Theoretical high school team of ritz, rupp, webb, hall, solinsky(at 17-18 yrs old). Do they beat Newbury Park top 5?

Nico ran 13:44 in high school.

Oops misremembering 13:50, but obviously nice jump in college

With super shoes, conservatively Ritz would’ve gotten 1.5 seconds per K. That would put him at around 13:36. If you don’t think the shoes help, I mean come on. I have no idea if Running Lane is the correct length but it appears it runs ~15 seconds slower than a track 5K.

xcrunner22765 wrote:

This is the dumbest thing ive ever read. Ritz was notorious for overtraining in HS, Hall ran 85-90 a week, Solinsky was 90+ a week as well. Pretty sure NP has said they dont run over 60.

Yet somehow Ritz was able to PR by 60 seconds in the 5k after high school. Hall had a very good pro marathon career and American has beat his records yet. Solinski was still able to drop a sub 13 and sub 27.

Obviously it's not all about mileage.

NP goes 1-2-3 and win automatically in a dual meet.

But I think you’re missing the point, which is that Ritz was in absurd shape as a high school senior. He was very highly trained. He battled injuries throughout his career (possibly as a consequence) and yes he managed to improve, but getting to that 5k mark took years. The NP guys are sensibly trained, and also very talented. Ritz’s resume accounting for pre-Super Spikes and with World Juniors/MI Speedway/Balboa times is legit. Feels hard to imagine you’d get 5 guys in that orbit in 1 year. The Balboa 60-second slowdown or so is a bit of a wake-up call for just how fast Running Lane was.

We've got some recency bias going on here.

It's more likely the old-timers go 1-5 then NP getting anywhere close to beating these guys.

Ritz-Solinsky are locks for 1-2. If we're running on the track like RunningLane course with new spikes, Webb is a clear 3rd and Rupp a safe 4th. Then, maybe Sahlman, with the Youngs losing in a kick to Ryan Hall.

It's no contest. You adjust for the super shoes and rabbit-like meets of today, and these 5 would have run about the following times in HS

Webb- 3:51

Ritz- 13:34ish

Rupp- 13:25ish

Solinsky- sub 4/835ish

Hall- 3:57-8

If super shoes are so super then why has no one come close to the 1500 or 3k records after over 20 years? Why is webbs American mile record untouched.

Shouldn't runners be blowing it out of the water now?

Why are we just simply discounting NP times?

Generational athletes and potentially the EPO effect (EL G, Morceli, specifically are highly suspect). Cheruiyot ran 3:28 going out sub-53, if fully healthy watch out. The 5K and 10K records went down significantly, and we are seeing very fast times at 5,000. The 7:20 was an outlier then and now but there’re now 7:25-6 from guys who don’t even get on the podium. Feels like a matter of time for Jakob and Katir at that distance.

Ritz and Rupp and Webb and those lads win easily.

coachcommentsnicely wrote:

??????????? wrote:

So Solinsky gets credit for dominating a national title XC race solo, but not Nico dominating solo? Nicos 7:56 3000m isn't worth a 8:43 2mi solo?

Nico won by 14 seconds, Solinsky by 21 seconds.

Solinsky solo'd 8:43 with a 4:27/4:16 split:

I'm not taking any credit from Nico for dominating. Just saying that Nico beating Solinsky isn't so cut and dry.

Nico ran an 8:40 as a junior, then showed his entire senior year that he was in better shape than before. He set a CR in awful conditions solo against a stacked field, ran 7:56 in his first indoor race ever. Then covid hit and seemingly removed all competitive opportunities, and Nico still ran a 13:50 solo after 2k. I think it's cut and dry that Nico would've crushed Solinsky his senior year. I think it's not cut and dry if Nico or Ritz were better their senior year.

Peach Pit wrote:

coachcommentsnicely wrote:

Nico won by 14 seconds, Solinsky by 21 seconds.

Solinsky solo'd 8:43 with a 4:27/4:16 split:

I'm not taking any credit from Nico for dominating. Just saying that Nico beating Solinsky isn't so cut and dry.

Nico ran an 8:40 as a junior, then showed his entire senior year that he was in better shape than before. He set a CR in awful conditions solo against a stacked field, ran 7:56 in his first indoor race ever. Then covid hit and seemingly removed all competitive opportunities, and Nico still ran a 13:50 solo after 2k. I think it's cut and dry that Nico would've crushed Solinsky his senior year. I think it's not cut and dry if Nico or Ritz were better their senior year.

Wouldn't say cut and dry. Nico was chasing Sprout the whole way to an evenly split 4:22-4:18.

Time will tell how stacked the 2019 NXN field is. So far Sprout and Methner haven't done much in college.

You suffer from recency and California bias.

I'd say there's a Ritz bias here as well. As incredible as he was, lets not forget Solinky's got a faster 5k and 10k PR.

Don't forget the Rocket.

coach brosnan wrote:

If super shoes are so super then why has no one come close to the 1500 or 3k records after over 20 years? Why is webbs American mile record untouched.

Shouldn't runners be blowing it out of the water now?

Why are we just simply discounting NP times?

You may have missed where a certain Hobbs Kessler blew Webb's 1500 out of the water.

coach brosnan wrote:

Np top 3 have the fastest 3 5k xc times ever. I think theres no question they win.

Ritz probably gets 4th or 3rd, rupp gets out kicked by appleford(a good comp to winthrow), webb mentally self destructs realizing he's not going to win, and hall is apparently dealing with Accutane treatment as the earlier poster opined so he's midpack also.

I know you are trolling, but comparing withrow to appleford is truly insulting. Withrow was good enough to make the SENIOR world xc team as a true freshman and finish 9th at NCAA XC the next year as a redshirt frosh (he was infamously redshirted as a freshman the year Wisconsin was upset by Colorado). He finished as the top American in that world xc race (60th, 2 spots ahead of ritz). You are telling me a kid who just finished in the mid 40s at a high school race is capable of a performance like that in 12 months? Please son, knock it off.

I seem to hear "recency bias" used to shoot down claims that members of the younger generation are just as good (or better) than previous generations. As if there were absolutely no bias that elevates these older athletes to untouchable status, capable of running times that they never remotely approached. Or we hear that members of the older generation never had opportunities to run really fast, or something like that. Like Webb didn't get to race the greatest middle distance runner ever, and Rupp didn't run his 13:37 in London, finishing mid-pack.

I DO think the older guys would win here (and Ritz takes the whole thing, if only because he tries harder), but it would be quite a race.

We don't really know what the RunningLane times are really worth, but consider that 4 (?) of the NP guys are nearly as fast as German Fernandez on the Woodward Park course. I think a team with 4 GFs would probably do some damage.

They aren't GF though. They are running GF times with super shoes on, an advantage GF doesn't have.

I know people hate bringing this up, but we've had a conceptual shift in times in track thanks to shoes. Across the board.

We need to think of this as the cinder vs. new tracks debate. It's like comparing Ryun to Webb. You can't compare absolute times.

But 5 of the guys wore regular XC shoes at Garmin RunningLane.

The legends would destroy NP.

You should be looking at their speed ratings. We are talking about Cross Country! I'm curious how the speed ratings are affected by the carbon plated shoes since not everyone wears them.

Newbury Park

1- Ritz, 213.7

2. Goucher, 2:13.1

3. Solinsky, 2:12.7

4. Davis, 2:11.3

5. Sage, 2:10.4

6. Fout, 210.3

Leaving out some, but...

Reina, 2:08.7

Withrow, 207.7

Webb, 207.0

Rupp, 207.0

Newbury Park 1 - 202.9

NP 2 - 202.3

NP 3 - 202.17

NP 4 - 199.21

NP 5 - 189.0

Still an amazing performance, by Newbury Park.

I want to make sure to give credit to Tullyrunners for those speed ratings!