Why no sub 4 milers from 1967 to 2001?

Stember was ready to break 4:00, but the state and Golden West meets were 1600m so he chose a strategy of running a crazy negative last 600m split. By the time he finally ran a mile at Pre, he had lost fitness.

I don’t know about there being a mental barrier. Most serious runners always want to improve their times and if the have the ability to run 4:00, they would have done so.

I will double down on this one. Look how many kids broken 9 in the 3200 in the whole 1980s and through 1994. I was with Dan Empfield the owner of Slowtwitch.com and he put this chart together and showed me. I can't remember the exact numbers, but 9:15 was a big deal back then. And to think 32 kids broke 9 in a single night in Arcadia this April and many more were close to doing it. Anyone who mentions mileage without a purpose....this fully explains area where I grew up in Western PA. Also, back then LOTS of races were run. You had to win those dual meets so distance runners going 4 events which of course included the 4 X 8 every meet. Scheduling with poor weather played into this as when meets were cancelled and rescheduled because of bad weather...you may do 3 meets in a week or 12 races and miss training days. The thing that is interesting though is the kids from that area ran some good XC times, but they never translated to the track.

Now I will list something a friend and I were just talking about this at Arcadia this year. Big heeled/cushioned training shoes. Talk about playing God and effing with mechanics and performance. The Nike Air generation of shoes from the late 80s through mid 90s meant well and oh my the marketing was there, but I do believe there was some unintended consequences. I would love to see a study on how many people were actually injured long term by those beasts. I can think of 5 people who have had hip replacements in their 40s and used some form of Air Max, Air Support, or Air Stab.

Better races and also way better training. More emphasis on LT work - I think thanks to the rise of the Norwegian runners.

There were some warped training/racing ideas. People actually thought it was good to dehydrate yourself as much as possible so you would be lighter for the race.

Realistically, how much mileage is required to go sub 4? I feel that the right person can do it on 40-60.

Going sub 4 is really much more about being a 1:50 800 runner that has aerobic training versus being a 1:58 guy who runs 100 miles a week.

I also wouldnt be surprised if the internet has helped highschoolers get PEDs. It certainly has for other sports.

I almost hate to say it but I think there has to be at least one top high schooler who is doping in one form or another. That's just human nature. But I don't believe that even comes close to explaining the overall improvement at the high school level.

We do know for sure that some teams were doping as long ago as twenty years. (Looking at you, Rockford H.S., MI, Coach Brad Prins and Dathan Ritzenhein).

http://archive.dyestat.com/state/mi/2in/prins/bloom.htm

This^ has been my point for years and it largely falls in line with my experience.

I still do a summer mileage club, but we’ve got 2 easy quality days and a day for short fast stuff in there now. My own HS summer mileage club was show up once a week and do an easy 5 miler with the team and then run oyo the rest of the time, which was encouraged to be really easy also.

when I started coaching, I had a girl run 10:30, which was good for #8 in the US. Her daughter is running tonight at NBN where a 10:30 is not going to be anything special at all.

Sounds right

The thing is, those 40-60 miles would be much more useful today than in the time period referenced in this thread. Today, under a good coach, there would be a very specific purpose for every mile. Back then there were so many days that were "go run the campus loop as a group and I'll see you tomorrow" and we would trot off on yet another pointless five-miler in which the slowest guys easily keep up and you giggle about the guy who got rejected by a girl.

As I reflect on my own coaching from that era, it is so easy to see how my athletes could have been better on the same mileage. Maybe they do "run the campus loop" sometimes, but then they could have been adding strength and flexibility work, form drills, running in the pool, and so on.

Sorry, but it doesn’t seem like you were much of a coach. A campus loop at my HS would have been .5 miles. Why didn’t you train them to be distance runners? Running on land is far preferable to running in the pool.

The ironic thing is at my high school we did exactly that and had one of the best mid d programs in the region, and nationally competitive with a sub 7:40 4x8 and 3 sub 7:45 teams in 4 years. Going sub 8 almost every year for 8 years straight.

You guys way over estimate how much mileage plays a factor in racing the mile.

Mileage does not make you faster. It makes it easier to run a higher volume of higher intensity paces. If you are not running LT or M pace in training, increasing your volume will do almost nothing for mid distance racing.

That might be true for 400/800m guys but I don’t think you’ll find an elite 800/1500m runner that didn’t do at least 50mpw. Middle distance means 800/1500m and it requires aerobic training.

They ran a lot of 1500s back then.

50 mpw is not “high mileage” though is my point. I was running 20-30 mpw and ran 4:14. We had other guys go 4:06, 4:07, 4:16, 4:19, and 4:20 in the that same 5 year span. They all ran a bit more than me but never over 50 miles in the season

I assume you must have bumped up your mileage for XC and during the off-season.

Nope

I don't want to get too defensive, but my results said otherwise. I coached state champions, many all-state runners, a state championship 4x800, and more all-region athletes than I could ever remember. But I am willing to explore why kids are faster today in a way that doesn't just point the finger at other people. I'll admit that I could have done things better as an athlete and as a coach.