Rich Kimball, Eric Hulst, Ralph Serna, Thom Hunt

Didn't Miller also coach Serna at UC Irvine as well as Steve Scott while he went there?

How come Len Miller isn't more well known as a coach?

twittering debutante wrote:

Kingery ran 2:23 marathon in HS and never got much publicity for it. Imagine if a HS kid ran a 2:23 today.

Nevermind. It's not gonna happen.

Ritz or Rupp could have ran 223. Ritz ran 15 or was it 16? mile training runs at 520 pace which i believe is high 219 pace. a 223 would not have been an extreme challenge for a 1337 or 1344 guy putting in the kind of millage they were putting in.

i was coached by serna's coach in 2004 for one season. serna was just raw talent. not a lot of mileage, big hills, or fast workouts.

Miller was a great coach for Steve Scott but he destroyed everyone else he touched, Hulst and Serna included. 10 x 1 mile is an example of a work-out he liked and they were not run as "cruise intervals" they were run hard. Tons of miles, tons of hills and tons of anerobic intervals.

collegesophomore wrote:

I hear Richard Kimball got most of his training in running from U.S. Marshalls.

Damn, beat me to it.

luv2run wrote:

collegesophomore wrote:

I hear Richard Kimball got most of his training in running from U.S. Marshalls.

Damn, beat me to it.

Goofy to reply to your own post, but I have to make fun of myself.

The post was from spring 2005 so he only beat to the punch by about 15 months.

Still can't get that ran/run thing down, can you?

mrr82 wrote:

twittering debutante wrote:

Kingery ran 2:23 marathon in HS and never got much publicity for it. Imagine if a HS kid ran a 2:23 today.

Nevermind. It's not gonna happen.

Ritz or Rupp could have ran 223. Ritz ran 15 or was it 16? mile training runs at 520 pace which i believe is high 219 pace. a 223 would not have been an extreme challenge for a 1337 or 1344 guy putting in the kind of millage they were putting in.

Bump

Another impressive thing about those times is that they were run on cinder tracks. Those 2 mile times might be several seconds faster if they were run on modern tracks.

blatz40 wrote:

Another impressive thing about those times is that they were run on cinder tracks. Those 2 mile times might be several seconds faster if they were run on modern tracks.

Also, Eric Hulst was a hammer the race kind of runner. Sit-and-kick was for losers back then.

hammer it. wrote:

blatz40 wrote:

Another impressive thing about those times is that they were run on cinder tracks. Those 2 mile times might be several seconds faster if they were run on modern tracks.

Also, Eric Hulst was a hammer the race kind of runner. Sit-and-kick was for losers back then.

Hulst didn't have middle distance speed of Serna and Hunt so he couldn't have won off of a slow pace.

As far as running high mileage I'm not sure if it helped him that much. After only 9 months of training, he ran 9:04 as a Freshman. Three more years of high mileage resulted in only an improvement of 20 seconds to 8:44. If he had trained like Hunt he might have still had similar results.

school daze wrote:

wrote:

Why does it seem that runners back in the day were happier and more fun to be around despite running more miles and training way harder than most runners do today. They had more fun racing and training than most on here seem to do when trying to have fun. Many runners today seem so uptight and bitter.

We did it for the challenge and the fun,maybe even to be rebellious. Today it is more about success and *bling*, whether it be scholarships, income or just plain attention. Not to say that many nowadays aren't doing it for nobler reasons, but the pressure to $ucceed and conform seem higher.

Gabe Jennings wouldn't have been an anomaly back in the '70's.

I was mediocre in high school (1977 grad). But you are right- we had fun, we loved to run for the sake of running.

We used to meet in the summers on different nights at the various local schools and run together- kids from area schools, open and masters runners.

We had all comers meets where there were heats of the mile with a ton of guys in the 4:10-5:00 range.

Road races were whatever freaking distance the car measured and our bling was the Popsicle stick with our place on it.

Wasn’t Ray Wicksell also a So Cal HS’er? He had some solid range after leaving ASU - 3:54, 13:20s and a 1:03 half

Coached by Len Miller after college

1970s high school distance training emphasized volume. Seventy to 100-mile weeks were considered essential to compete at the highest levels. Marathon races in winter or summer were part of the routine for many. At least 15 ran sub-2:30 for the distance, and the national record eventually settled at 2:23:05, a mark recorded in 1977 by Clancy Devery of South Salem, Oregon. Devery's record is an average of 5:28 per mile.

In the first half of the decade two Californians made their reputations on the track and the roads.The March, 1973 cover of Northern California Running Review featured them: Mitch Kingery and Rich Kimball. Kingery was a sophomore at San Carlos High School, Kimball a junior at DeLaSalle, having transferred from Jesuit High School in Sacramento. Northern California Running Review was a monthly magazine which evolved into California Track & Running News, which in turn has evolved into a website in this century.

In the 1960s and 70s, road racing was a significant part of the "off-season" for many preps; here Kimball & Kingery are battling at the Pleasanton 20 kilometer. Kimball finished second in 64:19 and Kingery third in 64:39. Kimball averaged about 5:13 per mile for the 12.4 miles.

Kimball had run 4:28 and 9:28 as a sophomore at Jesuit, then set a national soph 5000 standard that summer. His junior track season was curtailed by a stress fracture (about a month after this Pleasanton race), but he did manage a 4:12 at season's end.

His senior year Kimball dominated. He raced very frequently in both cross country and track, and pursued open road racing events as well. He recorded a 13:43.6 3 mile in December to win Track & Field News' postal competition. He won many open road races and set course records, then recorded two sub-4:03 miles on his own during track season, his best mark being a 4:02.4. This was the era when preps could not legally get into open track competition, and many feel Kimball would have broken 4 had he had the advantages of a fast pack.

Kimball's crowning achievement was the first mile/2 mile double at the 1974 California State meet. He won the two mile in 8:46.6, then about one hour later narrowly won the mile in 4:06.6.

Very few have successfully run this double since. Roman Gomez of Belmont did it in 1984 and 1985. Three Jesuit athletes have managed it: Paul Thomas was second in the 1600 (4:08) and first in the 3200 (9:02) in 1988, in 1995 Michael Stember was first in the 1600 (4:04.00) and 6th in the 3200 (9:13), and in 1997 Michael Altieri was second in the 1600 and medaled in the 3200. The feat is complicated by the need to run a qualifying heat the day before in the 1600.

Kimball claimed some impressive workouts his senior year: 10x800, first 9 in 2:10, last one in 2:00; and 20x440, first 19 in 63, last one in 53.

Kingery's career was most noteworthy for incredible road racing. His best effort turned out to be the 2:23:47 national marathon record he ran his sophomore year, subsequently broken by Devery. He is remembered for running four marathons in six weeks, probably the most prodigious running in prep road annals.

Didn't California win 4 straight World Junior X-C in the seventies, starting with Rich Kimball (1974)?

And in 2024 this board realized that.