RITZ 12:56 NEW AMERICAN RECORD!!!!!

yesstiles wrote:

As a JUNIOR, Jim Ryun ran 1:44, 3:51, and 8:25.

And that was 43 years ago.

Also, Gerry Lindgren ran 1:56, 4:01, and 8:40 while still in HIGH SCHOOL 45 years ago.

Junior in HS is what I meant. Ritz ran 3200m in 8:41.1 as an 11th grader.

Clearly by the way that was written I was aware of Ryun's and Lindgren's greatness. I do know all of their times and most of them were HS records or American Junior records. Probably World Junior records.

But show me an American who ran 1:54, 4:05.9m, 8:41.1m as a junior? My point was that he showed his amazing talent as early as 11th grade ... people just didn't want to acknowledge it.

Compare his demonstrated ability to other Americans who have run under 13:15 or 27:30. He certainly showed better natural talent than Williams, Kennedy, McChesney, Centrowitz, Salazar, Zishka, Tegenkamp, etc.

I think that his HS ability was right there with the all-time greats like Lindgren, Virgin, and Pre. There are several others who had fantastic HS careers, but fizzled out just after so they cannot be included in this group (Hulst, Merrick, Nelson, many others).

Ryun is by far the best 880/Mile talent HS has ever seen, but he didn't have the same opportunities in the 2mile or XC as some of these others ... and probably would not have been at there ~8:40y level anyway.

altoroad wrote:

Well -- Ryun did run 3:59.0 as a HS junior.

Yes, Ryun had all the class records 11th, 11th, 12th.

4:07, 3:59, 3:55. Had the 1500m mark also, and I think he held the HSR in the 880. He still holds the 11th grade mark and is the ONLY American High Schooler in history to break 4:00 before 12th grade.

However, I said Ritz had the fastest set of times 800/1600/3200 as a junior. What makes them more impressive is he ran the 1:54 and 4:05 at Dual meets in Michigan and the 8:41 at an Ohio Invitational in the very early season.

There are just so few 11th graders who have run ~8:45y, so it makes it easy to see if anyone ever had marks as fast as that for ALL THREE distances.

A message on behalf of distance fans in the UK:

Congratulations, a huge run and on the UK equivalent of letsrun this has had people talking and more importantly believing that if the yanks can do it then maybe some brits can too.

Hopefully this is a small step towards the start of the breaking of African dominance.

Thank you Ritz

what is the uk equivalent of letsrun?

arsenalrules wrote:

what is the uk equivalent of letsrun?

s

As far as I'm aware, none. This site is better than the BBC UK site for UK athletics results! There are results sites, but just lists of results to wade through

For UK stats Power of 10 is awesome.

I'm off for a run !

Ok, I don't want to get into this "She said, she said thing again." I DID, in fact, throw you props, UNLIKE almost anyone else, initially until you got all self-righteous on us. I did, in fact, personally doubt that Ritz could ever break 13:00 (and I'm still not sure he could without the altitude tent, but, whatever), but I certainly always thought he would break 13:10 and probably be a low 13:00s guy (13:03 +/-).

It would be like me saying you should throw props my way when jumping out of the market at 13,500 (because it was going out on a limb) or winning your silly little March Madness pool (oh, that's right, you never noticed), or saying the market is going to retest the March bottom, but then backing away from that thesis IF the government actually gets it right (ala - not focusing on the marathon and 10,000 and going back to the 5000 for comparative example). In other words, WHO cares? But you know what, props anyway. Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every know and again.

Every *now* and again since you're such a grammar hound.

Get a room, you two.

gaydar wrote:

Get a room, you two.

Hey Gaydar, as I said, ultimately, WHO cares?

Ryan Hall should stay with the marathon only (and don't lead the damn race early!) ... and Ritz should go after the 10k AmR ... if Ritz gets within 30 sec of the 10k WR on the track he could get a medal one day in a BIG Championship!

No .. I meant Ritz had a set of BIG balls and showed what America born distance runners can really do ... when prepared properly ... he should stay with the 5k and 10k events .. the longer event being his real calling!

TF

Its in the purity of Dathan Ritzenhein's blood. He is a pure blood Aryan Krieger, which is why you saw him take a 20 second chunk off of his PR. I hope that he has continued success and myself and the rest of the Volkskinder wish him well in his quest of slaying the evil African black dragons.

The Uk equivalent is eightlane.com...

Not nearly as comprehensive as letsrun but a good messageboard with lots of discussion on how to get UK endurance running back to the "glory years"... word of warning it is very UK, male, distance event, (especially student aged) focussed but that is probably the majority of the users background.

TFFlyer wrote:

Ryan Hall should stay with the marathon only (and don't lead the damn race early!) ... and Ritz should go after the 10k AmR ... if Ritz gets within 30 sec of the 10k WR on the track he could get a medal one day in a BIG Championship!

I'm not even convinced the 10,000 is where Dathan's maximum potential is. Did you see the way he closed the first 400 of the last 600 meters in Zurich after clipping off solid 61s and 62s? It's kind of like, Webb may have a faster relative PR at 1500 in a time trial situation, but maybe he'd be a better medal contender at 800 in a championship situation, as crazy as that sounds. Dathan seems to be in his sweet spot from 3000-5000, but I'd sure like to see him run another 10,000 this year, that's for sure.

Well that was just freakin' inspiring (just watched the replay on Universal Sports). What a total stud - he showed an amazing amount of guts the whole race, coming from the back and almost catching Bekele. I ran 20 hard this morning and I am inspired to get back out there again right now.

Amazing race Dathan. Really amazing.

Sagarin wrote:

I'm not even convinced the 10,000 is where Dathan's maximum potential is. Did you see the way he closed the first 400 of the last 600 meters in Zurich after clipping off solid 61s and 62s? It's kind of like, Webb may have a faster relative PR at 1500 in a time trial situation, but maybe he'd be a better medal contender at 800 in a championship situation, as crazy as that sounds. Dathan seems to be in his sweet spot from 3000-5000, but I'd sure like to see him run another 10,000 this year, that's for sure.

Nope. He went 61's / 62's, then the last 800m was marginally faster at 60 / 60. It looked fast because the Kenyans were going backwards from the fast opening pace. This race demonstrated Ritz's strength and ability to stay relaxed -- key to the longer races.

If a championship race ever goes super fast (sub 12:50 pace) and Ritz uses the same tactics, MAYBE he can find himself in position to medal. But of course, there are better runners in the championship finals and it almost never goes out that fast.

That's a good point, but until we see Dathan run a 10k equivalent to his 5k, I'm not convinced that's his best distance, even though, intuitively, we all thought that from the get-go.

Sagarin wrote:

gaydar wrote:

Get a room, you two.

Hey Gaydar, as I said, ultimately, WHO cares?

you do. so get a room.