A few clarifications here....and I am not going to get into the argument over whether Sean's cross country season was the best or not, and I'm not going to try and defend the Great Meadows course against some other ones. I just want to clear the misconceptions about Sean by someone who has worked with him for his whole career.
a) Very good season in the fall, meeting all of his objectives, losing only to Edward Cheserek at FLN. He set course records at the state meet and at FLS, and ran the 2nd fastest 2.98 time (14:19) at the district/regional course used, beaten only by Alan Webb's 13:57.
b) I would agree that Hereford is harder....Sean ran that as a junior and broke 16 there...I think only the 2nd person to do that.
c) Sean's actual mile PR indoors was a 4:08.32, run on the anchor leg of the 6th place 4x1 Mile relay. He ran 4:11 in the open 1600m.
d) Sean did lose the indooor state title in the 3200m run to Louis Colson by .02...great race by Colson...it was Sean's 3rd race in 18 hours (1:55 4x8 split, 4:11 1600, and 9:06 3200m)....no excuses here, he got outleaned by a fresher runner.
e) Sean's full mile time at Penn was 4:04.37, which converts to a 4:03.05 1600m.
f) Sean's 8:46.07 was run on a breezy morning...I don't know if it was 20 mph or not, but there was a good breeze throughout, and he ran virtually the last 3150 meters alone.
f) Sean is honored to be racing this weekend at the Dream Mile, and will show up in shape and ready to compete. I won't say if he will or won't win, and I won't say if he will or won't break 4:00, and I won't guess who else will or wont win or break 4:00. What I can say is that he respects all of his competitors, is highly motivated to do well, is healthy and well conditioned, and will do his best.I'm certain everyone in the field will be prepared as well.
If he is reading this (I don't know that he will), I'm sure he is honored that some of you think highly of him, and respects that there are always those who may have other opinions.