It's Official - 9:00 Is What 9:15 Was 20 Years Ago - 16 Boys Break 9:00 At Arcadia

Bernie Montoya is incredible. Just a junior and only started running seriously a year ago.

Used to run football - turned to running last year and won multiple state titles, showed awesome speed and range, solid times. Really coming into his own now and nicely improving.

I've just changed the title of this thread from "Arcadia Boy's 3200 2012" to "It's Official - 9:00 Is What 9:15 Was 20 Years Ago - 16 Boys Break 9:00 At Arcadia."

JK and I came up with that title because we want people to remember that in 1993 zero boys in the US broke 9:00 for 2 miles.

On the front page, I'm linking directly to this post.

You can watch the race here:

http://www.runnerspace.com/video.php?video_id=63920-Boys-3200-Invitational-Event-34-Arcadia-Invitational-2012

Results:

Section 1

1 Futsum Zienasellassie 12 Ind. N Cen (In) 8:47.75

2 Bernie Montoya 11 Cibola (Az) 8:48.25

3 Craig Nowak 12 Houston CyprW(TX 8:49.12

4 Jake Leingang 11 Bismarck(ND) 8:51.23

5 Michael Clevenger 12 MacArthurGen(IL) 8:54.12

6 Darren Fahy 12 La Costa Cnyn/SD 8:54.51

7 Blake Haney 10 Stockdale /ce 8:54.65

8 Zach Perrin 11 Flathead (Mt) 8:55.24

9 Dallin Farnsworth 12 Highland (Id) 8:55.28

10 Craig Engels 12 Ronald Reagan(NC 8:55.51

11 Leland Later 12 New Trier (Il) 8:55.61

12 Jack Keelan 11 St.Ignatius (Il) 8:55.86

13 Thomas Graham 12 Cary Acad (Nc) 8:56.21

14 Tony Smoragiewicz 12 Rapid City C (Sd 8:57.10

15 Jacob Thomson 11 Holy Cross (Ky) 8:58.12

16 Brock Baker 11 Oakland (Tn) 8:58.51

17 Billy Gaudreau 12 St. Margarets/SS 9:00.24

18 Sam Parsons 12 Tatnall (De) 9:00.61

19 Korey Krotzer 12 Auburn Riv (Wa) 9:01.11

20 Jonah Diaz 12 Palos Verdes /ss 9:01.42

21 Tyler Yunk 11 Belvidere N (Il) 9:03.09

22 Thomas Joyce 12 Campolindo /nc 9:03.23

23 Drew White 12 Festus (Mo) 9:04.08

24 Bryan Guijarro 12 Knight /ss 9:07.42

25 Cameron Miller 12 Stockdale /ce 9:08.08

26 Sam Roberson 12 Needham Br (Nc) 9:08.58

27 Keifer Johnson 12 ThunderRidge(CO) 9:11.01

28 Kevin Bishop 12 Monta Vista /cc 9:13.24

29 Gil Walton 12 McCallie (Tn) 9:18.11

30 Troy Fraley 11 Glacier (Mt) 9:26.78

What are thoughts/predictions on this years Arcadia field for the Boys 3200? If people could give predictions with places and times, that'd be great! I would if I could, but if someone/maybe a few people could give a synopsis of maybe everyone in the race, just so we know a little about the, that'd be awesome!The entries are in the link below. Click the orange "download" button to open the PDF. Then you can scroll to find the Boy's 3200.http://www.runnerspace.com/eprofile.php?event_id=63&do=news&news_id=24475 .Editor's note: We changed the title of this thread from Arcadia Boy's 3200 2012 to it's current title on Sunday evening and are linking to this post from the front page:

.

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=4519372&page=2#4524475

Props to Illinois, if you score their top 3, they beat Cali's top 3. Glad to see their individuals get back on the map after relatively week results at NXN and Footlocker.

Montoya was in last place at the mile!!

I'm very curious about the splits that he ran.

P.S. Way to kill the thread by changing the title.

watchout wrote:

Only the second lap was slow.

Leader (FAT) splits:

64.75 - 72.31 - 67.96 - 66.62 - 67.70 - 68.66 - 62.62 - 57.13

How are split times "fully automatic"?

Marion Barry wrote:

How are split times "fully automatic"?

The computer measured the splits...

As a senior in '92 there was nobody in the nation, never-mind 16 guys in one meet to break 9:00!

Actually '91, '92, 1993 nobody ran under 9:00 for 3200/2 mile run.

Wow, tremendous race. I don't remember a 3200 at this level that closed in 57.1 and 1:59.0 for the winner. Futsum's second 1600 was 4:14 and Montoya's was faster than that. It looked like Nowak's last lap was 56.x. Now I'm even more confident that Futsum is in shape to run low 8:40s given the right pacing and probably upper 8:30s by the end of the year if he runs an all out race. If he does do a national race like New Balance, there's a good chance he'd run the 5k though because that is more his strength. That's a complete guess though.

Obviously Futsum's strategy worked this time (barely), but in my opinion he waited too long to make his move and turned it too much into a sprinter's race, which is not his strength. Montoya and many others in the field are better 800m runners than he is. If he had moved earlier, it would be playing more to his strength which is endurance, and probably wouldn't have been as close. In every 3200 I've seen him run he waits until the 2nd to last lap to go, but in a field this strong it's very risky.

Montoya is clearly a huge talent that will probably improve more than most, because it sounds like he hasn't been seriously running for long. He's going to have a monster year next year.

With several of these sub-9 boys coming from the same states (Cali, Illinois and I think even NC), what do you think the winning state championship time is going to look like? Will they be able to dip under 9 minutes again, or will it be much slower? Or, will they slightly improve and go a little faster?

Freshman Elijah Armstrong from Pocatello Idaho ran 9:04 in the seeded race.

Indiana1600 wrote:

Futsum's second 1600 was 4:14 and Montoya's was faster than that. It looked like Nowak's last lap was 56.x.

I think Futsam ran 4:31.x - 4:15.x - 8:47.75

Montoya ran 4:36? - 4:12??? - 8:48.25

Impressive.

Here's 2008 results. Of course Derrick was in the 5K, and lots of other fast people like Fernandez, Lowe and Finnerty didn't run it.

1 Puskedra, Luke 12 Judge Mem (Ut) 8:46.40

2 Channon, Dominic 12 Athl Nelson (Nz) 8:48.00

3 Sullivan, Riley 12 Trabuco Hill 8:56.09

4 Schwartz, Chris 11 Foothill 9:01.45

5 Keveren, Sean 12 Brentwood (Tn) 9:02.61

6 Estrada, Diego 12 Alisal 9:05.94

I wonder how many top runners didn't run this year's? How deep is the talent? Is Futsum a U.S. citizen? Where's he going to college?

Actually there was a very similar race only a few years ago- little Matt Centrowitz closed in 1:59-2:00 for the last 8 running 8:41 at NON. Considering how his career has turned out, this seems to be a good sign for Futsam et al.

Looks like Futsum came from Eritrea in 2007. So he probably doesn't have citizenship, but maybe he will eventually.

I agree with the statement that 9:00 is the new 9:15 (maybe 9:10 but that is gettig pretty picky).

Just thinking it through a bit as to why. The 2 mile has become sexy. It is a big, big draw these days. Look at the stacked field for Arcadia and all of the out of staters. It was not always this way. Arcadia has always drawn the out of state studs, but not for the 3200. Thinking back 20+ years ago, I remember sitting in the stands @ Arcadia and watching them empty when the gun went off for the 3200. All the fans grabbing drinks and grub for the 4 x 400. No one cared much about the 3200. Was it not THE distance event @ Arcadia this year? If not the event of the entire meet?

Back then, most of us (including me) wanted to focus on the 1600/800 and eschewed the 3200. I hated it because it was so damn long and although it may have been the best distance for many of us, we were good enough in the shorter distances to fake it and get by. Only the true die hards focused on the 2 and it usually meant a good shot @ the podium come June @ the state meet for them.

Sub 9:00 was very, very noteworthy back then and as is pointed out above, no one even cracked 9:00 in 93. Unheard of now. Still very special to go sub 9:00, but seems to have become much more of a specialty that athletes target all season long. No one ever talked about running 8:4x back in the day. Anything under 9:00 was very eye-opening (88 state champ - 8:59, 89 - 8:58, 90 - 8:53?) . There was also a lot more doubling back then (1600/3200) which may explain the slower times to a degree. But man, this event is cool now!

Yeah, I think attitudes have changed because for a long time, 3200/2 mile seemed so long and slow, as most kids did not train enough to excel at that event. When I was in high school in the 80s, Jeff Nelson's 1979 record of 8:36.3 seemed untouchable. My senior season in Iowa was the last time cross country races were only 2 miles. My high school was not tiny, about 2,000 students, yet our record was only about 9:24, set in 1980. A teammate two years younger than me broke it by about a second in '89, and last I checked it still stands 23 years later. Probably close to 100 kids have run the event since then and still haven't broken it.

Hopefully that will change soon!

Also encouraging is that for every few runners like Chris Schwartz and Rob Finnerty who do not fulfill their potential after h.s., there's ones like Ryan Hill and Diego Estrada who improve a lot. Estrada only ran 9:05, but now he's got a 7:44 indoor 3000 PR, which is about an 8:18 2 mile. Hill wasn't at Arcadia, and got just 12th in 9:07 at Nike Outdoors, and is now the collegiate record holder in the indoor 3000 in 7:43!