"He's just an All-American type guy - not a contender."

No, it's not saying anything about talent. It's saying that improvements will occur more slowly after sophomore year. So slow that you will not improve very much by the time you graduate. If you keep running after graduation, then the small improvements will continue to add up. Essentially, the person that starts their training first will be the fastest.

The brojos are huge on talent being important. Talent (or lack thereof) was rojo's excuse for not living up to his promise of building a top-10 NCAA team.

As long as often older kenyan runners are competing that statement is theoretically true but to insinuate that most runners don't improve any after their soph year is just idiotic.

I didn't have to take but a few minutes and just one year (11-12) to see that Tom Farrell went from 31 to 9. Darling went from 46 to 11. Connor went from 36 to 12. Mayhew went from 64 to 13. Dohner went from 51 to 19.

stats and facts wrote:

As long as often older kenyan runners are competing that statement is theoretically true but to insinuate that most runners don't improve any after their soph year is just idiotic.

I didn't have to take but a few minutes and just one year (11-12) to see that Tom Farrell went from 31 to 9. Darling went from 46 to 11. Connor went from 36 to 12. Mayhew went from 64 to 13. Dohner went from 51 to 19.

Yes, but were any of those guys contenders to win? No. That's the point that was being made.

to reach back a generation or two...

if somebody had counted out Frank Shorter according to his "sophomore promise" (or lack thereof)...

well, lets just say, Frank, the last American Oly double Gold marathon medalist (Cierpinski to be stricken due to PEDS), didn't hit his stride until Senior year at Yale...

he didn't come near an NCAA title until his last year

Darling was 13th his sophomore season and 11th as a senior. It is not really fair to include him in your counter-argument.

Strom jr. wrote:

to reach back a generation or two...

if somebody had counted out Frank Shorter according to his "sophomore promise" (or lack thereof)...

well, lets just say, Frank, the last American Oly double Gold marathon medalist (Cierpinski to be stricken due to PEDS), didn't hit his stride until Senior year at Yale...

he didn't come near an NCAA title until his last year

Well, the quote just goes to show the lack of competence among college coaches and also shows how lazy they are. They are poor at developing talent and don't want to make the effort, better to recruit a stud than to develop one.

Isn't this contrary to Wejo's own experience? He improved a ton after college.

Seems like a lot of guys are over-analyzing here.

It's not saying that nobody improves after sophomore year. It's not saying that talent is more important than training. It's not saying that you'll never improve after years of training.

It's simply saying that, for most good collegiate runners, significant improvements in finishing place are not seen over that 2-year period, especially for a guy who is already training really hard (close to his potential).

You'll always see people who break the mold, but a few anecdotes don't disprove this generally correct theory. It also doesn't mean people can't significantly improve later in life.

Yeah, like he said.

The quote refers implicitly to sophomores who have competed at the NCAAs. This reduces the sample to those sophomores who have developed to the point that they have qualified for NCs. Every individual has a limit to their individual potential. Obviously, the earlier that you approach that limit, the more gradual your future improvements will be thereafter. The people in that sample are specifically those that closer to their personal limit.

As the Brojos point out in their chart, this follows through for the other AAs in their sample. Hill, Lowe and Estrada improved from freshman to soph years, but were what they were thereafter.

The “dreams become reality” supporters do not need to despair. It is not that type of runner addressed in the quote. If I come out of HS as a 4:30 miler who ran 30 miles a week, I have more relative “room for improvement” than Chris Derrick. He worked very hard in high school and achieved an outstanding level of success. He placed well at NCs as a freshman and consistently performed well thereafter. From a mile high view, however, he started as a top 10 type runner and finished as a top 10 top runner.

The 4:30 miler, on the other hand, just starts working hard freshman year. They may start to be competitive at a conference level as a soph, may qualify for NCs as a junior and may place higher at NCs as a senior. Most likely, they will not contend for a title, but they certainly have improved. Some, like Shorter, may contend. Most won't

Like a lot of issues, there are (at least) two correct and important ways of looking at this.

Yes, Not the real 4:30 Miler and others are right that a lot depends on where you are in your development when you get to college. If you're already fairly far along, and if you handle the transition to college training smoothly and without injury, the bulk of those gains are likely to be realized relatively quickly. As a result, you will probably not see great improvement from year two to year four of college running.

But at the same time, real xc is also absolutely correct. (And it's surprising there hasn't been an explosion of commentary on this factor since the QOTD appeared.) The vast majority of D1 college coaches are almost exclusively focused on two things -- recruiting ready or almost ready to compete talent, and whipping their kids into the best possible shape for the current season/year. They just don't focus on the longer term and year-to-year development. So once the adjustment to college training and competition has been (hopefully) negotiated, the athlete is more-or-less at the level he will be at for the remainder of his collegiate career.

The point that is being made is not that college kids don't improve after their sophomore year. It is that someone who is an All-America, lets say 20th, their Sophomore year is unlikely to ever become a contender for the win. The level of ability between guys like Kathuka or Lalang and an average All-American is huge. For a kid to expect to bridge a gap like that to those guys in two years is just wrong.

Also, someone's finishing place at Nats is determined by one race. There a whole host of things that can potentially go wrong. The point is that bridging the gap between 20th and 1st is very difficult and is not going to happen for most college kids.

David Rooney anybody?? Cmon obviously not every guy who was an all american his sophmore year is going to win. The statistical odds make it impossible. However the argument that a guy won't improve is completely bogus. It all depends on the type of training that runner was doing at a sophomore (i.e. 100mile weeks, large volume workouts). As long as a runner takes a gradual progression training each year, and does the things they are supposed to do outside of running (progression of better sleep habits, nutrition etc.) that runner will continue to improve. The reason too many all american sophmore may not improve a whole lot is because a) they are already training at a very high level, or b) there recovery habits in the coming years gets very bad.. leading to injury.

Gradual progression is also the key factor into overcoming the risk of injury (which is one other main reason these guys may not improve to be all that they can be).

I agree with VA Coach.

I feel like most college coaches nowadays are great recruiters who bring in the best talent, throw them on a decent training plan and let them do the rest. Very few college coaches step back and take a long term approach. If you include a logical progression for an athlete over their 4-5 years in college, you should see progression every year. Yes, they are likely to have a breakout season somewhere, in which they take a huge step and other years make smaller improvements. But I feel coaches that agree with this sentiment are the coaches that believe in the "one method fits all" training plan. They recruit great athletes and hope they can handle the system.

To me, this ties into the larger problem with coaching right now. To many coaches get caught up in the short term, ignoring the long term potential for their athletes. I really think this is the difference between the great coaches and average coaches (which they are far too many of in the NCAA right now).

I do agree with the sentiment that it is tougher to go from say 20th to Top 5 than it is to go from 100th to contending for All-American honors. The higher up you get, the less drastic that improvement curve gets.

Just my thoughts

JustAnotherAA wrote:

Yet this is contradictory to all the other writing here about "there is no such thing as talent, it is all training". Please discuss. Brojos, please explain.

What asinine writing says this??

I can guarantee you no well respected authority in our sport truly believes this

hmmmmmmmmmmmmm wrote:

JustAnotherAA wrote:

Yet this is contradictory to all the other writing here about "there is no such thing as talent, it is all training". Please discuss. Brojos, please explain.

What asinine writing says this??

I can guarantee you no well respected authority in our sport truly believes this

If someone did believe this then you and others would accord them no respect. As a result your statement is essentially meaningless (I hope that it is not necessary to spell out all the gory details).

I just went through the 2010 results and picked out the top 10 sophomores and listed how they finished in 2010 and how they finished this year. Only 3 inproved their place by a combined total of 8 spots. 4 did worse; all by at least 10 spots. 3 didn't even race.

Ahmed: 12 -> 8

Darling: 13 -> 11

Haile: 17 -> 47

Dunbar: 25 -> 41

Bosshard: 26 -> DNS

Thode: 30 -> DNS

Kemei: 46 -> DNS

Forrester: 52 -> 62

Kogel: 53 -> 51

Mildenhall: 57 -> 108

A lot of people in this sport need to believe that they will improve by leaps and bounds. So even though this is a statement of fact, there will be a lot of pushback on it.

Cam Levins went from nothing to battling Lalang at NCAA XC. It may not be likely, but it can be done.

I think the issue of lack of improvement is more a problem of coaches not adjusting training throughout college. So a kid comes in, makes a huge leap frosh-soph year, then stagnates. If he gets in with a good group after graduating, he'll make another huge leap. That improvement was always possible, but he never reached it because he was stuck doing the same old training after reaching a plateau.