Chasing the DIII Dream

Good luck.

Just believe in yourself and don't suggest you have no-talent.

You have talent.

Anything is possible with the right mindset.

You can improve but if the coach gave you those times, he meant them to be in season track times, not road times. You may be too late. I would want to see a much faster road time from a certified course.

Maybe you're right, but it's not as if I have much else to do this summer. In any case, we'll see what happens when you take a guy who never ran much more than 30-40 mpw during his high school career and only trained in the off-season senior year and feed him an eventual steady diet of 70 mile weeks. I'll never know how good I can be if I give up hope and don't try.

First off, good luck in your journey towards this!

Just ensure that you have taken some sort of down time after your track season has ended and not to bump up mileage too soon.

Where are you trying to hit your times? Going unattached at their home meet might be a good way to do it, I think.

I have three road races lined up this summer: a 5K on July 4th, a 10K on July 13th, and an 8K on August 3rd. Barring a respectable performance at one of those,

I will likely do as you have suggested.

I get what you’re saying about resting before building up, but I do not really feel beat down from track season. During April and May, we stopped doing workouts because of the frequency of meets, so my training became made up entirely of easy runs, strides, and races. If I didn’t feel great, there’s no way I could have gone out and hit 55 miles this week with such ease. I’m taking it slow, too. If I smell a whiff of injury, I’ll back off immediately.

Road races are for either T&F has beens or those who never raced T&F. Let the coach know you're showing up for XC in the August. A XC walk-on needs to show that you can keep up. Stop the road racing. Every day in practice may feel like a race in college. If the varsity guys on college team are running their ten mile runs in under 60 minutes, I think you want to be able to run with those guys.

No road races? Malmo says it’s ok to run a few during his summer program, as long as they are stepping stones for what’s to come in the fall. I thought they could be fun intermediary goals to break up the monotony of the trial of miles I’ll be putting myself through. Also, 10 mile training runs in under 60 minutes? That seems a bit extreme for a DIII team whose varsity squad is running mid-16s for 5K XC. Won’t a lot of these guys be coming in underdeveloped ateobically? Such a pace for such a distance could be a race for them, too, at least at this point in time.

Road races? wrote:

Let the coach know you're showing up for XC in the August.

What? No coach in his right mind would just let a guy walk onto his team unannounced. The coach decides if the athlete gets to be on the team, not the athlete himself. Let the guy prove himself first. If he doesn't race and get a good performance now, he'll have to do so when he gets to campus anyway for his tryout.

OP, I think you should ask the W&L coach for advice on this. He would know best.

FormerSub5Hopeful wrote:

No road races? Malmo says it’s ok to run a few during his summer program, as long as they are stepping stones for what’s to come in the fall. I thought they could be fun intermediary goals to break up the monotony of the trial of miles I’ll be putting myself through. Also, 10 mile training runs in under 60 minutes? That seems a bit extreme for a DIII team whose varsity squad is running mid-16s for 5K XC. Won’t a lot of these guys be coming in underdeveloped ateobically? Such a pace for such a distance could be a race for them, too, at least at this point in time.

You are not Malmo. Malmo did not have to prove himself in August on his college XC team. I guess I was thinking of my D-2 XC walk-on experience when I stated sub-60 minute ten mile runs. If you have to run 62:30 to 65 minutes on ten mile runs to stay with varsity guys, that will not be easy runs for you. Malmo has a sub-4:01 mile P.B. You can't do what he did.

I thought that the principles he espouses in Summer of Malmo apply to all fitness levels, though. I guess I’m just a little confused about what you’re advising me to do. You want me to spend the summer conditioning myself to do regular 65 minute 10 milers? Won’t that ability come with a combination of increased mileage and lowering my 5K PR to 16:3x? I came through 10 miles faster than that when I ran my half marathon PR in February, and at that time, the fastest mile I’d ever run was 5:18, so I don’t think that would be too much of a stretch for me to in training right now. I’m just keeping it slow while I increase mileage to limit my risk of injury.

I suspect most D3 schools will allow walk ons for cross country. You may not travel, but you may get to train with the team and run a home meet.

And sub 60 ten mile runs are pretty uncommon at the D3 level and, I suspect, at most D2 programs. Most guys who run easy distance runs at sub 6:00 shape are in 14:10-14:30 shape. There aren’t tons of teams in those divisions trotting out bunches of those guys. And even if there re, OP has no business trying to run at their easy pace in any event.

Good luck OP. You have an uphill climb to hit those times, to be honest; but I’m pulling for you.

Thank you for your encouragement. I, too, recognize the difficulty of the goal I have set for myself, but I feel like this is my only chance to run on a competitive team made up of others who share my newfound love of the sport. I did not get that experience in high school. There were three other members on our distance squad, and believe it or not, I was the fastest over events longer than 800 meters.

I actually talked to the Washington and Lee coach once. It was right before their home track meet a couple of years ago. My teammate and I were in the 10k and he said one of his guys would try and work with us. He seemed like a nice guy. I just looked at Washington and Lee's tfrrs and for track pretty much all their guys are running 15:XX with a few exceptions. I think the coach would let you on the team if you work hard. But you will probably be the slowest guy on the team.

You picked a good school. Beautiful campus.

good luck!

I'll just give 2 pieces of advice

1. Don't force the mileage too much. 55 is a big jump if you've only trained consistently at 35-40. You should see a significant bump in fitness once you acclimate to that volume. Listen to your body, and if it feels like you can keep bumping up then go for it, but if you're working hard at 55 then staying there is still really good.

2. Make sure you stay committed to developing your speed. The mile pace reps are good, and I'd recommend strides after most of your normal runs. 100's at speeds faster than mile pace are also good, just be careful not to overdo the volume of them. I like 4x100 @800 pace or slightly quicker with full rest, and 5-6x100 starting at mile pace and getting slightly quicker, again with full rest, focusing on good form.

I had similar PRs to you coming out of high school, and I ended up running varsity cross country and track three out of four years for a program that was consistently among the best in D3. After you run 16:30 or whatever this summer, just show that you can keep up in practice and that you are willing to work hard and maintain a good attitude. The rest will take care of itself.

I would reccomend following a training plan from the Washington and Lee coach. However, if you want advice about training and somebody to report training to you can email me at mattpowr1@aol.com. I ran D3 back in college at a competitive school and I now coach cross country at the high school level.

First of all congratulations on getting admitted to W&L its a wonderful school. Having spent the last 4 years watching the ODAC schools compete against each other I can tell you that the coaches at W&L are some of the best. Year in and year out they produce competitive teams and beyound that, their athletes always display a strong degree of enthusiasm and sportsmanship. I give alot of credit to the coaching staff there for the team atmosphere and the amount of growth Ive seen year after year from their athletes.. You've made a great choice and I wish you all the best!!

I took your advice and emailed the coach. I did my best to explain the situation and stress the inefficacy of my training.

FormerSub5Hopeful wrote:

I took your advice and emailed the coach. I did my best to explain the situation and stress the inefficacy of my training.

For what it's worth, I was once in your shoes. I had PRs similar to yours -- 2:11/5:01 (yds). I started training -- maybe 40-50/week all summer, and ran something like 27:30 freshman XC.