D3 1500

according to raceberry

Travis Wray ran 3:53

and Chass Armstrong ran 3:54 so there are a couple more

i would say 1500 is d3's best event. wat do you think? i wouldnt be surprised to see some1 go 3:45. what's the d3 record anyway?

3:39 is the d3 record.

3.47 is shite.

Distance is fairly weak in D3 in general...think about it distance runners are likely to get scholarships because they can be "3 sport athletes" (cc, indoor, outdoor) and sometimes can do multiple events in track.

okay sprinters can often double, even triple, but a good distance runner adds value in the scholarship departement at least as much as a sprinter.

On the other hand, d3 sometimes gets some really good individual distance guys that were undertrained in high school or just happened to be a good fit at their respective d3 school, but overall the depth just isn't there.

O'Brien got dethroned in the 800m this year at indoor nats. I'm sure he'll be hungry to redeem himself, as the 800 is his primary event...perhaps a double?

The 15 may be the best event in d3 due to the fact that there are a handful of guys who could qualify for d1 regionals. All of the other events are nothing special. Nice times, but there are hundreds of guys in the U.S. who can run a 14:30 and 30:00.

What's your point? The OP was talking about who might win the D3 1500m.

Pencil Neck wrote:

Distance is fairly weak in D3 in general...think about it distance runners are likely to get scholarships because they can be "3 sport athletes" (cc, indoor, outdoor) and sometimes can do multiple events in track.

okay sprinters can often double, even triple, but a good distance runner adds value in the scholarship departement at least as much as a sprinter.

On the other hand, d3 sometimes gets some really good individual distance guys that were undertrained in high school or just happened to be a good fit at their respective d3 school, but overall the depth just isn't there.

Sorry to not answer the original topic of the thread, but I just wanted to add my two-cents. In my opinion, DIII distance is much better than DIII sprinting. Did you see the 4x4 indoors this year? It would have been a decent high school state meet. Now I know that there will be DIII teams running 3:12/13 this year, but indoors the quality of the sprinting was obvious.

There are WAY more distance runners in DIII than sprinters. There are, in general, WAY more distance runners than sprinters in the general population. Your scholarship argument just doesn't make any sense. If there is a smaller pool of sprinters who want to run in college, it makes sense that a bigger portion of those athletes will be running DI than the portion of total available distance runners running DI. There are MANY more distance runners available to run DIII than there are sprinters. It only makes sense, then, that distance running will be stronger than sprinting at the DIII level. I think the results mesh with this logic.

Look at the UAA, for example (which is one of the best DIII conferences, comprised of major research universities). Running 50 seconds in the open quarter in the UAA will place you very high - in contention to win in some years. Then look at the 1500 from last year. It took sub-4:00 to score and (I think) 3:55 to place in the top 5. Go to a high school meet and count the number of 50.x 400 runners and then count the number of 4:12 1600 runners. There is your answer.

What are you talking about with scholarships? You know DIII doesn't give any athletic scholarships right?

A freshman from Hamline ran a 3:56 in what is presumably the first outdoor 1500 of his life. He probably wouldn't compete well at nats right now, but in a few weeks it could be a different story, and in a few years it should be a different story.

I read some interview where O'Brien said his goal for outdoors is to get the Olympic trials B standard in the 800 (1:48 or so, anyone know the exact time) so I would imagine he would be focusing on that event. Now he may just be getting some strength work in.

Olympic B standard for the 800m is 1:48.50