I don't know, the times this year seem pretty normal compared to other years, with Teare and Hocker's performances being massive outliers. I think Teare and Hocker are just special talents with a great coach who is not afraid to have them run fast, and not just do the bare minimum to qualify like Powell did with Ches and Jenkins, Hopefully this crop of Oregon guys will be able to maintain this fitness into the championship season.
straightfromtheoven wrote:
The training needed to run a competitive 8k/10k and the training needed to run the quality seen this indoor season are quite different and having to make that switch in 3 months is hard on the body. BUT I’ll add to my own hot take by saying this is just one piece of many things coming together at the same time:
1) No XC
2) Shoe tech
3) Meets/events being turned into time trials instead of races.
4) Athlete having to worry less about academics than ever before because they don’t have to try at virtual school.
5) Whatever new training secret Ben Thomas seems to have discovered
Mix it all together.... insanity
Correct.
bump
Paradoxical wrote:
I don't know, the times this year seem pretty normal compared to other years, with Teare and Hocker's performances being massive outliers. I think Teare and Hocker are just special talents with a great coach who is not afraid to have them run fast, and not just do the bare minimum to qualify like Powell did with Ches and Jenkins, Hopefully this crop of Oregon guys will be able to maintain this fitness into the championship season.
Oregon, Ole Miss AND VA Tech have at least 4 men on their team that have broken 4 this year. 3:59.95 is only the 30th best time in Div. 1. AND Sam Tanner’s 1500 is arguably the best mile or mile adjacent performance of the weekend
straightfromtheoven wrote:
Paradoxical wrote:
I don't know, the times this year seem pretty normal compared to other years, with Teare and Hocker's performances being massive outliers. I think Teare and Hocker are just special talents with a great coach who is not afraid to have them run fast, and not just do the bare minimum to qualify like Powell did with Ches and Jenkins, Hopefully this crop of Oregon guys will be able to maintain this fitness into the championship season.
Oregon, Ole Miss AND VA Tech have at least 4 men on their team that have broken 4 this year. 3:59.95 is only the 30th best time in Div. 1. AND Sam Tanner’s 1500 is arguably the best mile or mile adjacent performance of the weekend
That's really impressive, but at the same time not very abnormal for those teams. These 3 teams having sub-4 all in the same year doesn't usually happen, but at the same time they usually have 2-4 guys go sub-4 in a given year anyways.. It was either 2019 or 2018 where VA Tech had 3 AA's in the mile and won the DMR at NCAA's.
But Sam Tanner of UW was in some disguised Victories... UW is an adidas school
Paradoxical wrote:
.. It was either 2019 or 2018 where VA Tech had 3 AA's in the mile and won the DMR at NCAA's.
So this is more evidence for the spreading “Ben Thomas effect” then. Thats something I’m very willing to accept!
BeatEm wrote:
But Sam Tanner of UW was in some disguised Victories... UW is an adidas school
Okay.... but that’s not what we’re talking about here. I’m saying that the biggest reason for Tanner’s 1500 success is that he didn’t have to be in fast 10k shape in over a year.
So is it finally time to move on from cross country? Leave it in the rearview mirror?
I’ll compromise and go with the 2 season option someone posted earlier as well.
objects in the rearview mirror are closer than they appear wrote:
So is it finally time to move on from cross country? Leave it in the rearview mirror?
I’ll compromise and go with the 2 season option someone posted earlier as well.
I can’t get behind eliminating XC, because I’m sure there’s a handful of traditional XC powerhouses (NAU, BYU, Colorado, etc.) that have chosen XC over indoor track and are about to dazzle us all with their own insanity. Actually BYU just had their bonkers 5k showing.
No, I think the lasting impact here is going to be a further division between XC schools and mid-d schools. If I’m one of the best HS milers I want to go to a school that isn’t wanting me to train like a 10k guy 6 months of the year. If I’m the best XC guy in the country I want to go to a school that isn’t going to force me to run 25 laps on an indoor track all winter.
If those guys are one in the same..... follow your heart kid, some guys get all the luck.
I say all this knowing full well that Kessler committed to NAU. Shows what I know
Straightfromtheoven wrote:
Hot take: The absolute insanity you’ve seen in the NCAA middle distance races over the past few weeks is a result of all of these elite level track athletes NOT being forced through a full XC season in the fall.
Change my mind.
I think you are right and I would go a step further.
The reduction of meets and certain events has meant that these kids aren't getting burnt out running multiple events over a weekend. No stupid DMRs or all this other meaningless cr@p that get forced to do chasing "program glory".
Not only is this on a physical level but a mental level. Right now these athletes are so hungry - physically and mentally and they essentially living pro-athlete lifestyles (no going into classrooms, walking round campus, probably more time sleeping - so many things that will add up to athletic excellence).
I believe this is kind of in a way exposing how the NCAA system is a double-edged sword in terms of development (even though we kind of knew this already) of even the best collegiate athletes who we always used to assume were fine with the heavy workloads of xc, indoor + track but who probably never reached their potential because of said workloads.
This is honestly great to watch and I think that the longer kids aren't forced to participate in controlled environments that aren't really there to improve their educations or athletic abilities (classrooms and NCAA "schedules") the further escalation of performance levels we are going to witness.
straightfromtheoven wrote:
objects in the rearview mirror are closer than they appear wrote:
So is it finally time to move on from cross country? Leave it in the rearview mirror?
I’ll compromise and go with the 2 season option someone posted earlier as well.
I can’t get behind eliminating XC, because I’m sure there’s a handful of traditional XC powerhouses (NAU, BYU, Colorado, etc.) that have chosen XC over indoor track and are about to dazzle us all with their own insanity. Actually BYU just had their bonkers 5k showing.
No, I think the lasting impact here is going to be a further division between XC schools and mid-d schools. If I’m one of the best HS milers I want to go to a school that isn’t wanting me to train like a 10k guy 6 months of the year. If I’m the best XC guy in the country I want to go to a school that isn’t going to force me to run 25 laps on an indoor track all winter.
If those guys are one in the same..... follow your heart kid, some guys get all the luck.
I say all this knowing full well that Kessler committed to NAU. Shows what I know
I agree with this. If anything, do away with indoor track, there is absolutely no purpose or benefit from it. There's a reason most pro's don't do indoor.
Opening day for softball was this weekend. How does michigan or maine okay baseball or softball?
You think September in Houston is awesome for cross county? The sport is when the sport it. And when is cross country in the ussr/wa calendar? Same as indoors. Ncaa bastardized it to fall.
We need to do the exact opposite of moving XC to Jan/Feb. We need a shorter XC season and have it end in October. Why are some kids running 6 XC meets at 8k and 10k a piece then they'll turn around for indoor and outdoor season and only do 4 meets each of 1500m, 3k, and 5k over 5 months? All the preview XC meets are meaningless, start the Kolas scoring already. Have it start late August and end late Oct. Preview meets/Wisco/Pre-Nat's week/Conference/Regionals/Nationals all 2 weeks apart.
This will give the kids plenty of time to gear up for track instead of rushing back into speed work after XC season and hoping they can last til May/June. It's hard to do 5 months of racing with an abbreviated base.
Yeah, my original thoughts had no intention of eliminating or moving any seasons. The main idea was, the milers are going tf OFF at the moment.... why? Lots of people will say the shoes. We all generally agree the carbon shoes impact things. But that can’t be all of it! As others have noted, I too vividly remember coming off of a college XC season and having to transition to mile training and those first few sessions were brutal. I always thought “what if we didn’t have to have this big swing every year?” This year we got to do that exact experiment and what do you know..... the mids are going nuts. Been fun to see and will make it hard for the milers to switch back to real life next year. Who knows.... maybe they won’t! Ain’t like anyone is beating NAU or BYU in cross any time soon, and you certainly ain’t going to do it by throwing all-American milers at them. So save your mids up and unleash them on track season where they were always meant to be!