my makeup may be flaking

AM Did two loops of Sugarhouse. Threw in some good surges as the run went on and found my legs complained much less than on Saturday. I think I'll do a more organized fartlek type run this evening. Plus there's going to be some good pontificating!

PM Did seven miles with about 3 of them at a faster pace. My calves felt fine but I felt pretty tired overall which is completely understandable given my mileage the last couple of days. I can run reasonable fast (like sub 7) everyday if I'm under 90mpw pace I think, but I have to start measuring my effort when I log 46.5 miles in three days (which I just did!).

Now for the pontification, I'm not sure what my point is...

Anyway I was reading the responses to Jeff's Provo half-winning race report and specifically what Sasha said about the American collegiate system.  I am one of the few on here (I think) who actually ran for four years in college (plus 4 years in high school) and took no break after graduating aside from the break I would normally take after the end of a season. I have continued to improve at pretty much the same rate so far. In fact, the longer I run the more 'talent' I seem to discover.

When I look at how I did in high school cross, it's kind of laughable. I ran 18:04 at the WA state meet my senior year for 110th in 3A. My college coaches for a while thought I was a headcase because I seemed to fold in big races, they cited that state meet as an example. I told them that at the time it was a good race for me and they were floored. They couldn't believe that I could have been that slow in high school. Was it for lack of effort? NO! Because I had no talent? Apparently not, as I am now faster than probably 100 of those 110 guys. Because the coaching was bad? I don't think so, we were a very succesful team.

Maybe the point is that you can't tell who is going to be good and who is not based upon how well we do in High School. I watched footlocker this year, I decided I could have been competitive in that race and finished in the middle of the pack judging be the difficulty of the course and the times. So what? High schoolers aren't that good in the 5K in general and so it's difficult to see what someone's potential is because everyone is so far from being maxed out. However the people who show promise as freshman in HS get more attention and thus run more so they'll most likely be the best sophomores and so on. People who are the best in high school go to the best colleges and put in more miles and make a bigger commitment. Those who have made it by the time college ends go on to become professionals.

So essentially you will have no reason to push yourself to uncover your talent or be able to justify the time it takes unless you've already come pretty far. This doesn't just apply to running but alot of things. The difference with running is that it necessarily takes alot of time. You're not going to peak at age 20, but if you've only run, say, 14:30 at that point then you might not think you'll ever amount to much if you run D1. There's this kind of false assumption that the running is limited to within the scope of the 4 years.

I'm not sure any of this makes sense. Maybe I'll write more tomorrow and it will be coherent.