Unofficial 2018 D3 XC Thread (Official)

Shout out to Ryan Cox for finishing 7th at Little Threes, 6th at natties.

see emm you wrote:

What the hell happened to CMU?

CMU has 5/7 go down in the pileup. 2 were at the bottom and by the time they were able to get up they were in last.

To be fair CMU has a history of underperforming at Nationals, often behind what they were ranked going in. But I think today was more than just underperforming.

I can say from the experience of going down in 60th and being trampled and have guys piled on top of you, and getting up in last, is very demoralizing. It was very tough to get around the 100s of guys ahead to make up the ground lost.

Huge props to the guys that went down hard, got up and were still able to be top performers. Looking at the results, I can see guys that probably fell (based on their 150+ at the 2.4k checkpoint) and still managed to move their way up to top 50 finish.

And congrats to the under ranked teams that showed up today and raced their ases off to outperform us.

Oconomowoc wrote:

"How They Will Win: The Blue Jays have won five of the last six national titles, and with a rested top three and several more All-American contenders lining up on Saturday, the Johns Hopkins women will make it six of the last seven in Oshkosh."

Lol @FloTrack.

So happy to see Hopkins women go down. There isn't a more obnoxious team in DIII, men or women. I'm all for people being a bit funny at the banquet (PP you're in the clear), but Hopkins women always manage to come off as entitled and condescending. Even NCC men look humble compared to them

Dress the part wrote:

So happy to see Hopkins women go down. There isn't a more obnoxious team in DIII, men or women. I'm all for people being a bit funny at the banquet (PP you're in the clear), but Hopkins women always manage to come off as entitled and condescending. Even NCC men look humble compared to them

how so?

matching gucci track suits and somehow finding panera bread in the middle of goddamn nowhere

faronixx wrote:

matching gucci track suits and somehow finding panera bread in the middle of goddamn nowhere

Yeah, getting that bread seems to piss you off.

Couldn’t agree more with this. They were by far the most obnoxious team at the banquet and their coach looked like a massive tool going up to get his award. Also, funniest thing of the entire weeekdn was seeing the women’s team lose by 1 point then seeing the men’s team start celebrating when they supposedly came in 4th only for them to be knocked back one place by wartburg who then started celebrating only to get knocked back one place by Haverford. Johns Hopkins = tools. Glad they lost.

Is there video of the fall anywhere?

Or could someone screen record it from the Flotrack video (which is PRO for some stupid reason) and put it here for us poor people?

The pileup: https://youtu.be/W2muDj5mwEs

So basically kids went down 2 minutes into a 24 minute race and lost what, 5 seconds? If you got banged up then it’s a different story. But time wise, that shouldn’t have mattered at all over the course of 8k

Okay dokay wrote:

So basically kids went down 2 minutes into a 24 minute race and lost what, 5 seconds? If you got banged up then it’s a different story. But time wise, that shouldn’t have mattered at all over the course of 8k

Retweet

I can give some insight into the fall since I was one of the first to go down. Falling in a race takes a lot of momentum away especially on a fast course like at Lake Breeze. I was one of the first to go down and I believe I was in the first 1/3rd of the race and felt like I was in a good position to AA if it wasn't for the fall. Instead of going through the mile in around 4:55-57 like I would have liked to have gone through in, I went through in 5:15. That's 20 seconds back on my goal pace a mile into the race. It is pretty hard to recover from that especially after getting spiked by a bunch of people.

Okay dokay wrote:

So basically kids went down 2 minutes into a 24 minute race and lost what, 5 seconds? If you got banged up then it’s a different story. But time wise, that shouldn’t have mattered at all over the course of 8k

I know. I don't understand why NAU doesn't just take a 5-10 sec. walk break early in their races. It would help them drop their lactate levels a bit and they wouldn't have a problem weaving through 200 bodies to get back upfront (and they wouldn't even have fallen down). It's not like anyone else at the nationals meets are good runners.

Participant wrote:

I can give some insight into the fall since I was one of the first to go down. Falling in a race takes a lot of momentum away especially on a fast course like at Lake Breeze. I was one of the first to go down and I believe I was in the first 1/3rd of the race and felt like I was in a good position to AA if it wasn't for the fall. Instead of going through the mile in around 4:55-57 like I would have liked to have gone through in, I went through in 5:15. That's 20 seconds back on my goal pace a mile into the race. It is pretty hard to recover from that especially after getting spiked by a bunch of people.

Exactly, you can’t just fall like that then get up and run back to where you were

Dhruvil can eat bread AND win a national title -

let me just state this wrote:

Dhruvil can eat bread AND win a national title -

O b j e c t i v e l y better than Drew Padgett for these reasons and these reasons alone.

So, Monday morning armchair conversation: is this NCC team the goat D3 team? Point total wise, they are 3rd all-time with 43 behind the 1993 NCC team that scored 32 and the 2006 Calvin team that scored 37 at the muddy Ohio meet. However, in 1993, the field size was significantly smaller (21 teams/ 182 runners) compared to this year (32 teams/280 runners). It would be my assumption that more teams would equal higher team scores through the potential of adding team points to runners who otherwise teams would not have made the race, plus the race becomes a bit more challenging with an extra 100 bodies to account for. Accounting for # of AA's is also a tough point because the # of AAs has changed each time with AA being top 30 in 93 (NCC had 5), 35 in 2006 (Calvin had 6) and 40 in 2018 (NCC had 5).

I also wonder how depth impacts the conversation. This year NCC ran against two of the better teams we have seen in the last 10 years. Both Wash U and Lax would have won nationals in 2015, 14, and 12 with their scores, Wash U would have tied for the win in 2011. Calvin also had NYU in 2006 who broke 100 points, one of the few teams to do that and lose.

I feel like looking at margin of victory is a hollow-method because that doesn't show that one team is better as much as it shows that 2nd place is that much worse. I feel like the lower points scored in years where other teams scored low points is more meaningful because it would be harder to do so in a deeper field.

The final point, and this is much more difficult to measure, is what team had a greater regular season since it would be a little foolish to base the goat label all on one race (although the race should get a huge weight to it- can't be goat if you don't win it all).

I'm on the fence between Calvin of 06 and NCC of this year. Calvin had a lower point total and more AA, plus raced a deep NYU team, but it also was the mud bowl which makes it hard to say if they were that good or just great for those conditions.

Any other thoughts?

Participant wrote:

I can give some insight into the fall since I was one of the first to go down. Falling in a race takes a lot of momentum away especially on a fast course like at Lake Breeze. I was one of the first to go down and I believe I was in the first 1/3rd of the race and felt like I was in a good position to AA if it wasn't for the fall. Instead of going through the mile in around 4:55-57 like I would have liked to have gone through in, I went through in 5:15. That's 20 seconds back on my goal pace a mile into the race. It is pretty hard to recover from that especially after getting spiked by a bunch of people.

How can you say you were in good position to AA because you were in the first 1/3 of an 8k race at 2:00 in? That argument doesn't really make sense. Additionally, with the fact that tfrrs shows the leaders coming through 2.3k in 7:06 (4:58 pace), its doubtful you would have gone through the mile in that time.

I think I'll take NCC because of the regular season thing. Winning the Louisville meet over Kentucky was impressive. Based on how they ran at pre-Nats and such, it's not surprising at all that they scored 43. They maybe could have been more dominant on a different day, such as a day when Norvelle doesn't burn out.

Weird to think that if Borowsky hadn't gotten arrested we wouldn't be having this conversation. NCC would probably have gone 1-2-3 have scored like 25.