HS Junior John Lester runs 1:48.93 negative split (June 27)

I went to Milesplit and looked at the fastest 100 HS times(which turned out to be 1:49.6 or faster). Of these athletes, I found 29 had run 1 second or more faster since HS, and 21 had run 2 seconds or more faster since HS. This assumes no 2 different spellings of an athletes name.

So, a 1 in 4 chance of meaningful improvement perhaps?

Will gather some data for a post soon

FastTuohy wrote:

I went to Milesplit and looked at the fastest 100 HS times(which turned out to be 1:49.6 or faster). Of these athletes, I found 29 had run 1 second or more faster since HS, and 21 had run 2 seconds or more faster since HS. This assumes no 2 different spellings of an athletes name.

So, a 1 in 4 chance of meaningful improvement perhaps?

Could you by chance also share the improvement rate of milers? If it's the same then I probably just have a bias towards the 800m.

Tbbtg wrote:

Bottom line a high school junior is having an outstanding season let the kid have fun!

Yes.

Absolute badass.

I don't think Lester will fade anytime soon.

....I do believe there is validity to elite HS 800 performance fade for many following high school though

Not fast enough wrote:

Where do you think all of the 1:45 and 1:46 and 1:47 guys come from in the NCAA? A few are foreigners but the rest all improved after high school. I thought you were focused on the elite guys, not a bunch of 1:52 or 1:55 guys. Who cares about them? Here are a few guys who ran fast in high school but ran much faster after. There are hundreds of them.

They were are all 48s 400m guys who got moved up in college:). The thing is there are like 3 guys a year running like sub 1:49 and then like 30 guys running 1:49-1:52 (note I didn't actually look up the numbers). The percentage of sub 1:52 guys that improve might be the same as the sub 1:49 guys but you have 10x as many so you see a lot more of them.

And to some extent it is probably a bit easier to get close to your max in HS in the 800m versus the 1500+. Run your 35mpw and all those races(400/800/4x400) are pretty good workouts.

If you look at any event, it is pretty rare for someone to come out of nowhere (i.e. a 1:56 guy becoming a 1:46 guy) but it is pretty common for people to move up a tier (i.e. that 1:52 guy runs a 1:46) in ability as things like maturity, coaching and injury luck all come into play.

[quote]dadsfadsfdasfdsafdas wrote:

They were are all 48s 400m guys who got moved up in college:).

Not true, many 1:48-1:49 guys got to 1:45-1:46

The list I got out of Milesplit

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aRab0LLv1d042jaEShbqWUMdEd819De0/edit#gid=188746279

hansen9952 wrote:

FastTuohy wrote:

I went to Milesplit and looked at the fastest 100 HS times(which turned out to be 1:49.6 or faster). Of these athletes, I found 29 had run 1 second or more faster since HS, and 21 had run 2 seconds or more faster since HS. This assumes no 2 different spellings of an athletes name.

So, a 1 in 4 chance of meaningful improvement perhaps?

Could you by chance also share the improvement rate of milers? If it's the same then I probably just have a bias towards the 800m.

I can work on it. Looks like top 200 (outdoors) will be 4:08.2 and faster. And more simple to just do outdoors. Will that be enough?

Great 800m for a high school junior. The negative split is a hard way to run a quick 800m. Pacing is a tough job so no fault there.

I would love to do this kind of analysis and would happily report my findings back here. Do you know where I could easily access these kind of datasets? Or am I going to have to endlessly sort through random lists found in the four corners of the internet?

You guys are making this too hard. 200 guys ran 47.5 or faster in the 400 in the NCAA last year and 200 guys ran 1:51.4 or faster. That is just Div 1, not D2 or 3 or JUCO or NAIA or professionals. I checked high school 4 years earlier and only about 40 guys ran that fast in the 400 and 35 in the 800. So it is not the 400 guys moving up, it is almost everybody improving and improving by a lot. I would say that for every guy who does not improve, there are 5 who do.

John Lester has a brother named Mo

statistician wrote:

I would love to do this kind of analysis and would happily report my findings back here. Do you know where I could easily access these kind of datasets? Or am I going to have to endlessly sort through random lists found in the four corners of the internet?

This doesnt go very deep, but might be a good starting point. Has a reasonable number of years that might be enough to draw some interesting conclusions if you're good at databases. Only the US high school list is available, so I'd stick to US. Men are easier to compare than women, since they dont generally change their last name mid career:

runnerdnerd wrote:

statistician wrote:

I would love to do this kind of analysis and would happily report my findings back here. Do you know where I could easily access these kind of datasets? Or am I going to have to endlessly sort through random lists found in the four corners of the internet?

This doesnt go very deep, but might be a good starting point. Has a reasonable number of years that might be enough to draw some interesting conclusions if you're good at databases. Only the US high school list is available, so I'd stick to US. Men are easier to compare than women, since they dont generally change their last name mid career:

https://trackandfieldnews.com/tfn-lists/

Just as a check, I looked at a random year (2013) and checked the top 5. 2 of the 5 improved, 3 did not.

The problem is, I'm not sure how you do it any way other than manually. Taking all the high school results from that site is easy. But the hard part will be finding a nice deep comprehensive list to compare it to, or you'll just be manually searching.

There is that site with the name I can never remember (tolstapaja or something like that), but that is a paid site. Maybe you know somebody with a log in?

Could this be because 800m guys would quickly reach their anaerobic peak in HS due to doing a bunch of fast intervals, so they can only further their improvement from the aerobic side. But it is hard to further improve the aerobic capacity while trying to always be in peak 800m shape for both indoors and outdoors. This is just a theory, and there are clear outliers but it could show why some 800m runners don't improve.

runnerdnerd wrote:

The problem is, I'm not sure how you do it any way other than manually. Taking all the high school results from that site is easy. But the hard part will be finding a nice deep comprehensive list to compare it to, or you'll just be manually searching.

There is that site with the name I can never remember (tolstapaja or something like that), but that is a paid site. Maybe you know somebody with a log in?

Excel handles this easily, finding a name on a list and a corresponding value? Just need 2 lists - one with HS times, and one with best times. Which is is what I posted above.

runnerdnerd wrote:

There are a lot of people who dont improve post high school in every event, or only slightly improve, it isnt unique to the 800m.

German fernandez

.

Are you joking when you right that?

German Fernandez's career didn't end up the way we would have liked but give the guy the credit he deserves.

German got WAY better post high school. Last time I checked, he didn't break 4:00 in HS. He ran 3:34.60 as a pro. Do you know what 3:34.60 equates to for the mile? It's 3:51.81.

In HS, he ran 8:34 for 3200. That's equivalent to 13:49-50 for 5000. His 5000 pb is 13:25.

So he basically improved by8 seconds per mile in the distance events and 10+ seconds in the mile and you say he only slightly improved?

If anyone hears the name "John Lester" and this is who you think of then you lose, or most likely lost long ago, your man card.

I think this very very good HS runner could run high 1:46 point given the negative splits in his recent race. With good conditions in a competitive race with some faster runners he could be pulled to a quicker time than his recent 1:48 point. No way to tell what his ceiling is at this point as he is very young. His potential is great though as indicated by his very fast 800m times to date.

Jgt11 wrote:

Could this be because 800m guys would quickly reach their anaerobic peak in HS due to doing a bunch of fast intervals, so they can only further their improvement from the aerobic side. But it is hard to further improve the aerobic capacity while trying to always be in peak 800m shape for both indoors and outdoors. This is just a theory, and there are clear outliers but it could show why some 800m runners don't improve.

Yes. This is precisely the question/topic we've been exploring. 800m runners generally maximize their potential because alot of the race is so reliant on inherent speed. I'd say tolerance of acidosis (lactic acid) and the lactate threshold are genetic. On the other hand, aerobic capacity can be developed a great deal, and over a long period, because there are so many other factors involved which tend to adapt over a lifetime of running.