Where is the Nico Young Sub-13 Excitement?

But I meant here on Letsrun among people who talk about track every day. I didn't mean out in the real world. In the real world, 99% of the people cannot even name one professional runner or tell us how far 5km is.

14 Threads? I must have been offline that day. When I went to look tonight to read what people had said, I found one thread on page 6. It had sort of died and was certainly not full of enthusiasm for the result or for Nico.

For people saying it is "no big deal anymore," it is still a very, very short list of Americans. Just 12 guys, and only 9 of whom America can "take credit for" (who grew up in the US high school/coaching system):

USA All-Time Sub-13:00
1 12:46.96 - Grant FISHER
2 12:51.61 - William KINCAID
3 12:53.60 - Bernard LAGAT
4 12:54.99 - Joe KLECKER
5 12:55.53 - Chris SOLINSKY
6 12:56.27 - Dathan RITZENHEIN
7 12:57.14 - Nico YOUNG
8 12:57.55 - Paul CHELIMO
9 12:58.21 - Bob KENNEDY
10 12:58.56 - Matt TEGENKAMP
11 12:58.78 - Lopez LOMONG
12 12:58.90 - Galen RUPP

I for one was excited and saw a bunch of threads about it here the moment he broke 13. i dont know what more to tell you. ours is a niche sport.

And of course it is interesting that 3 of the fastest 7 performances occurred on the same fast indoor track in the past year (2023 and 2024) and that none of them have run as fast outdoors, although Nico hasn’t had an opportunity yet.

That sounds right... I must have missed them. Someone else said they all got combined into one thread and that is why they are "gone" now.

And because that thread had drifted out of the top few pages since the weekend, I didn't see much. That is what I get for not being online enough... :)

I should have said 3 of the 7 fastest performers had their personal bests on the same fast indoor track…

Nico is gay

How many posts did you make?

New track shoe technology makes no difference at all. Since the time they’ve been put into use, the 800m and 1500m WRs have not been broken, the rarely run 2000m was improved by 1.5 seconds, Jacob’s 2-mile conversion is a second faster than Komen, the 5000m was improved by 2 seconds and the 10 by 6 seconds. Your 15 second estimate would mean that Cheptegei could run 12:20 in Boston.

The BU track results are suspicious and deserve an asterisk.

My high school 3200 record is 9:02 set on a cinder track. Obviously new track surfaces are not faster because the record hasn't been broken.

Shoeszz didn’t say that all-weather tracks aren’t faster than cinder tracks and neither did I. Please feel free to convert your 3200m time to anything you want.

Short answer is that there is a lot of excitement and that showed last weekend. Long answer is that the accomplishment has been cheapened to some degree because of all the American sub-13s recently, the incredibly fast collegiate times, the hype about the BU track, and the shoes. The charts showing world times on the roads not improving for men at any higher rate than pre-road shoes--and those have been claimed to make much more of a difference than the track spikes--suggests that there may not be a huge advantage for the shoes. I think that it would be generous to give them more than 1/2 second per 400m. If that, that would give you 2 seconds drop for the mile and 6.25 second drop per 5000m. That would put Nico's time at 13:03.x without the super shoes. That seems about right but even that may be too much, as he has improved enormously since 2021-22. He ran 13:24 in 2021 outdoors. He then ran just 13:22 at BU in December of 2021 to take fifth (this year in December he ran 7:37 to win and then added on the 5k qualifier in around 13:26 the same day). In March 2022, he ran 13:21 for third at NCAA champs. So, he just ran BU 25 seconds faster than at BU in December 2021 and 24 seconds faster than NCAA indoor in 2022. The BU track wasn't much different (it was resurfaced but times were not generally different over previous years). Finally at Sound Running outdoors in 2022, he ran 13:11. So, he improved 14 seconds even from that paced race with presumably the same type of spikes. This was a breakthrough.

I think that some people put an asterisk next to current times, particularly those run at BU, but that is only a partial explanation. The underlying issue is that it is nearly impossible to discern the future relevance of this sort of performance. In ten years, will 12:57 still be the NCAA record? Seems doubtful. People get really excited for marks that seem like crazy outliers or ahead of their time - like Webb's 3:53 mile or Kessler's 3:34 1500. Young's 12:57 is really fast, but at the same time, we kind of expected this - if not from him, from someone in the NCAA. And as more NCAA guys work their way down from 3:55 closer to 3:50 in the mile, I would bet some of them will step up and take a crack at a really fast 5000 pretty much every year.

All that being said, I think Young and Sahlman deserve a lot of credit for continuing to progress from their impressive marks in high school. I wouldn't have necessarily predicted that they would be able to improve as much as they have in college, considering the level they reached in high school. I'll certainly be interested to see how the rest of their season plays out, and I hope they go into the summer with some good fitness for the Trials and possibly some European races.

You said that shoes don't make mu h difference because records are not falling. I said that track surfaces don't make a difference since my high school record hadn't improved on new tracks. You completely missed the point. A record is a small sample size. It will take 3:54 to qualify in the mile this year. It used to take 3:59. The 16th best DMR will run as fast as the winning time before shoe technology changed.

The track was short.

No one can argue this point, as indoor track has been renamed short track, since all the tracks are short (less than 400m).

Jakob is part of a massive sample size. How can the new shoes help bring up the average, but not the very best?

Your post is based on comparing something obvious to speculation. Saying running downhill is faster than uphill, is also irrelevant.

For American runners, I believe the massive development of middle school distance running, has brought in more talented kids to the sport, which would explain the increase in the number of elite collegiate runners.

The 25th best time in the world last year was 3:31. That would have been 10th in 2013. 25th 5k was 13:01 while that mark would have been 10th in 2013. Youvare arguing something that is not arguable. Every athlete, coach, and fan agrees that shoes have had a significant impact on times.