Detroit Piston Richard Hamilton a 4:30 miler?

Rulon Gardner's sport requires that he move all of about four feet...Warren Sapp's, maybe five yards. Don't get ridiculous with your analogies here. That is my job.

Maybe the disrespectful tone of the article and Rip Hamilton's ignorance of Track&Field grated people the wrong way? But this guy is a phenomenal athlete and I have no doubt he could run in the 4:30's. Most of the track guys in my high school were also the people who weren't going to play a lot in football, basketball, lacrosse. We had 2 guys that ran in the 4:30's. Neither are remotely comparable to Hamilton as athletes.

I'd love to see Iverson with a little training. Would also love to see Iverson play lacrosse. He'd destroy the prep school kids.

Californian - Post your real name & birthdate. Then tell us the exact dates of your "4:25" and "9:16" and where the races were run. THEN we might believe your BS.

I love it when you guys say that "if" this and "if" that and "if" this THEN (so and so) could run "4:30....using your reasoning, "if" I were 6'7" and "if" i played hoops year round for years and years THEN I'd be in the NBA. Sounds pretty stupid doesn't it?

For four years I witnessed Coach John Thompson put this Georgetown basketball players thru hell making them run upwards of 5 miles at a time several times per week to get "in shape" for the b'ball season. He made ALL of them run....including the 6' guards and the 7' centers. With the exception of MAYBE 3 or 4 players in those 4 years everyone one of those guys was sucking wind BIG TIME by the middle of the run. And these guys were shuffling thru the miles.

And each year at the bgeinning of outdoor track/end of b'ball season Thompson's guys would challenge the men's 4x100 and 4x400 team to a head to head relay race on the track. In four years the b'ball team won once (4x100). Some of the b'ball players were fast sprinters, but not a single one of them could have run anything close to a 4:30 mile. If you know anything about Thompson you know his players were "fit".

Granted running a 4:30 mile is not an earth shattering event, but it's not a easy as many would like to believe. Lactic acid has a way of making pussies out of even the "toughtest" and most "talented/gifted" athletes.

The woulda, coulds, shoulds arguments don't cut it.

If Hamilton can run a 4:30 mile he should prove it by running a mile on a track with witnesses and stopwatches. Anyone who says they "sprint" the entire mile is an idiot and obviously has no clue as to what they are talking about. The guys is full of BS and the RW person who interviewed him is a complete fool.

Runner's World continues to be a total joke by publishing that kind of interview in their magazine/web site. Nothing new there.

About 15 years ago I ran in the low 16's for the 5000 and had probably 53 quarter speed. I was a spare on an indoor soccer team. One night we only had 6 show up for the game. I was in the best shape so I never left the field although I was the worst soccer player there. In all my HS or college workouts I've never had my ass handed to me like I did that night. I could barely walk for days after that.

Oh yeah, I ran track and was a varsity stud my freshman year because I couldn't make 3rd string in baseball. (i say that kiddingly but i won district with a 4:32 and at least everyone in school thought it was)

BS Detector, here you go:

Mark Pilja

born 6/21/80

April 26, 1996, I ran 4:25.7 for 1600 at the Glenbard East Invitational . Good luck verifying that one, so I will post something you can verify.

May 25, 1996, I ran 9:16.73 for 3200 at the Illinois state track meet (probably worth the same as a 4:25 mile)

If you want, I will email you the training I did, just so you can see that you don't have to train that hard to break 4:30. Rip Hamilton is a more talented miler than I am. I agree with the poster who thought he could break 4:10 if he trained for it. I could barely break 54 seconds in the 400. I feel pretty confident that one of the most athletic NBA basketball players, who is an adult and who has demonstrated some good endurance in a basketball game could train for two months and break 4:30 in the mile. This is not intended to insult anyone. For most people, a 4:30 is difficult to attain; for an extremely athletic guy like Rip Hamilton, it is not so difficult to obtain.

not suprising rip actually sounds more like a typical UCONN bullshit trash heap

i gotta say that i would put more weight into something a runner like mark pilja says over people who are on here telling us how hard it is to run 4:45. those of us who are blessed with some measure of talent know how easy it is for us to reach times that for others seem difficult or even unattainable. if you're a talented athlete, 4:30 or 4:45 is easy. rip hamilton is ridiculously talented, ridiculously athletic. he's the sort of guy who would amaze you with just his natural abilities.

and, mark, i enjoyed getting my ass kicked by you in high school.

I think somebody was on the right track earlier when they mentioned how most top decathletes can't run a 4:30 mile. And for these guys, it is actually their business to be able to run a fast mile--unlike b'ballers. Top decathletes, like top b'ballers, are extremely good athletes, they are fast, agile, athletic, way more talented overall than your average 4:30 HS miler, but they generally can't run particularly close to 4:30 for the mile in competition. One would have to think that they get in more specific 1500m training than basketballers, but 4:30 miles for world class decathletes are few and far between.

Mark -

OK, let's get this straight....there is no way in hell Rip Hamilton is a more talented miler than you. Are you shitting me????

The fact is you had/have natural talent to run distance events on a minimum of training. You have the times/history to back that up. What does Rip have to support his claim to be able to run a 4:30??

"and, mark, i enjoyed getting my ass kicked by you in high school."

and had we raced on the track in college, you would have returned the favor and given me a good ole ass whoopin

Have any of you retards actually read that RW interview with Hamilton? There is NO WAY that he could run that fast.....read what he says and then think about it.

Of course his claim is just speculation, and I'm not much of an NBA fan since Jordan retired again but I've heard that Rip Hamilton is one of the most athletic players in the game. He's on the skinny side, not your typical 6'8, 220 pound player. Professional basketball games provide excellent conditioning, and he's playing 82 times a year, plus practice. He has great basic speed. All that is missing is the aerobic base. That is the easiest thing to train (assuming he doesn't have too much fast twitch muscle fibers). I think that two months of aerobic training would be enough to get him running under 4:30. Don't get me wrong. I don't think he could run 4:10 in a few months, but I believe if he trained for a year or two at the mile, he could do it. I guess I don't really have any facts to back this up, just my belief that the mile is a short enough race that you take an exceptional athlete from another sport and train them to race it well, provided they have the physique and determination.

Californian wrote:

Mark Pilja

born 6/21/80

April 26, 1996, I ran 4:25.7 for 1600 at the Glenbard East Invitational . Good luck verifying that one, so I will post something you can verify.

May 25, 1996, I ran 9:16.73 for 3200 at the Illinois state track meet (probably worth the same as a 4:25 mile)

How did the rest of your HS career go? As a Soph., you were running ahead of Prefontaine, whose best 1M/2M were 4:29.1/9:42.1 and, who had 2 full years of running under his belt.

Bravo on the posts Panache, hilarious

I do believe this is the first time the BS Detector has called someone out and then been slammed against the wall (at least that I've seen).

. . . Nice going, Mr. Pilja.

Lets just say that you won't read about me in any running books, but I did get under 9:00 in the 3200. But a lot of people have run faster than Pre did as a soph with times like those. Runners mature at different ages. The fact that Pre had been running for two years is irrelevent. I would guess that I just matured physically at a younger age than he did, and it happened to occur when I was earlier in my career than he was in his. Don Sage was running 9:15 as a freshman in high school, he too matured at a much younger age than Pre did.

Californian wrote:

Lets just say that you won't read about me in any running books, but I did get under 9:00 in the 3200.

Are you sure about that, I thought sub 9:00 would put someone in the top 50/100 of the all time HS lists that get published? Perhaps some will post it.

I don't know who Rip Hamilton is, but I do believe that if he is one of the more lean, not too tall, athletic types and does the type of minimal running training mentioned in the first post, he shouldn't have much trouble running "probably like 4:30". If that was the quote, the way he said it was clearly is just a rough estimation and I would give credit for anything under 4:40.

My own anecdotes: When I was in high school and younger, I sucked as an athlete. I was always picked last for pickup basketball games, and never scored a goal in 5 or 6 years of youth soccer. I ran 4:57 in my first official HS mile race as a junior off of very questionable training. Rip is presumably a vastly more talented and well trained adult in his prime. A soccer guy at my age at my school ran 4:39 as a soph off of soccer training.

When I was assistant coaching at my HS, we had an insanely talent guy who ran 1:56 as a freshman off of basically nothing. It was seriously hard to get him to do any distance workouts at all, meaning more than about 2 miles. He really didn't like distance work and would just bail for the first couple of years and almost got thrown off the team (we would get reports from his teammates), though he didn't mind hard interval workouts. His running training when he ran 1:56 as a frosh was probably no more than Rip does. Peer pressured and supported into doing some distance, maybe 30-45 mpw, he eventually ran 1:51 800 , 3:52 1500, and 15:20 5k XC CA state champ in HS. Other talented high school kids I saw at the time included a soph who ran 9:06, though he probably ran a lot, so not a good example.

Californian,

you're actually right about that; however, from what i understand, you had some health issues at michigan so i'm not going to get too much satisfaction out of it. i'm glad to see you seem to have put that behind you and are running well out west.

Craig,

sub 9:00 in the 3200 probably puts you at about the top 250 or so performances all-time. here's the link to the famed "distance gods" page; don't know how recently it's been updated. i imagine you can look him up on there:

http://www.cs.uml.edu/~phoffman/nats/gods.htm

i believe mark's performance, however, was indoors so i'm not sure if that one is included in the list. he just missed it outdoors at the state meet due to a bit of a misstep, if i recall correctly.