Just ran across this when i was searching on some of my regular sites. http://warr10r.com/about-hansons-brooks-south. Now i live in florida on the gulf coast in the tampa bay area. I think its a good and all but Lakeland? Honestly? I could understand Tallahassee which has nice trails, hills, and has some descent weather part of the year. I am not sure how they are going to try to produce possible olympic quality athletes while training in that part of Florida all year around.
I'm going to have to review my memories of Olympians Shorter, Galloway and others training in Gainesville as the Florida Track Club. Also I'll dig up to see where Olympian Keith Brantley trained.
Maybe Hansons are just going "old school"
Gainsville was bigger than Eugene, back in the day. TONS of great runners lived there. You'd think that plenty of locations would be crappy for training year-round, but the locals will surprise you. Look at Minnesota--frozen wasteland 4 months a year, right? Well that didn't stop MN from cranking out the Heath brothers, Will Leer, Rob Finnerty, Ben Blankenship, Mike Torchia, Hassan Mead, and others in the past 3-4 years. I imagine FL was the same "back in the day."
I remember that some of those guys did train in Gainsville but did they train their through the summer?
"The Lakeland area is home to some of the best training areas in Florida. With the best tempatures to train in during the winter time, Hansons-Brooks South will spend 6 months of their time in Lakeland with the other 6 months traveling during the summer. There are over 60 miles of clay roads and trails within a 30 minute drive of home. Whether it be races for cross-country or track, the colleges in Florida prove to be an excellent resource for the program. Both these factors make it a great place to start a distance training program."