Why Were Collegiate Times in the 1990s So Slow?

Way too late for it to matter I ran into a few of our top guys on a morning run. First time in four years.

They were plodding at 9 minute pace, while I was trotting along at sub-6. I never put 2 and 2 together.

Nope. You summed it up. Coaching was terrible. We constantly raced in practice. We sucked in races. If I ran my current “age-graded” equivalents in college I would have been nearly two minutes faster in an 8k. I think the better coaches back then were the ones who had the kids run 6’ miles most of the time, 5:20 on a 10 mile tempo, and then one short workouts. The bad ones had athletes blast mile repeats one day, 400s another and then race on Saturday. I had one of the bad coaches.

I actually remember the first time I did a Jack Daniels Lactate Threshold workout. It was the standard 12x400 but using his chart my target pace seemed laughably easy. The part I wasn't taking into account was the very short rest ( I was used to blazing through 400s but taking long 3-4 min breaks). By rep #6 I was working, by #10 I was really feeling it, and #11 & 12 were quite taxing.

I was an instant convert. It was just SO much more relevant to 5k racing and I wasn't so dead that I couldn't get in decent run the next day.

Ran in the very late 90s/early 2000s - the posters before talking about everything hard are spot on. College was 50-60 min “easy” runs at 6 min pace or faster, workouts were 20 min tempos at race effort, 4-5 miles of 800/1ks/miles all out, or something similar. I made it 1.5 years before quitting and didn’t improve a second from Highschool. Most of the guys who weren’t top 7 were just going through the motions by 3 years in. This was a fringe NCAA D1 qualifying team.

Highschool was 2-3 miles of repeats max (often less), all out, two races a week, 35 miles total a week. When I started running the advice from the top senior was “just run every interval all out”.

My coach was big into Seb Coe, always talked about how he only ran 40 miles per week or whatnot, and speed was king. There just wasn’t much information on training out there, I have a vague recollection of hearing El G ran all his easy runs at 5 min pace (no comment on his uh recovery techniques).

Honestly, the question should be how did guys run that fast with that approach. My recollection was the best guy I knew was kinda lazy and skipped workouts a decent amount, we all thought he was just incredibly talented (and he definitely was talented), not that he was also not as completely fried as the rest of us.

Fast high schoolers become fast college runners.

The internet makes it easier to put together a competent training program.

The internet makes it easier to see that Joe Blow on the other side of the state is running 9:32 so I better try to run 9:30.

Plenty of programs ran high mileage in the 90s.

Alan

After reading this thread I can say that 90s training sounded brutal. I ran in the NCAA from 2014-2019 and I could not imagine training like that. Racing all your runs and workouts takes a huge toll on your body. I can imagine many of you probably dreaded going back to school when August came knowing you had to train like that. Did you guys really not do any recovery days? There had to be a least one day a week where you ran by feel right?

Not really lol

I ran for a team that got top 10 at D1 nationals one year I was there.

I don't think myself or anyone else on the team ran a mile in training slower than maybe 6:15 the two years I was there.

Monday was 6mi "steady"....which meant I was racing to keep up with the top few guys.

Tuesday was run until you puke type intervals.

Wednesday was 6 miles "easy" at around 5:50 pace.

Thursday we crushed another killer workout.

Friday another "easy" 6 or so around 5:50 pace.

Saturday we just hoped we were racing. If we weren't racing we were doing a workout that would make a race seem easy.

Sunday was around a 12mi run at "easy" 6min pace or so.

Always tired. Always cranky. Always inconsistent and never peaked properly.

That said, what a great fukcing time we had lol

As some others have said, the training was just bad. Low low mileage and often too fast workouts with no competition. We also had terrible shoes and spikes that would destroy your legs after workouts.

Today we also have lots of meets (and tracks) for hs and college designed around running fast - but we had none of those. If you didn’t race at Mt Sac in college, you were not getting into nationals since everything was time qualifiers only. Guys would be trying to run NCAA qualifiers in the heats at IC4A or go to last chance meets for any hope at all. And none of these national meets and distance festivals for hs kids.

The only guys running fast in the NCAA were foreign. Top American in XC would be 12th-15th overall. 4:00 might win the indoor mile. You could get in on time to the 5k running 14:15 and 29:40 for the 10k.

Maybe only 1 kid broke 9:00 in the 3200 in 1989. You would be top 10 in the country with a 9:10. Best miler might be 4:06.

Our pros weren’t very good either. Guys running were 13:20’s were the norm until Kennedy showed up. The 1992 Olympic trials were won in 3:36 1500m, 13:40 5k, and 28:19 10k. The standards to get in were 3:43, 13:58 and 29:10.

What a horrible way to waste your college years. Did you compete after college? Did you finally learn?

The shoe technology improved over the years. There was no such thing as vaporflys or dragonflys back in the day

How is that 90's training different than what Harvard and Graham Blanks are doing? As I understand it all the runs are at 6 minute pace. Just the high miles they do and maybe less workouts?

My D1 program was higher mileage and we were successful at the cost of a lot of injuries. The training was just so dumb. Here is what it was like for everyone on the team (bear in mind that the elite talent upperclassmen could handle this, just barely... everyone else (including elite talent freshmen and sophs) was in way over their heads):

Monday - hammer 10 mile progression, always sub 60 and often more like 56 minutes, then all-out strides. One guy (an NCAA champ) ran 48 minutes for 10 miles on this loop.

Tuesday - workout at race pace (there was never anything other than race pace). In cross season this was something like 5-6x mile.

Wednesday - "recovery" day 75 minutes at 5:50-6:30 pace plus all-out strides

Thursday - same as Wednesday

Friday - workout at race pace (in cross season something like 3x (1 mile, 800) or pre-meet

Saturday - long run (90 minutes to 2 hours at 6:30 pace working down to 5:30 pace) or race

Sunday - long run if we raced yesterday, otherwise 60 minutes at 6:30 pace

Oh yeah, add in 3-4 doubles [4-5mi at 6:30 pace] and you're cooked!

Tempo running was not a thing unless you count whatever BS we did on Mondays.

It was just dumb, hard training.

Oh yeah, and we didn't have super shoes. Those things are freaking money.

In HS we doubled down by not only racing our workouts too hard, we also raced 18-20x per season.

Yes, we had "easy days" but those were just 5-7 mile runs with the team and always too fast. I ran with my friends, who were better than me, and was working kind of hard to hang with them. They might have been recovering but I wasn't. The "easy" part was how short the runs were...

p.s. I dreaded going to workouts. I knew I was going to get destroyed doing 8x800 all out with two minutes rest, stuff like that. Another common workout was a 4 mile tempo run that I had to "race" to stay with the other guys. It was as hard (for me) as our 8km races on Saturdays.

Shoes,better tracks and often,doping.

Myself and two of my HS teammates all ran D1 via different paths. I was the unsuccessful one. Telling of each persons path may be instructive to understand how the system didn't really work back then unless you came through in a specific way.

We were all within a couple seconds PR at all distances when I was a JR in HS (one guy was a SR). He ended up running terrible that year, not improving much, while my other teammate and I did improve well as JRs, but far below expectations. The older guy graduated, quit running, and went into the military.

My teammate and I made it to higher levels as SRs. I was lower mileage because I was deemed a 800/1600 guy (based on my great kick even though I was really good at long distance when I had enough endurance and I was only a 202 800 guy). My mileage was cut to 25-30 which killed me at 3200m, but I was state class in 1600m. My teammate boosted his mileage to 40-50 to focus on 3200m and became 15th? in the US with 9:10. I still beat him in the mile and owned him in the 800m but he'd gapped me in the 3200m and cross.

I went direct to Pac 10. As a walk-on I was still within a couple seconds of all the incoming freshman in the 1600m and was recruited so I didn't feel like some joker who showed up with unrealistic expectations. I was planning to move to 5000m since I didn't think I'd be competitive at 1500m in the long run. I knew I had work to do but was excited to get started because my teammate had showed me that it wasn't unreal to reach the higher levels.

My same age teammate went to JUCO and ran for a guy who is now one of the best coaches in the country. He spent a year there and transferred to my Pac 10 school with a 14:30s PR at 5000. He had the advantage of already having some endurance development and running with a pretty good team of guys and for a coach who developed him to the next level instead of putting him through a meat grinder.

The older guy (in military) started training for a marathon doing lots of easy mileage and some threshold type work. Started PRing a lot at road distances.

My freshman year in D1, all I did was a lot of sub 6:00 pace runs, which I could do in HS (but rarely did). I could keep up with the All Americans on road runs, and was encouraged to by our coach. Sometimes we'd dip into the 5:30s in the middle of a 11 mile run. On interval days I was mystified at how bad I was running thinking "I'm doing a lot more distance (40-50) and way harder so why am I sucking here?". I absolutely never had a single good interval workout in college. I didn't PR in anything that year. In interval workouts when I tried to pace myself (look at watch), coach would yell at me and tell me I should be looking at the group and stay attached.

My same age teammate transferred in sophomore year and made the top 7 in XC, as he was easily running 25:00 8ks which was good enough then. I was running 27 high 28 low and maybe 12-13th best guy; making the top 7 you'd need 26:30 (we were top 10 in the nation twice and top 20 the whole time I was there so this team was very good). My teammate was able to run at what I'd call the varsity level through his whole college career but stagnated pretty much the whole time he was in college and was never All American or an NCAA track qualifier. He'd later go on to run 4:06y, 8:11, 13:59, and 29:59 in the first year or two out of college, then that was it for him. He was the slowest of the three of us in the mile in high school.

I never improved and began experimenting with higher mileage, not knowing that I should slow down my runs, so I just brutalized myself into oblivion. I transferred to another Pac 10 school after 3.5 years because I was so miserable in both school and running I just needed to start my life over. I quit running for a semester, then started training for a marathon and on a run in the summer I ran into one of my new school's guys who said "we need you on our team". They really didn't but it was nice so I decided I might as well give it a try. At this school everyone was pretty much self-coached (coach non-present) and I ended up rooming with an African superstar so I could learn all I could about what they did. I learned that they did a lot more miles so I started doing that but still at 6:00 pace which I could survive but it was not developing into a better runner. I ended up running low 27s in cross but being 8th man so I didn't make the top 7 (this was a team I totally should have been able to make if I had any idea what I was doing). In indoor track I PRed pretty well in the 3000m but this was my last year so it was all over anyway. I planned to graduate and move on to marathoning.

During all this time, the military guy just kept improving and improving running marathon training and steady tempo runs. He got out of the military, went JUCO for 2 years, then went to D1. I believe he was All American a couple times, won conference championships, and eventually went pro (say B level) in the marathon. He eventually made a World Championship team and qualified for the marathon trials a few times.

I graduated, started working, lived in Park City, and started training longer. Moved down to SLC after a few months, had a great year of training (could run 10 miles at 5:30 pace on the track in SLC for tempos) but still wasn't seeing better race times (I never ran over 6:00 pace so I literally never rested). I eventually started working overseas and there was no running scene there so I quit thinking my goal to make the marathon trials was unrealistic (2:22 standard then).

About 6 years later I discovered letsrun and read about training here and realized I'd never trained properly in my life. It was too late for me but I believe the internet has revived distance running in America.

Sorry for the long post but it's hard to summarize how some people could progress in the 90s while others would hit a brick wall.

This is all ringing so true. I was a walk on at Iowa State. I ran unfathomable workouts, in comparison to any race I ever ran. Recovery times always started based on what the fast guy ran. I probably never really ran over 60 miles a week. Some "easy" runs might be 6 at just over 6:00, with sometimes the last 1 - 1 1/2 at 5:10-5:20. When I quit the team in 1999 and started training myself using Jack Daniels' book everything seemed ridiculously easy. I never heard of a tempo run until I read that book. We did do one workout a year, a 6 mile progression run during cross county, that might have counted as a tempo run. When I read Running With The Buffaloes I was shocked by how comparatively easy their workouts were, in comparison to their race paces, in contrast to what we did at ISU.

If you look at the timing of American (and British) decline, it was well under way before the East Africans became ubiquitous