No, there has to be a story behind that 5:38. Him doing that, and running 4:07 the next spring, makes no sense. I doubt if any other kid even ran 4:30, under that scenario.
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You will only see this from a talented 800m teenager.
You're only going to see this from a teenager with app. 400/800 talent. There have been many teenage Kenyans with talent. I wouldn't have been surprised if 15 or 16 year old Billy Konchella was unable to break 5 minutes for mile. I don't believe he ever broke 4 minutes for mile, but I don't think he ever seriously tried.
i don't buy your premise. a kid with some mid-distance talent is gonna be <5 out of the box in HS. you say converted sprinter. i could run you well under 5 in HS, as could the other guy i know who stepped up from sprints to be an 800 specialist and made state.
no, to me most kids who can only run a 5 are gonna be like the skinny pace metronome types who are meant to run a 5k and not a 100. and there is only so much burst to extract, their value is gonna be running 5m miles over and over in XC and college.
and i could also see where you could take joe schmo starting with over 5 but really more like 6 or 7 with that fitness profile. you'd be lucky to get them under 5 ever. or if ever under 5, to get much towards 4. because they aren't in shape and aren't naturally fast.
no, if you grabbed some talented 800 guy, they'd be well under 5. and then they like everyone would have to work and work over years to maybe ever approach 4.
In U.S., as soon as a 12 or 13 year old shows sub-5:15 1600m potential, he is shuffled off to Clydesdale School: XC, as many miles as one can tolerate and groomed to be a 1600m & 3200m athlete with college and Olympic 5000m aspirations.
First, excuse me to Konchellah family, typing errors. How fast of a miler do you think was Billy Konchellah as a teenager when he was a 400m specialist? Do you believe Billy Konchellah was racing sub-5 one mile at age 15 on 400m training? When Billy Konchellah first began racing both 400m & 800m, he was still training as a 400m man. I believe if Billy Konchellah switched his training to 1500m training from age 15 to age 16, I believe he would have been a sub-4 miler at age 16.
But in this scenario, a guy like El G coming from soccer would be capable of running like a 4:20 just off of soccer training, so I guess that fails your test.
This just doesn't happen. The talent from other sports shocks the coach by running 4:58, and then responds fast to training. They are not running 4:20 straight off the field.
Do you trust your coach and respect him? If you question his training at all or ask any additional questions then this will delay your achievement to a 4:00 mile.
Impossible for a mature male to improve that much but physical maturation is the main reason Ryun did. Some boys are 5"2 and 110 pounds as sophomores and 5"10" and 150 pounds as juniors. They can drop from 5 minutes to 4:20. Ryun is the once in a lifetime guy.
Closest I've ever seen in a year was 4:50 to 4:15. The issue here is how much more training it takes to run a 4:00 mile, regardless of talent. There's probably athletes who can get 5:00 -> 4:00 type of improvement in two years, but in most cases there's some underlying reason, usually a prior athletic background.
No, there has to be a story behind that 5:38. Him doing that, and running 4:07 the next spring, makes no sense. I doubt if any other kid even ran 4:30, under that scenario.
There are 2 or 3 books behind the story. A 5:38 isn’t really that bad of time for a sophmore who hasn’t really trained for distance running. Our hockey coach had us run a mile before the season as sophomores. 1 kid out of 50 broke 6:00. I think a lot of people forget how hard it is to run distance if you have never done it. Our gym mile in 8th grade wasn’t any better. We didn’t have a dozen kids running sub 7.
the thing with Ryun is he was a 4:20 mile in 2 months and sub 4:10 in 6. His ability to do high mileage and a lot of quality from day 1 is nuts. Of course if freshman were in his HS, he probably would have run like a 4:30 then and then improved to his sub 4:10.
Our HS team didn’t have any where near as dramatic but we had plenty of kids who ran 6:00+ in August and 4:50 in may as freshman. Going from 0 mpw to 35 and learning how to race gives huge improvements.
To pull this off you would need that Uber talented kid(future record holder), needs to be like to have the physical maturity, and have the ability to train hard from the start. What coach today would feed a kid the amount of vo2max type work that Ryun did from day 1? Maybe if we find some crazy high school coach that can get his kids to do an hour of Arc training in the morning and some track specific work in the evening…
Is it possible? If everything was perfectly set up, could it work? (No steroids 💀)
No problem if having great talent and runs 5:00 on very little mileage. Then one year with super Dancan training and a sub 4:00 will come easy. 🇸🇪🧙🏼♂️🇸🇪🖐
i could completely buy 6 to 5. that's your raw kid shows up who didn't play sports before, suddenly is running and getting in shape, knock the rust off and get them some legs and lungs, he's a solid 5 minute kid. requires no special talent.
the problem with 5 to 4 is if you are god's gift most of the time you would show up faster than 5, even as a noob. and even then 4 is a tough ask.
re ryun, stuff i read says he ran as a fish and soph. that makes his junior year his 3rd season, not "within a year." sounds to me like 3 years of XC and TF. which is less than most, and a pretty incredible trajectory to sub 4, but not some complete noob doing it in a year.
While I assumed from reading this thread at first that it would be having your mile PR go from 5:00 to 4:00, something like this might be the only way to make this technically possible. You have an elite runner who's been sub 4 before coming back from a major injury and barely able to jog a 5 minute mile. Give that guy a year of rehab and healthy training and sub 4 is guranteed.
Also while others have mentioned Ryun's insane progression, it's worth also mentioning that Hobbs Kessler barely broke 5 in the mile as a freshman. He made an instagram post about it when he first went sub 4 in HS but to go from sub 5 to 3:34 1500 in just 3 years is pretty crazy!
re ryun, stuff i read says he ran as a fish and soph. that makes his junior year his 3rd season, not "within a year." sounds to me like 3 years of XC and TF. which is less than most, and a pretty incredible trajectory to sub 4, but not some complete noob doing it in a year.