Worth noting that just 4 days before the 10k they ran a workout that includes an all-out 800m at the end of it. Definitely a bit close to the race to do that workout and could have left them fried
Worth noting that just 4 days before the 10k they ran a workout that includes an all-out 800m at the end of it. Definitely a bit close to the race to do that workout and could have left them fried
Go cougs? wrote:
What is going on here?? How does BYU come into this race with a Mormon handcart load of attention and hype, and they took the last three spots!! Rory Linkletter, who finished second last year, was still running when the winner was well into his victory interview.
Some theories: they all got food poisoning?
Linkletter and Murphy were taking it easy for the 5k on Friday. Not likely, as Mantz also ran a lot slower than his PB
Making some statement?
I love it. NCAA sports
These are just kids who haven't developed the mental toughness and calm that true elites have to deal with pressure and expectation. It's almost as important as physical talent and amazing that athletes who are favored to win the worlds greatest races can perform as expected.
nothing is for certain in NCAA athletics! NOTHING
another runner wrote:
Reptilians wrote:
Linkletter, Young and Mantz all ran the same time and finished over a minute after the fourth to last runner was off the track. I don't know as much about Mantz, but 31:37 - over 5:00 mile pace - has got to be a tempo level effort for Linkletter and Young! I think they must have been saving it for the 5k, and Mantz was either feeling terrible or decided to jog it in with the others. Unless those three were truly sick or something, it's incredibly disrespectful and immature to show up to a national championship jog it, making no effort to finish higher than DFL. Those three qualifying spots could have gone to three athletes who really wanted to RACE. I sincerely hope that they all had food poisoning because if not, it says a lot about them and their program if they are willing to tank a championship race and take spots from deserving athletes. They crushed the west prelims though, so it seemed to me that they were gonna rock the final.
They earned the right to run however they wanted. The athletes who didn't make it to nationals that really wanted to race should've run faster, they have no one to blame but themselves.
True, but also doesn't mean that we don't get to trash them online. They're free to be unsportsmanlike as much as they want, but they're going to take heat and criticism for it. That's life. You'll learn once you leave your mom's basement.
Also the byu fanboys/athletes on here should understand that if you're going to hype your team (which you inevitably do before every single championship) then be prepared for some smack talk when they tank, which they did. They tempod a national championship! That's taking "tempoing" races to a whole new low. I hope for your sake they bring their A game for the 5000.
Dril wrote:
Also the byu fanboys/athletes on here should understand that if you're going to hype your team (which you inevitably do before every single championship) then be prepared for some smack talk when they tank, which they did. They tempod a national championship! That's taking "tempoing" races to a whole new low. I hope for your sake they bring their A game for the 5000.
Agree 100%, and am saying that as a byu/eyestone fan.
Haha loved seeing these 27-year-old Mormon morans get owned.
Any relation to Phantasy Star Online?
I have been thinking about this all day long, and I think that I came up with an explaination.
Conner Mantz: first of the BYU caboose pack. I think that he was genuinely sick, as stated in his post race blog post. Independent of how the race went, he was only up for a 31 effort, which he gave.
Young: actually tried to go with the early pace, and got fried. Decided to pull the plug on the 10k, and jog it in, sticking to Mantz for the rest of the race
Linkletter: from the fun he wasn’t feeling it, prioritized the 5k. Fell back to Mantz, and jogged it in.
Conner McMillan ran hard and had a good race
go cougs? wrote:
I have been thinking about this all day long, and I think that I came up with an explaination.
Conner Mantz: first of the BYU caboose pack. I think that he was genuinely sick, as stated in his post race blog post. Independent of how the race went, he was only up for a 31 effort, which he gave.
Young: actually tried to go with the early pace, and got fried. Decided to pull the plug on the 10k, and jog it in, sticking to Mantz for the rest of the race
Linkletter: from the fun he wasn’t feeling it, prioritized the 5k. Fell back to Mantz, and jogged it in.
Conner McMillan ran hard and had a good race
The guy with the #2 seed time finishing 12th is not a good race.
Phantasy Star wrote:
Haha loved seeing these 27-year-old Mormon morans get owned.
BYU has "Freshmen" Steeplechaser at NCAA's who graduated HS in 2014...
Dark Falz's Sack wrote:
Any relation to Phantasy Star Online?
Female human ranger is the only way to play.
Dril wrote:
Also the byu fanboys/athletes on here should understand that if you're going to hype your team (which you inevitably do before every single championship) then be prepared for some smack talk when they tank, which they did. They tempod a national championship! That's taking "tempoing" races to a whole new low. I hope for your sake they bring their A game for the 5000.
Where are Gault and RoJo to take them to task? If only NCAAs were as important as a WCC meet?
Linkletter flexes on the competition at regionals then DFL's at NATIONALs LOL
Comprehension please wrote:
It was FOOD poisoning. How many times does it have to be said? The poor saps got food poisoning from some Eugene hippie food. Try running with that. It isn't good.
They ate hot dogs off the rollers and drank grape slurpees at the 7-11 at the edge of campus. What could go wrong?
Bdsmnsbsb wrote:
Worth noting that just 4 days before the 10k they ran a workout that includes an all-out 800m at the end of it. Definitely a bit close to the race to do that workout and could have left them fried
Well, it's always hard to judge a single workout--you have to know what the rest of their training was for the season (or the year, really)--but it is possible that there was some hangover from that.
I remember that Jumbo at VIllanova used to stop speedwork two weeks before NCAAs.
Here’s the thing: BYU is a very controversial acronym to begin with. This controversy undoubtedly extends to their running program and its reputation in the NCAA system.
It is a known fact that, largely on the basis of a religion most people in the US already have strong opinions about, BYU frequently skirts NCAA rules in terms of age and eligibility.
BYU also has a virtual lock on the lucrative recruiting pool that is the Mormon runners of Utah.
Despite having a relative wealth of resources as compared to the rest of their current conference, BYU remains a member of the WCC.
The NCAA altitude conversion chart allows BYU to send a lot of their athletes to the NCAA first round who definitely might not have gotten in had they only had access to sea level competitions.
BYU men’s XC/TF is generally considered to be a pretty boisterous program. Their athletes are known to talk a mean game on social media, and they frequently do things like flex after outkicking the entire western US while wearing trainers.
So in most cases you’re either pretty closely affiliated with BYU, or you don’t like ‘em at all.
And so when you take 4 spots at the NCAA championship (spots which alas they did earn, but were not at humble about) from a slew of talented and qualified athletes who most everyone else would’ve rather seen make it through (and then go on record saying you were just chillin’), people like myself are going to tune in expecting quite the show. And when you don’t deliver, I’m gonna go ahead and start talking that sh!t (for undergarment-wearing BYU affiliates, just replace sh!t with “crap” and you’ll get the idea).
Plus they are also responsible for the Mountain Meadows Massacre, so there's that too.
They have a top notch program that should be respected. They comply with all NCAA rules. I don’t like when people start poking at their religion. Many of the Utah schools have a large portion of Mormons attending. The top kid in my state is Mormon and he went across the country to attend Southern Utah.
BYU has good runners, and they are to be respected for that. I can' t imagine adopting the Mormon lifestyle, but it does have salutary effects on running, especially when combined with altitude training.
The problem is that just being good runners doesn't cut it. The teams that get remembered are the ones that really perform at NCAA's. Arkansas wasn't great because they merely had a bunch of fast runners. John McDonnell got those kids to perform time after time in championships. OK - his track record was unbelievable, so perhaps an unfair comparison, but Eyestone knows how to be a champion and got a lot out of his talent. It can be done.
I was struck by Ben Flanagan's interview. Referencing his coach and two of his past NCAA champion teammates, he said, look, you can't count yourself out, these races can be won. After watching BYU to the other night, my impression was that they needed the patience and humility of a Ben Flanagan to perform well. It didn't happen.
I always thought the 10k was a tough motivational event. You qualify, then typically have to prepare to run in some kind of heat, and then have to be focused in higher volume training for a month than your peers on a campus where most have gone home. It is easy lose your edge. You can have an off day and still qualify for the finals in the 1500. If you are off in the 10,000, you are going to feel it early and it will be a slog.
raymondy wrote:
go cougs? wrote:
I have been thinking about this all day long, and I think that I came up with an explaination.
Conner Mantz: first of the BYU caboose pack. I think that he was genuinely sick, as stated in his post race blog post. Independent of how the race went, he was only up for a 31 effort, which he gave.
Young: actually tried to go with the early pace, and got fried. Decided to pull the plug on the 10k, and jog it in, sticking to Mantz for the rest of the race
Linkletter: from the fun he wasn’t feeling it, prioritized the 5k. Fell back to Mantz, and jogged it in.
Conner McMillan ran hard and had a good race
The guy with the #2 seed time finishing 12th is not a good race.
Honestly though, can anyone in the know provide a real explanation for these performances from Young and Linkletter? They have season bests of 28:23 and 28:43, respectively. Were they truly sick? Can Gault get us some interviews with these guys tonight to shed some light?
This was pulled directly off their website:
"The 10,000m was a tough evening for our crew, but I'm very pleased with their effort," Eyestone said. "They've run extremely well all season long and that can be part of the problem because, when you run your third 10K of the season, you may just not have it. I expect that Connor, Rory and Clayton will go out and do the very best that they can on Friday in the 5000m. Sometimes you have a bad outing and you have to come back to show it was a fluke."
Unless we aren't getting the whole story, he seems to say they gave their best effort and chalks it up to fatigue. For guys who had to have a legitimate goal at competing for the win, this answer isn't good enough. Guys have bad days and that can be forgiven, but THAT poor of a performance doesn't make sense to me even if something was off.