Harvard XC

They have had up and down years (qualified to nats in 2013 etc.), but the new coach in charge of a lot of the distance training seems to have really helped with the injury issues in the recent era.

Gibby helped.

I’ve never heard of Gibby but I’m curious about his training philosophy because they were fantastic last year.

Before joining the Harvard staff 3 years ago, he was previously at Charlotte, Michigan, and William & Mary.

https://gocrimson.com/sports/cross-country/roster/coaches/alex-gibby/1325

P.S. I don't know why the link is showing the basketball videographer. When you follow the link, you get to Alex Gibby.

They have one the most talented teams in the country in terms of high school PRs. Harvard can get athletes in with 1200 on the SAT even though the average is 1550.

The lack of scholarships literally doesn't affect them at all because they give so much financial aid and can give special awards and packages to athletes. Most students on the team pay less at Harvard than they would at a state school w/ a 50-75% scholarship.

For the handful that might have to pay full price, they are happy to because a Harvard degree will guarantee you get insane job offers.

I've seen the training logs of some of the Harvard men on strava and they all seem to run, outside of tempos or workouts, exclusively at 6:00 or faster on what they call "maintenance runs" which constitute a large majority of their training. Not really any recovery days or easy runs from what I see. I imagine though that kind of training could easily lead to injury or burnout but it seems to be working for those who can handle it.

Tarrare wrote:

outside of tempos or workouts, exclusively at 6:00 or faster on what they call "maintenance runs" which constitute a large majority of their training. Not really any recovery days or easy runs from what I see. I imagine though that kind of training could easily lead to injury or burnout but it seems to be working for those who can handle it.

Interesting. Well clearly it’s been working as of late. It’ll be interesting to follow the team and see who stays healthy with that in mind.

I wish them the best. That day in day out grind is grueling for sure.

Also: is this the Bruce Denton method at work????

By snorting gold dust and diamond powder?

MA runner11 wrote:

They have one the most talented teams in the country in terms of high school PRs. Harvard can get athletes in with 1200 on the SAT even though the average is 1550.

The lack of scholarships literally doesn't affect them at all because they give so much financial aid and can give special awards and packages to athletes. Most students on the team pay less at Harvard than they would at a state school w/ a 50-75% scholarship.

For the handful that might have to pay full price, they are happy to because a Harvard degree will guarantee you get insane job offers.

So why haven't they been good all along???

You don't make any sense and refuse to acknowledge the job Gibby is doing and has done for a long time. He is a good coach. Period.

This is a very good point. Harvard has always had the pull, we know that. This Gibby guy must be doing a lot.

Anyone here have first-hand experience trying to run paces like that daily who could comment on its sustainability?

I remember a college teammate of mine who did something similar back in the day, running a whole lot of 5:30-6:00 pace nearly every day. He ended up right around 14:00, but was pretty injured if I remember correctly.

howdydowdy wrote:

MA runner11 wrote:

They have one the most talented teams in the country in terms of high school PRs. Harvard can get athletes in with 1200 on the SAT even though the average is 1550.

The lack of scholarships literally doesn't affect them at all because they give so much financial aid and can give special awards and packages to athletes. Most students on the team pay less at Harvard than they would at a state school w/ a 50-75% scholarship.

For the handful that might have to pay full price, they are happy to because a Harvard degree will guarantee you get insane job offers.

So why haven't they been good all along???

You don't make any sense and refuse to acknowledge the job Gibby is doing and has done for a long time. He is a good coach. Period.

They always have a lot of good athletes. They just had a couple rough years when their coach was paying a little too much attention to the women's the team....

In 2013 Maxsim Morolev was 3rd in the nation in XC for Harvard. He ran 7:51 and 13:42. They had another guy, James Leakos, who was a 13:44 runner that year too.

They didn't even win Heps this year, by the way. If you knew anything about the Ivy League, the runners would rather win Heps than get 5th in the nation.

Don't assume I don't know about the Heps/Ivy schools.

MA runner11 wrote:

They always have a lot of good athletes. They just had a couple rough years when their coach was paying a little too much attention to the women's the team....

In 2013 Maxsim Morolev was 3rd in the nation in XC for Harvard. He ran 7:51 and 13:42. They had another guy, James Leakos, who was a 13:44 runner that year too.

They didn't even win Heps this year, by the way. If you knew anything about the Ivy League, the runners would rather win Heps than get 5th in the nation.

At the time of Korolev and Leakos (and Dan Chenoweth too back in the late 2000s, who had very similar on-off periods), Harvard's distance/XC coach was also the director of the program (Saretsky). I always felt he either really overtrained the athletes or he couldn't control the athletes' competitive nature, allowing them to burn out or break down.

Saretsky is still the director of the programs, while Gibby and his wife (who is a volunteer coach) are more of the XC coaches now. I think the extra staff is key for them right now.

Gibby has done well with the distance guys everywhere he’s worked. At William and Mary I think they finished 6th at NCAAS one year under him and they were perennial contenders. He wasn’t at Michigan long but he was pretty successful with the distance guys there. He was taking over from Warhurst and he turned several guys around (admittedly Warhurst was on the tail end of his successful career). Don’t know the circumstances of him leaving but he got the guys at Charlotte performing well in a short time. That was always going to be a short term role for him. He’s to good of a coach for a mid major.

Tarrare wrote:

I've seen the training logs of some of the Harvard men on strava and they all seem to run, outside of tempos or workouts, exclusively at 6:00 or faster on what they call "maintenance runs" which constitute a large majority of their training. Not really any recovery days or easy runs from what I see. I imagine though that kind of training could easily lead to injury or burnout but it seems to be working for those who can handle it.

This is Gibby's model, at least it was at W&M. High mileage at high intensity. OTSS. If you look at that W&M teams in the early to mid-2000s, the top guys were there - Landry, Fitzgerald, etc. - year in year out, but after that, there was a lot of rotation within the varsity year to year as guys would tend to have 1-2 good years under the training and then either get hurt or burnout or just not improve consistently. What made it work well at W&M is Gibby wasn't getting a ton of sub 9 or FL guys and he turned a lot of 9:20s-9:30s guys into varsity runners who ran at NCAAs. Whether that model is sustainable with guys who are all studs and your admissions model doesnt let you recruit a bunch of underdeveloped guys is a different story. Regardless, he has success.

Coaching is a major reason but recruiting has improved greatly. Look at the kids they have gotten the last few years. These are on pace or better than Princeton. If you look at the times and xc events won (great american and nXN regional ) this year they are recruiting on a national level. Those kids have not gone to Harvard in the recent past. Also the ivys are able to compete with some of the best Of the Power 5.

No they can't compete with the best Power 5 programs. Guessing there were 20 power 5 teams better than the best Ivy last year.