U of Colorado investigating running program over weight management program.

To an extent the depression could stem from

realizing your just not good enough and everyday showing up to practice and getting your ass kicked or not being able to finish d1 workouts .

If anything, he should be sanctioned for that ponytail.

I think that there is a lot to be said for this.

Found the info below. (Not trying to badger or demean her, but she just didn't have the wheels to run for CU.

Competed twice during her debut indoor season with the Buffs, once
in the mile and once in the 3,000-meter run. Clocked her mile time at
5:23.31 for 17th place at the Potts Invitational
Ran a time of 11:16:93 in the 3,000-meter run for a spot in 26th place

MileSplit Conversion Calculator
11:16 for 3000m converts to...
3200m = 12:05.82
2Mile = 12:10.08
Mile Pace = 6:04.94

She wasn't even running sub 6:00 mile pace for 3000m on a DI team!

This is another good example of someone who is a non elite runner not understanding what it is to be an Eli runner, or athlete. Go ask any professional runner if they don’t watch what they eat and watch their weight, especially come the end of a season or championship time. Elite runners have “peak running weight or peak form”. It’s different for everyone, and where some coaches go wrong is if they try to put people into a “mold”. But to say elite runners don’t need to consider nutrition and weight is absurd. Nutrition and weight is a part of most sports, especially endurance sports.

If she had a 200m head start in the Colorado girls 5A state meet she would have finished 15th.

She was not CU material. Wetmore should be spanked for allowing her on the team.

So much character assassination going on in this. I don't know what the truth of the matter is here, but there were other complainants other than the 5:20 walk-on miler. It's easy to pile on and say "[victim] didn't have what it takes to make it as an elite."

What she complains of (if true) is problematic regardless of how fast one is. It could be that the RD was well-intentioned, but the specific way in which she went about things was problematic. That has nothing to do with how fast someone was/is. Every semi-serious runner knows that being lighter helps to an extent. Every single female college athlete you've ever met is to some degree concerned about being "too heavy" so having someone else reinforce that isn't providing new information.

Even if an athlete might do a bit better if they lost a few pounds, the better way to go about this from a risk/reward perspective is to focus on training appropriately and eating appropriately. Things will work out in a slower but more healthy way.

Going to college is a big change for athletes who've likely had their parents cooking for them and not had to think much about fueling or be responsible for it until that point. Meal halls also don't always have the best options. This is where a team RD would be useful... educating athletes on how to design healthy meals that meet their macro and micronutrient needs as distance runners. This can be done without focusing on weight loss. Weight in of itself isn't all that predictive within an already very light individual especially if you risk going "too far" and developing RED-S.

I ran for a team whose coach got fired/cancelled for this and other types of issues. We had lots of medical follow-up/monitoring that was done with the intent of ensuring we were healthy. However this had the effect of worsening/creating disordered eating for some of my teammates. I was personally not affected in this way, but that doesn't mean that it was a responsible way of doing things. And yes, I (female) was a sub-5 miler in HS if you wanna know about it.

Fake news. Look at Kristian Blummenfelt. Sub-14 min runner who is built like a linebacker.

any coach or person who thinks they "know" running over the age of 30 or 35 (unless properly educated and willing to try new things) should just not exist on let's run.com. literally everyone ik under the age of 30 just roasts this website. and everyone under the age of 30 are the only people still relevant in US distance running.

I was on the team in the early 2000s and the eating disorders and weight shaming were pretty terrible. It’s about time this came to light.

Exactly, I think this is what a lot of people on this thread are missing. Of course body weight plays a role in performance, but there's a right and wrong way to reach a healthy body weight. The right way is to naturally reach your weight by training hard and eating healthy. The wrong way is to get fixated on weight alone.

I was on a men's team where the coach regularly called people out for their body weight in front of the rest of the team. I can think of three people in my 5 year cohort that had eating disorders as a result, myself included. Assuming there were some I wasn't aware of, that's roughly one person per recruitment class with an eating disorder. And that's just from offhand comments by a coach! I can't imagine what it would have been like under CU's "comparative calipering" regime.

weight matters but coaches can take it way too far and it has fvcked up effects

Al Cantello at the Naval Academy regularly screamed at his athletes about being too fat. There was no science behind it. If he didn’t like the way you looked, or you ran a bad race or workout, he would tell you you were overweight and to go weigh yourself. You’d have to give the result to him in front of everyone else. I matter what you said it was too much.

Sometimes I think Cantello thought about was weight. That mindset pervaded the team, made everyone obsessed with what they were eating and policing what others ate. My entire freshman year I was running backwards bc I wasn’t eating. Eating disorders were widespread.

Future navy SEALs, infantry marines quit bc of Cantello. Not Becuase Cantello cut them or they couldn’t back the training, but bc he was an a$$hole and bc of his weird obsession with weight

One of my classmates, who went on to be a marine, was a varsity runner. Cantello constantly sh*t on him In front of everyone for being too fat. One summer my classmate took some summer school classes to lighten his workload during the academic year. One day after classes, he came back to his room to find Cantello sitting there with a scale next to him. Told my classmate to get on it. My classmate quit on the spot

Fvck coaches like him

*no matter what you said

*sometimes I think all Cantello thought anoint

Other comment re: athletes consenting and it being optional. It's not consent if you feel pressured to do so because everyone else is. If there were consequences of some kind for not submitting to testing even if it's just being nagged, that's coercive meaning that any consent given is not valid. The part about patient-doctor confidentiality is also concerning... you have to also give consent for your doctor to share test results with people outside of your healthcare team.

There was a similar thing in my program. I was happy to get all sorts of testing done since I had had medical issues in the past and wanted to stay on top of things. For other people this felt like spying because their results were used against them in various ways. Since I never had any adverse test results, I never had that experience. Not saying that necessarily happened here, but something to think about when you see mixed opinions from alumni.

I’m just gonna say it’s f’d up when the person who is pushing this story to be written knows that people on the team are experiencing exactly what this story is written about. Distracting the day before the biggest race of their careers. If the end goal is to make the ncaa a better place don’t do it at the cost of the athletes in the system. Not that it seems it matters, Colorado ran well today, but I can imagine the hurt and uncertainty they were feeling with that article being published the day before. Heres the thing, the problem is with the coaches not the athletes… protect them at all costs! Publishing the article the day of or the day after NCAA’s would have seemed better intentioned

Oh noes!!! Distracting!

Talk to knowledgeable people in Boulder and they will not be surprised at the combination of Burroughs, shaming, and EDs. This goes beyond a few offhand comments from what I hear. It's a cultural problem and has been festering for quite a while.

Another storied program is on the verge of being canceled. What a fking joke! Kids these days are a bunch of whiny soft cupcakes.

KG whines about everything. A real Karen, that Kara.

The great concern with CU is that the powers that be don’t do to the XC and track program what they did to the football program. Because they destroyed the football program.