Steeplechase mile: What would the WR be (sub-4?) and who would win the world title if it was an event?

If you’re putting up the cash, we’re all for it.

Jakob in a rabbited race, beamish in a championship style one.

if there was an outside water jump they'd start somewhere on the middle of the first curve, right? this would be so cool

Jakob wins this one, did not know they ran 1500 steeples ever

May 6th means none of the mentioned will show up as they will all be busy preparing for The Olympics in Paris.

Maybe some of the tops Brits will be tempted, or even compelled by federation contract, to show up and throw in a halfassed effort in front of the home crows.

Move the whole thing to the end of the season and up the prize money and EVERYONE who still feel they have something to prove and/or gain this year will be interested. I predict a 3:56 winning time and four men under 4:00.

In Sweden Junior champs are 2000 meters, but I've seen results from 1500 meter races too. Assuming the hurdles are put in the same positions as the 3000 for seniors it doesn't really matter, both distances already have all the markings on the track needed for either.

How many barriers would there be, a full 16 + 4 water jumps? In a typical setup where the water jump is halfway around the curve and the rest are evenly spaced 80m apart it puts the first barrier 10m past the start/finish line. So if they started at the regular mile start line they would only have 19m to get up to speed and get in position. That would be tough in a big field.

This would be a sick race. I might be biased but I think Beamish takes it. Probably in last with 400m to go, but he's got the best (ie my favorite) kick in the world, and he's fit enough (8:05i) to stick with them at that pace. He's the only one of the group to be a World champ in 1 of the events and top 5 at WCs in the other. And I'm expecting a medal in the steeple for him this year tbh. Jakob first qualified for WCs in the steeple at age 16, and while I'm sure he'd be mixing it up with Girma and El Bakkali if he ran it now, I don't think he'd be crushing them like he's crushing everyone in the flat events unless he made it his main event.

No one would want to risk running something like that for free. Your $1M would have to be spread out over the first 6 places or so, and appearance fees would need to be offered as well.

The obvious answer is Beamish but Cooper Teare would be a force.

Let's invent the world's most painful race: the Steeplechase 800m

How many jumps will there be?

20 if you take 4 laps x 5 barriers including the water jump.

19 if you skip the first barrier similar to how the first 200+ maters of a 3K steeple is flat assuming an inside water jump. This is closer to the ratio of 1 jump per 86 meters in a 3K steeple.

Nothing compared to the 400m hurdles steeplechase. 10 hurdles, 4 barriers, 1 water jump.

Or the high jump steeplechase...

Back in my youth running in college we did this once in practice as part of a “fun” workout before conferences.

We did 1 x steeple mile (no barriers until the barrier before the water jump) followed by an active rest of 1 mile and then 4(4x200m). Mostly just to kill any nerves the saturday before the big meet. We were holding a home meet but our coach opted for us to do a workout the morning of the meet rather than race in the meet, basically the steeple pit was open so he took advantage of it.

we had 5 guys run it, the prs for the steeple at the time were as follows rough estimate 8:55, 9:05, 9:25 (me), 9:30, 9:30

It was pretty cool, we ran the following times over 14 barriers and 4 water jumps. Also if you do this you must start further back, the water barrier cut in takes off some distance per lap, my coach did the math and I don't remember exactly how far we went back. It was a strange starting location, think further back than the two mile on the track.

Myself and the 9:05 guy were more strong mid-d guys 3:49 and 3:55 respectively for the 1500m that leaned more toward speed. The 8:55 guy was just all around solid 3:47, 14:04 as was one of the 9:30 guys (3:58/14:50) and the last place 9:30 guy ended up being a pretty solid 5k-10k guy (14:35, 30:40)

8:55 4:24

9:05 4:26

9:25 4:34

9:30(1): 4:37

9:30: 4:53 was with me and 9:30 (1) with a lap to go but he fell over the last barrier. Likely would have ran around 4:37-4:40

Anyway, it was weird to be able to kick in a steeple race. It was also weird getting the pacing especially the last lap where there was a “kick” but I definitely came close to falling on my face over the last hurdle. The 200s were also brutal after that. Overall a fun event that gave a weird leg burn between the hurdling and the speed.

Anyway It would be fun to see what Pros can do. However Rojo I think sub 4 would be a really tall order because the last lap the burn of picking up the pace combined with the beating the hurdles give is a tough combo. I would expect a decent number of falls after the final water jump.

In a steeplechase race of any distance, rules call for the first 200m to be barrier-free.

The 1904 Olympics featured a real 2590-meter steeplechase and the 1932 Olympics featured a 3460-meter steeplechase, cause by officials’ lap count error.

Jakob would get DQed after missing a barrier while peeling off to have a glass of water and wave to the crowd.

The test tubes would be glowing if they all did a p*ss sample post race

Maybe if 100 letsrun posters move to a certain Canadian city and fake a disability to scam welfare, we can raise the $ for it!

That’s crazy, that event would literally be made for Jakob. The steeple was his best event by far when he was still running it, he ran an 8:26 steeple at 16 without specific training when his 5000m best was only 13:35. He would certainly break 8 minutes now without even training specifically for it.

Beamish is a very good runner but will he ever break 8 in the steeplechase?And we can all agree he’ll probably never run under 3:29/3:45, so I don’t see how he would even compete with Jakob in that event.

You’re saying he’s fast enough to stick with them based on his two mile pr, but does he have the mile speed for that ?

And him being a world indoor champion isn’t as relevant as you think it is because 1) the race would be outdoor 2) Wightman, Kerr, Nuguse and Jakob weren’t in the race, he probably wouldn’t win a final with those guys in the field.

I also don’t think anyone would run under 4 except maybe Jakob, and even for him that wouldn’t be an easy task. The smoothest steeple guys have a x1.06 (generally more like x1.07 if you look at the top guys) conversion between their 3000m and their steeplechase time, even someone like that would need 3:46 low mile speed to break 4 based on the same conversion factor.

is it 3 seonds / lap max for hurdles, that is if you are a good hurdler.

so that is 12 seconds.

a 4 minute mile steeple chase might be worth a 348 mile.

sounds right,

but if you just ran one of them,

doubtful that many finish under 4. because no one is really trained for it.