What's the reason/s that high schoolers and collegiates are running so fast in the last couple of years.

Fffffff wrote:

Hot Takes wrote:

What will be the excuse when there are even more running fast in five more years? It's not like they're all running faster than old records. We don't have people beating what Alan Webb did decades ago. We just have a lot more people running what used to be fastest in the country types of times. There was often an 8:40-8:45 runner somewhere in the United States, now there are more of them. And they show up to the same race with each other, and one of them with the extra competition runs sub 8:40. Before the new shoes in 2016-2018 we had as many sub 4's in high school as we did from 1960-2009. It was already starting to happen before new spikes, it's not the spikes.

And from 2020 on we have more sub 4 milers in 1 year than you did in all of 2016-2018. Basically the same thing with sub 8:45s. Better training helped all those 4:02 kids run 3:59. Better training and shoes let the 4:05 kids break 3:59.

A guy like Kessler was a clearly different level of talent being like 4s faster than all the 3:39 guys. What isn’t clear is if was a Webb/Ryun fitness or more like Drew Hunter in HS. I sort of expect it is the later. I expect in the next 20-30 years we will have some other outlier dropping some 3:50 type mile in HS. See the other various 17 years running fast.

And we can’t discount kids being held back (3:59 as a high schooler was epic. Probably something like 10x as many do it when you add in freshman year of college).

Training wise I get the feeling that we have a combo of more kids starting in middle school and more kids being exposed to hard core soccer/swim training at a young age. If your norm for sports training is what travel soccer does, you aren’t going to question things like 2/days. The time commitment in some of those sports is nuts.

always a new excuse wrote:

Hot Takes wrote:

What will be the excuse when there are even more running fast in five more years? It's not like they're all running faster than old records. We don't have people beating what Alan Webb did decades ago. We just have a lot more people running what used to be fastest in the country types of times. There was often an 8:40-8:45 runner somewhere in the United States, now there are more of them. And they show up to the same race with each other, and one of them with the extra competition runs sub 8:40. Before the new shoes in 2016-2018 we had as many sub 4's in high school as we did from 1960-2009. It was already starting to happen before new spikes, it's not the spikes.

Agreed. It’s gospel that super spikes are the primary driver of all the improvement we’re seeing, but there’s no consistent explanation for how they work. The people crying spikes after 8 men break 3:30 in Oslo are the same ones telling you that super spikes don’t work for elites, or only work at longer distances, or [insert excuse here] when you press them to explain why no one who ran 3:28 in old spikes has run 3:26. Contradictory views like this seem to represent general board sentiment because they are always highly upvoted.

Every thread griping about high school and college kids is the same. Great performances are the result of the nebulous super spike effect, cheater shoes, boing boing, etc. Some genius observes that depth has improved at the high school and collegiate levels and concludes that super spikes are the only possible explanation. That’s what passes for analysis around here.

kochevnik wrote:

Was just thinking about this yesterday - I started track almost 50 years ago - our 'training' was 2 to 3 weeks of half-assed laps around a gym until the snow was gone - then about 4 to 5 weeks of races until the school year was done (Minnesota). We NEVER ran more than 15 miles a week at best and in most cases closer to 10 including races. And the shoes were horrible from a TRAINING STANDPOINT - the quality and weight of the shoes radically improved about 20 years ago not just recently.. From 14 to 24 when I stopped racing I had continuous shin splints that never went away ever. So training was based on how much pain I could take from that. We basically ran in gym/tennis shoes with leather spikes (no padding on the bottom) for races.

Now in my mid-60s I run/walk 55+ miles a week with no shin splints and only minor niggles I have to deal with.

It has to be some kind of nurture thing too - because most kids in modern day are overweight to a much greater extent than before. So where did all these lightweight dudes come from ? It might be from other sports - soccer and football have documented head trauma issues and I would bet most parents pushed their kids away from that towards something safer like running.

And a genetic thing as well : Lots more immigrants in the USA now - less than 50% white only now among young people - immigrants are generally thinner than original Americans. Nuguse for example. And unions of athletes as well - look at Kessler's parents - both are as thin as he is and were excellent runners when younger. Lots more of those types of unions among parents of high achieving young middle distance runners.

So IMO - LOTS of things coming together at the same point in time is responsible for this.

Shsjsjdj wrote:

run more now wrote:

3 kids broke 4 in the 1960s. Then it increased every year right? We should have had 2 kids do it every year and then 3 and then 4 and then 5. But no. We went 35 years until another kid broke 4. I guess kids in the 70s, 80s, 90s just didn't care as much as kids in the 2020s. Kids today are so much more focused. They have nothing else to do since they used to have video games, and the internet, and phones, and everything else going on in the 70s and 80s.

As a late ‘80s HS runner, I honestly think the reasoning goes like this.

phase 1: running starts becoming big and we get some early stars running in basically keds.

phase 2: running companies start putting foam in shoes and while people like it, it actually screws up so my high school kids with injuries that low mileage “higher quality” training become a thing. There aren’t great times because either kids trained wrong to avoid injuries or trained right and got injuries

phase 3: starting in mid 2010s (may be off on the timing) running companies started figuring out how to make shoes consistently that don’t injure runners. Kids start running higher mileage and younger kids are inspired by older kids running higher mileage

phase 4: super shoes, social media, internet, looking up national times on Milesplit and athletic.net, etc.

always a new excuse wrote:

Hot Takes wrote:

What will be the excuse when there are even more running fast in five more years? It's not like they're all running faster than old records. We don't have people beating what Alan Webb did decades ago. We just have a lot more people running what used to be fastest in the country types of times. There was often an 8:40-8:45 runner somewhere in the United States, now there are more of them. And they show up to the same race with each other, and one of them with the extra competition runs sub 8:40. Before the new shoes in 2016-2018 we had as many sub 4's in high school as we did from 1960-2009. It was already starting to happen before new spikes, it's not the spikes.

Agreed. It’s gospel that super spikes are the primary driver of all the improvement we’re seeing, but there’s no consistent explanation for how they work. The people crying spikes after 8 men break 3:30 in Oslo are the same ones telling you that super spikes don’t work for elites, or only work at longer distances, or [insert excuse here] when you press them to explain why no one who ran 3:28 in old spikes has run 3:26. Contradictory views like this seem to represent general board sentiment because they are always highly upvoted.

Every thread griping about high school and college kids is the same. Great performances are the result of the nebulous super spike effect, cheater shoes, boing boing, etc. Some genius observes that depth has improved at the high school and collegiate levels and concludes that super spikes are the only possible explanation. That’s what passes for analysis around here.