52 guys including the former LetsRun intern broke 4:00 at BU today + MITs Ryan Wilson who went from 4:06 to 3:55!

An athlete that I started coaching at 11 was one of those 52 and ran a new school record at his university. Started off coaching him for triathlons and he focused on running at 15 and proceeded to run 4:04 for 1500 before super shoes. At 17 he ran 3:54 and at 18 3:51 1500's all on training that rarely went over 50 miles per week. At university he now generally averages 65-75 miles per week so not surprised he is a sub 4 miler. Training has changed from the early 90's as coaches now know you don't have to regularly smash your athletes to get results. More athletes train at altitude which makes probably the biggest difference. Shoes play a part as athletes recover faster and can do more volume of intensity. You still have to race and yes the Boston track is fast but it is what it is.

“Training has changed from the early 90s”

People are saying training has changed since 2020. That’s the argument they’re making. No Sh!t training has changed since the 90s, that’s not what people mean when they try to pull this bizarre, “the training has gotten better” argument. They’re legitimately saying that, across schools and divisions, a new approach to training was universally adopted after 2020. If it was a gradual change in coaching methodology, dating back to the 90s let’s say, you wouldn’t have a sudden 2x increase in sub 4s in a single indoor season. It has nothing to do with anything other than the footwear. There has yet to be a single argument that is not easily jettisoned with elementary logic.

I’m calling BS. Sure, maybe some people do mean that and have some nuanced thoughts on it, but the folks screeching about mechanical doping and times not mattering are talking about advantages from the shoes during the race. I can’t ever recall seeing outrage about altitude training or AlterGs

Nope. Consider how many Americans have broken 4:00 since it was first done in 1958.

It's about 600, a little more maybe.

How many people have run the mile?

Even people who's only experience is the dreaded Gym Class Mile can understand the specialness of a Sub 4.

I always wish people like you can go back in time and run a mile on a cinder track in the Onitsuka Tiger spikes I ran in. I welcome the new technology in shoes.

To me, the pre-super shoe spikes and flats were so much faster and more technological than what I ran in when I was 12-25 years old.

I don't think a lot of people are including it- but they should be. I haven't run in them, but I have friends who do. They all talk about the training benefits.

Hmmm, that's interesting. Why are there so many this year then? People are wearing the same shoes they wore last year. If the shoes haven't changed from last year to this year, it must be something else.

Those barries have no meaning any more. The Super Shoes have turned hobby joggers into world beaters.

Somebody explain this. At this exact meet last year, 12-people broke 4:00, despite 275 people running the mile. The track is exactly the same, and the shoes are exactly the same. It has to be something else.

Unless they go to Oslo or Prefontaine, they likely won’t be racing the mile in the outdoor season.

This is a fun thread though. I am firmly in the mindset/training camp as the biggest factor for all the sub-4s. Shoes are slightly better, but it’s the athlete running the race.

You just lost the argument. You actually made my case. 52 in one meet? Your mind cannot grasp the fluidity of the situation. It is no longer special. I am not arguing it was not special in the past. So if 600 people had run under 2:10 in the marathon in history and then 52 did at one race, you would start to see how it is not so special anymore.

This. Thank you. I was wishing I had the shoes available just before the “super” shoes in my day. Less injuries, soooo much better. And tracks as well. My HS track was made in large part from recycled tires. Add tuned indoor banked tracks (read Scientific American about the first such tuned track, at Harvard) with no wind & weather variables and lots of competition (like having your own rabbit to reach sub-4 in each heat). And smart watches for training. And shared top training techniques thanks to the internet and social media. It’s an accumulation of helpful aspects. The shoes are better, yes, as has been the case every few years since I ran seriously in the 70s and 80s, but they are not super. It’s a recipe of many parts.

Interested to hear if any miler didn’t run in”the shoes”

Bingo.

Get these guys in a pair of jasari’s and run it back next week. Maybe everyone is just that good now, maybe not. Would be legendary if one of the studs decides to go for it at ncaas in 20y/o spikes. It would definitely shut up a lot of us old washed up milers that think breaking 4 is actually hard.

I can’t wrap my head around the idea that you might not be all ivy and still break 4min this year. Crazy.

The indoor track at Harvard was not "tuned" other than it had wooden supports. Over the years, it got slower as it was resurfaced with a hard latex surface put on by Cape Cod Surfacing. There is an article about the guys who built that track, and I saw the actual plans for that track, brought to me by the son (Mike) of one of the builders, who was also in the track building business and was interested in building the BU track using his father's plans.

The "tuned" track at Harvard was their outdoor track. It had a fiberglass base over the asphalt and then a sheet good surface (I believe it was an early Mondo or might have been Tartan). I remember that the track started to buckle with huge bubbles from the heat and cold over the years and eventually all that was taken out and a polyurethane surface was put down.

For anyone interested on track builds, Pete & others have good discussion in the below link.

There may already be this out there but, maybe with the increase in fast times recently a good article could be done on track surfaces/building over the years and what is different now.

Exactly. If I’m in (even an old pair) Dragonflies, I can recover from 800 pace work in a day, crush a tempo in Vaporflies 2 days later, and then have another workout 2 days after that. So, I can get the benefits of 3 workouts per week instead of just 2