College options for a 4:59 1600 guy?

Slim pickins

Yea definitely no to options 1 and 2. Don't even bother with #3. Go to a slower Mid pack juco. Like the teams that are in the bottom 10 at cross country nationals. That could give you an opportunity to enjoy competition and develop, since not everyone on your team will be much faster. I would not even consider looking any of the top 10 Juco teams, as you would be in the same position as your option 2.

I was quite a bit faster than that, went to CU, got my butt handed to me for years, and regret to this day I didn't go to DIII.

It SO much doesn't matter what school you attend. If you want to run in college, go DIII and put effort into it.

Option 1 or 3.

Option 1 can be a lot of fun, and if you end up progressing well at the longer distances as you mature and add mileage, you could end up competitive to some level.

Option 3 could also take place on a good D3 team that is open without roster limits. Even at some good teams in good conferences you could hope to qualify for the conference championship meet. If the coaching is good your progress should be that much better than the NIRCA club option.

#1 Go to the school that has the best academics for what you want to study. It's a pretty easy decision.

If the school that you want to attend happens to be a D1 P5 school, join the running club if you really want to run with others. If not, just run and find some open XC or track meets or perhaps some road races.

I'm not quite sure whay you are grouping D3 & NAIA schools together. Other than the Ivies and schools like Duke, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Michigan, Virginia, Northwestern, UNC-Chapel Hill, and others in some of the P5 conferences like Ohio State, Florida, etc, your best academics are going to be at those D3 schools that you label as "crappy."

D2 and NAIA school are a lot more analagous in terms of academics than D3 and NAIA schools. There are some decent D2 choices academically and perhaps a bit fewer among the NAIA schools but not nearly as many solid academic choices as you will find among the D3 schools.

So, bottom line, go with what I initially said - go to the best school for your studies. You're not going to win any meets with your 1600 time so run for fun.

DIII kid went from 4:54 to 4:10 over 4 years, you can find a good D3 to walk on and it might change a lot

Hell in my own life I thought I was done, realized maybe I didn't want to be. Transferred and immediately saw results with a new coach after HS, if you can find a place that makes sense academically and you could run at, and it does exist somewhere, then go for it.

The only guys I know that slow went to junior colleges. Basically, any non-serious program where the cross country team is more like a run club than an actual organized sports team. Not very much structure.

Based on that, you shouldn't judge your school by it's running program. Instead you'll need to set your sites on what career you want and your financial situation. Only a fool would try to look for a good fit running school if they're only a 4:59 guy...

Also, it depends on what your training is like now, as that would indicate your growth window. If that's your time and you're doing like 15 mpw or less then MAYBE you could set your sights high...

At my high school we didn't have a contender program and never even did well in region meets. Maybe 1 or 2 individual state qualifiers every other year in XC or the 800. None in the mile.

It was not serious and as a team we never ran more than 15mpw for cross country. If your school's situation is like that then you have good potential with a 4:59 1600.

I had a a teammate who was a 4:50 1600 guy (I'm on a JUCO team) and he was in the back of the pack during XC, I highly doubt a 4:59 1600 would be midpack at D3 honestly. Speaking of community college, I would recommend it, it's a nice, cheap and convenient way to develop yourself athletically and ease into the adult world before transferring to a 4 year.

No you didn't.

The OP's option 3 was a "crappy D3 school" and not a good D3 school, so I could see a 4:59 guy being mid-pack at those places. But you're right, a 4:59 1600 generally wouldn't be midpack at D3.

Yeah you're right I guess, I'd imagine there would be a lot of variance within D3. It's just that even the less competitive ones I know of would have barely let me walk on with my 4:35 from HS (if at all).

You are DIII material. Not sure why a crappy one has to be your thing though. A lot of great DIII schools out there. NAIA schools are mostly Christian schools, so know that. You're a DIII guy.

What do you WANT to do? Do that. In high school I was a 10:27 runner for 3200 and did 35:xx for 10K in a road race. I found a D2 school where I was able to run. We only had cross country but a lot of the guys fit my profile (just a few were significantly better) and most of us improved somewhat during college. That was a while back but the same school still has a team of that caliber and the teams we competed against were about the same level. Find one like that if you want to compete.

You need to realistically ask yourself if you can train to a 4:25 mile by yourself in the next year. I wasn’t a good miler coming out of highschool, but I upped my mileage a ton, got in contact with my universities track program, and made it happen. It’s possible and happens more often then you’d think.

Also realize that although you can start walking on to a lot of D1 teams and most D2 teams with 4:25, if they have 4:00-4:10 guys on the team, workouts are going to be brutal if/until you get into that kind of shape. The coaches are there to train those that want to run sub 4:00 miles, sub 1:50 800s and sub 8:00 3ks unlike highschool where the goal is just to get kids out to practice. My first ever workout with my college team was 12x400m with 400m jog and the top guys averaged 61s and no one was running above 65s. This isn’t like highschool where there are stragglers and a wide range of fitness in workouts.

That being said, your choice for academics is much more important than your choice for athletics in this time in your life. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but a 4:59 guy just isn’t going to run pro after college. There are people that run 4:20 off of garbage training. My opinion is to choose your best academic fit and go from there. If that’s a D1 that won’t talk to you until you run 4:20, so be it. Get some good schooling and see what you can do. Many coaches will be happy to give you a general outline of what they do for training and see how you manage it for a few months to see if you’re a good fit.

Many decent D3 schools don't cut. In my opinion you are better off being back of the pack on a structured team that has success, even if you are back of the pack. Also not knowing the HS training, he could improve substantially quickly. It happens. Sometimes you get dragged by the competition, within reason.

It's also possible he could find a better distance for himself. I've met guys who ran like a 4:40 mi but could run an xc muddy 8k in mid 25min, which a D3 level is good. You never know how someone will develop at 18, its hard to know.

Pretty much any college except mid to top d1s

I only ran 5:14 mile in high school (male) and I ran d3 and transferred to d2 as a walk on. My last few seasons I contributed to the scoring for d2 in XC. We weren’t that good as most of our varsity was 26-28min 8k, but point is that yes you can run for many college teams. The main thing is being able to handle a college training program load which is probably going to be more mileage (~eg50-60mpw)than you were used to doing in HS, and staying away from distractions like constant partying (big in many colleges), poor nutrition and sleep and that whole lifestyle. A little bit of that is fine of course and part of the college experience etc but the reason a lot of HS kids don’t run in college is that they just don’t really want to run competitively anymore, as they lose interest in running at that age and just want to party (which is fine too)

I agree with the DIII route assessment. There are many good DIII schools (academically). In many cases, they are more likely to have a T&F program than DI schools because they still generally view athletics as part of the whole academic experience (i.e., I believe DIII is where the true student-athletes are found). DIII schools also generally have a less stressful environment. Unlike high school, at any college, you will have more access to training facilities like weight rooms, pools, etc. There are at least a dozen DIII schools within an hour drive from my home, and all have good academics and nice facilities with both men's and women's running programs. A drawback is that many DIII schools are private schools and therefore can be expensive.

I'll quickly chime in and mention you should at least consider NAIA. I know lots of NAIA guys that were around your speed in HS, but with a good NAIA program they found themselves in the top 7 during cross or running some pretty decent times in track. One kid on my NAIA team was a 17:40 5k guy in high school, but by his senior year he ran 25:20 in cross and 8:38 for the 3k. All depends on the program and the coaching. Any school finishing in the top 15 at NAIA probably would have a walk on roster spot for you and a lot of those programs are built off recruiting runners with "potential".

Now of course don't go to an NAIA school if you're looking for the normal "college" experience. Most of these schools are Christian and very very small. Also, we should probably ask about your current training. Someone that runs 4:59 off 25mpw is way more attractive than someone running 4:59 off 60mpw. If right now you have really solid training and have a current PR of 4:59, then I might agree with everyone else and say that Juco might be the best idea.

Idk just my 2 cents