I'm surprised. Are you sure? In 1977 me and my college teammate Mike Wyatt were 12th and 13th with 3:42.2.
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)
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.
You are correct in that Jay Woods did not run a 3:55 mile. He ran a 3:54.4 at East Rutherford, NJ on February 27, 1983 on an indoor track. Not sure if that was a 200m track or maybe even smaller. He definitely wasn't wearing any super shoes. Jay later went on to become a police officer and was a very good friend of NCAA indoor mile champion Paul Cummings.
I ran collegiately I was a 400/800 runner and a guy I work with claims he ran 3:45 1500m.
Am I wrong to wonder wheher 400m/800m times of 49/1:57, though respectable and better than the times most of could run, are believable as team making college level performances? When I was in high school in the 90s those were average times ran by 15-16 year olds just to be on a team of 2. For the 4x400m or 4x800m perhaps also for 17-18 year old 3rd and 4th place runners. But college? Or does it depend on the.college? May we look you up?
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.
Most Mavericks surfers have unreal lungs, so I'd say , Yes, he ran a 3:45. [edit] I looked him up, he's legit 3:45. Cool. You Should be honored he talks to your 49.7-ass.
49 guys faster than 3:39 last year and only 35 faster than 3:45 40 years ago. The chance that a random guy ran 3:45 in the NCAA 40 years ago is about 1 in 200,000.
Apparently, he also served time in the Utah National Guard because that is what started the conversation. Saying Jay had run a 2-mile time around 9 minutes on his fitness test and made it look like a jog. I just figured it was a short course until he said he had run a 3:55 mile.
If he ran a 3:45 1500 in 1989 and was a Division 1 athlete, he may have participated in the NCAA finals. The winning time that year was 3:42 and the slowest time in the heats was 3:58.
I don’t know what the process was for qualifying for the NCAAs back then, but he could have run 3:45 in an early season meet and then got injured and/or ran a bad race (or fell) during the final qualifier before nationals and didn’t participate in the championships.
If he ran that time during that period as a college student, he was amongst the top tier of collegiate 1500m runners. If he never made it to NCAAs, he likely was an all-conference performer at some point during his college career.
I suppose that if you’re truly curious and have future friendly conversations with him, you may learn more about his collegiate track career.
I worked with a guy who mentioned recently breaking 60 in the 400 (he was about 54 at the time) and said he was a distance runner in college. I figured he must have been about sub 50 as a youth and therefore maybe a sub 4 guy. I asked where he ran, and then looked it up and found he really does still hold his D1’s university 1500m school record (3:43 in the mid 1980’s). He mentioned only 1 race, in which he was with some big name national guys in the final 100 of a race and still regretted he didn’t finish with them. So who knows- maybe the OP’s colleague really did run 3:45. If you know more about school/year, there definitely should still be some trace of it on the internet.
I’d be interested in everyone’s best guess at the answer to this question:
How many American runners between, let’s say 1980 and 1992 ran 3:45 for the first time during the indoor or outdoor track season the year after they graduated college or later? Put another way, how many 3:47-3:53 guys would keep at it hard enough after college to bring their PR down to 3:45? I can see the 3:43 guys continuing for a few more years trying to make a team. And the XC and 5 & 10 guys hitting the roads. But especially in America with a weak grass roots club system my impression is those 3:48 guys didn’t have many options and mostly hung up their spikes when they graduated. Or moved up an onto the roads part time. Thoughts?
Re: OP, if this guy is legit almost certainly he ran it in college and it should be discoverable.
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
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.
95% the guy is lying. 3:45 is way too round of a number