Lifestyle of a sub 4 miler while in college

13:48 guy here and lived with a guy who ran sub 4:05 countless times but never cracked 4. both of us were liberal arts students so school was never too challenging except around midterms and finals. we drank hard probably once every two weeks or three weeks. occasionally had a few toking sessions but that was mostly during summer or in between seasons. there were some random girls of varying degrees of attractiveness. but the best nights were those when a bunch of teammates did random things like wrestling, chugging hot sauce, drawing phallic symbols with a sharpie on whoever passed out first, and other stupid stuff i miss so much.

looking back i realize focus in running is so individual. some will thrive off of a spartan lifestyle while others need a girl, drink, party or whatever every so often to calm their nerves before they go berserk.

stupid thread wrote:

You're an idiot. You should try drinking a cup of coffee about two hours before a race, and ejaculating 2-3 hours beforehand. Shit, have a beer the night before your race. I bet you'd drop a minute off your 8k pr. I mean, you couldn't get any slower than mid-27minutes.

Also, NAIA is a joke. Going to ten random parties a semester is definitely more of an accomplishment. And I don't even like parties.

No it's not, any scumbag idiot can go to ten random parties. You probably haven't accomplished any of that mentioned stuff though. You're weird and you make us all feel weird.

Socal, I remember you saying you trained with SMTC under Joe Douglas and got down to 3:37. How much volume were you doing in your post-collegiate training?

If you want to know the lifestyle of 4 minute milers, check out the upcoming independent movie "The Real Maine" which chronicles the summer training of 4 current NCAA Milers as they rent a cabin in the middle of nowhere Maine. Erik Van Igen Directs. Trailer to be debuted today (Friday).

Link to Erik talking about his upcoming film

http://www.flotrack.org/coverage/239796-The-Real-Maine-An-XC-Series/video/503804-Erik-Van-Ingen-talking-about-Maine-training-and-the-documentary

One question: what's with all the 4:00+ guys posting answers? You are wasting thread space. Seriously, stop.

joe never had us count miles and never used mileage as a measure for our training. however, i'd estimate that much of the fall/winter/spring i was doing 80 miles of quality running. i was logging 25-30 miles just in morning runs, 5-6 days/week. started track work 2 days/week late november. long tempos 8-16 miles) basically every saturday unless racing. recovery runs were NEVER longer than 7 miles. easy days and morning runs were probably 6 minute pace or faster as i got into shape, though i never timed runs--i left that to my coach.

You can read my biography (Once a Runner) if you want to get hip to the straight scooby-doo.

Being slow, I already know how slow runners live so please stop telling me. Also, you are giving distance runners a bad name. you know who you are

I agree. Also, it seems that the sub4 college guys had it pretty easily academically. (No engineering majors, hard-sciences, etc). Perhaps that is to be expected from a task that takes that much time commitment?

4:06 not good 'nuf wrote:

One question: what's with all the 4:00+ guys posting answers? You are wasting thread space. Seriously, stop.

I hope I just got trolledCHODE ALERT

I don't think major should really matter. Plenty of people have run good times while working, and the first ever was by a med student. Hell, Yawauchi (sp) just ran 2:08.xx while working full time and with no sponsor.

Might be more of a self-selection thing though, where the really talented runners tend to focus more on running because it's their career plan.

Ran 1.49 off 20-30miles a week in collage while training alone, drank bout 4-5beers a day at the time, twice a weeak ,usually after races got wasted really bad 10+beer 0;5liters each, smoked cigaerattes pretty often

Benchmark workout was threshold reps with hangover off no sleep

Seriusly

Big Ten Sub 1:49 wrote:

Life is training. Fall is ok.. some occassional drinking and girls on weekends. Once Halloween hits.. no beer, no partying, gettin lucky only if its before 10:30 and its some xc chick who likes me for my speed. In season: 9 hours of sleep. Hard major = mostly C's. Traveling to big meets most weekends and being in great heats. Running the 8 in the Big Ten meet = All-Americans sometimes even can't score. But I still score cause I'm a boss.. sadly that doesn't really translate to scoring with chicks. Scoring at Big Ten's is better anyways though.. I'd rather score 3 points than score with a girl who is a 3 out of ten. Sorority chicks don't care if you run 1:48 or 1:58.. they're amazed you run 2 whole laps without stopping for a break.

Girls don't like you. Doesn't matter if you spend all of your time running or drinking. Results will be the same.