Why so many fast high school track times lately

Beat me to it!

Super shoes and designer surfaces. Super shoes are to track today what polyurethane super suits were to swimming in 2008. They basically reset all of the record books. Swimming had the decency to ban the suits. Track has not had the courage to do the same (primarily because the big shoe companies that control / sponsor the sport enjoy selling $250 shoes to millions of high schoolers, collegians and weekend warriors each year). It seems the effect is most pronounced in the men's mile. There were about 100 sub four milers in the NCAA this year (a typical year prior might see 2-3 dozen). The technology has come a long way from when Jim Ryun first broke 4 as a high schooler in old school Adidas Special spikes on a cinder track.

Yes. Just becuase it was pre-internet doesn't mean people were stupid bro. My coach knew how to read, and he listened to Arthur Lydiard talks on cassette. Crazy eh?

There were plenty of smart coaches "back in the day". What you are failing to grasp is how many ignorant coaches there were. They might have been very capable coaches, but the quality and quantity of information they had available to them was limited. Even just 15 years ago getting a monthly issue Running Times was legitimately top tier educational material.

Today, there is no excuse to be a ignorant coach. There are clinics, videos, podcasts, books, forum discussions--much of it free or low cost. There are more educated coaches in the high school ranks than ever before. It's making kids faster.

Bingo. There were some very good coaches back in the day. Emphasis on "some". Many were absolutely atrocious, and didn't know it.

“4:20 is not fast” Sean Brosnan

in addition to shoe technology, the internet, gradual advances in training, the YouTube by Hdrunners series on Newbury park and great oak opened a lot of eyes to what is possible.

Also other YouTube series like the ones by milesplit and the whole milesplit weekly show has taken up high school running a lot.

also NXN has also incentivized a boom in running.

I think good training, from a young age, is a HUGE factor. I think Jakob Ingebrigtsen is the classic example (but was he also on drugs??), as well as the Young twins that started club racing/training when they were in grade school.

Harder training. Less jerking off.

Volume alone is not the answer; Martin’s and the Young twins’ volume are not excessive (though Jakob’s seems to have been on the higher side from a young age). Rather, it is smart training starting at a young age (and diet, to a degree).

I think the internet has played a large role. Coaches can get good information easier, and kids can see what the top HSers are doing. Seeing the competition nationally and realizing 4:20 really isn't competitive is a big mindshift, and when it's happening in your section, it's an even bigger change. When a guy 20 minutes from you can run 4:05, your goal is to beat him.

Anecdotal, but in my 4 years of HS, we had 1 guy under 4:20, and being under 5 would put you on varsity. In a school of close to 3000 and with a track team of well over 100 people. The year I left, my track coach retired, and the new one has already gotten over a dozen kids under 5 in his first year, and there are two under 4:20. I've said that the talent is there all over the country, there were 3 kids in the 60s who broke 4, and kids in the 70s running over 8:40. That talent didn't disappear, we're just seeing it again now with better training and competition.

Also anecdotally, there was no one in my state who was running anything close to 4:10, and out of nowhere, a sophomore dropped a 4:10. That shifted the entire running scene in my section because people were training to beat 4:10, not 4:20. The next year only one guy was really anywhere near him, then covid hit, kids trained like crazy, and our senior year there were a few kids at state who were finishing close to him. Now, times are faster than they've ever been, and there's kids running around 4:10/9:00 because that's what the new standard became.

There's more dissemination of training information and a lot more running clubs and coaches getting kids off to an earlier start in running, and the shoes may make a few seconds difference, but the key in my mind is the far greater # of paced, competitive races that bring together upper level distance runners from all over. In my era, for high schoolers, there was very little outside the state track scene. Golden West gave some of the best in the country an opportunity to compete after states. I can't recall much else at the time. Now, there are so many paced races with top competition as well as lower level but very fast runners, and they often get major pr's from these competitions. At Hoka, there were multiple levels represented. A kid ran a 4:06 mile to win an earlier section in which everyone broke 4:11. In the 1990s and early aughts there would sometimes be one kid running one mile with pros at Pre and that was pretty much it. Now there are a couple kids at pre (there was a lower ranking kid in one of the 1500s as well as Sahlman) but there have been dozens of other meets already this year that had top preps competing outside the state or national championship schedule. Martin's the only kid since Ryun to break four in a high school only race. Setup races matter.

What does “proper training” mean? As another poster mentioned, volume of these kids is usually pretty low and kids in the 70s and 80s were running way more. Even in college, not many kids are running more than 80-90 miles per week these days.

I think it was 1999 or 2000 when you had an explosion of data and information become available. Due to Letsrun, Daniel's Running Formula, and the internet, kids and coaches finally learned how to train properly and the depth of fast times continued to improve as a result.

Now there's been over 2 decades to refine and improve things. And the youngsters today have had an abundance of training knowledge and wisdom just a few keystrokes away before they were even born. Add better shoe technology into the mix, and its no wonder they're running so fast right now.

I think the question then, is whether this is as good as it gets, or will the kids keep getting better and better? Only time will tell.

I think these are the biggest answer. Shoes and nutrition aren't making a huge difference. Getting the right year round, consistent training will make a much bigger dent.

Think about this, though. In the 60s, THREE guys broke 4:00 and a few others came close. So the potential has been there for more than 50 years. Maybe the question shouldn't be why so many kids have done it in recent years. Maybe it should be why didn't ANYONE do it in the 70s, 80s or 90s?

We had a really weak period of HS distance running, nationally, from about 1986 - 1998. It's been pretty good ever since Webb and Co. came along. No, not sub-4s really often like the last several years, but pretty good.

Access to more information has resulted in better training as well as better shoes and technology. I talked to my old high school head track coach and the weight programs they have athletes on these days is light years a head of 20 years. For example, the High School uses computer system that builds their weight programs based on day to day results of their lifting routines and the kids are stronger faster and better than ever before.

There was no YouTube when I was in High School and the internet was still very young, it was hard to find quality information other than scrolling through endless forums. Videos are super beneficial training tool.

This is not limited to running. In every activity worldwide there are more people achieving higher levels of excellence at younger ages than ever before. This includes all other sports but also math, music, writing, etc. etc.

It is likely that the improvement in running is more noticeable because standards of excellence in running are more easily quantifiably measured (time run for specific distances).

This growth in excellence is partially due to better teachers and better teaching methods (and that includes coaches and coaching methods)

Some of the improvement is in fact due to population growth. There are about 30% more people in US high schools now than in 1965. Presuming that the relative popularity of running in high school has remained the same, there are now more high school athletes running than before. You will always have greater numbers of outliers, including fast runners, with a larger sample size.

That means Webb would have run 3:49 for the mile in high school.