I just came across a post on an Ohio HS forum (from Scott Fry). Shocking how many times he broke 9:00 off the double. Here was his post ( I know he reads this site so sorry to embarass you Scott).
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Hey everybody, I just stopped by and saw this thread and it intrigued me enough to muscle statman over and let me chime in and add some stuff.
First, I love this site. We didn't have the Internet in my day. The first time I saw in the paper that the meet record for the Sandusky Relays 3200 was 9:04 by John Zishka I thought it was a typo. That was when I was just trying to break 11:00 as a freshman runner.
Those were some good days, though. I recall my coach taking our team to see "Chariots of Fire" in the movie theatre, hearing about the great race at Boston between Salazar and Beardsley at track practice(coach's wife called him), watching Oslo dream mile with Coe, Ovett, and Scott on ABC at 4:00 live on Saturdays in the summer and not ESPN2 at 2:00am a week later.
Those were the days when you had to be at least a 10:20 2 miler to make my hs xc team top 7 and we got only 7th at state (D2).
I would love to see the stats of Zishka, Scharsu, Nicholas, Kennedy, (only if were talking HS, he creams everyone after!) but here's what I got from my old logs.
After losing the state 3200 to Dan Franek(Bridget's uncle) 9:06.5-9:06.7 (hardest I ever pushed myself in a race EVER) here's the stats on the races my senior year. Starting the week after that state meet when I was a little mad from that defeat:
14:47 track, 30:54 10k road, 14:39 track, 14:31 track, 14:39 track, 14:58 road, 14:56(xc started), 14:53, 15:25, 14:58, 14:49, 15:05, 14:46, 14:56, 15:10, 14:50(state) 15:01, 14:50(nationals).
I had to train hard because I wasn't the greatest talent so my summer miles starting the week after the state meet and going all the way to nationals were 63, 86, 87, 88, 85, 102, 75, 81, 101, 101, 100, 98, 97, 90, 94, 90, 94, 90, 84, 88, 92, 81, 72, 79, 89, 82, 68, 76, 55.
These were done with morning runs of 4-5 6 days a week always. Gets you in the routine and trains anyone with a modicum of talent to be a RUNNER. Also the long run of 15 on Sundays was huge.
I see a huge upswing in the sport right now and predict that soon (3-5years) there has to be someone in the state to break these distance records that have held for 20 years. The odds seem to predict this.
I would love to see the total stats of Scharsu and Ziska, like every race. Maybe Coach Garcia looks here. I believe Scharsu ran 8:45 as a sophomore so he must have broke 9:00 a crazy number of times.
Here's my senior year 3200 times(adjusted by subtracting 3.4 seconds if 2 miles were run)
Indoors-8:59-8:54-9:03
Outdoors-9:05-8:50-8:51-8:52-8:46-8:49-8:43(8:08 3k)-8:50. All but the last 2 were done off of 1600 douibles of 4:19-4:15-4:11-4:11-4:10-4:12-4:12-4:16-4:11-4:08-4:08.
Didn't get the 13:55 5000 of Zishka, the 8:44 2 mile of Scharsu, and CERTAINLY not the 12:58 of Kennedy. But it was a fun time, although I wouldn't recommend any kid to be as single minded at that age as I was. I used to hide Runner's World in my textbooks during class(back when it was as big as a phone book). I think today things are so much more competitive and anxious and running should never be singular goal to the detriment of more important things.
But for the kids who like it and are willing to work a little you never know what it will bring you. I ran 5:04 and 10:46 as a freshman and was happy to letter by hte skin of my teeth but I gradually kept running more, as much as I could handle, and saw some nice results. I also had the greatest coach of all-time(John Hinton) and never remember being pushed over what I could handle.
Keep up the work and think big and don't get easily discouraged-that's what held me back later on when improvement slowed. You'll walk away and feel good about it if you keep it in perspective-its only running, not life. It shouldn't ever be the end all to be all.
That's all.
Scott Fry