Harvard XC

Not exactly. He never gave it a chance to be honest. I do agree you need to be tough to run for Gibby.

Also, this is actually a stupid thread. Gibby just coached the first ever Ivy League champion and also had the women’s 1500m champion last year. He’s good and that’s not even in doubt.

He is as good as the athletes he coaches. (i guess unless they are guys coming in with a PR of 3:38)

Agreed. Can’t argue with the success Gibby has had. Not just at Harvard - his athletes have done well at every institution he’s coached at.

Though I don’t think everyone should hammer all the time… arguing with Gibby’s results is pretty moronic. Anyone who has coached the women’s 1500 champ, cross champ and NCAA 5000 record holder… as well as top teams in the ivy and nationals… is doing something right.

Gibby has had incredible success with Banks and Ramsden, no doubt. But, I don't think those successes render the other criticisms moot.

Gibby has a history of running his guys into the ground 6:00 miles at a time, knowing that in any given year enough runners will handle it well enough for the team to be competitive. Outside of the generational talents, you rarely saw his runners progress linearly or injury-free. At W&M, the best runners, Moran, Graham and Landry, were frequently injured.

His method works for developing a competitive cross country team, though I am not sure it works for developing individual runners over their tenure in the program, beyond certain outliers. I also wonder whether his method will ultimately be sustainable when he gets more high profile recruits. At W&M it was a lot easier to get away with it when your training turns a 9:30 guy into the 5th man on an NCAA team for one season but he doesn't ever improve on that. If you're dealing with a bunch of 4:05/8:50 types, those guys aren't going to be satisfied with one great season and will want to see continuous improvement.

Last outdoor season, Harvard only had 3 men under 4:00 for 1500 and his fastest one quit. Princeton had 10 with 7 under 3:50.

Harvard only had 3 men under 14:20 for 5k. Princeton had 6 under 14:13.

That is not indicative of outstanding development considering how many sub 9:10 guys Harvard gets.

And Princeton brings in twice as many guys every year. Look they are both good coaches and programs. One kid with a questionable attitude leaving a program doesn’t mean anyone is a bad coach.

Right. Now Harvard has enough guys who can handle 6 min daily pace to place 15th at ncaas

We will see how they do in track. Blanks who actually is running easy pace at 6 flat should do well, maybe exceptional. We will how the rest do at heps.

Those three had some injuries but they all generally had very successful collegiate careers including solid track times. Same with Frey who was there under Gibby. And he had several top 10 teams and qualified for NCAAS virtually every year at W&M. Considering it’s not the easiest place to recruit (just look at their recent results), I’d qualify his W&M accomplishments as exceptional. As an alum, I’d take him back any day. Team has disintegrated since he left.

i can answer this question for ya.

it basically comes down to this, for guys at that level of fitness, running at 6;30-7:00 has no real benefit to improving aerobic fitness, its not enough of a stimulus. The coaching style that gibby uses is riding the line and getting as much benefit as possible out of the normal aerobic runs without the runs being so fast it impacts the workout the next day.

also another this to note is a aerobic run is different from a easy run or recovery run, in high school coaches don't really use this as if you aren't experienced then you can run the aerobic runs too fast and then it bad. I run for a very high level and completive club and my coach also does this, it works and its really fun too.

finally the athletes know there bodys and its not like gibby is going to get mad at you if you are a little tired and go slower

i hope this answers your question!

Shockingly, they can recruit the world.

On a serious note, this leaves other teams much weaker though (Brown and Cornell especially) since they're competing over the same pool of recruits. And basically nobody would choose them if they'd have an offer from a better college

Kenyans do recovery runs at paces slower than 9 minutes per mile at times, according to Canova and others. Running by feel does more. Hard days pretty hard, easy days as needed. There are all kinds of benefits you get from recovery. 6:00 pace for most will break them down, including the great talents like Blanks and Iverson. You don't want to go a set pace for easy runs because your body feels in variable states. So, Kenyans often start slow and build into hard progression runs by the end. That's what Crammy did as well, getting down well below 5 by the last miles after starting very easy for him. If too many runners are injured, was it worth it to occasionally get a great one? Maybe. But if the great one is injured every year, then you got a championship and a short-lived college record but then lost a season and maybe another. No wonder Blanks was so good the year after college when he trained with teammates away from Harvard at altitude (13:27 5000m) and then went through injury cycles and not much progression before briefly surfacing this year as a great xc runner and having one really good track meet before being injured again.

The year after high school, before college.

What are you talking about? he has been an xc all American every year. He didn’t just pop out of nowhere and win XC.