How is Chris Solinsky as a Men's Distance Coach?

Tough to say as he's only been at UF for a year. The school itself does have a lot of appeal and can get kids purely off of their name. If you want to get good at distance running you have a lot of other options. FSU and UNF both beat them at regionals the past two years.

Keith Brantley lived there year round and seemed to do pretty well.

the hammock wrote:

Keith Brantley lived there year round and seemed to do pretty well.

I read somewhere that Frank Short, Jack Bechelor, and Jeff Galloway used to train there in the 70's.

Don't forget Barry Brown and Marty Liquori

[quote]zxcvxzcv wrote:

UF is highly ranked, as you say, but the faculty and research facilities are far from Wisconsin and Texas quality.....

U.S. News Rankings takes those into account. And, since Florida tied with Georgia Tech for 8th in national

public universites while Texas and Wisconsin tied with eachother for 15th, your judgment is implausible.

As for your comment in another post that it is "very hard to go fast or recover from roughly March to October" in Florida, that is true for South Florida but not in Gainesville for March, April, and October. Gainesville's average high/low temps for the months you cite: Mar: 75/50 Apr: 80/55 May: 87/62 Jun: 90/69 July: 91/71 Aug: 90/72 Sep: 87/69 Oct: 81/60

Gainesville/Miami guy, just bear in mind that you have a warped perspective coming from Miami. Gainesville weather is only tolerable in relation to Miami. Compared to just about anywhere else, Gainesville weather is brutal for distance running. December, January, and February are usually ok but that's really it. May through October is completely awful. November, March, and April are iffy: sometimes nice, sometimes bad.

Solinsky seems to be doing a good job, all things considered. With the scholarship allocations and weather, he is limited in what he can do at UF.

gvillain wrote:

Gainesville/Miami guy, just bear in mind that you have a warped perspective coming from Miami. Gainesville weather is only tolerable in relation to Miami. Compared to just about anywhere else, Gainesville weather is brutal for distance running. December, January, and February are usually ok but that's really it. May through October is completely awful. November, March, and April are iffy: sometimes nice, sometimes bad.

Solinsky seems to be doing a good job, all things considered. With the scholarship allocations and weather, he is limited in what he can do at UF.

Yes, Miami is awful and Gainesville is definitely not ideal. But Texas and Wisconsin have been cited as superior choices. Austin's average high/low is higher for every one of the months from May-October than it is for Gainesville. (Marginally so for May and October, more so for the hot months.) So if Gainesville's weather forvthose months is, as you say, "completely awful," what does that make Austin's? As for Madison, its weather is clearly a lot better than Gainesville's for most of the year, but for Dec.-Feb the average highs are below freezing and average lows are in the low-mid teens. Not to mention snow - except I just did. :)

Not fun!

Perspective: I lived/taught/coached/ran in Miami for over 30 years but I grew up on Long Island and went to college in upstate New York. And the first three marathons I ran were all in c. 30 degrees temps. Even after all these years in Florida, I hate heat - and HUMIDITY. Never really acclimatized as a runner. In 1978 at age 40 (yup, I'm pretty ancient) I ran 5:50/mile pace at Boston and a month later, in Miami I ran a 20k, less than half the distance, at 6:10 pace. And ran my ass off to do it.

My main defense of Gainesville is that it is, weather wise, FAR better than South Florida and really quite good for most of the year. And UF is much stronger academically than it was in decades past. Even the stingy Republicans in the legislature have bought into the idea that UF, as the pre-eminent state university, should be funded sufficiently to challenge Michigan and UNC and Berkeley.

Fastest clean runner in American history, his magic will rub off on those tough Florida kids. P.S. Training in Florida isn't bad at all if you start your run by 6:30AM. Most college kids don't even have jobs so this is easy because they can just sleep all day after.

CS THE GOAT wrote:

Fastest clean runner in American history, his magic will rub off on those tough Florida kids. P.S. Training in Florida isn't bad at all if you start your run by 6:30AM. Most college kids don't even have jobs so this is easy because they can just sleep all day after.

LMAO, good one.

Just out of curiosity, who's faster?

Gainesville/Miami guy wrote:

Austin's average high/low is higher for every one of the months from May-October than it is for Gainesville. (Marginally so for May and October, more so for the hot months.) So if Gainesville's weather forvthose months is, as you say, "completely awful," what does that make Austin's?

As you well know, absolute temperature is completely irrelevant when talking about central Florida. The weather in Gainesville is much worse than Austin's in September and August -- the humidity is much, much higher, and Gainesville is well south of Austin.

Tampa has days during those months where the absolute temperature is 87 and the feels like 120. So it's really bad, as you already know.

But that being said, I generally agree with you that Gainesville isn't a bad place to run. I think a big problem is that the good Florida kids are forced to run XC (and track) in brutal humidity for their entire four years in high school, so they can't wait to get the hell out of here.

Gainesville/Miami guy wrote:

[quote]zxcvxzcv wrote:

UF is highly ranked, as you say, but the faculty and research facilities are far from Wisconsin and Texas quality.....

U.S. News Rankings takes those into account. And, since Florida tied with Georgia Tech for 8th in national

public universites while Texas and Wisconsin tied with eachother for 15th, your judgment is implausible.

As for your comment in another post that it is "very hard to go fast or recover from roughly March to October" in Florida, that is true for South Florida but not in Gainesville for March, April, and October. Gainesville's average high/low temps for the months you cite: Mar: 75/50 Apr: 80/55 May: 87/62 Jun: 90/69 July: 91/71 Aug: 90/72 Sep: 87/69 Oct: 81/60

Yes, Miami is worse than Gainesville; however, Gainesville is hotter and MUCH more humid than you are indicating! It’s been around 80-86 degrees for most of the days in February! There have been a few cooler days, but most were hot. In the winter the humidity is not high, but from May through November the humidity is horrible. In the morning it’s 95-99%. Yes, in the afternoon the humidity isn’t that high, but it’s then 90-95 degrees.

I believe Brantley was living in Lauderdale when he made the Olympic team. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned potential benefits of heat training.

zxcvxzcv - You said: "Yes, Miami is worse than Gainesville; however, Gainesville is hotter and MUCH more humid than you are indicating! It’s been around 80-86 degrees for most of the days in February! There have been a few cooler days, but most were hot. In the winter the humidity is not high, but from May through November the humidity is horrible. In the morning it’s 95-99%. Yes, in the afternoon the humidity isn’t that high, but it’s then 90-95 degrees."

I "indicated" what the averages are for all three cities., Gainesville, Austin and Madison. You then cherry pick this past February which broke all sorts of heat records. Yes, with global warming the averages are probably lower than they will be in coming years. But that is true everywhere, not just in Gainesville. The morning average humidity in Gainesville is 89% in July - not the 95-99% you apparently pull out of thin - well, thick - air. And Austin's average humidity on July mornings of 88% is indeed lower than Gainesville's - by 1%.

First the easy part. Gainesville is roughly 43 miles farther south than Austin. Not a lot. Bismarck ND is much farther south than Vancouver British Columbia and far colder.

In August there is little to choose between Austin and Gainesville. Austin's avg. high of 97 is a lot higher than Gainesville's 91. Gainesville's avg. low humidity in those hot afternoon's is worse than Austin's: 61%/42%. The National Weather Service calculates Audtin's Heat Index at 104 and Gainesville's at 103.

And in the mornings when temps are lowest and humidity highest, Austin comes in at 75 degrees and 87% humidity; Gainesville is 72 degrees and 94% humidity. The National Weather Service doesn't calculate a Heat Index for temps below 80 degrees.

As I said, both cities are equally awful in August. In September Austin's 91/49% afternoon Heat Index is 96 while Gainesville's 88/64% is 97.1. Austin's September mornings of 69/86% gives it a slight edge over Gainesville's 70/94%.

All in all, it's a near dead heat. (Hmmm, "dead heat". Pretty appropriate for both cities in the summer.)

Some of you say Gainesville is a good place to train and use Shorter, Brantly, etc from the 70’s and 80’s to support your claim. If it’s so good then why don’t the best distance runners in the USA train there NOW?

Because they figured out that Training in cooler temps, at altitude, and hills is better. #evolutionofTraining

I train and live in TN and it's bad enough. The summers are just a grind, and summer weather can start somewhere around mid April depending on the year. So you can deal with less than ideal, conditions from May> late October.

I remember traveling to CA one August and I would get up and go for a run in the AM before everyone else was up. It was GREAT. It was so cool I kept my shirt on. I think I ran 8M every morning then went on to do vacation stuff all day long. It was awesome. There is NO way that would happen back home. I would dead, and exhausted and need a long time to recover before even starting to do anything else.

I remember leaving thinking how easy it would be to get in 8M in the morning and then another that evening.

There's a reason the biggest and most well funded running clubs are in OR, CA, CO and not Miami FL, Mobile AL etc..

friar tuck wrote:

Don't forget Barry Brown and Marty Liquori

& grete waitz

Humidity starts to lower once the sun starts to rise. At 7:00 AM, Florida does have humidity in the mid to high 90’s for the summer through October. Yes, the morning average for humidity might be in the 89%, but that is including 9:00-12:00, when some of the humidity has burned off from the heat of the sun.