Should there be a distance race in high school track?

heaaallllll nooooooo wrote:

No, that's what xc is for. 3200 is long enough for high school track.

Actually,3200 is 18m too short to be a standard, universally recognized event. See Arcadia thread.

By the way, most of you over 24 are aware that 10km races exist nearly every week in large metropolitan areas and several times a year even in the middle of nowhere. High school athletes have (but do not take) the opportunity to run these. Distance running options exist for all. What is hard to find are races shorter than 5km.

I would have loved to run a 10,000m in high school. I ran road 10ks all the time.(back in the early 80s)

If you want a real distance race you should do a marathon...

...on the track.

I think the 3200 should be removed from dual meets.

I do like the idea of 5k post season.

Why stop at 5K, why not add a 50K? We should really try to corner the global market on this exciting new segment of the "running" community. That way all track meets will last for days, as there will have to multiple heats for all the kids pining away to be the next great ultra marathoner. After all we should have a race for everyone to feel good about themselves.

Devil Dog wrote:

I've always thought 3k/2M is the perfect distance race.

Drop the 200, 800, and 1600.

Race the 100, 400, and 3200.

Drop the "American" metric mile? Can we find any more ways to make track less popular. You must be slow AF.

American Metric Mile wrote:

Devil Dog wrote:

I've always thought 3k/2M is the perfect distance race.

Drop the 200, 800, and 1600.

Race the 100, 400, and 3200.

Drop the "American" metric mile? Can we find any more ways to make track less popular. You must be slow AF.

There's one reason track isn't popular in America; 75% of the population is overweight. One in three is obese. Americans have zero connection to skinny people running.

Why do you think football is so popular? Every overweight man in America can pretend that if given his chance, he could be the star of the team.

High school track and field has the highest partipation of all sports. The collegiate and professional TF system is living in the past. They do a horrible job of connecting to the community and the fans.

Everyone here rags on hobby joggers but if TF athletes came out to local events there would be a lot more interest in the sport. Nike for all its problems does send their athletes (mostly speed types) to hobby jogger events to promote the brand and athlete. I've gone to Oxy High Performance meet three times and there is zero outreach by USATF, shoe companies, and athletes.

Americans love football because: it requires a short attention span, there's betting and little else to do during the cold winter months, it's extremely violent.

malmo wrote:

Sara Palin wrote:

If any track event was added, I'd want a steeplechase. Maybe 2k with barrier regular season and 2k with water jump for championships. Most high schools don't have pits but enough colleges in each state do.

Strongly disagree. Even the best high school runners of alltime are barely carrying enough speed to properly get over the barriers. Better for them to wait until they become better runners before the start the steeplechase. Besides, the number of coaches who actually understand the event are few and far between.

We had 2k steeple at some invitationals. A bunch of kids didn't know how to hurdle. They jumped barriers like Kenyan Olympians from the 90s.

I'm not sure how you learned how to steeple, but kids can just step on all the barriers until they have enough speed. Half the collegians I see do that anyway.

" if TF athletes came out to local events there would be a lot more interest in the sport"

This is exactly how football became popular. All those pros showing up at high school games.

Or not.

HardLoper wrote:

2 miles is a distance race. Especially for high schoolers.

Exactly

I'm another vote against the 5000m on the track in high school. And this is coming from someone who would have benefited from it and would have had a better shot at a state title at that distance. Runners would be pigeon-holed into that distance at every meet that held a 5000m. My days of getting to run the 1600m would have been over because no smart coach would double a kid at 5000m and another distance on the same day.

5000m on the track is a college thing because there you actually get competition every time you run it. Could you imagine in hs how spread out the fields would have been in any 5000m that wasn't filled with several solid athletes?

different perspective wrote:

I'm another vote against the 5000m on the track in high school. And this is coming from someone who would have benefited from it and would have had a better shot at a state title at that distance. Runners would be pigeon-holed into that distance at every meet that held a 5000m. My days of getting to run the 1600m would have been over because no smart coach would double a kid at 5000m and another distance on the same day.

5000m on the track is a college thing because there you actually get competition every time you run it. Could you imagine in hs how spread out the fields would have been in any 5000m that wasn't filled with several solid athletes?

CT used to run the 5k and 3200 in the 80/90s (not sure when they discontinued it). It was a bit of bear in dual meets for small teams but most coaches would alternate running 3200/5000. It wasn't really much of a big deal. It did allow schools to win state meets with distance based teams (i.e. if you had 3 or 4 9:40 guys you could split them up and get 25+ points instead of 10 when you shoved them all in the 3200 as a result of the competition being split (i.e you get 2nd instead of 4th) both among your team and others (Imagine the state has 8 15:30 guys. Do the math when they are in 2 races instead of 1) Have another 1600m guy and then some random points (800m/jumper/sprinter/...) and you could be in the running).

The 5k was really nice for some slow distance guys. We had a 4:48/9:57/15:45 guy. He was never much of a threat to win 3200m races. there was always someone running 9:50 or so (or just sitting and kicking on him). In the 5k though, he could drop those guys with a relentless pace. He tended to only lose to the 9:30 type guys. I am sure it was good for his ego to win a couple of those races.

The boys 5k was never much of an issue. It was always done in 20 mins or so. The girls 5k on the other hand could really drag (think 30 min runners) at invitationals.

Mr E wrote:

If you want a real distance race you should do a marathon...

...on the track.

Already did that. Indoors!! 211 laps.

Didn't go that well. My second half split was slower than a road marathon I ran the month before.