College Distances vs HS

formerD1 wrote:

"Assuming you stay healthy and uninjured you'll improve" lol. You mean assuming you don't run at a top D1 program?

The good news is that he has stayed relatively healthy his entire career. My guess is that his coaches will push him but take care to not go too hard and cause injury. He talked to the guys on the team during his official visit and that is what they said their experience is.

Distances wrote:

The good news is that he has stayed relatively healthy his entire career. My guess is that his coaches will push him but take care to not go too hard and cause injury. He talked to the guys on the team during his official visit and that is what they said their experience is.

Nobody tries to cause injury or get injured. The coach wouldn't even really notice (or care) if his #20 guy on his XC roster got injured or his #8 1500m runner was injured. As I mentioned earlier, they don't even call out your times.

When you have sprinters and distance guys doing intervals at the same time on the same track, well not much coaching resources to do all the traffic control and monitor lap times for every runner. Once you start falling behind on the intervals, well your rest time is compromised, but they don't wait for you. You can choose to start the next one a bit later if you want (but the coach will probably scowl at you for messing up the workout), so you'll just go with the same group but with less rest. What do you think happens when you do this several days a week, for weeks on end?

Will the OP tell us how large the roster us and how many cosches there are? Formerd1 is right that some teams have 60 kids ajd 5 coaches. Worse yet is that the distance crew is usually 20-1 ratio. They will just tell the kid to go faster if he has an injury and falls behind.

Babies are people too wrote:

Will the OP tell us how large the roster us and how many cosches there are? Formerd1 is right that some teams have 60 kids ajd 5 coaches. Worse yet is that the distance crew is usually 20-1 ratio. They will just tell the kid to go faster if he has an injury and falls behind.

I think they hold the roster at about 20 and 3 coaches, but I also think they coach the girls side and I don’t know how many are on that roster.

All of these posts you have made and all of these claims about being recruited all over the country and you didn't do that basic homework? You at least could have looked now in order to answer the question. Three coaches is rare for a distance program. Indiana has the head track coach listed as the head cross country coach and one assistant who is listed as a recruiting coordinator. That is common these days because most programs have combined. Sprint schools usually have the head coach for track who has a distance assistant lead the XC team and he may get a grad student. It's like the D1 poster said, they won't care if your son is injured because they have other kids and won't have time to mess around with a 9:12 kid.

Scholar Expert wrote:

All of these posts you have made and all of these claims about being recruited all over the country and you didn't do that basic homework? You at least could have looked now in order to answer the question. Three coaches is rare for a distance program. Indiana has the head track coach listed as the head cross country coach and one assistant who is listed as a recruiting coordinator. That is common these days because most programs have combined. Sprint schools usually have the head coach for track who has a distance assistant lead the XC team and he may get a grad student. It's like the D1 poster said, they won't care if your son is injured because they have other kids and won't have time to mess around with a 9:12 kid.

I talked to the coach once during the process. My son worked everything out with him. I know the boys roster is up to 20 and there are 3 coaches. The thing I don’t know is how many girls are on their roster. I guess that doesn’t make me a helicopter parent after all. Sue me.

Easy there "formerD1" ... apologies for touching a nerve.

Never expected to be called a loser for simply stating my progression from HS thru college. BTW, my college best of 1:49 is faster than your HS best of 1:50 ... if I were only blessed with your talent.

So tell us your story "formerD1. You seem to harp on the negative. This is a time for optimism for "Distances" who is rightfully excited for his son's new beginnings.

Would love to talk it thru with you over a beer to find out why you are so bitter.

Wealthburg wrote:

Easy there "formerD1" ... apologies for touching a nerve.

Never expected to be called a loser for simply stating my progression from HS thru college. BTW, my college best of 1:49 is faster than your HS best of 1:50 ... if I were only blessed with your talent.

So tell us your story "formerD1. You seem to harp on the negative. This is a time for optimism for "Distances" who is rightfully excited for his son's new beginnings.

Would love to talk it thru with you over a beer to find out why you are so bitter.

Let's see...you started your post by calling us full of crap. Then you ended your post by calling us losers, and to support these claims, you stated how your college progression led you to...and elite HS boys' time...yeah maybe you're missing something here.

OP is clearly saying his son is going to a top program, not some random no-name D1 program (of which there are many). We know some D1 programs are even easier than the top D3 programs.

Your post assumed that those of us who never progressed much in college were either lazy, stupid or just really really unlucky. You don't think those of us who were good enough to be recruited to the top programs all have the same goals and dreams, and even think that maybe one day we'll make it to Nationals and maybe even make it to the Olympics and compete in the Diamond League? Yet, here we are, so many of us, who get burnt out and spit out of the D1 factory not wanting to run another step in our lives. One of my former D1 teammates who never made it to Nationals is working at a shoe store, and we graduated over a decade ago...real talented kid in HS.

Nobody warned us back then - we posted on a place called Dyestat and Letsrun.com didn't even exist. Nobody warned us (well there were some warning signs during the college visit now that I think about it - "certain people saying it's not fun like HS running was", I remember thinking, "HS running wasn't fun, so how bad is college???").

OP has the opportunity here to learn from our mistakes, but you're just sitting there calling us crazy. I guess now that I mention here, here is the biggest tip I can give to OP.

1) If your son is struggling just to keep up, it's OK to transfer to an easier school if he really loves running. Don't let pride get you injured or burnt-out.

2) If your son is going to stick it out for pride, and I would just go for the "take it easier" approach when it comes to the training as opposed to "try really really hard to keep up" approach, because the latter will just get you injured. Yeah, there's the pride and coaches looking badly at you if you can't keep up, but there's nothing worse than being injured and at least this will increase your chances of progressing year after year.

formerD1 wrote:

OP has the opportunity here to learn from our mistakes, but you're just sitting there calling us crazy. I guess now that I mention here, here is the biggest tip I can give to OP.

1) If your son is struggling just to keep up, it's OK to transfer to an easier school if he really loves running. Don't let pride get you injured or burnt-out.

2) If your son is going to stick it out for pride, and I would just go for the "take it easier" approach when it comes to the training as opposed to "try really really hard to keep up" approach, because the latter will just get you injured. Yeah, there's the pride and coaches looking badly at you if you can't keep up, but there's nothing worse than being injured and at least this will increase your chances of progressing year after year.

I really appreciate all of the comments (aside from the shots about being helicoptery). I learned something very valuable in this exchange and it is not what I originally asked for or intended. I was ready to be as hands off as I have been throughout HS, go to the meets, and occasionally ask how he is feeling. Now I will be much more attentive to what I see and, more importantly, what hear from him as it relates to his physical and emotional state. He is the kind of guy that would gut it out because he doesn’t want to let down the team, coach, or me. This is supposed to be a great experience for him, and I still believe it will be but it’s not worth being beaten up and beaten down. I sincerely appreciate the advice and comments from everyone and hope to carry on this discussion for the benefit of me and others who have a kid going off to run in college. Thank you!

I appreciate your reply "formerD1". You appear to have put significant thought into it and I genuinely agree with many of your points, however, your statement of my original remarks are out of context.

I did not call you and everyone on this thread full of crap. I stated that 90 percent (hyperbole perhaps) of the replies on this thread are horse crap. I did not call those who did not progress in college losers; just those that made poor decisions. I do regret that statement ... we all make bad choices at times, do we not?

Like you, I witnessed numerous significant HS talents flame out in college; none sadder than those who just pissed away. Others caught the injury bug and / or were just in over their heads as you noted.

It appears that you are a West Coast guy "formerD1" and I am an East Coast guy, likely 35 years your senior. I genuinely appreciate your perspective on the meat grinder mentality of some of the bigger conference coaches ... a real shame.

As far as belittling my humble achievements, it only hinders your many other valid arguments ... a little bit out of line, don't you think? Bygones.

Let's both agree to wish the OP (assuming he's not a troll) and his son good health and good luck. He may be a longshot but there is a documented history of far greater longshots paying out.

Cheers!

Wealthburg wrote:

Let's both agree to wish the OP (assuming he's not a troll) and his son good health and good luck. He may be a longshot but there is a documented history of far greater longshots paying out.

Cheers!

Yup, not a troll. I love our sport and I love my son and anything I can do to learn more about it brings me closer to understanding why he does it at all. This is the hardest thing for me to understand and I’m not sure the top runners get it. We, the non-runners, think you’re crazy and that you are going to quit as soon as you understand that. In my case, I have come to grips with the insanity of my kid running half marathons (recently) for practice. I want him to succeed so much but I don’t want to pretend that I know what it takes to do that. I am impressed with everyone who even tries.

I also apologize for being a dick in my reply. Not to belittle a 1:49 by any means - what I was trying to say is, there are maybe 6 or so kids in HS who run around 1:50 - 1:51 every year, and not all of us continue to improve. And believe me, I tried. I didn't drink at all, worked my butt off and didn't even have a social life because my dream was literally to make it to the Olympics. It kind of sucks when you are one of the top 5 kids in HS in your event and really believe you can make it someday and you do everything you're told to do, only for you to get killed in college and seeing those dreams get shattered. That's probably why I'm bitter.

Unfortunately that's what most kids do. It's embarassing to fall behind on runs and you don't want to look like you're slacking or get on the coach's bad side. So you end up going faster than you know you should be - for me, this happened literally every single day in training, but I wrote it off as just being part of taking the next step in my progression, sort of how HS running was that much harder than MS running (except instead of going from like 15mpw to 30mpw, you're suddenly doing crazy 60-90mpw at extremely high speeds). You start ignoring the little niggles in your achilles or IT band or places you never thought could hurt. Next thing you know you're out for a month with a stress fracture or pulled groin or something ridiculous. Then you try to rush back to "save" your spot on the team and that just leads to even more injury. "But you ran 1:50 in HS why are you running a 1:55?" So you work even harder and that just ends up screwing you even more. Our problem is not that we're not willing to put in the work - we'll run ourselves into the ground if we're not told that it's OK to go slower.

I have a daughter leaving in two weeks to run at a D1 program and I found this discussion helpful as well.

Update: son is doing well. He made the travel team as a freshman and ran in his conference final running 25:12. His attitude is very good and he has been injury free. All and all a successful first year in XC. He is looking forward to getting on the track. While we haven’t been able to make it to a XC race, we are going to take in an indoor race this winter. Thank you again to everyone for the advice. I will update you on his times as they come in.

He can try them all. You're welcome that will be $5 please.

HOOWIE wrote:

He can try them all. You're welcome that will be $5 please.

I don't get it.

Distances wrote:

Update: son is doing well. He made the travel team as a freshman and ran in his conference final running 25:12. His attitude is very good and he has been injury free. All and all a successful first year in XC. He is looking forward to getting on the track. While we haven’t been able to make it to a XC race, we are going to take in an indoor race this winter. Thank you again to everyone for the advice. I will update you on his times as they come in.

LOL. You don't give up on this troll job do you? Everything you have posted is a lie!

I am glad he found a below average program where he can run XC. Track will be a different story. The good meets have strict time requirements that he will not meet