
Yes lol
There’s quite a difference between pancake flat, hard packed golf course in 65°F sunshine in California and a couple inches of mud and rain and hail in Indiana
I did not see any really bad muddy sections at Terre Haute but I did not watch the Flotrack stream and I did not see most of the course in person. The sections of the course I saw in person while running perpendicular to the course with hundreds of other spectators was all very soggy so it would have been slow. I compared the times BigTen womens teams ran at the B1G Championship and Great Lakes Regions to their times at Terre Haute. Most had times 10 to 30-some seconds slower at Terre Haute than their best times at the prior two races. Most seemed to be in the 30-some second range. While there was no hail that I saw at Terre Haute there was drizzle both races. There was heavy drizzle up through at least the 1st half of the men's race after which it improved to a very light drizzle. It reminded me of the 2018 Boston Marathon experience except the wind was stronger and the rain much heavier at Boston. Travel north on I-69 after the race between mile markers 260 to 290 was very dangerous at times due to icy roads. We traffic was running 35 to 40 miles an hour for much of that stretch. We also had terrible weather for 2 of 3 trips to NXN Midwest years ago. Once due to a snow storm and another time due to multiple tornadoes throughout that section of the state.
if there ever has been a thread built for me on letsrun, it's this one. I literally marked the course for D2 nats at Haggin Oaks this year and was on the lead cart during the races.
The course is fast for many reasons:
short grass, packed well.
lots of straightaways and no tight turns
very little elevation change
very good weather, if a little warm as somebody else stated. probably 60 degrees during the 10k.
race starts with around 900m in a straight line, so it's easy to get into a rhythm early and there's no need to "get out" to avoid a bottleneck
as for vaporflies, they wouldve been a decent choice for this course but not all that much better than a spike. not that many runners even wore them, despite what others here have said.
something that others haven't mentioned is that the winner of the men's race didn't exactly blow away the field. the initial leader through 8k or 9k ended up gapping the eventual leader before blowing up pretty bad.
If you look on flotrack, D2 Nationals were in perfect weather on a fast course. D1 was in downright awful weather conditions on a pretty fast course.
The number of scholarships is even with the men but not with the women (D.I women can offer 18). Not all of the D.2 schools are terrible academically, and Mines is much better than an average D.I school. The top teams and athletes in D2 are close to the better D.1 schools but there isn't as much depth. You don't have to put down D.2 to pump up D.1's. The best D.2's can run at D.1 schools but make more of a competitive impact by running where they are. Celebrate the races. I'm willing to bet that very few of those posting ran this weekend in any of the 3 championships. Celebrate the races.
Checkout the following photo to see the course at LaVerne Giblson for DI races.
Album below:
I think the OP knows. Just wanted to stir up controversy. Most know that there is only a slight overlap of D2 and D1. Probably 10 guys from D2 would finish top 100 in D1. Some years there is overlap with D3 also but the level of competition was down significantly in D3. Some of the top guys are only 14:40 track runners which wouldn't make an average D1 team.
Except wrote:
Mines is the #84 national university and #34 public in the US News rankings... higher than six of the top 10 D1 finishers yesterday including their own state's flagship
Mines is a very good school, but there is no way it is better overall academically than CU Boulder. Certain programs certainly, but not overall. I don’t care what crazy rankings you’re looking at.
They are both foreigners so it doesn’t matter
You D2 types want to believe that you are just as competitive as the D1 athletes. What I would say is rather than trying to compare times across separate cross country venues that have vastly different conditions, you take a look at track and field times as they are the great equalizer. Last year, D1 had 79 athletes run sub 14:00 in the 5K, D2 had 4. D1 had 33 athletes run sub 29:00 in the 10K, D2 had 1. D1 had 93 athletes run sub 29:30 in the 10k, D2 had 3. You are delusional if you believe Mutai would have beaten Kurgat. He would have been lucky to be in the top 25 of the D1 race.
The thing you’re missing is: The runners from Mines all have real majors that will lead to careers with real $. There are no easy majors at Mines. Sure the best student at the D1 schools are great - but there is very little cross over between the kids which get the school the high academic rankings and the kids who get the high athletic rankings. Mines is this collection of freaks who are able to get a useful degree and achieve athletically, beating the other D2 schools which are basically 5 year long running camps. Mines is absolutely harder to get into academically than CU.
Mines is very good at what it does academically. Its petroleum, mining, civil and chemical engineering schools are top notch. But don't take CU's engineering schools for granted. If you want to find true academic / athletic super freaks, look at student athletes like Sage Hurta and Kaitlynn Benner who were google cloud academic All-Americans with 3.97 and 3.95 GPAs in Chemical and Bio engineering while also earning multiple athletic first team All-American awards during their tenure at CU. Hurta ran the fastest times in the NCAA last spring in the 800 and 1500 prior to the NCAA championships during a redshirt season. There is nobody in the history of Mines that could come close to that as an academic / athletic super freak.
Congratulations on cherry picking these two outliers. Yes there are a handful who can pull it off, but absolutely not a full xc squad. My point is that XC is basically a proxy for depth in a distance program - and while there will always be exceptions to - it still holds that the kids placing in D1 national XC meets are not the same people driving academic rankings. Easy majors and drastically relaxed admissions for the athletes in D1.
Why would that be different at CU than Mines?
Other than a few runners, nobody on the East coast has heard of Mines but they have all heard of Colorado. Entry standards are similar and graduation rates are similar but CU has much broader name recognition. Then argue with a hiring manager that Mines is better but he hasn't heard of them because they are D2 and he starts laughing. D2 has a terrible reputation so even if you attend the one or two D2 schools that are average schools, they get lumped in with all of the crappy ones.
Why didn't these super student athletes choose MIT or Stanford or Notre Dame? Maybe it was because they either weren't fast enough or weren't smart enough for MIT.