9:20 3200m D1 Walk-on

fact checker 230987 wrote:

SDSU Aztec wrote:

Weren't the guys chewing you up and spitting you out, trained by the same coach? What could he have done that would have resulted in you being able to keep up with runners with superior talent?

Taking a freshman who ran 50 miles per week in high school, making him run 100 right away with guys that are 3-4 years older than him is going to wreck that athlete.

But that athlete, if the coach is patient and builds volume slowly, can be a beast after a couple years. Power 5 coaches would just severely overtrain the athlete for a .00000001% chance he can run 13:30 as a freshman.

Pretty much spot on. Immediately doubling my mileage from high school, making "easy" days on rocky, hilly terrain so there was never true recovery, which got me injured, not recognizing simple things like iron depletion. I just was never recovered. Some guys could handle it though. Ironically, by redshirt senior year at the new school, I was just as fast as the top one or two guys at my old school. I got a much better education too.

D3 St Lawrence in upstate NY has a really good running tradition, great coaches, better athletic facilities than most D1's, and a fantastic alumni network. You'd be competitive for the top 7 immediately in XC, and there are faster guys already there who you can chase. Gotta like the outdoors and be ok with snow, though. Application deadline is Feb 1.

If you weren't particularly motivated in H.S. what would make you want to double your mileage in college? I'm also surprised that a coach would want you to immediately double your mileage as it would almost certainly result in injures. It should be common sense for a coach to ramp it up over 3-4 months.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

We are all has beens wrote:

Pretty much spot on. Immediately doubling my mileage from high school, making "easy" days on rocky, hilly terrain so there was never true recovery, which got me injured, not recognizing simple things like iron depletion. I just was never recovered. Some guys could handle it though. Ironically, by redshirt senior year at the new school, I was just as fast as the top one or two guys at my old school. I got a much better education too.

If you weren't particularly motivated in H.S. what would make you want to double your mileage in college? I'm also surprised that a coach would want you to immediately double your mileage as it would almost certainly result in injures. It should be common sense for a coach to ramp it up over 3-4 months.

Dude, who says I wasn't motivated? You would probably be shocked at how fast my high school PRs were. I just wasn't a high mileage runner. By immediately, I don't mean over the course of 1-2 weeks, but over the course of running a base (let's call it 3 months) I was expected to double my mileage. It proved too much. Not everyone thrives on high(er) volume. I was never going to be able to run >90 mpw at a high level.

We are all has beens wrote:

SDSU Aztec wrote:

If you weren't particularly motivated in H.S. what would make you want to double your mileage in college? I'm also surprised that a coach would want you to immediately double your mileage as it would almost certainly result in injures. It should be common sense for a coach to ramp it up over 3-4 months.

Dude, who says I wasn't motivated? You would probably be shocked at how fast my high school PRs were. I just wasn't a high mileage runner. By immediately, I don't mean over the course of 1-2 weeks, but over the course of running a base (let's call it 3 months) I was expected to double my mileage. It proved too much. Not everyone thrives on high(er) volume. I was never going to be able to run >90 mpw at a high level.

If you were motivated, that would mean you believed 50(?)mpw was the appropriate mileage for you so it seems odd you would want to walk-on into a program that required twice as much running.

I've never heard of a coach holding early morning practices so it seems you still could have controlled your mpw. The scholarship kids are going to be self-motivated so I don't see a coach spending time trying to get walk-ons to run mornings.

running joke wrote:

I ran 9:20 in 2009, which now seems like a whole different era. In the '00s, 9:20 was kind of like what 9 flat is now. Back then, you would have coaches who could recruit 9:40 guys (with a token low-9s guy) and took a squad to Nationals. Now those same programs recruit sub-9 guys and haven't qualified for nationals in over a decade.

There’s a little bit more focus on running full time/year round and getting mileage up in high school than there was in the ‘00s. Many of the 9:40 guys were more untapped potential, hitting those times on 40 mpw and playing other sports. The sub-9:00 guys now on 80+ mpw in high school get burned out pretty easily in a college environment. The smart coaches can judge somebody they recruit based on times, training volume, athletic ability, and potential. Many coaches are dumb.

I don't if that's true. The sub-9:00 guy that ran 80mpw is going to have an easier time adjusting to an increase in training in college compared to the 50mpw, undertrained 9:20 runner. If I'm a coach, I would be skeptical about whether the latter would suddenly become serious about running after not trying to reach his potential in HS.

Not sure why you're such a cynic. I ran in an era before the internet, so there wasn't a great deal of communication with coaches. I very overtly stated that I went to a "name" program, not a school where I got recruited, because of the brand. A dumb 18-year old thinks that the school or the historic running tradition is just automatically going to make them great. It may work that way for some but not most, unless they are already superstars.

We ran 10 miles every afternoon, but a 12-mile hilly run on Monday, and 15-20 on Saturday. I ran 15. That was a huge step up for me as I never did a long run in high school. Doubles weren't required but highly suggested. I probably ran two mornings per week for 30-35 min. We generally had a tempo and some kind of fartlek in there too. As I said, "rest" days were hilly, rocky trails. Sunday was the only truly easy day, on our own. I suppose this is the day I should've just taken off or jogged four miles or something, but most guys did ten at a steady clip, so that's what I did.

You're right, I trained half of this volume in high school, but I was fast, faster than the OP, and I was a recruited athlete. I just picked the wrong program and school at the time. Not all kids can just can ramp up to 80 mpw. Sure, I could've taken Sundays off or not run mornings. But the culture was that "you ran," and why wouldn't I? I wanted to be great. Ironically, I was exactly the kind of runner who should've been highly-sought after, because I didn't run a ton in high school but was still very fast. I had a lot of potential, which I realized in my early 20s at school#2, as I mentioned. I was very motivated. When I ran, it wasn't common knowledge that great high schoolers were running 70+ mpw.

I'm not a cynic at all and I've saw all levels of motivation to run among my teammates and didn't judge them. I'm just commenting that being undertrained in HS and then jumping into an intense D-1 program isn't likely to turn out well.

I ran long before the internet, but I was an avid reader of T&F news and a running news letter available in Northern Cal. Eric Hulst did 10+ mile runs in the morning on his way to 120 per week and the lowest mileage I'd heard of for a 9:00 guy was 70mpw. I talked to the Jesuit guys at meets that ran under Walt Lange and they did about 100 per week. That was the magic number I heard over and over again when I was in HS and what I ran as a senior. Except for trying to keep up with better runners than me, my training was almost identical in college.

A full ride? Only somebody dumber than a doorknob and richer than Bill Gates gets a full ride in track. 99% of kids are either getting some type if financial aid or academic aid. I guess we just found the unicorn of this site.