Northport boys nearly get South Eugene's decades old 4xmile record

Great to see all the folks from "back in the day" making this a quality thread, thanks!

ifififi wrote:

Great to see all the folks from "back in the day" making this a quality thread, thanks!

And Knowledgeable.

Not sure I get this obsession with "adding to" times that were better than the OLD record.

Anyone who knows this sport knows that rarely , if ever, do teams run to what they optimally add to.

When teams are so much better than their comp in long relays they spend half the race solo, and very rarely does it turn out to be a record performance with no one near by.

Teams have added to under 17:10 and better for years and not made that happen.

Kudos to Northport's #2 effort all time outdoors.

and side note to CBA's 17:07 Indoors which is outrageous

XC Nation has lost all credibility. What a joke they are. Most of the comments on the XC Nation website were critical of how they adjusted South Eugene's 4xMile time, so of course XC Nation deleted the all of the comments.

Latest on their web page at

http://xcnation.runnerspace.com/gprofile.php?mgroup_id=45417&do=news&news_id=268487

We @NHSCA have decided to delete all previous posts. These are high school athletes, to be toxic, blatantly seeking to make things personal is unbecoming of a member of the NSAF (National Scholastic Athletic Foundation). We have dug deep, done our research, provided the evidence and appealed to common sense.

The mark by South Eugene was hand timed. What we have asked is not unreasonable. Either adjust the hand timed marks or allow athletes of today the ability to try to break the 4-minute mile mark using stop watches and count them equally as those produced by Ryun, Lindgren, Danielson, Liquori, and Pre under the same conditions. Either make it equal or dismiss them all together.

Page 16 of the May 8, 1976 Eugene Register Guard explains the mark was produced at the Axemen Relays on the South Eugene Track. Here is the newspaper article. It is clear the marks were not rounded up. Prove us wrong.

http://news.google.c...frontpage&hl=en

Let me add that XC nation's High School Coaches Association (NHSCA) appears to be a bogus organization that they created to give XC Nation credibility. Do not confuse NHSCA with national Federation of State High School Associations (www.nfhs.org). XC Nation and NHSCA are just trying to sell you crap on the bogus NHSCA website.

Attention Runnerspace: you need to pay more attention to the running subdomains you are hosting. I made the mistake of giving XC Nation credibility because they are hosted through you.

I'm in agreement that adding up PR's is not a legitimate gauge of potential performance in these sorts of record breaking attempts. I presented the South PR's from '76 as an indication of depth that was present on those teams. South had teams in this caliber range for many years in a row.

And I second kudos to Norhtpoint and other teams who have approached the South mark this year. These were historic races and amazing efforts.

Your link to the Guard article didn't seem to work. I think this will get you there

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=4pF9x-cDGsoC&dat=19760508&printsec=frontpage&hl=en

I'm not sure how this article proves anything about the approach to timing the race, but it sure makes a strong case that they could have gone way faster under better conditions.

Scroll to page 16 on that link to find the article. Also, a correction on something I said earlier - Bill ran a 14:56.2 5K later that day. The 3M was contested the year before.

Dolphin alum wrote:

Pretty sure the 2008 Dana hills team could have smashed that record had they run it. They had 4 under 4:15 in the 1600 that year and 2 right at 4:10.

I think the Brea boys with Tamagno could have also given it a scare this year.

Brea had

4:06 full mile

4:10.1

4:18

4:26

Those are good points, but in a 4xmile the race is much different. Running a 4:15 in a league or championship 1600 does not necessarily translate to a solo 4:15 with a baton, or only a couple runners around. The competition is very different. Also the chances of all 4 runners running their pr times in the exact same race isn't very high. Interesting thought though...

1. There's no onus on anyone to prove these dingalings wrong.

2. I see no evidence that the times weren't properly rounded to the next tenth. If you've ever recorded results at a hand-timed track meet you understand that the times are rounded upon recording--there's no reason ever to record a time to the hundredth. The timer shows the time to the recorder, and he writes it down already adjusted. The times you saw were already rounded.

Bob Penny wrote:

Your link to the Guard article didn't seem to work. I think this will get you there

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=4pF9x-cDGsoC&dat=19760508&printsec=frontpage&hl=en

I'm not sure how this article proves anything about the approach to timing the race, but it sure makes a strong case that they could have gone way faster under better conditions.

It was windy at both the Axemen meet and the PR meet, so conditions are moot when comparing times.

TF&N weighs in and has reset all of the times at the meet. Instead of adding to South's times, they decided to add to Northport's time. 17:10.2+ They added 3.3 seconds to Northport??? Maybe Garry Hill can address this over there.

I still can't believe the cojones on this Dave Taylor guy behind NHSCA and XC Nation. Anyone with access to a computer can post all kinds of crazy sh*t on the web. National High School Coaches Association (NHSCA) sounds so official it fooled me. Good for him I guess.

I should make my own National High School Track and Field Association and post my own records. NHSTFA. I like it!

Bob Penny wrote:

On the issue of depth - if you will notice the seasonal PR times I list above for the top eight South Eugene runners from 1976 you will see that if South was not concerned with putting together the best possible foursome to insure breaking their own 1975 record we could have fielded two teams, each whose PR's that add up to better than the 1975 record of 17.11.1.

Bill McChesney 4:10.6

Seth Brown 4:19.3

Dirk Lakeman 4:16.9

Scott Slovic 4:23.3

Combined PR's 17:10.1

John Gustafson 4:08.0

Chris Nielsen 4:14.8

Sean O'Conner 4:19.3

Jim Payne 4:28.2

Combined PR's 17:10.3

Bob, thank you for providing this info. It's very inspiring as a coach to see this and will be happy to share this with our team. That depth is just awesome! Can you tell us more about your team back in the day? What the training was like. What the mindsets were like. What motivated you guys. What the shoes were like. How often you replaced your shoes. What surfaces you ran on. How you think kids were different back then vs. today, and how they were the same. Were any of the guys working jobs as well? Anything relevant, especially that which is not often spoken of. I'd be excited to read anything you have time to share.

That your combined times equaled a 16:50 points towards drafting and/or running by a competitor being equal to about 1 second per lap. If anyone wants to break that 17:06 without deep competition it sounds like the individual PRs need to add up to 16:50 or less. Good to know for next season as our team should have a shot at it.

Thanks again.

Not sure I can answer quickly to all those questions. Currently I am in the middle of a multi-year process of writing a book about the Axemen, based on the past and also on their current successes. The book certainly gets into answering all of that and more. I have all the source materials from the old South Eugene files and have been conducting extensive interviews with all the past coaches and many athletes. Certainly the prime factor contributing to the depth of those teams was the attitude that everyone was included in the success. We regularly had 20 or more runners under 5:00 in the mile each year, not just a couple good guys. We had amazing coaching. Our founding coach, Harry Johnson, was the first coach for Athletics West. Our South teams regularly tested shoe prototypes for Bowerman. But given all that it really can't be said we were any different than anyone else. In fact we really didn't train in the summer like kids do now. It was just that when you had guys on your team who were fast the culture of the team was to look at them and say to yourself "yeah, well I can be fast too". Which school do you coach?

Where did you see this reset of Northpoint's time by T&FN? Haven't been able to find that on their website.

Look under "lists."

T&Fn is notoriously slow about updating their lists. I believe that 17:10point Northpoint mark is their first attempt at the race a week before. The new Northpoint mark apparently hasn't been posted yet.