Gary Martin

My guess is that the coaches project him to be a top 7 runner when it’s important - ie, ACC meet, regional, NCAA championship. It is not unusual for coaches not to run those that they project to be the top runners in early season meets.

"The Virginia men’s top performers include Rohann Asfaw, Wes Porter, Yasin Sado and Derek Johnson, who’s a standout steeplechaser in outdoor track & field. Another returning runner to watch is Jack Eliason, who was the Cavaliers’ top finisher at the Spider Alumni Open meet Sept. 3 in Richmond. And then there’s freshman Gary Martin, who was one of the greatest high school milers ever in the United States.
“Gary’s a middle distance guy,” Lananna said, “but he’s fully prepared and determined, and I learned very early in my coaching career to never doubt when someone tells you they’re doing to do something. I look at their goals through their eyes, and he fully expects to make an impact [in cross country]/ So therefore, I fully expect for him to make an impact.”

virginiasports.com

Cross Country Programs Picking Up the Pace

Next year's NCAA Cross Country Championships will be held at Panorama Farms, and UVA wants to be more than a good host for the meets.

Link:virginiasports.com/news/2022/09/13/cro...

It's surprising to me that sophomore Nathan Mountain is not mentioned in the article as being one of the Cavaliers' top guys.

Mountain was UVa's #3 at the regional meet last season. He was 4th in the ACC steeple, ran the fastest leg for UVa on the 4x1 mile school record-setting team that narrowly lost to Texas at the Penn Relays, came within a few 100ths of going under 3:40 in the 1500, was an 8:42 2 miler in high school, and is the national high school record holder in the 2000 Steeple.

He will be one of the top UVa guys this season.

Nate Mountain is most likely redshirting this season. Dealing with an injury. Should see Gary Martin running next weekend at Battle of Beantown in Boston. Justin Wachtel won the Virginia Invite this past weekend against a full squad so he could be a factor for uva this year.

I was not aware. Thank you for the update. Hopefully he comes back strong. He's a talented guy.

Gary will be running this Friday in Boston as well as freshman Will Anthony. They both will be looking to contribute to the team.

*his training

Maybe coaches told him to hide strava to hide training?

Perhaps, but Martin has never put much detail about his training on Strava.
Usually it's just the miles and overall pace, and a few scattered details here and there.

We shall soon see. If he races and still no updates, that's the answer.

Other UVA guys post so I doubt it

Possibly busy with school work and training and college life, so creating manual entries for Strava is not a priority.

You do what Div1 schools do for all the other sports: you redshirt the best freshmen with some BS injury that’s made up.

Well he went to UVA. His inevitable regression to mediocrity has begun.

Yeah because Vin Lananna has never had any success coaching distance.

Is there some strategic advantage to hiding injury details for runners? Is he hurt? What about Hutchins? Who at NAU or Stanford or NC State are hurt and how bad is it?

Why would hiding the information be helpful to individual or team goals? It isn’t like NAU will start or not start Sahlman based on whether Martin is at full strength.

That's a bad guess and completely FALSE! The only reasons any freshman doesn't run early meets is that they've had a long summer of racing and or are injured. Any good coach wants to get their freshman going as soon as possible. The D-1 competition, the 8k-10k race distance, and new training environment is a lot to adjust to and the sooner you get them into the "Fire" the sooner they will adapt and perform.

Of course he has had success and I believe he will get uva going but he inherited a top 20 team in XC and they have not been good. I expect that to change this year but that’s a long time to turn around a team that was already good.

Vin Lananna has been at the top of the game at Stanford and Oregon, but I haven't had the sense that he was really focused on coaching since around 2009-10, so I have my doubts. If he's dialed in, then he can absolutely turn this program into an East Coast powerhouse, and Martin can help a lot with that.