Solinsky admits 2004 Wisco XC team "kind of choked" while Bairu says "we were overly confident and maybe not as focused"

i'm not surprised one bit wrote:

Hardcore competitors remember the stinging losses just as much as the major victories.

NCAA Team Competition in which you are coming in favored to win and have been crushing it that season - yeah - you're going to be pissed for a long time about that one and remember how terrible the feeling was to have lost.

Not only do you remember those stinging losses, you never get over them. Anyone who has competed at that level and lost, you never, ever get over it.

Word of experience wrote:

negativenancysplit wrote:

just look at those splits. solinksy went 15.17/16.05. looks like they were flat out, out coached. i never understand why every team goes out so fast? don't give me the 'get could position' argument. its a wide open 10k, not an indoor 800m. colorado outperforms just about every year and its because they are well coached and run smart.

I have a very strong feeling that you've not run at the NCAA national meet. Not so easy to weave your way around 170+ guys.

I used to hear this all the time when I ran xc in college. People would always use it as a justification for going out in 4:40 en route to their 24:30 8k. It's never a good way to race. There's always ample room in the latter stages of the races to move up and pass people - doesn't matter if it's the National Meet, Roy Griak, Club XC with 600 guys, etc. This race is a perfect example of that. Colorado's guys all even split, Wisco's guys all positive split. Colorado outperformed, Wisco underperformed.

A similar thing cost Wisco the title in 2006. Solinsky went for the win, didn't listen to his body, and ended up crashing and burning in 70+ place. And this isn't to criticize Solinsky - he's accomplished more in this sport than virtually anyone on this board ever will - but it's a good lesson for college athletes and their coaches.

American speaks: “In our eyes we’d kind of choked.”

Canadian speaks: “We were overly confident and maybe not as focused as we could have been. It was devastating. We should have dominated that race and we didn’t.”

I think athletes in general tend to remember the bad performances more than the good because the entire time you are practicing/training the good outcome is what you expect, so when it turns out that way "that's what was supposed to happen", the bad is when things don't go according to plan.

The few good races I remember are the races where I really ran outta my head and surprised myself, the others are just a blur.

Leaving Withrow out was a really stupid decision. He was an absolute monster and always performed his best on the big stage.

I would leave Withrow out too if our top 5 were Bairu, Solinsky, Teg, Spiker (was AA in cross), and Lockhart (was AA in cross). Too bad for Spiker, not alot of mid-distance runners were All-American that day. Brannen and a few others, but not many...

Just a great race from a young CU team that was well prepared to clean up in those conditions. A bad race from Wisco yes, but a great, great race from the National Champions that year. Wisconsin's 2005 team was better prepared mentally and physically because of this loss and look what happened...utter dominance.

My recollection is that the 2004 Wisconsin team never raced hard from the gun prior to nationals. They dominated Griak against a large, but not stacked field, the played around at the Jim Drews meet at UW-LaCrosse (top guys used it as a tempo run), sat in the pack for the first half of the Big Ten meet before putting the hammer down and crushing everybody and just ran to qualify at regionals. Despite the fact that Solinsky said that their long "tempos" were some of the hardest things he's ever done, I still think it's hard to go out from the gun for the first time at the NCAA meet regardless of the conditions of the course.

In 2005, the Badgers changed things up a bit. Some guys raced at Griak (I seem to recall some ran the first 3-4 miles and dropped out?), some guys raced the next week at Notre Dame and some more raced at Jim Drews (I think some guys still tempoed it and dropped out, but my memory is a little fuzzy?). The biggest difference was at the Big Ten meet on the tough course at Minnesota. The Badgers hammered from the gun! If I recall correctly , their entire squad was sub 2:50 at the K on a wet, cold day on a tough course! They went on to take 8 of the top 9 places with only Sean Jefferson breaking them up in 5th place. I was at the meet that day and it was an impressive performance! Total domination from the gun!The Badgers ran like they had something to prove! They then ran the regional just to qualify and then dominated at nationals!

I think the biggest change from 2004 to 2005 was that they actually raced hard at least once prior to nationals.

I had to come back from injury during my last college XC season. My teammate had the benefit of uninterrupted training but was not as strong a runner as I was. That season as I came back he started beating me in races for the first time. He had gotten better and I had to round into shape. I got tired of him beating me, and noticed that he would go out under control and work his way up. I started having more confidence in doing this and it worked. At the NCAA meet somewhere around 300 or 400 m. in my teammate and I were right next to each other in almost last place behind the pack, and right next to us was one of the Torres brothers (this was 2000). Yes, you have to be careful and work your way through people with this method, but it's possible to race well without immediately redlining yourself. As a side note, within the tremendous pack at NCAAs that year there was a big fall that took a number of people down. I was happy to be out of traffic.

Word of experience wrote:

negativenancysplit wrote:

just look at those splits. solinksy went 15.17/16.05. looks like they were flat out, out coached. i never understand why every team goes out so fast? don't give me the 'get could position' argument. its a wide open 10k, not an indoor 800m. colorado outperforms just about every year and its because they are well coached and run smart.

I have a very strong feeling that you've not run at the NCAA national meet. Not so easy to weave your way around 170+ guys.

Was this the year that Teg decided he didn't run the 10K?

Also I don't think it's fair to compare pre-doping Solinsky to post-doping Solinsky. He was good in college but nothing could have been indicative of his future results.

In the end I guess it goes to show that strength of your team is decided by your fourth and fifth man.

44. 31 191 Stephen Pifer Colorado 16:01 25:31 31:56.8

Stephen Piper -This is the guy who moved up most in the race.

He was 44 seconds behind the leaders at the 5k split, close to the back, and then began an incredible comeback to finish 44th.

More info on this 'snail catches the hare' runner.

Solinsky was only a freshman. Wet course. 10k (long race)

Not surprising he finished where he did.

The Badgers went after it at the 2004 Griak meet, but that was almost two months before nationals. In a loaded meet Teg, Bairu, and Solinsky went 1-2-3, and I think they had 3 or 4 more in the top 10. Otherwise yeah, Jim Drews was a tempo run and at Big 10s they only ran hard for 4 or 5 K.

In 2005 Schumacher didn't want Bairu and Solinsky going head to head in September so they split the squad between Griak and Notre Dame. Withrow didn't run either - I think they decided to just have him train until Big 10s. What they did at Big 10s on the Griak course was incredible. I doubt you'll ever see anything like it again in a major conference. If Lockhart hadn't had an off day they could have put all 9 in the top 10.

Point of fact: Jerry didn’t become a good coach until AFTER his time with Salazar.

His Wisco teams sht the bed more than once at NCAA. Never acatully won a title.

Withrow has been quoted that he was crap in the first time trial and didn't know how to train at that level yet. However, there must have been some signs by November that he was good enough to be in the top 7. I imagine that Jerry thought that having Withrow for an extra year would be worth the slight risk. However, with his injuries it turned out that it cost Jerry the NCAA championship bonus and didn't pay off down the line.

You are absolutely correct.

AlSalShu wrote:

Point of fact: Jerry didn’t become a good coach until AFTER his time with Salazar.

His Wisco teams sht the bed more than once at NCAA. Never acatully won a title.

Normally points of fact have actually facts. Wisconsin won the 2005 title (easily) with Jerry as coach. They ran amazing at 2002 NCAAs to get second. I guess you could say they choked in 2003, but still got second. They definitely choked in 2004. Their 2006 team choked too.

But they won NCAA Indoor in 2007, largely on the strength of their distance.

History memory wrote:

Solinsky was only a freshman. Wet course. 10k (long race)

Not surprising he finished where he did.

He was a sophomore. As a freshman in 2003 he placed 15th.

Plain and simple Wisconsin underestimated just how slow/challenging the course was in 2004. They went out and tried to take it to the other teams. This simply did not work due to the conditions. It played right into Colorado's hands, a team that understood the conditions. The Wisconsin throughbreds simply did not have it that last 2K and all on that team ran below there potential except Bairu.

This was a team that had three consecutive second place finishes and was poised to get it done but mother nature and lack of understanding did them in. This is simply the way it is sometimes.

Another point is Colorado has used these tactics perfectly more times then any other school and for some reason they are the masters of perfectly timing a race. Schumacher undoubtedly know how to coach as was seen the next year and at the professional level. In my opinion had Schumacher stayed around, Wisconsin would be the powerhouse in the NCAA still.

Gega wrote:

Normally points of fact have actually facts. Wisconsin won the 2005 title (easily) with Jerry as coach. They ran amazing at 2002 NCAAs to get second. I guess you could say they choked in 2003, but still got second. They definitely choked in 2004.

fact: nobody was beating Stanford in 2002 or 2003.