Slowest collegiate runner of all time?

This - a D3 college teammate of mine went from running ~18:00 in HS to running at the olympic trials marathon this last January

To be fair, he had already gotten much faster during his gap year (or two?) before joining the team. There were a fair number of guys who walked on with times close to (or above) 18:00 who wound up doing pretty well (even if they haven't eventually ran a 65 minute half)

larry bacow wrote:

Sesamoiditis wrote:

I'm sure there are a number of D3 All-Americans who entered college with PRs over 18 and 22.

This - a D3 college teammate of mine went from running ~18:00 in HS to running at the olympic trials marathon this last January

To be fair, he had already gotten much faster during his gap year (or two?) before joining the team. There were a fair number of guys who walked on with times close to (or above) 18:00 who wound up doing pretty well (even if they haven't eventually ran a 65 minute half)

Wow your friend is the best

I thought I was one of the slowest but apparently not. I ran for a division III school back in the 80s. I ran for the first time the summer before I started university. My first cross-country season I ran somewhere around 32-33 for 5 miles and ran in the high 18's for 5k in track. In those days I was almost always in last especially in track. The only question was how many times I would get lapped.

My second x-country season I was down to around 30 flat for 5 miles and consistently around 18:30 for 5k. I was still almost always at the rear of any race and only on the team because my coach was very kind.

My junior year was a disaster. I tried to up my mileage and train with a guy who was quite a bit better than me. Both seasons I crashed and burned with a low-light of a mid 40 minute 10 k on the track. I was beaten by a girl who was clearly overweight.

I managed to recover my senior year and eventually ran low 36's for 10k and 16:5? for 5K. I really loved running and decided to dedicate myself to running for a few years after graduation. After many miles and being towed along by some fast training partners I got down to 32:09 for 10k and 15:18 for 5k. I have no regrets about spending 3 years working part-time jobs and just running. I look back at it as one of the most fun parts of my life.

I once saw a girl who was at least 7 months pregnant walk a 5k cross country race. They only had 5 girls on the squad and needed her to finish. I don't know her time but you don't get much slower than walking.

Sesamoiditis wrote:

I'm sure there are a number of D3 All-Americans who entered college with PRs over 18 and 22.

Maybe leaving HS but by the time the college season started and they had to run a 5k time trial they would be under 18 and 22

larry bacow wrote:

This - a D3 college teammate of mine went from running ~18:00 in HS to running at the olympic trials marathon this last January

To be fair, he had already gotten much faster during his gap year (or two?) before joining the team. There were a fair number of guys who walked on with times close to (or above) 18:00 who wound up doing pretty well (even if they haven't eventually ran a 65 minute half)

John Crain!

Look at the last place finishers. This is just a sample of d3 meets around the country. If I spent more than 2 minutes I'm sure I could find worse

What about someone who runs a great race, but trips in the mud and falls and breaks an ankle within the last km and takes 10min to cross the line. Does that make them slow?

I had a friend who would claim to run 16 miles at 5:15/mile pace and his 8k race time was 32 minutes. To his credit he had run 10k road races in 35-36 minutes. So maybe the course the 10k course was short by a mile.

I saw a girl run over 1 hour for a track 10k. I think she was 6 laps behind 2nd to last. It was a cold and windy day, and it completely messed up the next event's (110HH) warm-up.

Dude on my team has a 63 minute 8k to his name. He ended up running a 4:13 mile indoors, so he could use some more long runs

Some D3 programs are just like high school programs and anybody can join. I wasn't fast at all in high school and after the first couple days at college I saw the team and missed running. I talked to the coach, he said come on in. Just like that I was on the team. We had some fast guys and guys slower than me with no training. Being on a team can be fun as long as you are all working hard. Nobody was turned away as long as you were willing to work.

worse than that wrote:

https://www.tfrrs.org/results/44184_m.html

Look at the last place finishers. This is just a sample of d3 meets around the country. If I spent more than 2 minutes I'm sure I could find worse

Look at last place for the men's 100m, 16.53 for the 100m wtf? How can anyone be this slow, is the guy disabled?

Hofstra University is D1 and pretty awful

I would hope that the leaders lapped him at least 3 or 4. That would only require about 4:20 mile pace.

crazy eights wrote:

I saw a guy run a 6:52 mile at an indoor meet once. Got lapped by everybody in the field (maybe even twice by the leaders.) There were guys off the track running their warmup jog faster than him.

I have it folks, if this counts. We had a thrower on my team that missed the bus once and in order to compete that day he had to run the 1500m. He walked it in 17 minutes! But hey he got to throw that day.

And to think i thought 28 minute 8k was slow

I go to a D1 college and run on the club team since my high 26 8k won't allow me to walk on, and it's funny to see some D3 schools in my area who have every single one of their runners slower than me. Some teams will have over 50% slower than 30 mins.

muebele wrote:

Some D3 programs are just like high school programs and anybody can join. I wasn't fast at all in high school and after the first couple days at college I saw the team and missed running. I talked to the coach, he said come on in. Just like that I was on the team. We had some fast guys and guys slower than me with no training. Being on a team can be fun as long as you are all working hard. Nobody was turned away as long as you were willing to work.

Many college running programs (D3, NAIA) do not offer scholarships for running, or have very limited scholarships. The schools are not providing much to the runners, so there is no obligation to only keep a certain number or quality of runner on the team.

Depending on the coach, they can be no cut like high school.

Some coaches treat the team like a class. You might need to meet a very minimal standard so as not to fail (get cut) but that varies from coach to coach.

Good coaches at small schools with no scholarships try to teach running. They want to see effort and improvement. Like in high school, your back of the pack frosh might develop into a point scorer as a senior.

I went to an NAIA school where we had 4 guys running 38+ minutes for 8k xc.

They had no natural talent. tried to do all the workouts. never really improved over 4 years. They ran all the home meets and some of the away (that did not limit entries).

This was at a small academically intense private college(total enrollment 1000) and we only had 10-12 men out for xc.

The reality was one of the top 7 guys gets injured and you plug in one of these 4. Some of your top runners graduate, drop out, transfer, quit or flunk out and these guys are your team.

As a coach, you want to actually coach and have a team, so you are not going to cut people. BTW the coach also taught numerous regular courses, so his main position was not coaching the team.