Be Not Far from Me
question
It's unrealistic how fast Ashley was
Genevieve
Feb 02, 2022 09:47PM
So don't get me wrong, I LOVE this book, it's honestly one of my all-time favs. Yet as a cross country runner myself I can never seem to get over the fact of how unrealistically fast Ashley was for the lack of time she'd been running for.
As Ashley is dying in the woods we get to hear about her back story, how she won state her first year ever running, cause she was such a badass motivated athlete. Yet this quite frankly is extremely unrealistic.
An average cross country season is about 3-4 months. Even if Ashley has an amazing training program set up, great coaching, perfect nutrition, etc, for her to get a time fast enough to win state in Tennesse of all places is absurd.
High school cross-country (also known as xc) typical races are 5ks. Based on where Ashley lives she'd be running altitude races. Anyway, the state champion in Tennesse this year ran a 17.26.91 5k. As someone who is an xc runner from Colorado, from my observations new runners who are previously athletic or have athletic backgrounds run about 8:30 miles ON A TRACK! Now multiply that by 3 and put it running up and down hills against 200 other people and we can guess that Ashley's first 5k took about 27 minutes.
HOW THE HECK DID ASHLEY MANAGE TO DROP 10 MINUTES IN 3 MONTHS!!!
Not to mention the fact that the author made it very clear that Ashley wasn't eating a balanced consistent diet.
Running is a sport that takes time and consistency. A friend of mine from my team won state, not this year but two years ago, (She also holds the altitude 5k girls record for the western region) has been running since she was like 3. It's just kinda frustrating to see this kind of plothole in a book that revolves around the sport.
Lol that was kinda a long rant.
As Ashley is dying in the woods we get to hear about her back story, how she won state her first year ever running, cause she was such a badass motivated athlete. Yet this quite frankly is extremely unrealistic.
An average cross country season is about 3-4 months. Even if Ashley has an amazing training program set up, great coaching, perfect nutrition, etc, for her to get a time fast enough to win state in Tennesse of all places is absurd.
High school cross-country (also known as xc) typical races are 5ks. Based on where Ashley lives she'd be running altitude races. Anyway, the state champion in Tennesse this year ran a 17.26.91 5k. As someone who is an xc runner from Colorado, from my observations new runners who are previously athletic or have athletic backgrounds run about 8:30 miles ON A TRACK! Now multiply that by 3 and put it running up and down hills against 200 other people and we can guess that Ashley's first 5k took about 27 minutes.
HOW THE HECK DID ASHLEY MANAGE TO DROP 10 MINUTES IN 3 MONTHS!!!
Not to mention the fact that the author made it very clear that Ashley wasn't eating a balanced consistent diet.
Running is a sport that takes time and consistency. A friend of mine from my team won state, not this year but two years ago, (She also holds the altitude 5k girls record for the western region) has been running since she was like 3. It's just kinda frustrating to see this kind of plothole in a book that revolves around the sport.
Lol that was kinda a long rant.
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