What is the softest current high school boys record?

Well you actually did insult me by saying that you were guessing that I was one of those who is delusional about Ryun. Well anyway the HS 800m mark is soft but as others have pointed out, there are not very many races where a 1:47-1:48 kid has a chance to get real completion in HS, so I think that may be a big factor in why it is not like 1:46:00 or a little faster.

Shot Put!

Strident!

It’s easily the 200m

sub 20 will be not unheard of in the next 10 years

There's a middle school kid from my district that could one day get close to 1:46 if you keeps improving. Ran 49.11 and 2:06i in 7th grade last year.

How many 3:53 miles or 8:30 2 miles? Compare that to finding a 1:47 800(want something that goes out in mid 52s) which happen in a ton of college meets.

It isn’t like there are a tons of sub 1:48 kids that need a race. Summer and flat needed a race. Not of ton others.

The real high school 200m record.

Erriyon Knighton - 19. 49 as a high school Sr.

He might have done that 880 record on a cinder track.

The people that are saying the 800 record is soft are crazy. Cade Flatt and Will Sumner were outliers in a 44-year stretch, and they couldn't get it done. Let's also not forget that Cade was 19 years old when he got so close to the record in a college race, I believe. Granville ran his record in a HS only race basically by himself at 18. No one is doing that these days. If the 800 record was really soft, you would see boys breaking 1:47 or running 1:47 low almost every year. That isn't happening. As for Michael Carter's shot put record, no one is ever breaking it. It might last 60 years. It's far from soft. 81 feet is not human for a high school boy.

Didn’t Cade Flatt claim he ran like 6 miles per week or something? The HS 800m record is soft. When other countries like the Netherlands can have kids the same age running 1:44.78 then you know that the 1:46.45 is soft.

Yes, Niels Laros has run 1:44.78 and a 3:48.93. Does that mean Webb's record is soft too in addition to the 800? No, it just means Laros is clearly one of the top juniors in the world.

It is a pointless discussion. Of course 1:46.45 is soft but it doesn’t matter.

I see a guy at the running trail here who ran 1.48.8 for 880 yards (maybe 1:48.1 converted) in high school for Houston Memorial in the 1960s. So about 60 years ago. Memorial had a 46 400 meter guy and they held the sprint medley and mile relay national records. He held to state record for about 35 years.

I agree that mentioning 'slightly out of high school performances' is worthwhile. Ironically, that means I support kcoe (the poster this guy seems to be at odds with) mentioning Ryun at 19. If a HS record is soft only due to 'lack of opportunity' then we would see college Freshmen and 19 year olds breaking them all the time. This would tend to suggest that the 800 is weak, I suppose.

But it also suggests that Chapa's 10000 mark is very strong. Many believe that it's laughably weak and that any Newbury student, and possibly the Principal and janitor could have broken it if they simply bothered to time their warmup one day. If this is the case, we would see NP alumni breaking it by large margins as true Freshmen.

They certainly have the opportunity in the NCAA, although it's hard to play the 'lack of 10k races' card if you're in So Cal where the Sound Running time trials are. They could easily have gotten a lane at some point, especially if Nike had pulled strings. But they absolutely have no shortage of 25-lappers in college. And if you could break it at 18, it should be no problem at 19 after an entire calendar year training specifically for10k (training for 10k XC would start immediately after HS).

Yet they don't. Nico still hasn't.

It might sound weird, but to me it seems like the key to fast 800m times is high endurance development rather than speed.

Why do I say this? Well, running in the dead era of the late 80s - early 90s, almost nobody was breaking 1:50 in HS then. Now that people are training endurance again, lots of people sub 1:49.

Also, one of the Youngs (can't remember which of the two), who I thought was a threat to break the 5k record, decided to take a shot at the 800m record. He ran in the 1:47s. That's pretty insane when you consider that Rupp's PR as a pro was 1:49, and I think of the Youngs as more 5000m types (maybe that's a bad take).

So it seems that the ticket to success for 800m is training like a 5000m runner. We aren't seeing records because the 5000m dropping down guys aren't fast enough, and the fast guys like Flatt aren't developing their endurance enough.

Someone with the Mark Everett 400/800 style talent will crush this record when they put in enough miles to run it strong.

This is probably also why you see such a jump ahead when people enter college, which shows that they could probably do it sooner if they upped the volume a couple years earlier. Sumner almost broke it while training like a 200/400 guy

That was Aaron Sahlman I think, he's definitely more of an 800/1500 guy. Also Colin Sahlman who was more of a 1500/2 mile runner did run 1:48 mid, but he is also one of the most talented high school distance runner in history. I will say Simeon Birnbaum randomly ran 1:47 with a negative split at U-20's, so running an 800 while training for longer distances is viable, but I see more potential in 200/400 runners like Sumner than 1500 runners like Leo Young for a shot at the 800 record

A high mileage endurance based guy who ran 13:11 at the age of 19 should be able to. Let's see this year.

I actually think the boy's 5000 meter record is the softest of the major records at the moment. Though it's not run much during the regular season, more and most top stars are running in the post season lately. Connor Burns and Lex Young both beat Rupp's record last year. With sub 4 mile guys and sub 8:40 2 mile guys becoming less of a rarity, I can see it going down in the next year to 3 years. I doubt it will last 5 years at all.

The current 800m record was set in the “dead era” of the 90s