A quick background before I get bombarded with the "why are you redshirting if you are D3?" comments.
I ran for 3 years in high school but never cared for being competitive in high school let alone college. After realizing I loved the sport more than anything, the summer before my senior year I trained as hard as I could and put up some respectable times for the amount of training I did but were not super impressive.
Fast forward to right now, I am enrolled at a very prestigious school that is D3 and I am in contact with the distance coach. I was unable to join the team during XC and indoor track for reasons unrelated to running, so I decided to redshirt the outdoor season so I have a full year to run in graduate school. The coach is on board with it and sends me the workouts.
My problem is that balancing school work and track might be unmanageable as I get older so I had an idea that might work. Would it be possible for me to redshirt an extra year or two and then after I receive my degree from my graduate school, take part-time classes at a cheap D1 school and compete for their team with however many remaining seasons I have left?
Is this a way to keep my NCAA eligibility without sacrificing my educations?