hi school senior wrote:
my two pennies wrote:
In general, the "average" improvement for a runner who stays relatively healthy and competes for four years would be to take a minute off your high school 3200, and run that in a 3k. So a 9:45 guy should be looking to run 8:45 or so in college (and by extrapolation, 15:10 or so for 5k). If you can take more than that off, you've had a good career for your talent level.
This seems like a pretty accurate estimate. I know there are a lot of stories of individuals who run insane times after only 9:45 in high school but there are equally as many who don't.
So far in my research it looks like smaller schools develop 9:45 runners much better than bigger schools. Why is that?
Could be plenty of reasons...bigger schools may have less to gain regardless of improvement, so they ignore the 9:45 guys. Smaller schools may be targeting people with a lot of upside -- good D3 recruiters can find diamonds in the rough. 9:45 guys who choose the big school may not care as much to begin with.
Anecdotally, my large-ish D3 school had a lot of 9:45 guys who quit or just weren't that dedicated. If you're the 15th guy on the squad, it's not crazy to focus on school instead of running.