university running only 20 to 30 miles a week.

Speed Kills wrote:

"Speed Kills...It kills those that don't have it!" --US Olympic Track Coach Brooks Johnson

So, what's your connection to Brooks Johnson? Or are you just taking from his quote?

xjcvosdf wrote:

What I find amusing is that the big schools, like Kansas, Virginia tech and Syracuse with all the money they have can't field a xc team that's any good.

However, Syracuse did hire Chris Fox as head XC coach. They will be running decently soon.

OK, so what's Kansas and Virginia Tech's stories? Their distance team are just terrible and have no hope of getting better until they get new coaches?

I agree Virginia Tech sucks but leave Kansas out of this thread. We run more than 30 miles on a weekend.

why are you including syracuse in here? The had a huge improvement last year and now they hired a new coach? Give them a break

would someone explain how a program can run 30, 40, even 50 miles a week and run good at 10K?

OK I have to throw in my story. I was on Virginia Tech campus for recruiting recently and I was taken to the outdoor track. The place has no seating for anyone and there's this big tower looking thing in the middle of the track. I asked if they use that to film runners or something and he said yes. I later found out it is used by the marching band for practice and the track team can't even use the track when the band is practicing. Have you ever heard such crap?

You can run fast on very little with the right genetics---

I don't consider myself real fast, but I run 50-60 and my road 10ks were 30:30-31:19 this year. Is that fast? Maybe not, but it is decent as you say...

Altering your genetics is hard to do these days. So what do you do if you're not gifted. Do you choose another sport or what? Do you just tell your hs team to go home?

"talent is a myth"

then become world champion in the shot put or the marathon, whichever comes first.

Depends on the person. Henry Marsh ran his best on under

fifty miles. George Maley did it on very high milage, but george later became a marathoner. I think Henry tried to run a Marathon once but did not do well.

As for myself I did doubles in high school, 10 miles most mornings but was not fresh enough for those 440's or 880's

in the afternoons.

A coach should work the workout around the athlete.

I found out that our top runner (D2) (female, about 18min 5k) runs 30-35 mpw. It became painfully evident to me that the coach knows nothing about training. This girl will go to nationals, but she could run at the D1 level and probably be running mid 16 5ks with real training. I think she will run these times in the future, but it'll be after she realizes how to train. It's a shame she wound up at such a poor program.

18 minutes and 16 minutes are not close. 45 seconds per mile improvement would be alot.

There is seating! There a some bleachers and a huge hill. It doesn't matter anyway because there are no meets held there. There used to be but they were very small meets anyway. The indoor track hosts some pretty big meets though. And if someone told you the tower was for filming runners, that is indeed a lie but I have a feeling you misheard or are just plain lying. However, the team DOES practice on the track during band practice. Its also CROSS COUNTRY season, not track season so the team is obviously not on the track as much. It has nothing to do with the band. So to answer your question, NO I have not heard of such crap because such crap doesn't exist.

Hey - 6th place in Conference Championships. Perhaps no one at Colorado is sweating right now, but not bad for a "university running only 20 to 30 miles a week" (if there is any sustantiation to this whole thread). Nice job Hokies (and what happened to Tasmin Fanning's sister?).

2005 ACC Women's Cross Country Championship Results

1. Duke (20 points)

2. NC State (91)

3. Wake Forest (104)

4. Boston College (106)

5. North Carolina (128)

6. Virginia (177)

7. Florida State (196)

8. Maryland (214)

9. Virginia Tech (235)

10. Georgia Tech (281)

11. Miami (323)

12. Clemson (327)

18 full scholarships and a 9th place team finish is no reason to toot your horn. Besides the point of the ACC being weak this year is well documented with only 2 men's teams ranked in the top 30. I think people should look at places and pay less attention to the times when judging cc teams. No one will ever really know what the distance really was.

Well I wasn't tooting the horn on the 9th place women's finish, only that the 6th place finish by the men was better than one would expect given everything that has been said on this thread (and presumably the hokie women may have done better if Jessica Fanning was in there). Yeah, it's too bad they all didn't get 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, but such is life.

It's funny reading different web sites. Another site says that Va Tech runs too much mileage. Anyway the point being VT runs 80-90 miles a week (men). Not the 100's that Liberty does but not 20-30 like some VT haters think.

VT also is NOT fully funded. The womens team use to be before 2001, when the women's team was cut to 12 or 13 scholarships because the administration was well over title nine obligations. Part of this is because VT enrollment is heavily male (I think the ratio is 60-40). Pretty much sucks that the administration chose to apply that money to probably football- but in the long term might benefit track/ XC if it stays successful. The men stayed around 6. Remember scholarships are for both XC and track & field. VT has decided to put there money in throws for the most part and have done very well in this area. They also have a great pole vaulting group. That is the reason they placed thirteeth last year at nationals. The male sprinters and male distance runners have less than two scholarships split up. The majority of the funds are with the conference point earners: ie Throwers. Sucks for distance and sprints but makes since if you want to have an impact in the national standings with a small budget. Many schools overlook single specialty athletes (javelin, high jump, pole vaulting, hammer) because they can't do much else. A distance guy can run multiple events and XC, sprints the same thing with multiple events and jumps. The money schools will go after these guys as their first priorities. Schools with limited budgets will shoot for the guy that is a one event athlete because frankly they have a better shot at getting him.

One of VT biggest obstacles in getting into the ACC's has been its olympic sports programs. VT was not putting much money into it and to be fair doesn't have the money people think it does. Looking at NCAA figures while VT was in the Big East it had the second lowest athletic budget among those schools (WVU the lowest). Syracuse for example had twice the budget. Most of these schools have huge endowments where VT does not. It is fairly a recent athletic power in terms of history. Not like a school like USC. It cost $100,000 to $150,000 for one football player endowment according to Hokiesports.com

VT has started to pick certain sports to give more money to. Men's soccer for example is less than half a scholarship from being fully funded when they use to only have two. Now they are a top 20 program. The school has increased it's support of wrestling by hiring the U.S. olympic coach and increased money for scholarships. Before the coach didn't even have an office with the other olympic coaches. As VT does well in football and gets a half way decent B-ball program going the other sports will thrive. Track and xc are seeing some increases this year as are the other olympic sports. I believe the women might be up to 16 with a 1/4 going to distance by looking at some of their recent recruits.

When the guys XC team has only one scholarship they can't be considered a top notch program. In the 1980's Vt has some great XC teams (I believe they were fourth at NCAA in 1986?)- but they were also teams that had money in the distance events- that is not the story yet today, but with football's success it is going to happen in the future with increased funding for scholarships. Unfortunately our sport depends on Football and/ or basketball.