Lindsay Scherf racing marathon one week post-NCAAs??

A guy I went to college with ran a marathon about a week after cross country nationals. Ran about 2:21 or so. It was his sophomore year of college and he was only 19. Didn't seem to hurt him long term as he ran well that spring in track and had very successful junior and senior years.

Good for her! She's in better shape than 99% of the people who'll run marathons this year. Why is a <3hour run a disaster? Cross Country nationals are a long way off.

For an Ivy League girl, Scherf does not seem that smart.

Scherf has always seemed nice but I think misguided by her Harvard coach. Many of us were ahead of her at NCAA's cross country, indoors and outdoors but are not obsessed with junior records. Coach says the road is always there at the end of our track career. I hope she can recover and race with us next year. It sucks to see her down the wrong path.

I think it's a great move. It was not uncommon for college guys, and even HS guys, to run a marathon at the end of the cross or track season back in the 70's. Remember? Back when people were fast. If you really think one marathon run off track training will somehow screw up the cross season 3 months from now then you don't know what you are talking about. Run the marathon, take 2 weeks of active recovery, start training again. What's the problem?????

name the coach.

Runners recover from the marathon just fine!! For crying out loud, you guys are 20 years old. If old farts like us can recover, then what's your excuse.

I hope she cranks its, then has a great cross season.

Didn't Shorter run a decent marathon shortly after a 10k in the 72 Olympics?

Back around 1990, Peter Fonseca ran around 2:10 at LA in the middle of track season while at U of O. Dellinger wasn't happy about it , but he did it anyway.

As for Scherf, she is one of those weirdos who actually likes to run. I've spoken with her a couple of times and the difference between her and most runners is her passion for the mere act of running, competing and testing her limits.

I don't know where her running career will go, but I gaurantee she gets more out of running than 99% of all runners.

Best of luck to her

She'll be fine. I had a HS teammate that did a marathon the first week of August every year of HS cross. He stunk it up in September, and came on like a scalded dog in October. By the end of the season, he was top 3 on a very tough team. He thought it made him much stronger, and it was hard to argue with the results.

It's June. Don't get your bun huggers all bunched up over this.

Ain't no thang:

Another successful NY HS runner, Williams College's XC All-American Michelle Rorke, has been running well at 26.2:

As a junior: 18th woman at Boston '05 with 2:50

As a senior: 17th woman at Boston '06 with 2:43

anybody think that maybe the marathon is her goal event? seems to me people forget one of our most successful marathoners started pretty early.... Cathy Schiro O'Brien. I also recall Lisa Martin running one shortly after her cross season at Oregon. seems it was the fastest debut ever at the time.

The average age of the japanese women in 2000when hey had something like 15 of the top 40 times in the world was 21. this philosophy that the roads will always be there doesn't hold much water if we want to compete on the world stage for the marathon.

This kid has always marched to the tune of a different drummer. Let her be.

It could be, although setting the 10,000 junior record makes one think she might concentrate on that for a while, although the jump from 10k to 42 is usually quickly bridged in any given career.

She's been running 80 to 90 MPW since last summer, so she is well prepared to give her first one a good shot.

I don't understand the big deal, the training for a NCAA 10k is similar to that of a marathon anyway.

I didn't change my training that much following NCAA's and ran a fast marathon shortly after.

Why does everyone think she is "going down the wrong path?"

Why wouldn't she recover?

She is fit as hell right now, might aqs well run a fast marathon before she takes a break prior to summer training.

Update- she is not running Grandmas now. Just taking a break and enjoying the good old summer time. Wahoo!

c77 wrote:

Anyone have inside information on this?

I do, but I won't share it. If I did, I'd be letting inside information out, and it would then become outside information. If people wanted everyone on a freak-filled message board to know everything about their plans, why, they'd just post those plans here.

midd8krun wrote:

Ain't no thang:

Another successful NY HS runner, Williams College's XC All-American Michelle Rorke, has been running well at 26.2:

As a junior: 18th woman at Boston '05 with 2:50

As a senior: 17th woman at Boston '06 with 2:43

Rorke had this to say in an interview on eliterunning.com interesting that a college senior who's run 2:43 in her second marathon would think she's not good enough to warrant focusing on running for a while:

Have you given any thought to joining one of the post-collegiate training groups, like Hansons, ZAP Fitness, or one of the Team USA groups?

I don't really know very much about those programs. I think 2:43 puts me in a kind of limbo: it is fast enough that I'm excited to see if I can improve but not fast enough to warrant dropping everything and training full time. Also, I am really looking forward to starting a career. I was able to get my workouts in before work last summer, and I hope to be able to do the same after graduation.

midd8krun wrote:

Ain't no thang:

Another successful NY HS runner, Williams College's XC All-American Michelle Rorke, has been running well at 26.2:

As a junior: 18th woman at Boston '05 with 2:50

As a senior: 17th woman at Boston '06 with 2:43

Yeah, but she stopped doing track to train, I'm pretty sure.

Yeah, but she's probably 21 and likely no older than 23. From the sound of things, she has only two years of serious mileage under her belt (i.e. not running track until late in high school). The operative word here is "upside" and she appears to have loads of it when it comes to marathoning, where accumulated training volume plays such an important role in achieving optimal results.

Her priorities are clear and unambiguous--to get started on her career in publishing. I just find it interesting that someone on the cusp of being national class is playing down her own potential.

We've all read about the guys (and they were almost exclusively guys) "back in the day" who lived a pauper's life in order to train full-time. I wonder what the Hanson brothers would think of Rorke's choice to focus on career right out of the chute, and if they could convince her otherwise.