Parker Valby says she only run 2-3 days per week

The issue is how the best college runner in the country succeeds on this formula, not what the recreational athlete can achieve - however interesting you may find that. It is a separate issue.

You are presuming she is more talented based on her results. If her results are based on less running training than anyone else then she likely would be "vastly more talented". But given her progression I don't find that credible. There are alternative explanations, which have often applied to those we believed super-talented.

As for your Webb comparison - that doesn't stack up. You are suggesting that an athlete who trained hard in his collegiate and senior career, and achieved great heights, would still have been dominant at college level if he had trained less. That may well have been so. But Valby has never trained like Webb and has not reached anything like his level of achievement. She trains like a recreational athlete. That wasn't Webb.

One other specific point. You claim she is so much more talented than her competitors. But until the last two xc races we saw that it was Tuohy who won their encounters and who has held much of the high school and collegiate records, not Valby. So Tuohy isn't talented?

People mature. When Cain was world class, Schweizer was losing her high school state meet. When Effraimson was national class, Monson was only a HS state class runner. It has been pointed many times that phenoms like Ping and Cain and Lane, fizzle out while runners like Coburn and Frerichs amd Schweizer and Monson, become world class.

I remember runners and triathletes like Non Stanford in the UK having a similar approach. Years ago there seemed to be a lot of athletes who ran very low mileage yet did a lot of cross training and competed as a triathlete too. A lot of them did very well in events like the world XC trials and so on.

I think the important factor was the race distance - always around 5K-6K so a shortish time running (~18-20mins). I doubt this would work for longer distances. It does appear to work for some people though, no matter how astounding we find people having such success on 30mpw of running and cross training put together. It also may work for some people and not others. I don't know, I don't pretend to fully understand it. I would say that there are other people who have tried this approach though and had success.

Yes.

Since we are discussing college athletes here isn't it a bit premature to suggest anyone has fizzled out?

Okay. I guess we shouldn't have discussed the leadup to the meet before Saturday. I even played the prediction contest. Heck, you sure didn't make predictions about what would happed to Alec Baldwin.

Im with Stebbins here. I can think of a ton of triathletes who are absolute animals.

Yee, Wilde, Blumenfelt, the Brownless in their prime, Gomez in his prime.

These guys are putting out some pretty amazing run performances while cycling an insane amount and adding swimming to the mix.

Yee ran on the DL against Jakob in the 5000m at London. Probably still could run on the DL circuit.

A Brownlee ran a great 10k on the track at Stanford back in the day.

Watch the 2012 Olympic Tri and tell me that 10K is not world class running. Pre super shoes.

Wilde could easily run low 13s probably without any need to change anything in his training.

Yes, her training is ideal for a top distance runner, or, yes, it is a less than optimal substitute? You can't say yes to both without showing you understand neither.

What are the "world-class" distance times that any triathletes have actually recorded?

Baldwin cross-trains?

For tri-heads, it's not cross training...swim and bike probably take up 75% of their time/volume.

You have failed to understand my response.

She is smart. No need to run yourself into the ground with 50 mile weeks. Etter to stay running into old age.

You failed to understand the question. Your response was meaningless.

It's great to see Bannister training making a comeback. Why have athletes been wasting all those years putting in the miles?

I posted on here years ago regarding merits of running no more than about 60 miles per week and adding three to ten swimming sessions per week. NCAA XC title is very good but let's give her about (6 or 7) more years, we'll look at P Valby's achievements then. If P Valby becomes an elite top five international 5000m &/or 10000m runner, it will require her to log at least 50 miles per week.