Why did you suck in college?

I was into crypto

It was just because all the popular girls did it too.

Late nights, juggling girlfriends, beer, chronically incorrect training, lack of information (80s) inability to read the room.

Plateaued my freshman year, which started a corrosive feeling of burnout. Thought I would try to bust through said plateau by hitting the miles pretty hard that summer, which I did. Lots of doubles, peaked at 85 mpw. Unfortunately proceeded to run 2+ minutes slower in XC and sat out conference and regionals in favor of having a pity party for myself. Sat out most of indoor as well then picked up a small injury trying to come back for outdoor.

Somewhat managed to get my "old self" back junior year, setting modest PRs in XC, indoor 3000, and outdoor 5000, but got a really bad case of possibly swine flu-turned-bronchitis and was never really the same after that. I absolutely sucked my senior year.

TL;DR a combination of bad attitude, lack of patience, lack of aerobic development, and bad luck with illness.

With age I have improved my attitude but I now seem to be too injury prone to take a good crack at my weak-ass college PRs. C'est la vie.

A lot of reasons, and I will admit most of them were my fault. I walked onto a program with some good 5k & 10k guys as 800 & 1500 guy. The XC workouts, paired with binge drinking on most weekends absolutely destroyed me fall of freshman year. I also ran way too fast on easy days trying to hang with the top 5 on the team to "prove" I belonged on the team. I burned out fast and honestly probably should have quit then. There were a few really good days once in a while that kept me going through two years - most of my prs came in workouts as I didn't actually get to race much. I finally had a moment of clarity in a rain soaked race where I finally admitted I was done and my collegiate career was over.

I avoided running for years after that. Even going on a 3 mile jog made my mind race through all the what-ifs of what went wrong and what I should have done instead. It look almost a decade before I felt that I could enjoy running again.

I had a loft problem - lack of f'ing talent.

Too hard on easy days

Not weight training to prevent injury

Non athlete roommate that stayed up too late so I didn’t sleep enough

Caring about the ladies too much. Women destroy your discipline.

50 beers per week, 20 mpw

Women weaken legs.

I didn't start running until after college, I was too busy partying and studying. I also smoked a pack a day

The weird thing was when I was binge drinking like a borderline alcoholic my freshman and sophomore years I was running PR's. However, I was an 800-specialist type guy being coached by a former long-distance guy who didn't know sh!t about coaching the 800. That and injuries eventually led to me plateauing and getting worse than I was in high school.

- Not enough mileage or off season work;

- too much partying (that I don't really regret);

- should've moved up in distance but ego and love of speed kept me in mid-distances;

- coach did not tell me weight (or lack thereof) was important and didn't push me to move up in distance to steeple or 5000;

- kind of lost interest in college and did not relish competing like I did in HS.

Tried to walk on to an SEC school instead of looking at D3 or NAIA schools.

Lack of talent.

I showed up injured and out of shape, Then I gained 27 pounds.

I didn't suck in college.

Fr - ran 400/800/1500-mile. Came in with no base minimal background in track, just signed up in January and decided to run. Near the bottom in all my races, including a couple embarrassing DFLs.

So - ran 1500/mile, 3000, 5000. Did not really know what I was doing, best outcome was 3000. 9:17.

Ju - Showed a big leap in XC but then plateaued. Too many hard miles. Started partying more. Skipped track.

Sr - Stayed same at XC, maybe got a little worse. Drank a lot on weekends, stayed out late-late (like 2-3 AM a lot of the time), over-trained, i.e., cooked myself in workouts and over raced. Did PR in track but was overall very inconsistent. PR 32:50s 10K.

Improved significantly post-college (sub 15 5K once, dozens sub 15:30) and masters.

I walked on at CU, got on the team via the TT, ran a handful of PRs all within a four-week timespan, and never got faster.

By the time it should have been 'my time' I was too injured to even walk, having thrown myself into it for a year away from the program in an effort to come back big.