Kyle Merber does not make it to NCAAs!

"Soft, over rated, washed up, has been", .... Typical posters on here. Have NO idea what you are talking about. Ignorant as hell. Check out the posts of those who purport to know him & you'd get......"Fast as hell, articulate, nice guy, fun, awesome team mate, humble..."

"Soft, over rated, washed up, has been", .... Typical posters on here. Have NO idea what you are talking about. Ignorant as hell. Check out the posts of those who purport to know him & you'd get......"Fast as hell, articulate, nice guy, fun, awesome team mate, humble..."

fun. wrote:

"track was short" said by people who are jealous of Merber's time and stupidly think that if they never heard of the school (Swarthmore) then clearly it is not a real track.

Ask any Div III runner what Swarthmore is and enlighten yourself.

as someone who has raced there and watched merber's race there last year, i would absolutely believe that the track is short, nothing crazy but maybe like a couple meters or something. guy runs a 335 on a rainy, windy day in a low key meet then doesn't even make natties two years in a row.. theres three options here: he's been hurt/unable to train consistently (which doesn't explain not making it last year), he's a choker, the time is illegitimate and he's just really not that good. pick one

Shmerber is done, kid's been beatin off since swarthmore last year. needs to take a hike, go back to strong eye bro, let the big boys duke it out while u admire ur earrings in the mirror. this lunatic is everything that is wrong with collegiate running, pretty boy who thinks he should get a free pass to the finals because he shit on people in one race, get a life man. i for one think this playboy needs to be taught a lesson, try earning something for once in ur life bro, just cuz u run for texas doesnt mean people r gonna lay down for u, this isnt HHHW bro, show ur stones or go home.

well i don't think he thinks that lol to me he doesn't seem entitle or perhaps you are trolling. Me thinks the latter.

Last spring Merber came down with a pretty bad stomach bug the week preceding nationals, and was still fairly weak come prelim day.

Since cross country this year he's been battling little injuries nonstop, and hasn't really had the opportunity -due to the demands of a full NCAA racing schedule- to take a step back and get healthy.

Kid thrives on consistency. Leading up to that 3:35 none of his workouts were other worldly, he just didn't miss any/wasn't physically or mentally impeded at all.

consistent? i'm pretty sure ur not/were not on columbias team so lets not jump to conclusions. thing is, guy had a rough year for whatever reason, could have been for a million reasons, everyone does at some point, leave him alone and stop speculating. I'm sure he'll bounce back if he decides to keep following the dream

As someone who is a Columbia alum and still has deep ties to the team and system, from what I understand, what Tom Hanks Fan said is spot on. My CU sources indicate it has not been smooth sailing from an injury perspective this year for Merber.

Can someone just measure it on google maps?If the track was short, why didn't Willis stay in the race? With his 330 pb he could have run a 327 on a short track. Have any other races been exceptionally fast? I'm going to say no. When you have an Olympic silve medallist pacing, someone is going to run fast.

dixswizzle wrote:

as someone who has raced there and watched merber's race there last year, i would absolutely believe that the track is short, nothing crazy but maybe like a couple meters or something. guy runs a 335 on a rainy, windy day in a low key meet then doesn't even make natties two years in a row.. theres three options here: he's been hurt/unable to train consistently (which doesn't explain not making it last year), he's a choker, the time is illegitimate and he's just really not that good. pick one

"a couple of meters" doesn't account for such a leap.

The short track conspiracy theorists never realize the true absurdity of their comments.

For a 3:40 guy to run 3:35 simply because the track is "short" would require the track to be short 34 meters. I have a hard time believing that a track would be 9 meters short per lap. Everybody would have been running AMAZING prs at that meet, not just the 1500m runners.

If this track was even a METER short, it'd amount to about 8/10ths of a second for a 1500m runner.

If you believe Swarthmore's track is short in any way, you're an idiot.

(And yes, I've been to the track and this meet.)

tweet today from dan huling:

"@DanielHuling: I am officially vacating my PR of 3:37.50 from Swarthmore Last Chance in 2012. I will revert to 3:39.24 from #OxyHP."

Take from it what you will, but even the guys who ran in the race seem to realize its absurdity.

dixswizzle wrote:

tweet today from dan huling:

"@DanielHuling: I am officially vacating my PR of 3:37.50 from Swarthmore Last Chance in 2012. I will revert to 3:39.24 from #OxyHP."

Take from it what you will, but even the guys who ran in the race seem to realize its absurdity.

Dang, are there more deets on this?

Wow the people of Letsrun have hit an all time low in actually believing a meet that has been used as a Division 3 NCAA national qualifier is using a short track. Do people realize how many guys qualify for Division 3 NCAA's using this track? I'm pretty sure the distance has been ratified by some sort of committee because this meet has served as a last chance meet for the past few years. Is it not plausible to think that a bunch of guys who are super fit can all arrive at the same location with some confidence, motivation, and just pure fire and run a time well within their capabilities? Just having the privilege to hop in a race paced by an Olympic Silver medalist would surly get some guys hyped up to do something big. Remember, this race was full of college guys who are set to peak at NCAA's. It makes sense that they didn't run any faster after this meet. They peaked for NCAA's which were holding the regional championships 9 days after Swarthmore. Did Dan Huling even run any other 1500's after Swarthmore? Nate Brennan went on to run faster so surly that should tell you something.

Does Swarthmore hold any type of conference meet or invitational at it's track during the regular season? If the track was short then I think we would see some ridiculous times coming out of small meets.

I was at the meet last year. Nick Willis paced perfectly for 1300 meters before stepping off. He already had the A standard for the Olympics so there was no point in him trying to solo a 3:35 race. Nate Brennan was on pace to run 3:35 which is well within his capabilities as Brennan has run 3:34. Brennan locked up big time on the final straight away and got hawked down by Merber off of an incredible kick.

Riddle me this ;

do folks think the circumference of the track is less than 400 meters or are they saying the officials used an incorrect starting point for the 1500.

If the former what are they saying is the true lap measurement/ if the latter what line on the back stretch could the officials have mistaken for the start of the 1500 that would have caused this, or as some say this continuum, of short race?

former Theory

It was a 6 lane cinder track that went to 8 lanes like Franklin Field adding the lanes inside. Then another group put down an all weather surface thinking the old track was 440 in lane one and hired a contractor who saw a good thing and saved about 2% on material cost pouring it short. Then the contractor told his brother the line painter how short the track was. Armed with this information the linepainter shrunk all his measuring devices that amount and painted the lines.

latter Theory including a continuum clause

3000m steeplechase with inside water jump start line is used to start 1500. The 3000 steeple line label indicates it is also the 1500 start,or the 3000msteeple and 1500 labels are transposed leading to shorter 1500m times and longer 3000m steeple times.

I don't know if that was actually Merber posting but I do know that he reads these boards and definitely has seen this thread by now.

lotta haters on this board. sucks to see.

You people aren't serious, are you? I live in Swarthmore. I run on that track every week. I was at that meet. The starting line for the 1500 was the correct one. The track isn't short. It has hosted countless DIII meets in a conference that includes Haverford, perennially one of the top DIII teams in the country.