Did Sowinski mess up the pacing for once?

If he went any faster there would have been a huge gap. The guys were struggling to hold on as it was. If you watched the race you would have seen him looking back constantly ...

You could tell he started out faster, but slowed down when he looked back and saw a bit of a gap forming right away.

A good pacer does not blindly run the splits if no one sticks with them that is a bad pacer. If they stuck on them he would hit the planned splits. Whats the point of a pacer gapping the race

Sowinski should have Pilkington'd the race, kept going and won it.

Woulda been pretty cool to see him beat a bunch of high school kids.

Without Sowinski the winner runs 4:01 in that race. He did an excellent job given the field was high school phenoms. 1100m in a 1609m race is about as far as can be expected. At some point let the kids race.

Hindsight is 20-20, but if the original plan was 58’s, then he should have hit 58’s. The race would have played out differently.

he knew there was no way any of them could run 3.53 so no, he paced it perfectly and got 4 kids under 4. burns stalled even with what you say was “too slow” pacing

Fair points. Perhaps the issue is that Burns was the one behind him and was having an off day, and if someone else had been on his tail perhaps they could have hit 58’s.

Does anyone have the splits from last night? Keep in mind, when Webb ran 3:53, he came through in 58.5 for 409 and 1:58.4 for 809

letsrun.com

I Was Bored, So I Watched Alan Webb Run 3:53 as a High Schooler at the 2001 Prefontaine Classic

Jonathan Gault

19 years later, Jonathan Gault revisits the day when Webb broke Jim Ryun's 36-year-old US high school mile record at the Prefontaine Classic.

Open link

What most people do not understand is that even, to negative split running is almost always the way to run faster. Looking at these times, these guys would have caved at 2:54 for 3/4. Getting dragged out in what would have been clearly over their heads would not have worked any better.

Agreed.

I think if he hit faster splits the gap would have been bigger. As it was, they were not running on his heels.

Why would they let that little gap open up, when they were capable of sticking to him?

Because several guys in the field believed they could win.

As much as we could want this to be an absolute time trial in which they throw caution to the wind and risk blowing up, I have to believe that they ran within themselves and governed their early energy output (smartly) so that at least four guys still were trying to win the race with 500 to go.

If it was "run as fast as possible, even if you die" the race would have looked different with 400 to go.

In Diamond League races he definitely blindly runs splits. That's his job. The rest of the field should know how far off they are from the prescribed pace, not just have some guy right in front of them.

I was at the race…agree w others, he did a great job pacing and it’s not his fault they weren’t able/ready to break 3:53. From what I saw they came through 3 laps around 2:59 and I think at least the top 4 ran a negative split in the last lap.

As an aside, there was a terrific atmosphere at the race. Stands were not very big (high school stadium) but there was also a large crowd on the backstretch shouting and cheering. I’d like to think this helped the runners. Great to see so many fans supporting the sport!

Right, and maybe those 58’s would have followed with a 63.

if those kids ran 58-1:56. they all run 4:02

for reference, they hit the 1k mark at the same time as webb.

No, he showed why he is the GOAT. He sized up the situation early on and paced accordingly. He did a great job.

You didn't watch the race then, the runners should have hit 58, all they had to do was stick on Sowinski. I think several could have, but Conor was having a subpar day and everyone else was keying more off him than Sowinski.