With the new WR of 2:02:57 (4:41 mile pace), my coach posed this question the other day in practice and our team had a spirited debate about this.. we were pretty 50/50 on the question.
RULES
1)I go to an all boys school, so we didn't include female runners. Including girls would make this a much, much harder challenge. For the sake of discussion, let's not factor in the girl runners.
2)The relay would be run on a track
3)No Varsity Top 7 runners can participate in the relay, even if gradewise they are a Frosh-Soph (if we included top 7 for my school this would be a definite yes... we have 1 guy sub 4:15, another sub 4:20 and the other 5 are all sub 4:35)
4)EVERY F/S and JV runner must run AT LEAST 400m. (This made things tough for us because we have about 7 bigger runners on the team who race a 25+ min 3 mile)
5)You can run in any order and for any distance, as long as each runner ultimately runs a total of 400m.
My team: We have about 35 total runners on the JV and F/S squad, including about 7 runners who are in the 445-515 range. I would have our faster guys run as many all out 400s (likely 59-64s) with staggered long breaks in an attempt to build as big of a lead as possible and to make up for the runners on our team who would struggle to break 75s for 400m. We have at least two 2:02 800m guys who would be a huge asset, and I could easily see them each running 8 x 400 at ~56-58s if given long rest. Again, the big problem would be our slower guys. I know one guy who ran a 28 min 3 mile and couldn't break 85s for 400m (he's a beast shot putter though). I didn't think we would get the record, but I guessed we could still break 2:04.