JMysterio, this is not true: "The racing schedule was true. The mileage claim was not. Newton early stressed high mileage but he adapted and cut back on the mileage around
the early 90's before Don was running."
My kids ran for Newton from 1998-2001, and they ran over 1000 miles every summer (except as frosh, when they ran 360), with peak weeks hitting 120 mpw. There were easily 25 kids in the 1000-mile club each summer, and mine got 3000-mile shirts. If you pick up the book "Coaching Cross-Country Successfully" (the original not the Pat Tyson re-do) you can actually see Newton's training plans, which remained quite high-mileage.
The easiest days of xc my kids had were on meet days. You would just have a 3-mile warm-up, the race and then a cool-down. Every Monday was 25 quarters with one-minute intervals. This was after the warm-up run.
Micah Vandenend was a fine runner and a good human. I would put Tim Keller ahead of Micah, but Tim gets little attention- the year Sage ran 8.42, Tim went sub-9 something like 4 or 5 times, but always in the upper 8.50s. Even in the race where Sage ran 8.42, Tim ran 8.57.