Newbury Park Track 5,000m: AMAZING!

Astro posts here wrote:

I have never seen a kid go from 5:12 in 8th grade to 4:12 in high school and I have been at this a very long time.

I did not run as an 8th grader, started in 9th and ran 5:10.5. I got down to 4:23 as a senior without running during the winter between xc and track each year, and without cracking 30 miles a week. Pretty sure I could have been pushing low 4:10s with real training.

My teammate was a 5:03 guy as a 9th grader (he had been running for a few years). He got to 9:09 for 3200 as a senior on about 50mpw and later went on to run 3:49 1500m and 8:11 for 3000m.

This was in the early 90s when training sucked. I could believe a 4:4x guy getting to 4:1x using today's better training methods.

DannyRam04 wrote:

If it werent for the fact their coach is a big Trumper i would be congratulating them

Is he actually? That’s epic.

gfhdghdfgh wrote:

I got down to 4:23 as a senior without running during the winter between xc and track each year, and without cracking 30 miles a week.

30 miles a week? Did you even like running? That would be a pathetic amount for a slow high school senior, let alone a fast one.

Has anybody said if this was a real meet? I assume it was but if not, this programs seems to like to promote itself which fuels the next group of recruits.

young nico wrote:

More than 1/2 of the states don't have those performances but you want us to believe you had them all at your high school? Oh, and of course none of them were great in JH either. And you happen to know the precise 8th grade times of all of them.

Likely American Fork in Utah.

Outstanding HS team, and he seems to have been amongst them.

Times don't line up. Faster in 2017 and slower since. More likely just exaggerations.

That isn't our team's data.

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Congrats to Newbury Park; this is what occurs when talent meets appropriate training. Coach Brosnan is a fantastic coach who doesn't overtrain his athletes. His training, like ours, concentrates on strengthening their aerobic engine. Both our programs average about 60 mi/week.

"No one will burn out doing aerobic running. It is too much anaerobic running, which the American scholastic athletic system tends to put young athletes through, that burns them out."

Arthur Lydiard

I remember an interview where Brosnan said that 4:20 for a high school mile is not fast

Thanks coach. On the topic of improvement from 8th grade, how much have you seen? As I pointed out, I have coached a handful of sub 4:15 runners but every one of them had run sub 5 in 8th grade. We did have one guy run 4:18 who had only run about 5:10 in 8th grade though.

If these 8th grade times are true, it would be a failure not to win a national title. That is absolutely ridiculous. That team was head and shoulders above everyone before they started high school. I'm happy when I get a handful of guys who have broken 6 minutes and then the rest scattered between 6-8 minutes. I can perform well developing that talent. I will hand it to Brosnan because of course you have to train and guide the kids.

That IS an impressive group! It gets even better. Check out who’s on their bench.

Daniel Appleford 4:52 (1600)

Aaron Cantu 4:29 (1500)

Dev Doshi 5:00 (1600) as a 7th grader (no 8th grade time, assuming due to COVID?)

Zaki Blunt 4:55 (1600)

Hector Martinez 4:22 (1500)

You still gotta coach'em, but DANG, that's not a bad starting place.

Speedier than a Rating wrote:

Thanks coach. On the topic of improvement from 8th grade, how much have you seen? As I pointed out, I have coached a handful of sub 4:15 runners but every one of them had run sub 5 in 8th grade. We did have one guy run 4:18 who had only run about 5:10 in 8th grade though.

I don't think I've ever had a sub 4:50 8th grader join our program. I can count 5 or 6 guys who broke 5:00 in 8th grade. I do have quite a few varsity guys who finally broke 5:00 in 9th grade (who usually still ran Jr. High Track). I think the basic reason is the lack of substantial training in our Jr. High track program, with which I'm completely fine. We can develop them when they get to us. Connor McMillan ran 5:05 in 9th grade, but ran 27:53 last Saturday night. Patience with the young guys is key.

I want to give some perspective on this issue, I think I have an interesting perspective.

When I was in high school we had a kid who came from a family of runners. Senior year he was a multiple time state champ, ran under 4:10, was a great 2 miler and XC runner as well. He was for sure a national class runner

We also had another extremely great talent, he ran I think 1:50 or 1:51 in the 8, never really ran the mile, but I’m sure could have broken 4:10, and he was pretty good at XC as well, all state etc. another national class guy.

After this tier of guys we had guys like me who weren’t as talented, but willing to put in the same amount of work to get better. Over my years, there were a handful of these kids that were both older and younger than me. A couple 4:1x guys and 4:2x guys. Also around 9:2x and 9:3x.

We had two different coaches for track and XC, and we always had more success in track. We never won a XC title, and our coach didn’t really personalize our training at all.

I don’t think it’s unrealistic to say that a kid with average talent and a strong work ethic can be a sub 16 runner their senior year. It’s hard to get 7 of those guys on a team at the same time though.

Newbury Park’s team is insanely fast. California has so much competition, they run on fast courses, and a deep team like that breeds competition.

Most schools would be lucky to get one kid with the talent to break 15. Middle school running is really the key to success in later years.

People have this idea that elite runners can be competitive in their mid/late thirties. Sometimes this is true. Lagat, And Abdi come to mind right now. I believe both are older than 45 now.

The truth is that most guys peak at around 25-27. So if you think about it, you graduate high school and have maybe 10 years if you’re lucky.

If you aren’t running at a high level in high school, there’s less chance to get into a good college program, less chance to become a pro.

Running as a kid can make you a champion, but you need to be careful with how you structure it.

Are you ready for some football?!?! wrote:

That IS an impressive group! It gets even better. Check out who’s on their bench.

Daniel Appleford 4:52 (1600)

You still gotta coach'em, but DANG, that's not a bad starting place.

He actually ran a 4:32 in 2019 and was NP’s 5th man at NXN 2019 which they won.

trundzer wrote:

Are you ready for some football?!?! wrote:

That IS an impressive group! It gets even better. Check out who’s on their bench.

Daniel Appleford 4:52 (1600)

You still gotta coach'em, but DANG, that's not a bad starting place.

He actually ran a 4:32 in 2019 and was NP’s 5th man at NXN 2019 which they won.

Those are 8th grade times, not high school! Theses are the times they ran before they set foot on a high school campus. UNFREAKIN' BELIEVABLE!!!

Dude that isn't that nuts. I had a teammate who ran around 4:15 1500m in 8th grade, which converts to around a 4:36 1600m. He ran 3:57 last spring as a sophomore in high school, hopefully headed great places if he keeps it up.

Wow. It is amazing what you have accomplished. We have had several sub 4:50 eighth graders recently and many sub 5 minute ones. We have managed to win 3 state titles but we would be lucky to have our top runner be top 5 on your team. It seems that we normally get about 40 seconds of improvement from 8th grade to senior year but have had nobody break 4:10. Yet you were able to get 4 guys to 16:40.