A few questions for former or current collegiate runners of any level...

Train year round.

Little.

None.

No.

I did Xc/indoor/outdoor so year round. If you don’t do xc… practice started in early fall.

between thanksgiving and Christmas breaks.

not compared to my peers at the time. But a lot compared to what I have now with work and kids of my own.

no… even unorganized pickup games were forbidden.

Ran at a D1 school in a pretty good conference. My answers are pretty much the same as this person.

Pretty much this for me...Big Ten school (back when Big Ten was 11 schools).

Old former D3 runner here.

All of us trained year round. A lot of the off season was easy running.

Partied as much or as little as we wanted. Me, not much.

Very little free time; we all had academically demanding programs, and a lot of interests outside academics and sports.

We fielded an IM soccer team each year; we never practiced but ran the other IM teams to death in games.

A

Based on your questions, I would advise you NOT to run in college. Every one of your questions reeks of, "What is the minimum effort I can put into this?"

Boy do I miss the days of college racing. For reference I was apart of a team that took top 12 twice in NCAA D1 cross, pretty recent.

1) We started practice in January a few days before school started, about two weeks before fall classes started.
2) Looking back at it, we partied extremely hard over the entire summer, stopped when classes first started, and between NCAA xc and indoor practice was a sh*tshow as well normally.
3) Weekends with no competition we had a fair amount of free time, it differed depending on your major and if you worked. During midterms and finals, you virtually had no free time.
4) The serious travel squad didn’t engage in anything else, but we did play spikeball together when the weather permitted.

Every team has a different culture/ environment with how they function. If you are going to balance drinking and training before the real training starts, I’d advise you to start at like 4/5 so you’re in bed by 9/10.

And do a beer mile at least once, it’s miserable, but when there’s like 10-15 of you doing it at midnight, it’s a freaking blast.

I trained year round. The NCAA limits how soon before a season "practice" can formally begin but I think it was something like a month before. That meant that outdoor practice could begin almost right after indoor season was done. I recall practice for indoors starting as soon as we got back from semester/Christmas break. But again, I trained year round.

I never got invited to parties and that was fine with me. I hate parties but had I been invited and interested could have done so.

Yes, I had plenty of free time.

Yes, during basketball season the cross country team had an intramural team. The games were always at night so team practice was done. Intramural football was out of the question as games were played in the late afternoon and that conflicted with practice. We did once have a guy who said he was hurt and couldn't run that day. But we ran past the intramural field and saw him playing for his dorm team.

Do just XC or just outdoor track. Half the year off - maybe more. The other coach won't even know who you are and will leave you completely alone. This is the way to make the situation less than all-consuming. A collateral benefit is that those who buy into the idea of a single, unified, year-round program won't consider you one of them. They won't see you for months on end and will not become your best friends. The upside of this is that a small, insular running gang won't dominate your social life. You can end up with a crowd that does other, non-running-related stuff.

1. All year.

2. Very little.

3. No.

4. No.

Just in case this offends any of you...

Not saying everyone should follow this path. Most of you who did NCAA made it an every day, all year lifestyle. That's cool, but this guy might not be into that. Lessening the involvement might work for someone concerned with it taking over their entire life.

Started practice in the fall when school started. If you ran and were serious about cross country, you’d ramp up running in August. I always took July off. you race through May or June depending on how good you are.

I didn’t care to party or drink at all. I didn’t notice any good runners that did that, but I have heard some have.

Yes, there is plenty of free time. 15 hours of classes. 15 hours of training. That’s not even a full time job. You can study and have a part time job and still have some leisure time.

You’re not doing other sports on the side if you’re serious about running.

I ran XC too, so all year.

Sometimes.

Lots, no. But I had some free time.

No. Once in a while, we played some disc golf.

If you don't want to run year round, don't try Division 1 track and cross country. I ran for a pretty good school back in the day - now it's top 15 every year in CC. We would take off a week after cross country and a week after track and run the rest of the year. Of course during the summer it was on your own but the distance runners on the team would still try to get in 70 mpw or so (I ran mostly 5k in track) and run in fun runs near home. Before our senior year a bunch of us got an apartment in Lake Tahoe and worked in the casinos and restaurants and ran trails in the mountains after work. Just distance all summer. We had about a dozen people sleeping on our floor over the course of the summer. In the school year, if you're at an academic school, you have 15 hours of classes and a couple hours of workouts every day - PLUS about 30 hours of homework a week. Figure out those hours yourself. We would usually take off a Friday or a Saturday night in season, depending on our meet schedule. If you went out Saturday night, it was fine with Coach, as long as you made the 15 mile run every Sunday morning at 9 am! Distance runners ran about 80 mpw but a lot of it was low intensity. It's much different training now. Look, it's long hours but you have to be committed if you want to race and do well in school. It's up to you - what do you really want to do??

Competed a small d3 school

Did cross country, indoor and outdoor. No early season for xc or arriving to campus before the semester started again the winter. Last couple weeks in May early easy then started back up again. Was not given a program training calender for summer workouts.

Usually went every 2 weeks after meets. No drinking nights before meets. Maybe went out like 3-4 times on Fridays in between seasons, but usually did laundry and school work then so I could have Saturday and Sunday free. There was usually more partying in the 2nd semester with the track folk then the xc group. Never had formal Sunday practice or scheluded long run.

No intramural sports allowed.

Plenty of time with classes, practice and meets.

Former Big 10.

Made finals in several times in the 1500

1. Didn’t run year round

2. Went to parties, drank too much

3. Enjoyed my free time

4. No intramural sports

Could have been faster. Wasn’t willing to sacrifice having a life for faster times. Don’t regret it at all.

I was very serious about running but played loads of basketball in college. It never detracted from running. It's not like I skipped runs for basketball.

I was completely into running, but I didn’t let it derail my academics or social life. Had a very high GPA as a math major and was in a fraternity, while I didn’t partake in a lot of the party craziness it was a nice social group to be part of. Ran D3 so it was way less pressure, although I put a lot of pressure on myself (to win conference titles, qualify for NCAAs).

Trained year-round, even higher mileage in off-season (70-115 miles a week).

I attended most of our house band/DJ parties and frequently played beer pong, etc. at gatherings but didn’t really get out of control myself.

Had enough personal/free time, but I enjoyed being busy.

Did intramural sports such as basketball, swimming, table tennis, maybe one or two others. Basketball probably wasn’t the best idea but I was pretty decent and I always liked throwing down some dunks, although haven’t done any since I was 34.