If a 4:20 mile isn't good for a high schooler, is 4:10 good for a D1 athlete?

You also cant' just measure "good" by taking conference or another championship meet times. Those races are often tactical. Better to take the best marks of the season for all of those runners in those conferences. 3:50 might be 6th in a given conference meet 1500. But the 6th fastest runner in that conference for the year might be 3:44.

here ye wrote:

Your sentence makes no sense. A bell curve would plot all D1 runners. But in the same sentence, you talk about beating high school runners. That is like saying a man is fast based on a bell curve because he can beat most females. 4:20 is good for high school based on a bell curve but 4:10 is not good for college for the same reason. About 4 flat is equivalent based on where they fall.

Ugh sorry I have to explain in detail for the non-thinking men and women.. you know what, no I don't.

michimanx wrote:

You also cant' just measure "good" by taking conference or another championship meet times. Those races are often tactical. Better to take the best marks of the season for all of those runners in those conferences. 3:50 might be 6th in a given conference meet 1500. But the 6th fastest runner in that conference for the year might be 3:44.

In the end it's about winning races.. as it turns out, you usually have to be fast to do so. How well people do in championships is the ultimate measure. Or did Mo suck?

isn't it like a homeless guy applying for CEO . "You will never get there if you don't try."

Most guys who try to break 5 min mile run 7:45 .

4:20 is not fast for Nico Young's gene pool.

My high school's 4:18 miler, less than 2 seconds off the school record, couldn't get past the Meet of Champions to make California states, and that was in the much weaker northern California meet and in an era well off the best of the 1970s or 2010s. 4:20 is still a # beaten by maybe 1% of high school boys track runners. But as a mentality, that fails if you want to be competitive in the world. In Kenya, they aren't setting teens up with the idea of running 4 flat for 1500m or even 4 flat for the mile. They'd say 3:40 isn't fast. You want to travel, you need to be able to run low 3:30s, or comparable at other distances. So, for the mile, we'd have to say that 3:58 isn't fast for a collegian. Aim for 3:48 in college. Then we're talking about potentially being a world elite if you can drop a few more seconds in your prime (22-26).

Do the workouts and the mileage and you will get a lot faster. Brosnan's teams set the bar very high and do the work to make it happen consistently for just about everyone. Five guys under 13:48 for 3M early in the season. That should tell you something if you're not too busy looking for excuses why his team's so much better than anyone else's.

Make that four guys, but the fifth guy would be at that level now if not for being ill, based on where he was previously.

The notion that highly competitive runners are limited by arbitrary times that are considered fast is completely false. It is the same false notion that elite American marathoners are slow because they aim for 5 minute mile pace instead of 3 minute kilometer pace. Elite runners at all levels are out there trying to get as fast as possible and aren't going to just stop doing that when the reach a level of fitness that others consider to be fast.

Let me put some context on this thread. I normally post under BeenThereDoneThat on most threads. My name is Dan Poole and I went to school with Sean Brosnan our first year in college in the mid 1990's. It's interesting Sean should say that, because if I recall, he ran about 4:18 (1600m) and 9:35 (3200m)in high school in New York State,; at least that's what he told us back then. I was on the team with him at Brevard Jr. College in Brevard, NC in the 1995/1996 school year. He transferred out after one year. Don't think the small mountain town life appealed to him. But that aside, my roommate Joe Gibson ran 4:20/9:20/15:12 (eventually ran for Hansons Distance Project in Michigan for a few years). The guy Sean roomed with, Chris Pluchos ran 4:14 or so in high school (and eventually ran like 14:00/29:30's for 5K/10K at NC State). We had another freshman on the team named Will Hodges who ran like 1:53/4:13/9:13. We had 4-5 sophomores who had broken or been right at 4:18-22 in high school, with another, Tommy, at about 4:14 as well . Sean is speaking from the context of what he knows/experienced. And he's right in a way, because it's really about mentality and devotion and not limiting yourself to some abstract 'number' equating to 'good'. If you set the bar low, kids aim low. Set it high and they aim high. Maybe they don't break whatever barrier is there (in this case, 4:20 for 1600m), but some will and others will get close. Sean used to tell us that in New York he was consistently in the low 4:20's himself, ran right under it a few times, indoor and outdoor, and usually was lucky to make top 4-5 in most of the 'big' meets he went to back then. I can still recall his New York accent, "I'd run like 4:21 or something and be like 6th place. Talent in New York is crazy." (He was right. I also trained a short time with Anthony Famiglietti in college and he was like a low 4:20's/9:30's guy in high school in New York and he eventually went 3:55 mile/13:13 5K, etc. He told me once he wasn't that competitive in New York, just 'above average' good.) Anyways, enough rambling, but that may be why Sean thinks they way he does. And I agree with him to a point, but I also would tell kids who want to go for 'whatever' goal that the final outcome isn't as important as the process in getting there: you learn to know yourself and how to set goals and work towards them with sacrifice/devotion/tenacity, etc. I know in the county I grew up in only two guys have broken 4:30 and it's not because of lack of talent. It's really that there isn't incentive, community support/knowledge, good coaching, and dreaming big. I've met a few kids in the area who had the talent but they have no one to help them structure and explain the couple of years of steady work it takes to get to that level.

I asked Gjert.

A puzzled look came across his face.

Thanks for the insight!

hahah, I think that it is a nice time for this

Thanks for that..

I think the key is not to set limits. When I ran in VA in the 80's I often compared what my athletes did. Well when you get a 15 year old boy running 4:20 equivalent and a 14 year old running 4:58 which would have place in top 3 in states you draw on perspective and just keep the expectations high. Set no limits is probably the key message. Our city is crazy fast and everyone rises to the occasion.