D1 guys drinking hard training hard

I'll be honest, I had a bummer of a collegiate career. I had numerous injury issues and only ran 25 flat in the 8k a few times during cross. I ran in the mid 14:30's for 5k as well. I can tell you, now 8 years out from collegiate running, boozing regularly in college is a choice, but it can have some serious consequences. I boozed it up in the off season and had a "good" college experience overall. To some extent I was satisfied with my PRs. Truthfully I was satisfied, got good grades and felt ready for the real world. But as many post-collegians have described, "many of us were alcoholics, only to be realized later on". I had a seriously hard time when booze coincided with stressful times after college. Post-college, I struggled with drinking. I immediately lost connection with friends, diversity of experience, and felt serious disappointment in the economy. I struggled with missing friends and the general transition from student to professional. The current poor economy has probably made worse the experience overall, but I've tried to make the best of everything. Meaningless drinking has followed me throughout the good times and bad times. Only recently have I felt positive about my training and ability to control my actions (currently at 25:54 at my hometown TT 5M). I guess the point is: it's just easy to become complacent about all things once college running is over. Make it a point to always be in control of your decisions. Boozing is a good time but it can also become something bigger than yourself. Celebrate and enjoy life but always be the director of your decisions.

I'll be honest, I had a bummer of a collegiate career. I had numerous injury issues and only ran 25 flat in the 8k a few times during cross. I ran in the mid 14:30's for 5k as well. I can tell you, now 8 years out from collegiate running, boozing regularly in college is a choice, but it can have some serious consequences. I boozed it up in the off season and had a "good" college experience overall. To some extent I was satisfied with my PRs. Truthfully I was satisfied, got good grades and felt ready for the real world. But as many post-collegians have described, "many of us were alcoholics, only to be realized later on". I had a seriously hard time when booze coincided with stressful times after college. Post-college, I struggled with drinking. I immediately lost connection with friends, diversity of experience, and felt serious disappointment in the economy. I struggled with missing friends and the general transition from student to professional. The current poor economy has probably made worse the experience overall, but I've tried to make the best of everything. Meaningless drinking has followed me throughout the good times and bad times. Only recently have I felt positive about my training and ability to control my actions (currently at 25:54 at my hometown TT 5M). I guess the point is: it's just easy to become complacent about all things once college running is over. Make it a point to always be in control of your decisions. Boozing is a good time but it can also become something bigger than yourself. Celebrate and enjoy life but always be the director of your decisions.

AJ Acosta did pretty well in college....

http://www.beermile.com/query_indy/submit_1/ref_query/name_AJ+Acosta

lol at suggesting there is 5-7x more alcohol in canadian beer.

Reading comprehension not your forte, sonny?

namlys wrote:

lol at suggesting there is 5-7x more alcohol in canadian beer.

Having ran in the Big East I can say it does and it doesn't. My team did their fair share of drinking and to give you a couple example we had one kid who literally was an alcoholic drank every and drank hard but still went to practice at 7am and still would drop a 1:50 in a meet despite drinking heavily the night before. However this makes one wonder if he could have gone sub 1:50 without the booze. Then we had a freshman miler come in who ran 4:09 in high school off very low mileage. However he got into the party scene a little too much and ended up putting on 20 or 30 lbs and dropped out after never reaching his potential. So it really depends on the person.

b33r wrote:

AJ Acosta did pretty well in college....

http://www.beermile.com/query_indy/submit_1/ref_query/name_AJ+Acosta

Apparently AJ Acosta drinks Coors Light. I used to have respect for him. No longer.

You can always transfer or quit. If you don't meet the terms of your academic scholarship, you get'er yanked too. Keep boozin' bra.[/quote]

Where in the post you are replying to did the writer say he drank or 'boozed'? You think people who disagree with you are all slacker-drinker-'bros'?

Yeah, drinking's a choice college athletes have to make. Some make good choices--drink none or only in slight amounts on occasion, others get hammered and 'lose their scholarship'.

But just because someone responds to you're d***wad elitist post does not make them a boozer or an irresponsible person. For all you know you could be talking to some high quality athletes, ones you'd dream of having on your team, aggressively accusing them of profuse alcohol abuse.

For all we know you could be some great D1 coach too. But i'm inclined to think not. Great coaches don't threaten their athletes--they know what makes them tick and inspire them. It's a reflection on your coaching if your athletes drink. Most runners, if the coach is unselfishly giving it his all, will respond and put all that they have into their training and racing. A great coach wouldn't be complaining about how hard their job is and would certainly not waste their time on Letsrun.com immaturely accusing anonymous people of being 'frat-boy boozers'.

^ Yea, couldnt agree more...

"Keep boozin' frat boy"

I despise "frat boys". I am a recent graduate of a D2 program. I narrowly missed All-American status in xc. I run 90 mpw. I put in the time and effort it takes to run decent times. My Pr's are rather mediocre, however i am content in knowing that i got them by training hard, and racing hard. But if you for one minute think that i would rather stay holed up in my room on a Friday night after an ass kicking workout with my close - friend team mates, or "call it an early night" after setting a nice PR or running a great race on a Saturday morning, then you are sadly mistaken; not only about me, but for more collegiate runners than you think. I completely agree with many posters on this thread in that attitude and common sense is everything when it comes to drinking, and im not necessarily advocating "Drinkin HARD" However, i will state that to ostracize someone for having a social life outside of running (which may involve some alcohol)is very immature. Plus, if your job was all that bad, why the hell did you sign on? If it was for the love of the sport, my guess is that you'd be putting more time into the development of your athletes rather than encouraging posters (most likely college runners themselves) to "keep boozin". Damn, you sound like one hell of a motivator.

One word kid: PRE

just don't kill yourself in a drunk driving accident... or drive at all for that matter. I trained for the marathon this spring and drank 3-4 nights a week without serious issues. If you feel too sh1tty to finish your workouts just stop a pint or two sooner next time

Anonymous Intent wrote:

I once ran a 2 minute PR in the half marathon two nights after getting pretty drunk. It was irrelevant to the race.

The fact that you PR'd by that much just makes your statement even more worthless. If your original time was actually bad enough that you were capable of setting a 2 minute PR then you were going to set a better time no matter what you did. If your PR was 67 minutes and you dropped a 65 I'd be impressed. No one really cares that you dropped your best time from 80 minutes to 78.

Show me where I complained about my job. I was clearly responding to the insinuation that it's a cushy, care-free money maker. My athletes now know that if they meet me half way, I am behind them 100% through thick & thin & it's working pretty well. It took a house cleaning to get here, but it worked. Now we don't have to be asking ourselves "what could have been" like "more collegiate runners than I think" do.

-D***wad Elitest

At the risk of putting words in someone else's mouth, I believe both Bob Kennedy and Todd Williams (who were the American elite of the 1990s) both said they started racing much better and training much more consistently when they limited their drink.

D1 Coach why don't you tell us where you coach so we can look up your "low salary" in the public records.

"but if your job depended on the performance of 18-23 year olds what would you do?"

DI Head Coach wrote:

Show me where I complained about my job. I was clearly responding to the insinuation that it's a cushy, care-free money maker. My athletes now know that if they meet me half way, I am behind them 100% through thick & thin & it's working pretty well. It took a house cleaning to get here, but it worked. Now we don't have to be asking ourselves "what could have been" like "more collegiate runners than I think" do.

-D***wad Elitest

You said that before anybody made statements about your "cushy care-free money maker." But I am confused because on one hand you say "I tuck it away in my file when we talk about scholarships," and on the other hand you say "now we don't have to ask ourselves what could have been," kinda contradicting yourself, Coach. It's also funny how you're posting on letsrun.com during "work hours," I thought your job was tough? Shouldn't you be making recruiting calls or training plans? If you indeed, are a D1 Coach as you claim to be

All of this is absolutely ridiculous. BS "the college experience." The college experience is immersing yourself in academics, becoming a part of a community, growing as a person. The unfortunate side effect is binge drinking. You are not typical college students, if you want to be than just quit and make drinking your sport. Drink in the off season, fine, whatever. In season is so stupid, and to all of you who say it has no effect on your running-BULLSHIT. It's really sad to me that the only way you can have fun is to get hammered and not even remember what happened. I have a teammate who can hardly socialize and interact with others unless she's drinks a ton. Sad. I look forward to seeing you all in 10 (heck 5) years as alcoholics who can't move on from "the good old days." Sounds like fun. What a freaking joke.

Ghost of Ashenfelter wrote:

At the risk of putting words in someone else's mouth, I believe both Bob Kennedy and Todd Williams (who were the American elite of the 1990s) both said they started racing much better and training much more consistently when they limited their drink.

Pretty sure he asked about D1 athletes, not some of the greatest in US history. Of course when you're on the elite, or Bob Kennedy's level, everything factors into racing better, but for collegiate athletes, areas such as lack of form drills, strength training, etc. probably have a greater negative effect on their performance than drinking

I aint no historian or logician, but wouldn't BK and TW have been D1 guys? And if they stopped drinking and got better wouldn't that logically mean that they used to drink when they were younger and not as good? Like, when they were D1? Like, prior to being elites?

so drinking during the season which is anytime from (aug-nov or jan-may/june) makes you an alcoholic? right, go yank it to flotrack vids on the weekend while everyone else thinks about something BESIDES running for a night