Cameron Myers (3:55 16 yo) Training?

What are the boys age 17 1500/mile records?

Fair enough as far as genuinely “world-class” 1500m/mile guys go, though I’m thinking in a little broader context of “elite” than that here.

For example, Myers’ time for a full mile would be the school record at many D1 and solid D2 college programs who’ve had hundreds of talented and undeniably “physically mature” 18-24 year olds over the years drawn from the top 1% of the human talent curve. That’s a pretty good reference class for comparison and definitively shows that it takes far more than precocious physical maturity to reach 3:55.

There also are a number of elite runners specializing in the 5K and up who have never run 3:55 at any age despite physical maturity and years of world-class training.

In short, despite the recent surge of improvement, a 3:55 mile is still an exceptionally rare accomplishment in the grand scheme of things…and entirely unprecedented for a 16 year old (even among all the precociously developed human males that have ever raced a mile).

As for the long run question, I’m mostly referencing the longstanding dogma attributed to Lydiard-based approaches. I myself definitely don’t think of 16-22 mile long runs as essential, even for strength-based milers who come at it more from a 5K training angle. The fact that Jakob has never run longer than 13 miles in a single run is demonstrative on this point, I’d say.

💉

I don’t know about “average 16 year old” but I agree that he wouldn’t look out of place at any state high school XC or track meet or national competition. He just looks like what I would expect from a very good high schooler. I’ve definitely seen more impressively developed high schoolers…all of whom were notably slower.

At any rate, he definitely doesn’t look 26 (which, by the way, is the age of Oliver Hoare who happened to be in the race where Myers ran the 3:55).

He doesn't look overly developed and could pass for being 15. Look at him.

au.sports.yahoo.com

Athletics world in disbelief over 16-year-old Aussie's 'ridiculous' act

Cameron Myers broke Jakob Ingebrigtsen's world record for 16 years olds. Read more here.

Link:au.sports.yahoo.com/cameron-myers-stun...

His face looks his age. His body looks more physically mature than his age.

But this all beside the point: anyone else have insights regarding his training history?

Dick Telford is an expert on talent identification and recruitment, an often-overlooked component of getting great runners. Watch the NOVA video, “Can Science Build a Champion Athlete?” to see the interview with Telford on this topic. It is the fastest way to get a talented athlete for a sport: basically screen large numbers of the population with general fitness tests that test for the physical attributes needed to excel in that sport, select a manageable # of them, then do physiological lab testing of exhaled gases and blood waste products at higher levels of effort for representative durations of the sport, then select those whose attributes most closely match the demands of the sport. The Australians learned to apply this by studying the East German system of talent identification and recruitment after Communism fell. Within 2 years, the Australian women won the World Junior Rowing Championships in the 2 person rowing shell in a sport which normally takes around 10 years to reach world class status by training alone. Dick Telford & crew proved their method by choosing a sport which, as he said “You can spot great runners running on tracks, in parks, on roads, but you don’t see rowers rowing down the street, so we needed to devise tests to find them.” Those 2 women had never rowed before. It’s not all about training.

You're just saying this out of jealousy. He looks like a kid.

I don’t doubt this. But it doesn’t seem to apply to this kid. Telford did not identify Myers, has never been his coach, and only became loosely tied to his training later in Myers’ development when his real coach (Lee Bobbin) asked if Myers and another of his top runners could join with some of Telford’s runners on certain training sessions.

See the Runner’s Tribe interview with Bobbin posted above for more details.

Cam Myers does all his sessions with Telford's group. You can see on strava.

Training week ~90km ( in summer)

Monday = 45 min + gym

Tuesday= track ( typically quarters or 400m) some variation of the two

wednesday = 1hr ( 4.20 per Km)

thursday = continuous or broken threshold (usually 8km) on XC course

Friday = easy 30

saturday = 1km repeats 4min or 4.30 cycle (usually 6 or 7) 5 x200m

sunday = solid 10 -12 mile over hills

The post I replied to insinuated that Myers is the product of a grand scientific selection process:

“It is the fastest way to get a talented athlete for a sport: basically screen large numbers of the population with general fitness tests that test for the physical attributes needed to excel in that sport, select a manageable # of them, then do physiological lab testing of exhaled gases and blood waste products at higher levels of effort for representative durations of the sport, then select those whose attributes most closely match the demands of the sport.”

This is not what happened here. Myers’ parents sought out a coach (Lee Bobbin) who (at the time) coached a talented athlete (Tomas Palfrey, now at University of Oregon) who was older than Myers. And, over time, Bobbin decided that he needed to find faster training partners for Palfrey and Myers, which led him to Telford’s group.

So, the selection process described in the quote above does not apply here. Myers’ parents self-selected Bobbin who self-selected Telford’s group.

Moreover, even in agreeing to the later training arrangement, Telford explicitly told Bobbin that he (Bobbin) would remain their real coach and would need to be the one to individually calibrate training sessions for his (Bobbin’s) athletes off of what Telford was doing independently with his own athletes. Again, listen to the recent Runner’s Tribe interview with Bobbin for more details.

Still, though, the primary point is this: neither exceptional brute physical maturity nor some East Germanesque scientific selection process adequately explain Myers’ performance.

Being relatively tall does not equal "more physically mature than his age". If you want an example of that, look at photos of Webb at the same age. He looked mid-20s.

Myers’ 800m PR - 1:50.82

Snell’s 800m PR - 1:44.3 (on cinders)

That’s quite a gap still in the event that Snell was clearly best at.

My guess is that Snell also might have had similar results to Myers at 16 or 17 if he had not been primarily engaged in team sports but instead, like Myers, had started serious distance training under a quality coach with talented older training partners at age 10 (and had better tracks, shoes, physios, and the rest).

Thanks for taking the time to do this. I spent some time going through his strava and this looks to be pretty accurate. Doesn’t appear to be anything earth shattering, just solid, consistent work.

Anyone know when he started? Strava goes back two years and it’s clear at that point that he was already pretty fit at 14 so I’m guessing it was well I’m advance of that.

According to the Runner’s Tribe interview, Lee Bobbin has been coaching him for “5 or 6 years” and Myers had a national champion age-group athlete (Tomas Palfrey) as an older training partner from the beginning. (It also sounds like he had been training with another more local athletics group before that.) They began “throwing them into sessions” with Telford’s group in late 2020 in order to have someone to push Palfrey.

In short, story sounds fairly similar to Jakob: a talented kid with strong work ethic starts training seriously around 10 with good coaching and training partners, stays healthy and consistent, and six+ years later is world-class.

Simply I think similar to Jakob I’d that the group you work with has people who are driven. Aussie MD running top notch at the moment. So when you’re around people with lots of self belief big things happen. While Jye and Rorey are his more elite training partners are are “pro” there’s another 8 guys working or studying with pbs from 3.40-3.45 for 1500m. They all race and go on camps to altitude together etc.

What a big man you are! Anonymously accusing a 16 year old kid of doping.