Colin Sahlman 13:42 5k

What a great result for a kid with 1:47 800m speed. Freaking Seb Coe could only run 14:06 in his prime. And now I think he’s 1-second faster than Lex Young, which tells me Leo Young going to blitz a 13:37!

Some no name guys beat him

Those "no name" guys are busting @ss for the last few years. Give respect.

13:42 for arguably the greatest high schooler of all time? Very mid race for his credentials.

who tf is arguing colin sahlman is the greatest high school runner of all time???

i think top 10 all time is quite reasonable but anyone putting sahlman over ryun or webb or ritz or even fernandez is out of their mind

Good to see Colin running a OK time after his lacklustre performances in the indoor season.

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He, however, is still some behind the best young runners in Europe:

Dane Joel Ibler Lillesoe ran 13:40 at 17 and 13:29.6 last year at 18.

Dane Axel V. Christensen ran 13:44.5 at 17.

Not to mention Jakob who ran 13:35 just before turning 17 (in a championship race in a long weekend where he also ran heats and finals in the 800, the 1500m and the 3000m st.)

Jakob also ran 13:17 at 17 and 13.02 at 18.

It’s a result that just perpetuates the ambiguity of what’s going on with him and NAU. Enough here for the optimists to be optimistic and the pessimists to be pessimistic, with maybe a shade towards the positive. Certainly not a disastrous result, nothing happened that should lead people to say he’s a “bust,” but at the same time, not a result to suggest that’s he’s broken through yet and headed towards the performances that were expected of him out of high school. It’s just a sort of treading water kind of outcome. Ambiguous.

Especially with the super shoes being worth up to a second per lap for some runners. Yes, it’s a fact.

Still a good time though.

Ok Rip Van Winkle. Did you sleep through the endless posts on Letsrun over the past couple years claiming exactly that? Remember the debate over breaking Ritz’s 5k XC record and people saying he would have taken top 10 in NCAA’s that year?

He trained super hard in high school. There was nothing magical about N.P. They were extremely well organized, trained really hard, and had great racing opportunities.

He is also super talented, he’s going to keep getting better but it’s not going to be some insane level of improvement.

Super star freshmen in the past did not train at the same level in HS. Look at the spring of ‘09. We had Chris Derek, German Fernandez, Hassan Mead, and Evan Jagar all under 20-21 all under 13:25 pre super shoes

I'm still holding my CS stock. Every runner goes through periods of regression, stagnation, it isn't always just constant improvement. It's too early to write him off, and a 13:42 is a step in the right direction and shows he's still got it.

Agreed. In a vacuum this result is nothing special for him - instead it’s about the progression from how he was doing previously.

Makes me think of when Katelyn Tuohy started to turn a corner after a rough start to college - and look where she is now

He could have run this time a year ago in high school. We’ll see what happens next.

it’s not horribly far fetched to put him over some of those guys. i could see him as high as 3. 1:48/3:56/8:33/14:03xc is the probably the best range we’ve ever seen out of a us high schooler. he doesn’t have any track records but the resume is very impressive nonetheless.

Super star freshmen like dathan “100 miles a week in hs” ritzenhein and nico “literally went to the same school as colin” young didn’t train at a high level in high school.

1 second per lap? Where the f did you see this garbage? Absolute nonsense.

Switching training plans so drastically, like Colin did, often makes for a difficult transition. In high school, he was primarily training efficiency at fast paces and relying on his innately high VO2, as many high schoolers do. NAU does very little of this kind of training, instead placing emphasis on developing the aerobic system. Getting to the point where your aerobic system is your greatest strength simply takes time, sometimes many years. So, if anything, it's impressive that he's hardly taken a step back. The fitness will come around in due time, and I fully expect him to have a wonderfully successful and fulfilling running career. Where we–as nothing more than spectators–go wrong is comparing Colin to Nico Young (or any other high school phenomenon), who is simply a different athlete with a different skillset.

You train in micro, meso and macro cycles. He peaked in hs in his last macro cycle. He will be very improved in the coming years. You guys are insane to put this much judgement on a college freshman after running a great time.

It’s the first race of the outdoor season and people want to write him off already, so nuts. Kid will bust a sub 13:30 by season end but still won’t be good enough for some of these armchair quarterbacks.