Why do so many high schoolers not run much faster in college?

Not enough focus on their basic speed along the way. Everyone has a ceiling of how fast they can run at any distance versus their 200m speed. If someone's 200m speed is the same as a junior in college as it was as a junior in high school and they were well trained aerobically in high school it's not easy to improve. Once your basic speed stops improving you've only got about 2.5 years left of substantial improvement at the distances most often contested in college. And once the improvements become minor at best many runners lose their motivation.

This is the result when the love of running is replaced by love of PRing.

Well then why do 90% of guys improve in college?

Faulty premise. Your argument is invalid.

You truly think basic speed work is a reason?

I don't know about that, but I can say for certain that we never worked on pure speed in college. Knowing what I know now, I have learned it's a good tool to have in the shed. I use it with my own HS kids as well. I know other good decent guys at solid DII and DIII colleges that never had a coach work on pure speed.

Prover of improvement wrote:

Well then why do 90% of guys improve in college?

Because they weren't all that great in high school relative to their potential?

Where are you getting this 90% figure from anyway? If it's because there are ~9 guys running a 4:10 mile in college for every 1 guy in US high school that doesn't mean 90% of guys are improving. If this is the case you have to remember quite a few of these collegiate athletes didn't run in the US in high school. There are also collegiate 1500 runners that didn't specialize in the 1600/mile in high school and are moving up from the 400-800.

They don't improve their running skillsa and they getting lazy and fat...

I’ve had the “my college coach sucks-my HS coach was better” conversation with more college runners than I care to think about.

Here’s one thing I’ve noticed. Most are getting a little faster, or are holding a pace longer, albeit marginally. But they are farther back in the pack. Most were race winners or ran toward the sharp end of the field in their last two years of HS. Then they are pack fodder in their first two years of college. They suffer from a failure to have or meet reasonable expectations and they get frustrated.

Then their thinking looks like this:

HS coach = I won races

College coach = I’m mid-pack

HS coach > College coach

Add in that they might have been the best (or among the best) kids that HS coach had, they got a disproportionate amount of attention, they were a local hero, etc.

In college, not so much on any of that.

Portland Hobby Jogger wrote:

Everyone has a genetically imposed limit on how fast they can get. If your DNA caps your best mile at 4:02 and you ran 4:10 off of moderate mileage in high school, no amount of training will get you under that performance limit. Next time, pick your parents more carefully. Many celebrated high school athletes are just running very close to their ultimate potential already.

In my opinion, that is poor coaching. No one hits their absolute peak, or close to it, at 17.

Well duh. Guys are further back in the pack in college because guys are improving in college.

The small Sample was the 10 guys who ran 4:09 in high school. 9 of the 10 improved. If top notch guys improve at a rate of 90%, it makes sense that slower guys would improve at a rate equal to or higher than that.

"Much faster" is entirely subjective of course.

If we're talking about males, I think most college athletes show only moderate improvement, regardless of the sport. I think there are two main reasons:

1) College athletes were already at a pretty high level. Across a lot of sports, 18 is no longer that young. We see teenagers crushing it on the world stage in track, basketball, football, etc. If it weren't for rules about eligibility, the majority of pro athletes would not compete in college. (Incidentally, those rules are of questionable antitrust legality.) In soccer, the "young player of the year" award in England goes to someone 24 or under, which used to make sense, but these days good players are typically breaking into the first team around 19 or 20. If you're close to physical maturity and have been training hard for years, you're already getting to a point of diminishing returns.

2) Some get overtrained or burnt out on the sport. They get interested in other things, drink a lot, don't sleep enough, etc.

In running specifically, people move up in distance. It takes relatively less training to reach your potential at shorter distances, so you run up against your limits in the mile. It's common knowledge, however, that good freshmen can struggle at the 10k distance in NCAA XC nats. Strength takes time. There are plenty of 18 year olds who would obliterate me in a 1500, but they would have no chance of keeping up with me in a half marathon. That doesn't mean everyone has to move up; it just means that much smaller margins count as significant improvement when we're talking middle distances.

Improver wrote:

Well duh. Guys are further back in the pack in college because guys are improving in college.

They are also farther back because most of the field is older, more seasoned, has settled into college life, has adapted to a collegiate training regimen, etc.

That might be “duh” to us but try explaining that to a guy who ran in the 80% percentile in HS and now is in the 20% percentile as a college runner.

When you skim the top 20% off the HS ranks (I’m making up a number) and they matriculate into a new population, a guy who was good suddenly stinks in his mind. Even if he’s getting faster.

Tell a kid that used to win that he’s better/faster now, even as he finishes near the back. I’ve tried. A typical response is that he’d be “even faster” and “more competitive” if he was still with his HS coach.

Many college runners end up running their high school mile pace for an entire 5k so it is dumb to say that they are at their peak mile in high school. Also, hundreds of college guys run the mile under 4:05 while only a handful of high school guys do.

As a runner who hasn't gotten faster in college than I was in highschool, I'd like to offer my experience as to why that has been.

I was a 4:24 miler in a pretty serious high school program. Respectable times, but I trained with teammates who were far more talented than I was and as such had no delusions about how good I was. I knew I wouldn't be getting much money (if any) to run, and as such chose my college without much thought about the team or coaching, I focused on the education I would be getting. As it happened I go to a d3 school that doesn't emphasize sports very much with a coach who isn't very good. Less volume and intensity than I had at the end of high school, and I've never had any real injuries. I've also always been one of the top runners at my school so it certainly isn't a lack of attention.

These factors combined mean that I don't care about running as much as I did in high school where my team was competitive and training towards shared goals, and it just makes more sense for me to prioritize career oriented goals over running goals. Every year I wrestle with whether or not I should continue because it feels foolish putting time into running if I'm not really putting enough work into it to improve. I think a lack of motivation and will to improve are the reason many mid tier runners don't improve in college. I think there are many runners like myself who prioritize classes or interviews or whatever else over running and are really only going through the motions.

I'll offer an opinion that may or may not be shared. I really think HS coaches invest more in their kids than collegiate coaches do. I think collegiate coaches expect kids to come in and produce and if they don't, they just cut them and move on or focus on recruiting new kids; it's definitely more of a business. High school is also more of a team oriented thing, I think. Not that there aren't passionate collegiate coaches, but overall I think many high school coaches are passionate about the sport and investing in kids and when that goes away in college, there is a huge void. When kids don't produce immediately, they get down on themselves, and many collegiate coaches don't have the patience to deal with them.

Just my take.

You guys are trying to provide an explanation for something that isn't happening. Most guys improve in college. It's like asking why so many people lose money in the stock market even though the stock market goes up by 10% per year. Stop trying to explain away the exceptions to the rule.

Prover of improvement wrote:

The small Sample was the 10 guys who ran 4:09 in high school. 9 of the 10 improved. If top notch guys improve at a rate of 90%, it makes sense that slower guys would improve at a rate equal to or higher than that.

Who were the 9 that improved in this extremely small sample from 2015?

I had HS prs of 1:58, 4:36, 10:50, and 16:56. I walked on to a college team and two years later ran 4:02 (4:20), 8:57 (9:30), and 15:30. I'd say thats a pretty decent improvement.

1) Beer consumption. Many on here are pro running and pro drinking. Some how most good runners made it through high school without drinking much. Many on here ignore everything they learned in middle school or high school health class regarding alcohol once on a college campus.

2) If one averaged 60 to 80 miles per week plus intense workouts in high school, what are you going to do next?

3) If one averaged less than 40 miles per week in high school, then attend a college or university with greater volume and greater intensity, also a greater risk of injuries.

4) I had significant control of my diet in high school. Mom bought the groceries and I asked her to buy. I got to college and I ate the institution food.

5) My first few years in high school, my coach, a cigar smoking teddy bear of a gentleman in his late 60s allowed me to have a bit of input in the training. Not the case in college.