keybanc wrote:
I went to a perennially good XC high school with at least one kid sub 4:20 in the mile every year and 2 sub 16 in 5K XC.
Literally half of the freshmen and sophomores that showed up first day practice and hadn't really done much over the summer could run 4:40 - 4:50.
Heck didn't German Fernandez run 4:15 as a 13 or 14 year old? If you are playing most downs as a wide receiver or running back, that is a very tiring position.
I've been reading through this thread and thinking that there have been a lot of dumb answers (for instance that an NFL guy could do it by going 4 x 50 for the 400 with 20 second rest...), but this takes the cake.
1. German ran a very fast time as a freshman in high school off of about 3 weeks of training. It was a 4:34. It was at the Stanislaus County Meet. I was there. He went to a rival high school of ours.
2. If half of your freshmen coming out could run 4:40-4:50 off of no training, you had the worst coach in the history of running. To only be able to get 2 sub 16s per year with all of those guys would be a failure of epic proportions. I've never had a freshman show up, trained or untrained, able to run under 5:00. The best new freshman recruit I've had is a boy that in the year 2000, ran 5:17 off of about 20 miles per week. I've never had a boy come in with a PR of faster than 5:10 from junior high or youth track.
Quite of few of the football players at our school go to private athletic development gyms in the area. The three gyms I am thinking of are run by former division 1 college football players, one of whom also competed in track while at USC (with a PB of close to 10 seconds). These kids talk about the training they do and there is NO aerobic training anywhere in their training diet. There is no training that would even lead to a solid 400. These kids are doing very high volumes of very short, explosive running/sled pulling, etc.... The rest of the time, they lift weights. I don't care how hard you run your exploseive reps, those won't get you in shape for a 4:30 mile.
I'm sure that not all of the players in the NFL train the way the local gyms train our local football heros, however athletic trends are really fadish and I believe that the stuff the kids are doing here locally mirrors (albeit at a lower level) the training that NFL guys do.
Only 2 players come to mind that could have broken 4:30: Jerry Rice and Walter Payton. Both were known for running tons of hill repeats. Rice in particular would run high volumes of some fairly long hills. There is a hill in SF that people just call Jerry Rice's hill. A freind of mine has run it and says it's no joke. Multiple reps of that thing is more in line with the type of training needed to run 4:30.
Plus, back in the day, there was more emphasis on aerobic fitness for football players. Training camps regularly featured distance runs. Back in the day, there was more emphasis on endurance training for sprinters as well. I believe Wilma Rudolph and all of her teammates ran cross country in college. There have probably been quite a few football guys from the past that could have broken 4:30 because the training emphasis was different back then, but I doubt it could be done by any of the guys today
Somebody posted a link to one of Bear Bryant's running training days from 'Bama's ancient history. The stuff I remember seeing on there might have led to a 4:30.