The depressing reality of college runners

There are also some who develop a sense of purpose, self-discipline, and resilience from the experience of devoting themselves to training and discovering the relationship of long-term commitment to success.

Many are also afforded access to a college education they might not have had otherwise, and still others wind up with an education they might have been able to access, but nevertheless get to pursue it with a support structure they might have lacked.

And there are many, many success stories, in spite of the cautionary tales.

The right development, attitude, coaching, and additional support structure and resources can be crucial.

This.

Committing to training teaches a lot of life lessons and just because someone enjoys doing all the things OP listed (committing to workouts, running 100 miles a week, new fads) and doesn’t become an Olympian, doesn’t mean they are a failure in any way. Why is the Olympics everyone’s go to as if that’s all people aspire to when they super enjoy a hobby. Let this young man live. Dear lord.

meanwhile half my college teammates binge drank 3 days a week, did no-nonsense workouts and ran like 70 mpw and broke 14. It's all genetics.

Never understood why people got mad at people for training like this

usually guys who couldn’t touch 14:10

not bad as a sophomore

The kid is passionate about exercise science, that’s cool to me

why post a huge paragraph looking down on him, you learn life lessons from the sport, and hell maybe he’ll experiment on himself enough to become one of the next great coaches!

I think it's great this kid has found something he's passionate about. There are lots of college kids and young adults who struggle to find something that excites them. This kid has it. Maybe in the future he'll be a successful coach.

We posted a similar thought at the same minute!

Hopefully, he saw the Nationals with “Elite” pros performing in front of a 3/4 empty stadium.

That should make any college kid realize pro running is not a path to riches.

The dude that OP speaks of will be a regular poster in about 2-3 years. He will be angry and depressed. He will constantly rant about cheaters and call any time faster than he ran into question because he understands the science!

He will keep winning Turkey Trots over the next decade but grumble about the lack of sponsorship and money. He will have many kindred spirits to identify with on these boards.

this is how it is in EVERY college sport. there are blue chip prospects riding the bench on Div 1 basketball teams who still think they'll get drafted in the first round, 5 star recruits who will never make it off their football practice squads but are convinced they'll win a Heisman. and yes, great high school runners certain they'll win an Olympic gold even if they can't make the travel squad on their own college team. college athletics should be a wake up call for these dreamers, but some never get the message.

there's a guy I play basketball with at LA Fitness, he's in his late 20's and played for Cal Baptist (I checked his stats, he never started) who is STILL talking how he only plays at LA Fitness to stay in shape for when the NBA G League calls. he even flew to Greece on his own dime and tried out for some teams to no avail.

Yeah, but how does he do at LA Fitness? Can you take him?

he owns me, but then again I couldn't make a WNBA G League team.

And you car, why?

*care

It’s all relative. This guy is “only” running 14:10 while I (and thousands of other mediocre D3 college runners) would be ecstatic to come anywhere close to that.

if simply “doing all the right things” guaranteed running elite times then the sport wouldn’t exist.

I am sorry that this seems depressing to you. I can def. see why many might see this as depressing. But his dream is still alive and he is on his life journey. Good for him. Based on the stuff you shared, he is very passionate and focused and probably has a dream and to me this is not depressing, but is positive. He cares deeply about something. What is depressing to me is young people having no direction and not caring about anything, having no dreams. It seems to me that this guy will eventually come to realize that he just does not have the innate/genetic talent to get to the very top. It may be painful for him to get to this point, but he will get there and that is part of the journey of life. Maybe he will retire from running after college, maybe he will be a local 5km road monster, slaying the locals. Who knows? But, he will very likely come to accept that he is not gonna get to the very top, just like 99.999% of runners. If he stays involved in running he might be in a position to help others or coach others, etc.

A slice of my own journey: I was the best miler on my high school team (4:26), but of course I was not scholarship material. I was very passionate about XC/track. My (not-fully-developed) 17 year old brain actually believed that I could one day break 4 minutes for the mile (I reasoned that all it would take was just 4-5 seconds of improvement each year for 5 years, lol)! After high school, I walked on to a very good DII XC team for my freshman year of college. I actually chose this college not for academics but for the XC/track reputation. For 3 months of XC I got my ass handed to me, day in and day out. Some of the scholarship guys had great talent + great passion and those guys were All-Americans and some other scholarship guys had low passion/low focus/low commitment but still had WAY more natural talent than me and therefore also wiped the floor with me on a daily basis. The easy runs for them were like tempo runs for me. The team tempo runs were nearly all-out efforts for me. As the season progressed, I began to realize that I probably was not ever going to be a high-level runner. It was a mental shift that required time and involved some emotional pain I am sure but it was so long ago. As the season progressed, I developed a reputation as positive cheerleader, fanboy and booster for the top varsity guys and began to not stress about my own disappointing performances (I was way overtrained due to trying to hang with the top guys in practice). At the end of the XC season, the coach did a debriefing with each runner. Just a little quick meeting to check in. Our very-passionate young college coach (who 40+ years later, still coaches today and is a now a very famous college/pro track/xc coach and has coached dozens of Olympians) actually thanked me for walking on to the team. He said that my passion and enthusiasm was infectious and made some of the team's top guys clean up their act a little and do a bit better. He said my presence (I was on the JV squad) made the varsity team a notch better. I was truly touched and honored by this beautiful compliment. Anyway, I ended up transferring to a better academic college with a "run-of-the-mill", high-school-level DIII XC/Track program. I loved my new coach. He never coached a single Olympian but he became a life mentor for me, he was all about being an athlete/scholar... classes came first and running was secondary. I kept competing for 4 more years but changed my focus away from big running dreams to just having fun with my bros and having friends and staying fit and focusing on getting my engineering degree. I never broke 4 for the mile but hey I broke 2 for 800m, lol! Cheers.

i encourage double majoring -- specifically "one for me, one for the world" -- because i think it allows a mix of practicality and humility alongside the dreamer thing.

also i don't see how a kid who hits his limit and is frustrated for ideas is the ideal coach, or why they would seek out a sport causing them frustration as their work. but i get your point where it sounds like they are really majoring in going pro. but you would think an obsessive would know how far they are from that goal and know better.