Your Biased Opinion

Believe it or not, Arizona has 48/49 sec. runners making it easier for me to make the team. ASU is completetly out of the question, though, as you need to be 46/45 to even be looked at.

I am taking my training in my own hands and the way I look at it, if I don’t get fast enough to walk on during my first 4 years of college, I can still train and walk on during Grad school. I have no problem with it.

See, being in AZ, I know the USATF system here and all that so I know the who/what/when/where/why about when to train, how to train, how to plan, etc. This makes it easier for me to train for a peak and hit a goal when needbe. Living other places would make that difficult.

I am applying to only 1 out-of-state school, so chances are that I’ll be here and thus, have an easier time training, etc.

I started taking my “career” into my own hands during the middle-end of last season when I started making sacrifices like the chance to run w/ our 4x4 at state. If I hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.

I’m doing the reasarch, I’m planning, I’m doing all I need to do and so far I’ve seen results and I think I can go <50 this year if I train properly. UofA and even PVCC (one of the better JUCO schools in the US in track) will accept a 49 in hopes to get them faster for competition.

The only reason I have yet to start training is because of football. Otherwise I would be going 6x a week right now. Schools like a not-super runner who does something with their time, even if it’s not training for their sport, over a super-athlete who sits on his ass until the season rolls around…right?

Sounds reasonable enough… Good luck! Keep us informed!

“Kids! They always do things the hard way.”
–Rodney Dangerfield, Back to School

Actually 400, I think schools like a person who ran a fast time regardless of what he/she did to get there. When you get recruited coaches want to know your grades, attitude, and times. They don’t want to know what your fall program consisted of or your gpp, spp, pre-comp, etc, it is a “what have you done for me lately” world when money is involved.

Seems like you are going to do this so I wish you much success. I guess when it really comes down to it, you can walk on anywhere if you are accepted as a student. I think the best thing about you is you keep referencing grad school and such. That tells me you have more goals than running fast, pissing off bad high school coaches, and saying “f*#@ the world.” Keep striving man, it’ll all work out.

400stud, out of curiosity, what are you doing to stay in shape while you wait to play football? Tempo? Anything?

Real Deal - I will keep you guys informed.

Dazs - It’s not 100% certain that I am doing it, but it looks like that so I am planning accordingly now to avoid poor planning as a result of inadequate time later on. I also plan on going into a medical field of some sort so Grad school is a necessity, even for a nurse (to me anyway). My education always comes first (hence sacrificing state), and that is my number one goal in life…getting a good education. Track is secondary, but it doesn’t mean I can’t strive to achieve, right? I’ve reached many goals in life and one of the next ones in line is to run in college (behind getting a MS…lol).

Scarface - That’s right we always do things the hard way!!! That’s what makes us, us!! I find out today if I’m 100% certainly playing football. There has been a weird situation that I can explain later if you want to know that has kept me out, so I have just being do a little tempo, occasional windsprints and such. I don’t want to go 100% football training if I am just going to be training for track after all. Just taking precautions.

good luck 400. it’s an uphill battle w/o someone there to vouch for your work ethic and potential as a person/runner, but if you can run under 49 fat, you won’t have a problem…keep planning ahead.

Thanks. I appreciate it.

–Wow, I need to watch where these things go.–

400stud, my hat is off to you. I have all the respect in the world for you. What I was wondering is if you had “camps” where diff peop worked in diff groups to train together. Do you have “camp coaches”, if one of them is smart enough he could let you do your own thing. You still get to ware those school colors of yours, and you even get race against your peers. If that doesn’t work, g’luck.

If you want come over to north monterey county we lost 2 of our 4x4 team and with you we could take section :stuck_out_tongue: j/k

Anyway, I made an amazing discovery, I have a drive phase!! Woot! After XC practice I was thinking about all of the interesting things I had read about hip positioning, arm usage, angle of the head/neck on this site and many others. So I asked my twin to get out the stopwatch and I busted out with an 11 flat 100 yard (football field) with just my running shoes on. I have never ran that quick :stuck_out_tongue: I’m pretty sure that if I get a better start and with proper lactic etc I can bust the Frosh/Soph record open. 49.78…

Thanks, but I’m 100% alone. I have no outside resources except you guys on this board to help me throughout the season.

I’m a bit of a rebellious guy, though sometimes I can be on the blatant side. If I was in your shoes 400 stud, I would do something like, print up some of this thread at your collage, and then go to your coach’s office when he is not there and put the prints under his door. When he eventually gets them he’d have to read through them before getting the chance to approach u about it. However, this is probably not the best approach for a schooler/pupil who is not supposed to put peoples/authorities backs up. It’s just what I’d do cuase I’m like that.

Perhaps u could just find the best bit of info on general speed development for 400m sprinters, on this website and post THAT to him instead.
IF he questions both you AND the literature, here’s what to say;

“The literature was comprised by various sprint coaches around the world, including Charlie Francis who I read was the best track coach in the world.
I was also curious as to what u think of those ideas becuase they seem a little differant from some of your training routines…”

How about if I e-mail him from my other address that doesn’t come up with my name and send him a link to one of the 400m threads or something here? I think that would get the point across as well without having to waste ink (I’m low :smiley: )

I think that would be a great idea. :slight_smile:

I Like Both Ideas.

The e-mail was already sent and I haven’t seen or heard from him since I sent it, so we’ll see what happens.

Just want to bring this back…

Update:

I talked to the club track coach I used to run for and he said I could train alone and still run for the team so I can be part of our national-level relay teams :smiley: It’s great.

BTW - the coach is Sebastine Onyepunuka. You might have heard of his daughter Jessica that ran 11.31 at World Youth Championships in Canada and her sister, as a Frosh, ran a 54h 400m at state. So, he’s a good coach, but I wanna train alone regardless.

But, just wanted to bring this back up to the top and let those involved in this thread get an update.

Peace :wink: