Many good HS runners could get to really high levels if they continued running the next 5-10 years. Same thing goes for college kids. So what if you aren't competing elite right after college? Give it 5-10 years and you might be up there.
Worth a shot trying versus being 50 and regretting ever going for it. I guess people like partying better. Easier to get pleasure from than training in the elements for races.
I started running in college for fitness and have run since for decades. The reason so many stop is because they were part of an organized group that is part of the education establishment. They think it's sacred. When they leave running is not scared anymore. I would have never joined track or cross country in high school. Do you actually think I would be forced to spend my precious life at that darn school only to stay hours later and run with others? No way! I'll do it on my own, thank you.
From my observations, injuries, plateauing/diminishing returns from running, and they don't really enjoy running without a team. It's far from guaranteed that you'll improve. There's a good chance you train hard for several years and don't make any improvements.
For a lot of people the loss of the benefits of having a team, and new opportunities in other parts of life, kill their motivation. If you're not competing "elite" right after college you're sacrificing a lot more to run, and for more selfish reasons without that team aspect of things. Money to travel, time to train that could be spent on enhancing one's career (or another hobby) instead, etc. all are things that post-collegiate runners have to consider.
It’s harder to get out the door and go for a run when working a full time job than it is when In school
reasons student runners compete:
1) pad their college applications
2) their parents make them
3) their friends are on the team, or to impress a girl
4) are extremely competitive and want to be the best
5) they genuinely love running
people in the 1-3 category will quit once the social pressure is removed. group 4 will continue into college and train as hard as possible to run PRs and race hard, then either bring themselves to injury or burn out. their primary passion is to PR at the final collegiate event and then "retire". the rarest group, group 5s will run, slow or fast, their whole lives because they enjoy it. what you need is a rare combo of a group 4 and group 5 person to continue on and become elite. and even then that person will likely be distracted by the millions of other opportunities in life.
For me it was the realization that I was doing everything possible I thought I could reasonably do (short of doping or grey area stuff) and was fast enough to know I wasn't that fast to make a career out of it. I could walk away knowing I gave it everything I had and I was at peace with that. I never stopped running in the exercise sense but I stopped serious training and competing. I get asked all the time by people what I'm training for or when my next race is (by people who know about my past experience and people who don't). Honestly I have no interest in getting hooked back into that mindset.
The one thing I would have done different is to run a marathon in peak form just to have a fast time to claim.
Burnout
Internetsherpa wrote:
Many good HS runners could get to really high levels if they continued running the next 5-10 years. Same thing goes for college kids. So what if you aren't competing elite right after college? Give it 5-10 years and you might be up there.
Worth a shot trying versus being 50 and regretting ever going for it. I guess people like partying better. Easier to get pleasure from than training in the elements for races.
Has nothing to do with partying.
People pursue careers where they can make money instead.
Hmm, the options are get a professional career, where in 5-10 years, I can be making $150k or more. Or work at a running shoe store, make $20k per year, and when I'm 32, maybe I'll be sorta elite (probably less than 10% chance of this happening) and make $100k for 2-5 years, and then realize I have to get a real job, but I'm 37 and have no real work experience.
It's a horrible financial decision to pursue a running career if you aren't getting contract offers by the time you graduate from college.
If you ever "go for it," you'll be 50 and regret that you wasted at least 10 years of your life chasing a dream that handicapped you financially for the rest of your life.
The ROI changes dramatically after college.
In college, running can give you the following:
College scholarship (maybe worth up to $40k/yr?)
Acceptance to a school/program you may not otherwise get into (worth a lot more than $40k/yr over the course of a lifetime, depending where you go)
Free travel opportunities
Stability/structure to help towards success in class
Friends/social opportunities
A lot of the benefit after college simply goes away. Heck the first two on the list are probably worth more than the value of what 90% of pro/elite runners receive from running, maybe even a higher percentage. Unless you're competing to make a worlds team, the ROI from running competitively practically goes away compared to what it is in high school and college. My high school 1:55 may have done more for my lifetime earnings by getting me in a great school than what a 13:20 5k does for a runner when they are in their late 20s, and it took a whole lot less time for me to run that 1:55.
After college, a lot of other extracurricular activities become more worthwhile than say working towards a 13:20 5k (if you ever get there). Being part of different social circles may offer better chance for valuable networking (whether finding a life partner or great job opportunities), benefits from lifting weights (becoming more attractive) or other physical activity (which are more enjoyable, say someone may like biking, rock climbing etc etc a lot more) may have a lot higher ROI from a lifestyle standpoint than running a 13:20. At the end of the day, a lot of runners in high school and college may rather be participating in other sports, but they are competing in running because its what they are good at and they are receiving a lot of benefits from it. When those benefits go away, they move on to something else. Not everyone has interest in running outside of the benefits it gives to them which are available in high school and college.
obvious answer wrote:
The ROI changes dramatically after college.
In college, running can give you the following:
College scholarship (maybe worth up to $40k/yr?)
Acceptance to a school/program you may not otherwise get into (worth a lot more than $40k/yr over the course of a lifetime, depending where you go)
Free travel opportunities
Stability/structure to help towards success in class
Friends/social opportunities
A lot of the benefit after college simply goes away. Heck the first two on the list are probably worth more than the value of what 90% of pro/elite runners receive from running, maybe even a higher percentage. Unless you're competing to make a worlds team, the ROI from running competitively practically goes away compared to what it is in high school and college. My high school 1:55 may have done more for my lifetime earnings by getting me in a great school than what a 13:20 5k does for a runner when they are in their late 20s, and it took a whole lot less time for me to run that 1:55.
After college, a lot of other extracurricular activities become more worthwhile than say working towards a 13:20 5k (if you ever get there). Being part of different social circles may offer better chance for valuable networking (whether finding a life partner or great job opportunities), benefits from lifting weights (becoming more attractive) or other physical activity (which are more enjoyable, say someone may like biking, rock climbing etc etc a lot more) may have a lot higher ROI from a lifestyle standpoint than running a 13:20. At the end of the day, a lot of runners in high school and college may rather be participating in other sports, but they are competing in running because its what they are good at and they are receiving a lot of benefits from it. When those benefits go away, they move on to something else. Not everyone has interest in running outside of the benefits it gives to them which are available in high school and college.
Very few runners are good enough to receive a running scholarship. I grew up in the Sacramento area and there have been years where not a single runner received a D1 scholarship.
A high percentage of relatively successful high school and collegiate runners run mostly for the competitive aspect. Continuing to train afterwards, when you already know you were a 14:XX nobody at the collegiate level, often feels anticlimactic and tedious. Some people just move on.
It’s the same reason why anecdotally, D3 people seem to be more likely than D1 people to keep training after college. The archetypal D1 person was trying to be the best he could, so he gave it a shot, and once he saw how exactly how he matched up, he was done. The D3 person was just having fun, so he sees no reason to hang ‘em up just because college ended.
For same reason people stop playing other sports. For a lot of kids, it's just playing sports.
Benedict wrote:
Burnout
Benedict for president!
Internetsherpa wrote:
Many good HS runners could get to really high levels if they continued running the next 5-10 years. Same thing goes for college kids. So what if you aren't competing elite right after college? Give it 5-10 years and you might be up there.
Worth a shot trying versus being 50 and regretting ever going for it. I guess people like partying better. Easier to get pleasure from than training in the elements for races.
By quitting running I assume you mean no longer competing. College requires more time for studying and running is much more competitive. I trained hard in college, but I was a middle of the pack runner and in retrospect, it wasn't worth it.
After college it's even more of an effort to train hard while working full-time; especially if you're running doubles. As another poster said, working part-time to accommodate running will delay a working career.
The same decisions are made in other sports. Among baseball players at the same level some will be willing to risk wasting a few years to chase their dreams playing in the minor leagues and others won't.
Winning road races is fun for about three weeks after you graduate and take them on. Then you turn it down a bit, find a career, find a partner, start doing other things, then a year or two later some recent grad takes you at the July 4 run. The cycle continues.
UsedToBeKnowItAll wrote:
Has nothing to do with partying.
People pursue careers where they can make money instead.
Hmm, the options are get a professional career, where in 5-10 years, I can be making $150k or more. Or work at a running shoe store, make $20k per year, and when I'm 32, maybe I'll be sorta elite (probably less than 10% chance of this happening) and make $100k for 2-5 years, and then realize I have to get a real job, but I'm 37 and have no real work experience.
It's a horrible financial decision to pursue a running career if you aren't getting contract offers by the time you graduate from college.
If you ever "go for it," you'll be 50 and regret that you wasted at least 10 years of your life chasing a dream that handicapped you financially for the rest of your life.
Amen to this.
I ran throughout HS & College, and a few years beyond when I could work at my career and run at the same time.
That works ok; but at some point, you have to make a choice and be realistic, and I chose the path to make money and do other things than run competitively.
Oh - also - started having more of a "life" as in meeting a girl, getting married, and having kids. You cannot do all three well - family, career, running at a high level. And running in particular requires a ton of personal time and effort that you simply don't have time to put in the training required to be at an elite level if you have a family and the career to support the needs/wants of the family unit.
For me, I "retired" from running; look back at it fondly, and now work hard (just like I did when I was running) to be successful in other stuff that isn't running related. I'm still competitive - in certain things (not everything), and still get a competitive rush while achieving a goal, or beating a competitor.
nerdy virgin xc runner wrote:
reasons student runners compete:
1) pad their college applications
2) their parents make them
3) their friends are on the team, or to impress a girl
4) are extremely competitive and want to be the best
5) they genuinely love running
people in the 1-3 category will quit once the social pressure is removed. group 4 will continue into college and train as hard as possible to run PRs and race hard, then either bring themselves to injury or burn out. their primary passion is to PR at the final collegiate event and then "retire". the rarest group, group 5s will run, slow or fast, their whole lives because they enjoy it. what you need is a rare combo of a group 4 and group 5 person to continue on and become elite. and even then that person will likely be distracted by the millions of other opportunities in life.
I actually kind of agree with this. It's pretty rare to find someone who genuinely likes running, and plan to run for their whole lives. Fast or slow, I have the most respect for those. Enjoying what you're doing should take precedent over anything else, maybe not in every aspect of life, but definitely for a hobby like running.
I also kind of agree on the ROI stance. Economically, it just doesn't make much sense. Still, people that love running will find a way to balance their life with it, maybe they wouldn't achieve the highest world-beating standards, but heck they'll enjoy it. If you want to look at it economically, the benefits you accumulate over a lifetime of running is probably worth a lot more than just "going for it" during your high school/college career. But again, that differs from person to person. If there's not incentive to run, well, you have to really love running to run!
I agree with you’re view and that’s why I did continue to train and race full time for four years after college.
I figured I Rohan the rest of my life to work and build a career and this one shot to see how fast I could run.
I do not regret it.
For me it was a simple choice, I started running competitively when I was 12 years old and ran until I was 22. I was injured three times during that span, and realized that I wasn't getting any better, my growth was relatively linear. I just didn't love it like I did when I was in high school. I stopped competing, really just ran to stay in shape, for about 5 years. I then picked it back up and haven't stopped. My growth is the same, but now it's more about me and my love of the open road, trail, sidewalk whatever the surface. I'm not elite but I could probably still beat ~95% of the people in my region and nearly 100% of the keyboard Olympians on this site. Sometimes you just need to take some time off to realize what you started it for in the first place.