I used the World Athletics website. It is not 100% accurate but pretty close. The further you go back, the less reliable it becomes. For example, I looked up 1977 and the only Americans listed under 3:42.90 were Steve Scott (3:36.13), Mike Slack (3:37.46), Phile Kane (3:39.37), and Richard Schwartz (3:41.8). The 1986 list looks fairly complete. Even if some times are missing, there are far more than just 35 men who ran faster than 3:45 like the other poster stated.
World Athleticvs website --> "Stats" --> "Top Lists: --> "All-time Top Lists" --> change the date range to whatever year you want to see (i.e., 1 January 1986 to 31 December 1986)
WAC lists top runners globally each year. If Ameicans don't make the global lists then they aren't listed. If you want a list of the top Americans you have to go to TAFN. As a generalization TAFN lists the top 50 times, then lists top Americans and Foreign collegians to whichever depth level they think is interesting to their readers. Understand rubberband?
Actually I just followed your instructions. WAC is useless. Stick with TAFN. Go through the yearly annual lists and you'll get what you need.
I competed in the mid 2000s to mid 2010s and there’s summer series meets I remember competing in and running mediocre sub elite times that I honestly cannot find on the internet I either do not remember the name or date of the meet or the website page is 404 doesn’t exist anymore because it was a very small organization or meet. Can I say I ran 1:42 at these meets no for obvious reason but to run 1:49-1:50 is not a big deal and If this meet was to hit a USA standard it was an epic fail. Let it go move on 3:45 that long ago you’ll be hard pressed to even find the meet results at all
Does he hang out with my sister in law? She loves to tell people she did unbelievable things. She never proves it, or has anyone to support her claims. But, according to her, she has done just about anything and everything. Just ask her.
A 3:45 1500m is an elite time even for professional runners. For someone around 58, that would be extremely rare and likely documented somewhere in official results like IAAF or national masters records. It’s definitely reasonable to question claims that sound unusually fast.
You can find his college on his LinkedIn page. But if he ran that 3:45 in college in the late-80's, it's probably not on the interwebs; it's in a paper results booklet in someone's metal filing cabinet.
He's probably a BS artist, but you never know. Unless he's European (or a really good BS artist), he would have said mile.
I ran collegiately I was a 400/800 runner and a guy I work with claims he ran 3:45 1500m. Age wise he is 58 or so. I looked him up and did not see anything at all relating to a 3:45 1500m in connection with his name. My thoughts if you ran a 3:45 1500m wouldn’t that time be listed in IAAF or something? I am thinking a 3:45 1500m is inside 4:00 for a mile not exactly a random runner time. My times are not listed because I only ran 49.76 and 1:57.15. I am only skeptical because the guy tries to one up everyone. For example, if you play poker, he plays in the World Series Main Event and cashed, if you surf, he has charged Mavericks.
Usually guys like that are people who actually run... because they claim times that would be just out of the reach of making them easy to find. Most pathological liars would have no idea what a good time for 1500 meters would be.
But a 3:45 would make an all time list at many colleges and universities... And it certainly would have made him a letterman at said college. Some colleges have letterman's lists available on the web.
If you don't already know... just ask him where he went to college when you aren't talking about running.
Online history is often incomplete or even missing altogether for athletes who competed decades ago. A man who is 58 today may have raced in an era when results weren’t digitized, archived, or widely reported, so the record can look thinner than it really was.
And like many areas of public life, the internet also makes it easier for people to exaggerate or distort their accomplishments. That isn’t new, but the scale is. When highly visible public figures normalize bending the truth or using harsh language, some people take that as permission to follow suit. Cultural influence works that way: when behavior is modeled at the top, it often spreads.
My point isn’t to single out individuals but to highlight how public examples shape private behavior. When honesty, respect, and accountability are modeled, those values tend to rise. When they aren’t, the opposite can happen.
I ran collegiately I was a 400/800 runner and a guy I work with claims he ran 3:45 1500m. Age wise he is 58 or so. I looked him up and did not see anything at all relating to a 3:45 1500m in connection with his name. My thoughts if you ran a 3:45 1500m wouldn’t that time be listed in IAAF or something? I am thinking a 3:45 1500m is inside 4:00 for a mile not exactly a random runner time. My times are not listed because I only ran 49.76 and 1:57.15. I am only skeptical because the guy tries to one up everyone. For example, if you play poker, he plays in the World Series Main Event and cashed, if you surf, he has charged Mavericks.
Rule 1 on LRC: The difference between what you know and what you think you know is huge. When looking up things that happened 40 years ago, especially obscure running stats, you are unlikely to find what you're looking for.
We had a thread on LRC 20 years ago about sub-4 miles from each state. The most common answer for South Carolina was 1976 in Charleston. I was the only one who said that doesn't sound right. It;s probably Charleston WV*. The usual trolls disagreed, violently. But Charleston WV didn't show up in their precious Google machine. It didn't matter to them. It didn't matter to them ... GOOOGLE!!!!
Your friends 3:45 doesn't seem like something that would show up in results unless he gave you the race. Why not do the simple thing and ask? Instead you created a lame thread on an internet message board that is known for trolls.
* Wilson Waigwa won that race and i was invited to run but didn't. It didn't seem to be something I wanted to do in blister random object generator heat a week before the Olympic Trials.
I had a guy at work saying his buddy was a 3:55 miler and I called bs on it. He kept swearing it was true. I said OK let's look it up, what's his name? He says Jay Woods and yeah, he was right.
I ran collegiately I was a 400/800 runner and a guy I work with claims he ran 3:45 1500m. Age wise he is 58 or so. I looked him up and did not see anything at all relating to a 3:45 1500m in connection with his name. My thoughts if you ran a 3:45 1500m wouldn’t that time be listed in IAAF or something? I am thinking a 3:45 1500m is inside 4:00 for a mile not exactly a random runner time. My times are not listed because I only ran 49.76 and 1:57.15. I am only skeptical because the guy tries to one up everyone. For example, if you play poker, he plays in the World Series Main Event and cashed, if you surf, he has charged Mavericks.
Where did he go to college? And how old is he? That could give you some insight into his time possibly being legitimate. If he went to a school with a decent coach maybe he is telling the truth.
I had a guy at work saying his buddy was a 3:55 miler and I called bs on it. He kept swearing it was true. I said OK let's look it up, what's his name? He says Jay Woods and yeah, he was right.
I had a similar experience. I was catching up with a friend of mine that had moved to a new location about 15 years ago in one of the Carolinas. He told me that one of his new neighbors was supposedly this badass runner in HS and college. It turned out to be Alan Scharsu.
I'm little younger than him and you won't find my time in Google because I was way too slow. But 3:45 1500 back then was a big deal. He has to be listed in school newspaper article or big meet results. They're out there. So most likely he is lying to you.
I think there's a good chance this guy is telling the truth. The biggest indicator for me is that he's saying what his 1500 time is not the mile. 3:45 was fast back then but also accomplished by many. 95+% of 58-year-old guys probably don't even know the 1500 is a track event.
I'm a couple years younger and there's no way to find old college newspaper results online. Local newspapers may or may not have been digitized (might require microfiche search at a local library) but school newspapers are highly unlikely. The only results I can find for myself, not including my own writing on my pocket calendars (my training logs back then) from the '80s is digging up stuff that I actually clipped out with physical scissors. I have a common name (literally a dozen people in just my college phone directory shared my name) so my race results are pretty much unsearchable until you add a location, and even then I've not seen my pre-2000 results. In fact, my 2000-2010 results in things like ski races and local road and trail races have disappeared from the internet too.
Believe it or not... I used to work at a mental hospital in Oklahoma and one of the old men in there who was crazy as a loon told me that he ran for Oklahoma State and gave me his times. Said his brother was a world class runner for Oklahoma State ('30s and '40s). Years later I thought about him and looked it up. I found old copies of the Oklahoma State school newspaper that included articles about both he and his brother. His brother was one of the best steeple guys in the country and both brothers won the Cowboy Jamboree in their running careers. Found picture of both of them. So he was telling me the truth.