It's been 50+ years since Jim Ryun ran 3:55 as a HSer, how has only 1 American high schooler beaten that since then?

Global warming since then has made it less conducive to fast distance races.

The most gifted distance runners play soccer. Anyone who can't cut it on the soccer field joins cross country (see Galen Rupp).

/thread

Track meets were shown every weekend instead of being tucked behind a paywall, if you can believe that.

Plus Ryun + Timmons was kind of a psychotic episode unique unto itself.

Wow, I just realized I'm been a follower and researcher of the four minute

mile phenomena for 40 years. Summer of 1977, read books about the UK great runners, Ryun, T&FN and so forth.

What gives? It's been stamped enigmatic few want to tread into the deeper

waters of 3:45 and under.

Theoretically, If Gerry Lindgren broke the four minute barrier at an AAU race in Jamaica, it could've opened doors. People forget that the two (Ryun) were once rivals the only difference and think makes the difference, is the focus and Lindgren wasn't too greedy and let Ryun have his day with the high school mile.

The combination of talent, motivation and determination of course all coupled with a coach makes or breaks one. The Lindgren's, the Danlelson's the Liquori's...hard work.

If you aren't on that track flat on your back after a mile, with the air being ripped from your oxygen depleted body, you did not try hard enough. That includes some practices. It's in the mind. If you can accept during those very hard quarters and especially when you are flat on your back and say, "I am not my thoughts, body or pain" you're halfway there -- to immortality.

And don't you forget it.

Also if you can look past the eccentricities of Lindgren, he does have a lot

of good advice on mastering that pain.

See and read, nibble the book, savor it, "Gerry Lindgren's: Book on Running" by The Shadow of Gerry Lindgren.

His thinking is suited to more focused runner. You will see.

seriously....? wrote:

It's been 50+ years since Jim Ryun ran 3:55 as a high schooler on a bad cinder track. Since then, training methods have evolved, technology has become better (better tracks and better shoes), and yet only one other American high schooler has beaten his time since then and that too in a super elite loaded race.

What gives? Yes more people are going sub 4 now but still no one near Ryun. Was he that talented or are HSers still not getting to their full potential?

I ran in high school (in the early 90s) with a guy who has one of the top 100 high school mile times in US history, I think still the second best in our state. He was from an athletic family, had an older brother who played DI ball somewhere, and even then understood quite well his future professional options. I remember him explaining to me that he didn't take running very seriously because he didn't intend to make a career out of it. He became a very successful corporate lawyer.

He had the whole package. He was fast at 200m too and wont he state XC championship multiple times. But his expected earnings and lifestyle were much better by opting for a different trajectory.

I think he was an extreme talent and trained harder than anyone with serious talent today.

While the internet enables more athletes to train "smarter" and motivates more athletes to run faster, it also normalizes training and makes athletes and coaches too aware of what's extreme and the realm of wackadoodle, which is where Ryun and Timmons seem to have existed. Since there was no "career" in running I don't think anyone was worried about burning themselves out.

Today anyone was training as hard as Ryun did in high school would be vilified, along with their coach.

In statistical terms, I think the mean has been shifted upward for the top 1000 milers each year but the spread has been reduced.

In addition to all the modern cultural reasons which interfere with, distract, or prevent, the kind of hyperfocus needed to be the second coming of Jim Ryun, we just can't forget the fact that Ryun was a physical and mental anomaly. Sometimes an athlete comes along who is just light years ahead of others of his generation, or even the next and the next, in terms of fundamental physical and mental prowess. Ryun was a monster, even on a cinder track. Just look at his physical appearance when he was 17.

I'm thinking of Jesse Owens and, say, his legit long jump world record. Not broken until Ralph Boston 25!! years later. Similar deal to Ryun -- a monster in his day and age.

Lapped Miler wrote:

Sometimes an athlete comes along who is just light years ahead of others of his generation, or even the next and the next, in terms of fundamental physical and mental prowess.

Who then sees that Track and Field is a dead end and at least tries to make it in some ball sport. If that doesn't work out, there's being a lawyer or whatever.

Jim Ryun was very good.

Others have said it:

1. Ryun was phenomenally talented and driven and by luck ended up with a coach willing to push him beyond a reasonable limit. It would have broken most runners (we hear much about Timmons' other runners at this level).

2. Opportunity. A smart, driven American can do much better with more certainty than becoming a pro track runner, even if they have the talent. Not so in Kenya. Back then, top in America meant top in the world. Not so anymore.

But also remember that Ryun was a wild outlier even then. Only 3 American HS runners broke 4min 1964-1967, then nobody until 2001. Still there are only 10 and Webb is the wild outlier of the new crop.

Star wrote:

Jim Ryun was very good.

This ^ is the answer to the question.

There have probably been a few high school runners over the decades with Ryun's physical abilities. But I think the difference was the training he did. As someone else pointed out, no high school coach could get away with doing that sort of training today or for several previous decades.

Herb Elliot and Jim Ryun burned brightly for a short period though ryun went a little further that ended in anguish. They were the artistes of that decade plus a few years. Did jim need all that volume probably not and herb was not going to stay in Portsea for very long. Many runners in Ryuns era trained that hard even in HS but few had that gift or the one in a lifetime ability of Elliot. Do not look for answers-how do you explain a Hemingway a Emily Dickinson or for that matter Sugar Ray Robinson. We should just feel very lucky.

Once thing that struck me when reading his book was how insecure Ryun was in HS, and how this insecurity generated the motivation required to complete the high volume, high intensity training. His early racing training didn't indicate insane talent - his greatest talent may have been the ability to absorb training that destroyed most others, though perhaps survive may be a better word. Lydiard thought that Ryun was overtrained and would've run faster under his system. Given Lydiard's exceptional strike rate, he may have a point.

To the OP's point, schools today are interested in avoiding risk rather than achieving excellence.

Ryun was a mind-blowing talent. As a high-school freshman, I believe he ran 5:10 in his first dual meet. In his second dual meet, he ran 4:26 and beat the Kansas state champ. I believe he ran a 47 quarter on his high school relay team. From the beginning, in that era, he was a unique blend of speed and endurance. On U-tube there's a grainy video of him running 3:58 all by himself on a crappy track as a high school junior.

Because no one's trying to run

____

Are there credible documents showing Ryun's training or specific sessions? I always see people say he run like 140mpw and did 40x400m, etc. I'm inclined to think, "It's true--all of it." - Han Solo, RIP

_

If you follow Jim Ryun's son Drew on instagram, he posts pictures of Jim's training journal

That image of Ryun was from his high school only (3:58 mile), look at the pain.

For triviality, Eliud Kipchoge was the most recent runner who tried a supernatural time, and was on the ground briefly after the race.

German Fernandez, in his 4:00 mile, so close. That pain can be an eternity, master it and you pull through.

Possibly, Steve Ovetts' (3:48.40) could've been faster had it not been the barrage of cameras and reporters near the finish line, if he'd of just given that one more ounce of pain, he could've had gone under 3:48.

Athletes need to reach their full potential as a senior not in HS