Are sub-16:00 5K runners in high school a dime a dozen?

Hey, just so you know, nobody cares about XC times. They mean absolutely nothing because the courses all vary so much. They especially mean nothing in California where the average course is downhill and 2.8miles long with the times being like 14:30's but it's claimed to be a 5K. College coaches could care less about the time and all they care about is performance at like the state meet. Track is where time matters.

Sub 16:00 at Wickham Park in CT is pretty hard. Not sure how many kids in the state do it it these days, but when I was there, the state champ would just sneak under. I think Pete Rea of Zap Fitness fame held the record at Wickhan forever and to break 16:00 there basically meant you were a sub 9:10 guy on the track (very rare in CT in those days, where if you ran sub 9:40, everyone probably knew who you were).

Do people regularly break 16:00 there now?

Well there were 11 guys under 16:00 at the 2009 Northeast Footlocker qualifier in VCP, so roughly, a sub-16:00 in XC makes you a Footlocker qualifier these days. That's pretty good.

Flagpole wrote:

off constantly wrote:

Ohio's state meet course is also a fairly tough course. I'm sure there are a good number of other guys in the state who broke 16 at some point on legitimate, but less difficult, courses.

You talking about the course at Scioto Downs? It's not that tough.

It's not a tough course but it isn't a flat track meet either. The times are very fair and a good number of runners do not pr there especially if they run Tiffin or Galion.

They changed the course at Wickham a few years back. To my knowledge, it is slower- less pavement and more hills. Plus the girls now run 5k at states, so they are obviously slower.

People on here are retarded. Yes a lot of kids do it but sub 16 in high school in my opinion is legit. It shows you have a lot of potential to be d1 all-conference maybe better one day in college. Sub 16 shows talent in my opinion.

In my league, approx 4% of varsity men were sub 16 5k XC. Race with like 80 guys, maybe 3 or 4 guys go sub 16. (in a pretty good CA league). HOW DO THEY MEASURE HS XC COURSES??

I remember in the nineties, you could make footlocker with like 15:30 some years at McAlpine. This year you would have been like 100th!

For those of you who don't know, a time at McAlpine can be considered the rough equivalent of a track time.

I ran in Ohio in the early 80s and was a little under 16 on the roads. We ran 2.5 miles xc where my fastest time was 12:28. At the state meet, I ran 12:46 which McMillan converts to 16:11. I had the 100th best time that day between all the divisions. I certainly didn't have D1 colleges knocking on my door but there were also hundreds of kids that day that didn't run that fast and thousands of others who didn't make it to the state meet.

I think you could reasonably say that running a 16 minute 5k is similar to running a 4:30 mile for a high schooler.

kind of in the middle wrote:

Flagpole wrote:

You talking about the course at Scioto Downs? It's not that tough.

It's not a tough course but it isn't a flat track meet either. The times are very fair and a good number of runners do not pr there especially if they run Tiffin or Galion.

Scioto Downs, to reiterate, a tough course. It's never track-like fast, and the grass isn't always cut appropriately. The weather is almost always cold, and while the temperatures aren't terrible, it's the time of year where Regionals could still be a bit warmish, and State be hat-and-glove weather. Look at what Jeff See ran there as a junior and senior to see that it's not a fast course. I would point to Bob Kennedy, but he toyed with the meet I remember his senior year. Zach Wills, a very impressive cross country runner and a sub-8:50 (I believe) two-miler, has yet to set the state on fire with a great time here.

Tiffin and Gallion are too fast. We always strove to have every runner have a faster day at State than the Tiffin Invitational/Carnival, but for those who run Regionals there, times won't equivocate.

In Michigan, in a typical year at the "track-fast" state meet course at Michigan International Speedway, around 50 to 60 guys will break 16:00, all divisions. Last year a lot less did on a bad weather day. With about 600 high schools in the state, breaking 16:00 means that you are probably the best at your school and stand a good chance of being the best in your conference. It's not a big deal on the national stage, but most kids who run that fast will feel like the shit because they'll win a lot of meets and be able to beat most other kids in their area.

CTRunnerDude wrote:

Sub 16:00 at Wickham Park in CT is pretty hard. Not sure how many kids in the state do it it these days, but when I was there, the state champ would just sneak under. I think Pete Rea of Zap Fitness fame held the record at Wickhan forever and to break 16:00 there basically meant you were a sub 9:10 guy on the track (very rare in CT in those days, where if you ran sub 9:40, everyone probably knew who you were).

Do people regularly break 16:00 there now?

I'd say 0-5 people per year break 16:00. Yeah, I guess it does nearly indicate 9:10 outdoors. Here are the people who have run sub-16 at the XC State Open over the last 5 years and how they did later that year in track (if I could find their times on the Dystat lists...if not, no track time listed).

2009

Raneri - 15:40 - 9:00 3200

Bendtsen - 15:43 - 9:03 2-mile / 8:58 3200

2008

no one

2007

Cabral - 15:32 - 8:56 2-mile

Kane - 15:35

Misenti - 15:44 - 9:15 3200

Judd - 15:48 - 8:37 3k (equal to 9:18 2-mile)

Hackett - 15:50 - 9:11 3200

Terry - 15:56

2006

no one

2005

Koloseus - 15:33 - 9:04 2-mile

Ward - 15:49

Cabral - 15:52

Carlson - 15:58

There are many XC cources in the U.S. were running sub- 16 would make you a stud and running sub-16 on a track is pretty good as well. And, you don't need to run sub-15 on the track to be elite as someone said, there are only about 3 H.S. athletes each year that run a sub-15 on the track.

ripvanracer wrote:

I think you could reasonably say that running a 16 minute 5k is similar to running a 4:30 mile for a high schooler.

This seems about right. Certainly sub 16 xc 5k were a dime a dozen in the 70's and early 80's. After that, not so much.

During my senior year our HS team had 10 runners get under 15:30 for xc 3 miles at some point throughout the year and we barely won our conference. (We ended up with 7 under 4:25 for the mile and maybe 16 under 10:00 for 2 miles on the track that year.) This would constitute the "dime a dozen" label.

In the late 80's through today, on the same courses there rarely is anyone running under 16:00 3 mile xc. This would not warrant "dime a dozen."

Man, they changed the Wickham course? What a shame. What is it now?

When I graduated in 1996, you came through the big open field, made a hard 90 degree left maybe 1/2 mile in, then went to the bottom of a big paved hill. From there you ran up that (what seemed at the time) massive hill before coming back down to the field. We then would run up a short steep grass hill (in 1996, we had a ton of rain and had to postpone the Class and Open meets, so it was changed) and then somehow double back towards that field (I think a short wooded section?) around it by the start, and through the finish.

Don't see how it could be made that much different.

Anyway, CT running in the 90s was sub 10:00 and sub 4:30 was decent. If you were sub 16:00 at Wickham, you were a stud (read Dan Wilson), and really anything faster then 16:30 was pretty legit. I think my teammate ran 16:12 and was 10th or so at the State Open. He was a 1:55/4:24 guy. If you could pound out sub 9:30 and sub 4:20, everyone knew you and you could be considered one of the favorites for a State Championship. Sub 16:00 on the track was also a notable accomplishment.

I think now a days kids are a lot faster. When I was in HS, our school records were 1:57, 4:28, 9:35 (the mile by a soccer player). Now they're 1:53, 4:14 and I'm not sure what the 3200 is. Definitely faster then 9:35. I think someone brought mile down to 4:18 not long after I graduated, and most of the other improvement has been in the last few years. Crazy. I would guess my coach has the team running more then 20-30 mpw (which is what I trained at), and probably has a real indoor track schedule and summer training plan. When I was there there was nothing organized between cross and outdoor and between outdoor and cross.

For that 4:18 guy, you may be thinking of Ryan Steer who ran 4:21 in 1998:

http://www.cs.uml.edu/~phoffman/nats98/cttopb16.htm

. He was good, 4th at State Open.

And then after him I don't remember any notable Hand runners until Sean Nestor, Dave Cotton, and now Dan Nestor. Dan Nestor ran 4:16-high and 9:27 last year. I'm trying to think who the 4:14 guy could have been. And Nestor has not run 1:53.

I don't know, I think Brent Roberts could potentially still have the 800 team record at 1:55-1:56-ish.

Oh wait, Brendon Fish went 1:54 last year. Completely forgot about him and Haff since Cotton and Nestor tend to overshadow them.

the answer is no they are not and who cares anyway. Noone runs more than about 1 per year on the track and as someone else said XC times are completely irrelevant.

I suppose I have to say it heh since noone else has yet but at Hereford in MD if you break 17:00 for 3 Miles! then you should be well under 10 for 2 miles on the track. This is why noone cares about XC times. That and 90% of the courses are measured wrong.

Yeah, I know Ryan well because we were on the team together. After him came a kid I don't know, but met once, who ran, I think, 4:18 (he tried to run at Indiana). From him to Cotton/Nestor/Fish I think there was a drought.

Brent ran 1:55.9 at Nationals his senior year. He ran one 4:24? to start the season against Amity's Ravi Purushotham, but I'm pretty convinced could have probably run 4:16 or 4:17 if he ran it later. Our coach didn't really have us run much against each other and I focused a bit more on the 1600 and he the 800 our senior year.

Its kind of crazy how fast those Hand guys got. I always thought Coach Geary was a good coach... but we were really low volume back in my day. I remember looking at my HS logs a few months ago, and I routinely ran 20-30 mpw. The only time I got to 40 was over the summer before my senior year.

Next time I'm home, I'm going to have to ask him what he's doing with these kids. The Cotton's have the genes. Fish and Nestors? Its gotta be Coach Geary!