Elite Runners who were Mediocre in High School

letsbang wrote:

Riley Masters, didn't break 2 in the 800 'till his sophomore year in college. Ran, 1:54 in a small indoor meet a week before running 3:59 in the mile. I think he ran a 4:14ish mile in highschool, but I don't think he ever broke 16 in a 5k.

HE ran 4:16y at New Englands ... who would have ever thought that guy would be any good at running?

How good is 4:16y? IS that just considered "mediocre"? What would be a good time? 4:05y?

15:40 is darn good if it is a legit 5k cross. You could be a contributor to a decent D1 Cross Country team. Oregon and Stanford won't be calling you though.

If you pour through the top of the USA Championships results, you will find an occasional example of a runner who was "mediocre" in HS. Likely if you dug deeper you would find many of those runners who ran only during the season and did very low volume. When they began to train seriously, they improved dramatically.

Bottom line is that if someone is running in HS consistently with almost any coaching, year round, their talent will begin to show. SOME people will take several years of high level training to have a breakthrough, but it is likely that they have shown some level of talent before that.

Brian Sell is an extremely rare example of an Olympian who did not run sub 4:20 in HS. He did not run year round and was running 25mi/wk, so he only further makes the point that talent shows almost immediately.

If going to the Olympics is the only end game for you, learn Handball or get a horse and do the Olympic Pentathlon or some other obscure sport. If you love running, do it and enjoy where it takes you, but even if you run sub 4:10 in HS, your chances of making to the Olympics are extremely small.

oneoff wrote:

I'm a high school junior who has run 15:40's in cross country and I'm starting to lose motivation seeing that all of the elite runners were running in the 14's as juniors. Can anyone think of some of today's elites who were mediocre in high school (high 15's low 16's) and got fast once they were in college.

If you can break 9:30 this year and 9:15 next you can go places. As it has been said, if running 3:35, 7:40, and 13:20 in college is the only thing that will make you happy, get out now, you are wasting your time.

newname wrote:

douglas burke wrote:

Bill Rodgers, Frank Shorter, Steve Scott.

Some people would disagree (from his wiki page):

"In his senior year, Scott became the top runner on the cross country team and improved his track times to 1:52 in the 800 and 4:15 in the mile. He finished fourth in the CIF California State Meet in the 880 yards[5] and drew several college scholarship offers. He liked coach Len Miller and joined him at the University of California, Irvine in the fall of 1974."

What do you have to run to rise above "mediocre"? Do you need a top-10 all-time type race like 1:48?

Steve Scott wanted to go to UCLA as his first choice, but Jim Bush said no, that he was not good enough to run for UCLA.

Will Geohegan ran 15:33 XC his senior year in HS, just missed Footlockers. Was only running 20/30 miles/week. Seems like the northern New England male running these times off this mileage in HS will blow up in college (Will, Riley Masters, Eric Jenkins).

Will just ran 7:45 indoor 3k at Millrose, something like 1 second shy of Rupp's American Collegiate record, off his first consistent injury free year. Keep an eye out for him to make a world team sometime soon, guy looks like he jogs every race while looking sexy as hell...

douglas burke wrote:

newname wrote:

Some people would disagree (from his wiki page):

"In his senior year, Scott became the top runner on the cross country team and improved his track times to 1:52 in the 800 and 4:15 in the mile. He finished fourth in the CIF California State Meet in the 880 yards[5] and drew several college scholarship offers. He liked coach Len Miller and joined him at the University of California, Irvine in the fall of 1974."

What do you have to run to rise above "mediocre"? Do you need a top-10 all-time type race like 1:48?

Steve Scott wanted to go to UCLA as his first choice, but Jim Bush said no, that he was not good enough to run for UCLA.

And if you were aware of these facts, does that mean you believe that someone who ran 1:52, placed 4th in the most competitive State Meet, and had scholarship offers to places other than UCLA, was, in fact, mediocre?

I thought we all agreed that 10:00 is the gold standard for mediocre.

No mention of Cam Levins?

4:16 in HS

27:27/13:19 at SUU......27:27!!

3:54/13:15 with NOP now

Tom McArdle ran 28:18, 3rd in NCAA 10k, top 10 in XC back in the day.

HS ran like 4:30 and something like 8:40 3k, which was by far his best HS race.

I was hardly a world beater but I finished 7th on the Olympic Trials and made a world champs team and I didn't run anything near 15:40 in High School. Along the same lines I ran with Blake Boldon a lot who was 4th at USATF indoor champs and ran 3:58 in the mile. His HS best was 4:30 or so.

There is a ton of great running going on in high school these days and it is so easy to see just how many people are better than you but it is important to remember there isn't anything you can do about them. It is also important to remember that if you focus on you the job has nothing to do with how many hundreds or thousands are between you and the best in the world. The job is still just to keep improving to get there. If you have run 15:40 and want to get to 14:00 it doesn't matter if you are the 5th best runner in the country or the 5000th best the job is the same. If anything the extra depth makes your life easier because you can get in more competitive races.

Rome was not built in a day. Keep getting better every year and someday you'll be shocked just how far you have come.

Missing ewe wrote:

No mention of Cam Levins?

4:16 in HS

27:27/13:19 at SUU......27:27!!

3:54/13:15 with NOP now

No mention of him because 4:16 is not mediocre. That's a great time. Are you kidding?

Missing ewe wrote:

No mention of Cam Levins?

4:16 in HS

27:27/13:19 at SUU......27:27!!

3:54/13:15 with NOP now

So an 8:45 for Tom McCardle and 4:16 for Levins is mediocre?

What kind of times won your guys' Conference Meet?

4:04 / 8:54?

Because those guys who won were not mediocre, they were GOOD. Mediocre HS runners may have made State Meet but they were in no danger of winning it.

4:16 will be at the sharp end of most State Final 1600s.

me·di·o·cre

ˌmēdēˈōkər/

adjective

adjective: mediocre

of only moderate quality; not very good.

"a mediocre actor"

synonyms: ordinary, average, middling, middle-of-the-road, uninspired, undistinguished, indifferent, unexceptional, unexciting, unremarkable, run-of-the-mill, pedestrian, prosaic, lackluster, forgettable, amateur, amateurish; More

Can't believe Dick Beardsley isn't brought up more in discussions like this. He should be running's "Michael Jordan was cut from varsity" story. The guy ran 16:39 in high school while actually going for it and training seriously unlike those 25 mile per week guys who cruise to mid 15s. It just took a long period of consistent intelligent training for his talent to show, and he went on to win the London Marathon and go runner up in the best finish in Boston Marathon history.

Cam Levins

Eric Jenkins

Brian Sell

Desi Davila

Frank Shorter

Bill Rodgers

just the ones that come to mind, the list probably is much longer.

I heard Peter Snell was the third fastest guy in his high school. He did OK.

I heard Cam Levins didn't even break 16:30 in HS.

Dan Tapia ran 10:04 for 3200 in HS, now he comes pretty close to that pace for a marathon.

I had a college teammate who only ran 4:43 for 1600 in HS, made the team as a walk on, ended up running 8:30 for 3k.

I had a high school teammate who ran 24's for 5k as a high school soph, 18:30 as a junior, and 16:56/10:11 as a senior...went on to running just under 15 and just over 31 for 5k/10k in college.

Lots of people drastically improve. Lots of people run in college and never beat their HS PR's.

Run because you get enjoyment out of it. Not for any other reason. I wish I ran 15:40 as a high school junior.

James Carney

http://www.runblogrun.com/2010/04/rbr-interview-james-carney-distance-runner-by-larry-eder.html

Mo trafeh

I know someone currently who signed with Sketchers very recently. He ran around 4:45 for the 1600, around 10:20 for the 3200, and like 16:40 for the 5k during high school. He went to a D2 college where they improved tremendously. He then went on to qualify for the marathon Olympic trials by running a 1:04 half marathon this past month.