If a 4:20 mile isn't good for a high schooler, is 4:10 good for a D1 athlete?

Mid-American (MAC), you'd be 6th

https://www.tfrrs.org/lists/2831.html#event57

Horizon you'd be 4th with a 4:10... starting to realize people don't understand how fast 4:10 truly is -

https://www.tfrrs.org/lists/2830.html#event57

And you know what a top 5 in your Conference is at my school = FULL SCHOLARSHIP.

If you are running 4:10 or 4:20 and end up going D1 you are a GREAT runner. You went to college, learned how to balance athletics, academics time management and made friends. Likely didn’t go Pro but still a great runner. Who would even want to go pro at running? Really. A few make it big time. And even those are short lived. Get your heads out of your asses people. You run a mile between 4:10- and 4:20, you’re a great runner.

Context matters. In small schools, small regions, and small states across this country, 4:20 is elite in high school. In the school I started teaching at, the state record for their division is currently 4:17 and only a couple athletes in that division have broken that barrier ever. Where I teach now, kids go under 4:20 at state every year. I'm sure if you go to a small school where the school record is 4:32 and just tell the kids to set their sights higher, that doesn't mean within 4 years you'll have a bunch of sub-4:20 guys. There are a lot of factors that go into fast times, with one of them being that some kids will never been able to run that fast, period. Not everyone is at a school with 600+ kids per grade. These message boards act like every school has 60 boys to work with every year, and all we have to do is tell them to run faster and they'll do it. It's actually disrespectful to good coaches that don't have all of the tools that Brosnan has. He's undoubtedly a great coach, but just because he says something doesn't mean it's true.

Both those are good times for hs and college. You can be a good athlete without being elite.

This is all semantics but in my opinion you're using "good" and talking about what it means to be an elite runner.

my two pennies wrote:

Thinking about Sean Brosnan's statement about how 4:20 isn't a good time for a high school boy. 4:10 in D1 is about as good as 4:20 is in high school, and I remember being pretty dang proud of my 3:49 1500 (4:08 mile conversion). Would Brosnan say 4:10 is bad for a college athlete? What would his standard be? Sub-4:00? Discus

Yeah, if you spend four years as a competitive college runner focusing on the mile and can't run faster than a 4:10 mile by the end of it, you're simply not f ast at the mile. Especially if you're DI.

5kTime wrote:

This is all semantics but in my opinion you're using "good" and talking about what it means to be an elite runner.

The original quote was specifically talking about elite runners. The quote stated that 4:20 is simply not fast for a high schooler, and it isn't. Almost every state has a shallow field at the mile where the champion often wins a time slower than 4:15. In California, you need to be able to run 4:12 just to qualify for the state final. To be an elite college recruit you have to be a 4:14 guy at the slowest. So with specific reference to elite high school runners, a 4:20 mile is slow.

Proper use of adjectives

For high school Runners

Sub 440, pretty solid, respectable

Sub 4:30 , good, solid, accomplished

Sub 420, very good, really good, really solid, very accomplished

Sub 4:10, excellent, outstanding, awesome, Elite

Sub 4 minutes, exceptional, unbelievable, incredibly Elite, ridiculous, amazing, unbelievably amazing

Sub 355, legendary, ungodly, otherworldly , freaking Legend

For every year you're out of high school take the towards the top categories down about 3 to 5 seconds and the bottom categories down a second

Runners have the lowest self esteem of any athlete. A HS soccer player scores one goal in all of HS and thinks he is a star. A baseball player hits one home run and he going MLB. A guy runs a 4:20 mile and scores in all but 3 state meets in the country and thinks he is a chump. A 4:10 miler is traveling to most meets for all but maybe 10 D1 teams.

Examples from 2019 of top XC teams with less than 5 equivalent 4:10 runners.

NCAA XC Team placing, Number in top 500 1500m list that goes to 3:53 (roughly 4:10)

Iowa St. 4th, 2

Tulsa 6th, 2

Notre Dame 8th, 3

Portland 10th, 3

Harvard 15th, 0

Utah St. 16th, 1

Wisconsin 18th, 2

Virginia 20th, 4

Not David wrote:

4:10 is not good for a college runner. Good is 4:05, very good is 4:00, and great is sub 4.

I will take this as a personal complement.

1000m: 2:24.35

1500m: 3:45.09

Mile: 4:04.35

4:20 is good for HS & can get you on a D1 squad. &, as others have posted, someone who runs 4:20 in HS could totally be top-10 in the conference with a 4:10.

The top-end, elite, high schoolers are dropping sub-4:10 now. But that's the exception -- not the rule. Sub-4:40, even sub-4:50 can let you run D3. Hopefully kids don't read this thread and give up the dream. Sub-5 in HS is great. It shows you're doing some training and you can probably stick with running at the D3 level or on a club team and keep improving.

There is a problem with the question: What exactly is D1? You have P5 e.g. Oregon, Mid-Major e.g. Southern Utah, and "D1 in name only" e.g. Coastal Carolina.

4:10 mile = 3:51-2 1500 = being borderline to qualify for D3 nationals. Definitely a stretch to make the final/be relevant at the meet unless you're saavy with tactics. So no that shouldn't be considered particularly good in D1. Congrats for those who have just discovered that some D1 conferences are pathetically bad and worse than the top D3 conferences.

No problem with the question. They are all D1 so they are forced to be compared with the fast guys which leaves 4:10 not being good for D1. 4:20 is good for high school though because the pool is so large.

Forget about times for a moment and think bell curve. If you can beat all but maybe a handful of the top HSers, you are a very good D1 runner. You are great if you can beat them all.

Your sentence makes no sense. A bell curve would plot all D1 runners. But in the same sentence, you talk about beating high school runners. That is like saying a man is fast based on a bell curve because he can beat most females. 4:20 is good for high school based on a bell curve but 4:10 is not good for college for the same reason. About 4 flat is equivalent based on where they fall.

What is good? Top 1%? Top 5%? Top 20%?

A 3:50 1500m puts you about 450-500th on the descending order list for 2021. There are over 250 schools with D1 Track and Field Programs. I have no idea what the average roster size is, but I would assume schools would have, on average, at least 10 guys race the 1500m annually. So 3:50 (ballpark) puts you in the top 20% of D1 runners.