Drew Griffith - 8:34.91 2-mile HS indoor Record

You're talking about 5 years ago. That STILL doesn't explain why times have gotten much faster over the past year.

Just this past weekend the high school boys indoor national record was smashed in both the 2 mile and the 5k. And the girls 5k indoor record was smashed in the 5k. Those records weren't broken by a few tenths of a second, they were smashed!

And the girls 2 mile record might have been broken too, if Leachman hadn't jogged the first mile of that race. She still ended up running the second fastest 2 mile of all time.

And four of the top eight girls 2 mile times in history were run this weekend. That's right. 50% of the top times in history run in just 3 days!

Plus Leachman ran the 3 fastest 3200's in history last month.

That can NOT be explained just by super shoes. Those super shoes have been around for a lot longer than a year.

I think it's a combination of more belief that high school runners can run fast times, combined with better training. Lots of people make fun of Sean Brosnan and his "4:20 is not fast for a high school mile" but I do think that a big mental shift has occurred at the high school level about what is possible.

NAU isn't the only place where people go to become pro, Notre Dame is still a great program I mean look at Nuguse and Dylan Jacobs

And drugs. People are never tested at the HS level

We’ll see what happens outdoor. Part of what’s going on this last month is kids targeting indoor in a way they didn’t used to.

Impressive time for sure, kid deserves the record with a crazy negative split like that. Only question I have is, when did national championship meets start allowing pacers in them? I raced NBIN and NBON back before COVID canceled everything, and wasn't aware of any pacers but it looks like the both the mile, 2-mile, and 5k had them. Kind of takes away from the "championship" aspect of it in my opinion. You don't see pacers at Worlds, the Olympics, or any of the NCAA championship races.

Also, none of the other sections of the mile, 2-mile, and 5k had pacers in them. How's that fair to the other entrants? Seems to put those not in the fast heat at a disadvantage even though they should all have an equal shot at winning. Putting a pacer removes that. Might as well just do one "national championship" heat of just the top athletes and get rid of the other sections of the "championship" event

The spectacular record-setting performances (and really amazing depth, too) are the result of a confluence of factors. Beyond general progression of the sport and athletes, there are a couple of unique factors that have been present and building for several years, and are the types of things that take a few years to reveal the full benefits.

1. End of Covid lockdowns and alterations - kids had a lot of life and athletic experiences taken away during the pandemic. As a result, as things returned to normal, a lot of kids really appreciated the opportunity to be a part of a group pursuing excellence, and went all-in on the sport. The real payoff occurs after a few years of getting after it with that level of commitment.

2. The Super Spikes (and Super Shoes) - yeah, they've been out for a few years now, and they had an immediate and direct impact on performances. But they also, as has been mentioned by others, altered training. Athletes can do longer sessions because their legs get beat up less within a session. They can probably run more the day or two after because their legs are less beat up, and their trainers are bouncier, too. They are ready for their next big session sooner. All of this had an immediate impact, but it also kept piling up over a few years, and now we are really seeing athletes reap even more benefits.

3. Training - Good coaches at all levels take at least some cues from the best, and a lot of the best groups of the last 5 years, both domestically (Burrito TC, NAU, etc) and internationally (Norwegian method, Cheptegei's group in Uganda, etc) have not shied away from high volume workouts (and high volume overall). Coincidentally, the improved shoe technology has helped tear down some of the fear many HS level coaches might have had regarding the high-volume approach because coaches know/believe the shoes will help their athletes handle it. Again, it had an impact right away, but let it build for a few years as athletes put in more work day after day, week after week...

Lindgren trained 200 miles per week when he was in high school. Ryun did a LOT of hard, fast intervals.

Drugs? If it was just ONE high school runner running really fast then that would be one thing.

But there are A LOT of different runners from different teams in different states running historically fast times. Do you really think that they are ALL on drugs? I don't.

College choice is overrated when it comes to going pro.

If you look at the top 10 men and women pro runners in the US in the 800, 1500, 5k and 10k, you'll see that they came from a wide variety of colleges, not just from the famous distance schools.

kids are given NIL deals and are flown across the country to compete so yes the best will match up with one another and times will be faster. Its not just the shoes there's a lot more in the sport recently.

I think there's a few things. First is that there are way more options now than there were a few years ago. Remember when On (and Hoka?) were letting their athletes run in Nike shoes at the Olympic Trials? It could be that more kids are wearing them now, or it could be that some shoes work better for some kids than others. I think there's also a good chance that starting younger is helping, at least somewhat. 4 years of training in super shoes is probably better than 1 year.

And also, I think we're shortchanging last year's class a little bit. The Newbury Park seniors underperformed kinda drastically. Aaron Sahlman ran 8:01i as a 16 year old, and Lex Young ran 7:57i at 17 in the same race. Neither improved on that time. Both of them ran 4:00/4:01 as juniors, and neither broke 4 as seniors. Lex broke the 5k record, and Aaron won NXN though. Leo skipped indoors but did really well at WJXC, and outdoors, he ran 3:39 a bunch. 3 of the best HSers ever, but none of them had a senior year like Colin.

But I wholeheartedly believe Newbury Park is in large part responsible for the huge number of kids running super fast at the HS level. I long held that they weren't 4 generational talents all going to the same school. I still believe that any school of 2000+ people in the country has at least 1 kid that talented come through every few years, and most of them either don't run, aren't motivated to become that good, or don't have great coaching.

Elizabeth Leachman WAS tested... by the way, there was no pacer, no pacing lights...

Does anybody also think that some improvement is due to more kids running mileage again?

In the 2000s-2010s there were far more athletes doing 15-30mpw with a lot of intervals, but nowadays it seems like every other program has kids running 60.

The runners this year have spent more time training and racing in super shoes than any previous generation. That explains why.

Your position that positive attitudes and better training techniques are at play certainly doesn’t explain the sudden leap in one year (or for the sudden leap in 2017). What new techniques have suddenly appeared on the scene, which every top athlete would have to be using, that accounts for this? There aren’t any.

Thanks for the shout out to some recent great SWPA HS and College Athletes. Ryan Pajak of Ringgold who finished 2nd to him at the Footlocker XC Nat'ls and will go with him to ND did not compete in this race scratched. Ryan finished right behind him in the NB and PTFCA Mile and the ND 2 mile.

There have been studies that drugs like Aderall and Ritalin can improve sports performance. I remember Salazar taking Prozac when he was burned out and saw immediate improvement.

Lots of kids take Adderall for studying, it may be more prevalent than we think.

It might be that 1985-2005 or so was a really bad era for running in the US--at least high school level. The high school runners in the 1960s and 1970s were tremendous. Lindgren, Ryun, Virgin, etc. . . . Jump ahead to the 1990s and a 9:05 3200 was one of the best times in the country. The best high school runners in the 1990s were slower than 20 years before. . . Shoes have definitely made a big change in the last few years but no question that runners are just better as well.