Am I the only one on Letsrun who's actually played organized NCAA DIII XC/TF? Like half of the comments I've seen on this thread are so obviously written by hobby joggers that it's almost humorous. When I was in college (3 year starter for our varsity XC/TF team) I would get a full-on sprint going and clock the sh*t outta the first mile of an 8k. My coaches called me "speedhawk" as a nickname caus I had such a nose for the first mile and for those three seasons I was considered the most feared distance runner in our conference. Senior year I led my team to regionals only to get f*cked over by the refs in the 4th mile but that's another conversation (DM me if you're interested in hearing about it) So, yeah. I hope yall can understand why I feel like their's such a big disconnect between myself and your typical Letsrun hobby jogger. Please tell me I'm not the only one who feels this way lol
Am I the only one on Letsrun who's actually played organized NCAA DIII XC/TF? Like half of the comments I've seen on this thread are so obviously written by hobby joggers that it's almost humorous. When I was in college (3 year starter for our varsity XC/TF team) I would get a full-on sprint going and clock the sh*t outta the first mile of an 8k. My coaches called me "speedhawk" as a nickname caus I had such a nose for the first mile and for those three seasons I was considered the most feared distance runner in our conference. Senior year I led my team to regionals only to get f*cked over by the refs in the 4th mile but that's another conversation (DM me if you're interested in hearing about it) So, yeah. I hope yall can understand why I feel like their's such a big disconnect between myself and your typical Letsrun hobby jogger. Please tell me I'm not the only one who feels this way lol
We just watched so-called “Professional” running be exposed twice as a fake sport. No one cares that you ran in college. It has zero market value in the real world.
I ran d3 in the 80s, am in my university’s athletic Hall of fame and at the time didn’t love the sport. But I kept running and I’m 59 now and a top guy nationally in my age group. I grew to love the sport for what it offers in many aspects. Thank god it’s in my life. My high school son also is coming to love it and runs 55 a week so it’s consuming for that age. But he can’t imagine not doing it. Times and progression are just the outward manifestations of a sport that gives so much.
Am I the only one on Letsrun who's actually played organized NCAA DIII XC/TF? Like half of the comments I've seen on this thread are so obviously written by hobby joggers that it's almost humorous. When I was in college (3 year starter for our varsity XC/TF team) I would get a full-on sprint going and clock the sh*t outta the first mile of an 8k. My coaches called me "speedhawk" as a nickname caus I had such a nose for the first mile and for those three seasons I was considered the most feared distance runner in our conference. Senior year I led my team to regionals only to get f*cked over by the refs in the 4th mile but that's another conversation (DM me if you're interested in hearing about it) So, yeah. I hope yall can understand why I feel like their's such a big disconnect between myself and your typical Letsrun hobby jogger. Please tell me I'm not the only one who feels this way lol
I am sorry that this seems depressing to you. I can def. see why many might see this as depressing. But his dream is still alive and he is on his life journey. Good for him. Based on the stuff you shared, he is very passionate and focused and probably has a dream and to me this is not depressing, but is positive. He cares deeply about something. What is depressing to me is young people having no direction and not caring about anything, having no dreams. It seems to me that this guy will eventually come to realize that he just does not have the innate/genetic talent to get to the very top. It may be painful for him to get to this point, but he will get there and that is part of the journey of life. Maybe he will retire from running after college, maybe he will be a local 5km road monster, slaying the locals. Who knows? But, he will very likely come to accept that he is not gonna get to the very top, just like 99.999% of runners. If he stays involved in running he might be in a position to help others or coach others, etc.
A slice of my own journey: I was the best miler on my high school team (4:26), but of course I was not scholarship material. I was very passionate about XC/track. My (not-fully-developed) 17 year old brain actually believed that I could one day break 4 minutes for the mile (I reasoned that all it would take was just 4-5 seconds of improvement each year for 5 years, lol)! After high school, I walked on to a very good DII XC team for my freshman year of college. I actually chose this college not for academics but for the XC/track reputation. For 3 months of XC I got my ass handed to me, day in and day out. Some of the scholarship guys had great talent + great passion and those guys were All-Americans and some other scholarship guys had low passion/low focus/low commitment but still had WAY more natural talent than me and therefore also wiped the floor with me on a daily basis. The easy runs for them were like tempo runs for me. The team tempo runs were nearly all-out efforts for me. As the season progressed, I began to realize that I probably was not ever going to be a high-level runner. It was a mental shift that required time and involved some emotional pain I am sure but it was so long ago. As the season progressed, I developed a reputation as positive cheerleader, fanboy and booster for the top varsity guys and began to not stress about my own disappointing performances (I was way overtrained due to trying to hang with the top guys in practice). At the end of the XC season, the coach did a debriefing with each runner. Just a little quick meeting to check in. Our very-passionate young college coach (who 40+ years later, still coaches today and is a now a very famous college/pro track/xc coach and has coached dozens of Olympians) actually thanked me for walking on to the team. He said that my passion and enthusiasm was infectious and made some of the team's top guys clean up their act a little and do a bit better. He said my presence (I was on the JV squad) made the varsity team a notch better. I was truly touched and honored by this beautiful compliment. Anyway, I ended up transferring to a better academic college with a "run-of-the-mill", high-school-level DIII XC/Track program. I loved my new coach. He never coached a single Olympian but he became a life mentor for me, he was all about being an athlete/scholar... classes came first and running was secondary. I kept competing for 4 more years but changed my focus away from big running dreams to just having fun with my bros and having friends and staying fit and focusing on getting my engineering degree. I never broke 4 for the mile but hey I broke 2 for 800m, lol! Cheers.
Very much this. It's always talent that matter. No amount of hard work will get you around that, and most of the "bro you just gotta train hard and smart" guys are just very talented.
You can even out the field a little bit with peds, but talent with peds will still beat you.
There's a 30 year old man in my local area who ran 15:30 last summer off 10 MPW of running and cycling to and from work. He reguarly finishes first at parkrun in 15:55-16:00. Does almost no running. Never seen him run more than 15 miles in a week.
OP, I know you're talking about Matt Hansen the youtuber hahahaha. When I read lactate testing I immediately knew it. He also ran 14:10 this year.
My opinion is he's just a total running nerd. He's completely harmless but I think he's absolutely cooked himself by over-training as a junior athlete.
I do agree that he's pretty close to his ceiling but he just seems passionate about the sport. Can't knock the guy for making his way onto a D1 team and having a crack.
I was way slower than 14:10 and probably more obsessed with running than anyone. Overtrained myself into oblivion. I have no idea if I was talented as a lot of people I used to beat up on who were training properly broke 14:00 or approached 4:00 for the mile, so this kept me believing that I could get there one day. This was a long while ago so those times were decent back then. I went from wanting to be all american to eventually scaling down to wanting to make the trials marathon qualifier. Never accomplished that or anything else of note post high-school.
I ended up lettering at two different PAC 10 schools although I don't feel like I deserved to. Given my sucky performances in college, it's not something I would ever brag about but it's kind of amazing to me now that I accomplished that. It is not easy to get a letter at UW these days!
While I was failing to improve, I went through a big journey of training with different people, trying out different things in training, living with a Kenyan and getting to know how they trained, etc. I learned a ton about distance running and made a lot of friends in the XC/TF community. I never figured out what I was doing wrong when I was running. After a few years of not running and getting fat, I came back to running for purely fitness reasons, was informed about the existence of letsrun (way back in 2003), and spent some time here learning all the things I didn't know when I was in college, and how to train properly. I was already pretty old at that time but still within the age window of being young enough to PR and maybe qualify for the trials marathon. I wasn't really going for that as a serious goal (more like something to keep in mind) but I decided to just go back to training like someone who was serious (70mpw and some workouts) and had a wonderful year getting back in shape while learning how I should have been training back when I was actually good. I ended up getting a non-running injury that required surgery, then got married and had a child while I was still rehabbing it. I never had time to train full blast again but I learned that you can get back in pretty amazing shape after being way out of shape, a useful lesson to know in life.
I've always enjoyed the sport and have continued to follow it and read letsrun all this time.
Now I have a daughter who decided to make her sport running and I am able to apply all the lessons I learned to help her training. As someone who did pretty much everything wrong, I've been able to help her avoid the pitfalls that kill 95% of all runners, mainly training too hard. She's having tremendous success and lots of fun. Since almost everyone trains poorly, it's been easy to get her near the top of her state and there's no way I'd have been able to do that without everything I learned when I was obsessed.
I will never regret being obsessed with running. At the time I was in college, many things were out of order in my life. I didn't even realize it then, but running was the thing that kept me together. Without it I would have needed something else to carry me and in a city like Seattle it could very well have ended with me finding my way to drugs/heroin/death. So running probably saved my life. The sport is full of really great people and so much more healthy than just getting loaded every weekend. You could do a lot worse than being an obsessed running nerd.
Not everyone can become a top runner. But it does not matter. What matters is that you can look in the mirror after your running "career" and say, "i did everything i could".
And then move on.
We have one (or in rare cases 2) chances to max it out as a runner. After 30 or 35 its too late. Age catches up.
So I recently saw the social media profile of a D1 college runner and went down the rabbit hole of researching him and it left me feeling a little depressed.
So this guy appears to have been running super high mileage from a young age, with a 5k time of around 15:10 at age 14. He then stagnated, failing to improve at all over the next 2 years. Fast forward a couple more years and he's improved slightly, and gets a scholarship to a D1 US college.
He seemed to be doing pretty well there, got a 14:10 5k in Spring 2024. But the thing you need to know about this guy is that he is OBSESSED with trying to maximize his running performance. He runs 100 miles a week, does all the popular fads (double thresholds, lactate testing), and reads all the academic literature. Recently he made an instagram post detailing a workout he did and said he took bicarb before the workout, go figure. He is totally maxed out. There is nothing else he can do to improve his performance.
In spite of all this, his best result was only around 14:10 again in the 2025 outdoor season. He still has two years of college left so has time to improve, but imagine the pressure this kid must be under. Especially from the college and coaches that have invested tremendous resources in him. And of course he is majoring in EXERCISE SCIENCE... because why have a backup plan when you are hellbent on becoming a career athlete?
He made another post on instagram recently talking about all the work he's put into the sport and how it might not pay off now or in a year but that it will pay off 'eventually'. It feels like he's in denial and trying to cope with his situation.
It just put things into perspective for me that there are hundreds of kids just like this guy who are convinced they are going to become Olympians but then hit their ceiling midway through college and the money eventually dries up and they are dumped on their asses after graduation, left to fend for themselves in the civilian world.
What is it that depresses you? I don't see anything wrong here. Is he enjoying what he's doing?