A 7-person Japanese HS team ran a marathon relay in 2:05:11 - Could Newbury Park do this?

That's an easy NO.

/thread

It depends on whether the Aarons, Doshi, and Seymour bring their A-game and whether Martinez returns and gets back in shape.
The 7th man they currently have on the team need to step up a whole lot

NEIN!

iie

This year no, but lets do last years team. Im assuming this is on the road and the course is flat. I think with the carbon plate shoes, the road is fairly close to track times now as evidenced by some of the recent road WRs being faster than peoples track prs (Aregawi 12:49, Kipruto 26:24, and Yehualaw 29:14)

Leg 1 (10K): Lex Young 29:15. Tyrone Gorze ran 29:29 and Lex beat him by 17 seconds over 5,000m so Ill just assume a similar gap at 10K and add a few seconds for the road

Leg 2 (3K): Dev Doshi 8:35. His 3,200 equivalent is 8:25, added 10 seconds for the road

Leg 3 (8.1075K): Colin Sahlman 23:31 (23:11 8K pace). Going to just assume L&L & Colin are in similar 10K shape, and just assume 29:00 10K pace with 2K less.

Leg 4 (8.0875K): Leo Young 23:27 (23:11 8K pace). Same as above

Leg 5 (3K): Hector Martinez 8:45. 8:32 3K equivalent in the 3,200, added some time

Leg 6 (5K): Aaron Sahlman 14:25. Ran 14:14 in an XC race

Leg 7 (5K): Appleford 14:55. 14:44 in XC.

Total Time = 2:02:53 vs 2:05:11

Obviously not everyone will have their best day, so I tried to handicap it by a few seconds each leg. Might have butchered some math in there, but even being conservative NP probably wins. You could handicap these even further and they still win, the 8K legs are the biggest difference. This all changes if the course is hilly or the weather is bad or something.

Leg 1: Lex Young - 5k converts to 28:49 so even on the roads he should be capable of 29:04

Leg 2: Aaron Cantu - 9:15 equivalent, his PR is 9:19

Leg 3: Leo Young - should be capable of this given his 14:05 in xc. 4:50 is probably just faster than tempo pace for him.

Leg 4: Daniel Appleford - an 8:52 guy might be capable of 24:00 for 8k, but probably a little slower. In any case, he should be able to run 24:30 without too much difficulty.

Leg 5: Dev Doshi - 9:00 3200 is much better than 8:37 3000 (9:22 3200)

Leg 6: Hector Martinez - ran 14:52 on grass, 14:40 on the roads is reasonable

Leg 7: Aaron Sahlman - 14:14 xc guy runs almost a minute faster than the Japanese leg.

So if everyone on NP ran to their best on a single given day, they'd probably win - but since nobody runs to their absolute maximum potential in a relay, I might still give the edge to the Japanese team.

And I forgot Colin - so yeah, NP wins this.

Their 7 is definitely a weak spot, but can runners double? I've never seen someone double in a relay but I don't know if that's because it's against the rules or just because it's not practical.

If runners can double, Lex, Leo, or both could do a second leg. If they ran the first and last legs they'd have 90 minutes of rest. 15k at PR pace is a lot, but GF ran his state meet double with similar rest and ran PRs, albeit with only 3 miles of racing. They could also take a 3k and 5k leg or any really other combination that would work.

How about the Newbury park all-time top 7?

top 5 are obviously 3 Youngs and 2 Sahlmans

I think Jace Aschbrenner would make this team. He got top 10 at nxn in 2019.
What about Jeff Wilson from the 90s? I don’t know much about him.

What about Brayden Seymour? The guys he does workouts with shows that he should be finishing much higher than he did at Clovis

espn.com

Ekiden: A closer look at the Japanese way

It is Sunday morning, Dec. 25, and all across Japan TV sets are tuned in to the spectacle of high school distance running championships held in the streets of Kyoto.

Open link

ESPN sucks. This is the article

This brings back memories of when I had to double in a swim relay in a pinch back in high school. Swam 1st leg and then my buddy who was supposed to swim 3rd leg got a real bad case of nerves and told me to swim again as he high-tailed it to the nearest bathroom/trash can (he’d recovered from a bad car accident the year prior and became a lot more sensitive to that kind of thing after that). Apparently we were in medal contention because another coach was pretty sure we’d had a swimmer double and levied the accusation and our coach defended us, not realizing what had actually happened. Anyway, turns out doubling was not legal and my embarrassed coach asked me to go explain it to the meet director so she wouldn’t have to. XoD

Winning it, probably no, but they would be in the mix. The top 3-4 Newbury athletes could certainly hang if not be ahead, but they would lose ground on the last couple legs. When top HS athletes run an 8K road race, they are usually only in the 25s. Looks like the Japanese kids who can average that with 7 runners. If Newbury trained for it and treated this race as important as the Japanese kids did, I think they would be close.

There is a pretty big gap between a top HS kid who is running say 9:00/14:40 and a 8:40/14:00 type guy. It would shocking to see a 14:00 5k guy not running sub 24 on the roads.

Realistically that is where the difference will be. If those top guys can run 4:40s 8-10k, a couple of slower guys running 4:40s for 3k will not matter .

We should bring this topic back next year, after seeing what Doshi can do as an individual when class of 2023 is gone.

And in 3 years after seeing what Dickran, N Sloan and Bernardino can do as seniors

And the younger Cantu’s senior year (in 4 years) if he goes to Newbury Park.

Not in 2 years because the Newbury Park boys class of 2025 has zero relevance.

This isn't very difficult to figure out with a little Excel work and using conservative time conversions for NPHS team. I think most on here are overestimating the disadvantage of NPHS' number 6 and 7 runners vs the Japanese 6 and 7 runners given they would only be running a 3k each. Also keep in mind a marathon is run on the road, which will yield closer to track times than those that are seen on a cross country course.

Leg 1 (10 km): 1. Shu Nagamoto 29:04 vs Leo Young (Estimated 28:45) Differential+19 seconds
Leg 2 (3km): 9. Hasegawa? 8:35 vs Cantu: (Conservative estimate: 8:45)
Differential -10 seconds
Leg 3 (8.1075km): 9. Kanno 24:29 vs Lex Young (Estimated 23:14)
Differential +1 minute 15 seconds
Leg 4 (8.0875 km):1. Yamato Yoshida 24:47 vs Aaron Sahlman (Estimated 23:55 - based on current post-injury fitness)
Differential +52 seconds
Leg 5 (3 km): 1. Shogo Iwane 8:37 vs (Shetty 8:50 - estimate) Differential - 13 seconds
Leg 6 (5 km): 2. Yudai Mizuno 14:40 vs (Doshi - 15:00 - estimate) DIfferential - 20 seconds
Leg 7 (5k) 8. Murakami 15:04 (8) vs (Seymour - 15:00 - estimate) Differential - 4 seconds

I have NPHS winning by around 2 minutes. Tried to be conservative when estimating NPHS runners times. Even if Doshi trips and lays on the ground for 20 seconds they still win by a comfortable margin. Last year's NPHS team wins by a even more considerable margin obviously.

If we’re going to talk about this year’s NP team can we replace Shetty with Martinez? Martinez got 12th at Clovis last year and is a senior in hs right now still

What are the ages of the Japanese ekiden high schoolers vs NP?