JJ Clark sub four mile? Says so on his bio?

Aghhhhh!! It has been written about on LetsRun before that a 1500 is not a mile, and that a lot of cramping up, lactic acid-caused tie-up, fatigue-caused collapsing, etc., has happened in those final 100-plus meters of races. So 1500-to-mile conversions are, at best, rough guides to speed, not precise predictors of finishing mile times.

It's fitting and proper that John Walker and Steve Scott have kept their sub-4 tallies free of 1500m-to-mile conversions. They, better than most of us, know the struggles that those final stretches entail. Sometimes they have felt invincible, and other times they have survived hell.

Wealthburg wrote:[/b

Very accurate info, however, where did he run his 3:41?

Not at that questionable "Last Chance" event in Jersey prior to the '88 Trials?

No one in the stands had him anywhere near sub 3:43 that day.

Truth!

I heard this too. I was not there so I didn’t want to mention it. But Strong word on the street was he was 3:43 mid to high that day.

Of course his second lifetime 1500m best is no where near sub 4 equivalent.

His best mile if I remember correctly was 4:06. ( correct me please if I am wrong )

Keep in mind his whole college career he was overshadowed by Olympians O’Sullivan, Marshall, O’Reilly, Jenkins, etc so his ego must have taken a beating. Once he left he got away with slightly inflating his accomplishment and has gotten away with it.

Glad to see someone brought up that race in 88. Common knowledge he never ran near 3:41 to a lot of us on the inside.

LappedMiler wrote:

Aghhhhh!! It has been written about on LetsRun before that a 1500 is not a mile, and that a lot of cramping up, lactic acid-caused tie-up, fatigue-caused collapsing, etc., has happened in those final 100-plus meters of races. So 1500-to-mile conversions are, at best, rough guides to speed, not precise predictors of finishing mile times.

It's fitting and proper that John Walker and Steve Scott have kept their sub-4 tallies free of 1500m-to-mile conversions. They, better than most of us, know the struggles that those final stretches entail. Sometimes they have felt invincible, and other times they have survived hell.

this almost irritates me as much as the dude who claims he could have run a 3:59 mile the day he ran 3:45 in the 1500m.

steve scott and john walker would probably be the first people to tell you that the 1.08 is a precise (though not perfect--there's a difference) conversion method, with a whole lotta data to prove it. walker's 15/mile PRs are identical using 1.08. scott's mile PR is actually a good 1 second faster than his 1500, so obviously this is not perfect, but fairly precise. el guerrouj's PRs go the other way, with his 1500 about a second faster than his mile. but scott's mile PR came during a career-defining race in oslo, and by el guerrouj's time, the mile had already fallen in international stature, so he ran fewer. i'd still call a 1 second margin here fairly precise, but maybe it's not by scientific and statistical terms.

as far as the "struggles that those final stretches entail" goes, i can say that the last 100 of a 1500, if run properly, hurts just as much as the last 100 of a mile. i've never felt that one was harder than the other, though i know enough 15/milers who have a preference between the two, so it's possible i'm in the minority here, but i doubt any of them would say they were more likely to cramp up/tie up in either race...

Thanks for the back up wildcatalumbi! Your remarks are spot on. I posted similar remarks several days ago that were deleted.

I remember this era vividly. I was a wannabe 4 minute guy myself back in the mid 80s. Went to school just down the street from you folks and competed against your guys often.

2 of my former teamates & post college housemates competed in the 1500 at the Trials in Indy ... both had hit the legit standard of 3:41.97.

Wealthburg wrote:

Thanks for the back up wildcatalumbi! Your remarks are spot on. I posted similar remarks several days ago that were deleted.

I remember this era vividly. I was a wannabe 4 minute guy myself back in the mid 80s. Went to school just down the street from you folks and competed against your guys often.

2 of my former teamates & post college housemates competed in the 1500 at the Trials in Indy ... both had hit the legit standard of 3:41.97.

No problem. We competed in an exacting sport. The finite differences we lived and died by. Seeing someone “ skirt the system “ is just not right. This all seems like a different world now. But the truth always comes out.

JJ has known for years that his bio was inaccurate. And that his 3:41 is at best skeptical.

He has to live with that knowledge. Now more people know.

Power of the internet.

It is best in life to just be happy with what you did, or didn’t do. An accomplished coach shouldn’t have to embellish his personal athletic career. He was low man on the totem pole at Nova.

Maybe that still bothers him?

Keep in mind a 4:03.20 mile qualified you for indoor NCAAs back then! Auto qualifier at that !

A standard he never came close to.

FYI, I reached out to Clark and the Stanford SID for XC/track, David Kiefer.

Kiefer told me that he thinks the line about the sub-4:00 mile was picked up from his previous bio at UConn (which in turn appeared to come from the bio before that, at Tennessee).

Bio has now been changed.

It reads as follows:

"Clark is a 1986 graduate of Villanova with a degree in communications.

"In 1988, Clark ran 3:41.5 in the 1,500 meters at the Essex City Twilight Meet. When converted to a mile, the time equates to 3:59.38. Clark competed in the 1988 U.S Olympic Trials in New Orleans."

Obviously neither you nor scott nor Walker were STEM majors. No conversion method is precise. By definition none of them are accurate to two decimal places. All conversion factors are just wildassed guesses.

With that said, by convention, most people accept 3.42.2 = 4.00.0 as an agreed upon wildassed guess.

Jonathan Gault wrote:

"In 1988, Clark ran 3:41.5 in the 1,500 meters at the Essex City Twilight Meet. When converted to a mile, the time equates to 3:59.38. Clark competed in the 1988 U.S Olympic Trials in New Orleans."

You'll have to do better. Stanford is a fine academic institution. You simply cannot convert a value from one significant decimal to two significant decimals. This is junior high math.

Given that conversion factors themselves are wildassed guesses its vest to say, "...when converted to a mile the time equates to ~3.59."

That should satisfy all of the pedants.

Jonathan Gault wrote:

FYI, I reached out to Clark and the Stanford SID for XC/track, David Kiefer.

Kiefer told me that he thinks the line about the sub-4:00 mile was picked up from his previous bio at UConn (which in turn appeared to come from the bio before that, at Tennessee).

Bio has now been changed.

It reads as follows:

"Clark is a 1986 graduate of Villanova with a degree in communications.

"In 1988, Clark ran 3:41.5 in the 1,500 meters at the Essex City Twilight Meet. When converted to a mile, the time equates to 3:59.38. Clark competed in the 1988 U.S Olympic Trials in New Orleans."

See, what did I tell you guys? This is nothing but a misunderstanding that was easily fixed. You can put down your pitch forks now.

Before We Shame Him wrote:

Jonathan Gault wrote:

FYI, I reached out to Clark and the Stanford SID for XC/track, David Kiefer.

Kiefer told me that he thinks the line about the sub-4:00 mile was picked up from his previous bio at UConn (which in turn appeared to come from the bio before that, at Tennessee).

Bio has now been changed.

It reads as follows:

"Clark is a 1986 graduate of Villanova with a degree in communications.

"In 1988, Clark ran 3:41.5 in the 1,500 meters at the Essex City Twilight Meet. When converted to a mile, the time equates to 3:59.38. Clark competed in the 1988 U.S Olympic Trials in New Orleans."

See, what did I tell you guys? This is nothing but a misunderstanding that was easily fixed. You can put down your pitch forks now.

Agreed. This was over the top.

Jonathan Gault wrote:[/

"In 1988, Clark ran 3:41.5 in the 1,500 meters at the Essex City Twilight Meet. When converted to a mile, the time equates to 3:59.38. Clark competed in the 1988 U.S Olympic Trials in New Orleans."

WOW.

Maybe somebody in the Stanford SID office can explain why JJ was running the Olympic Trials in 1988 in New Orleans while the rest of us ran in Indianapolis?

Doesn’t make them look very “Stanford smart”

The 1988 US Olympic Trials were not in New Orleans. They were in Indianapolis.

Before We Shame Him wrote:

Jonathan Gault wrote:

FYI, I reached out to Clark and the Stanford SID for XC/track, David Kiefer.

Kiefer told me that he thinks the line about the sub-4:00 mile was picked up from his previous bio at UConn (which in turn appeared to come from the bio before that, at Tennessee).

Bio has now been changed.

It reads as follows:

"Clark is a 1986 graduate of Villanova with a degree in communications.

"In 1988, Clark ran 3:41.5 in the 1,500 meters at the Essex City Twilight Meet. When converted to a mile, the time equates to 3:59.38. Clark competed in the 1988 U.S Olympic Trials in New Orleans."

See, what did I tell you guys? This is nothing but a misunderstanding that was easily fixed. You can put down your pitch forks now.

Not sure how you can make the leap to “simple misunderstanding” as it merely explains how Stanford wrote the first press release. It doesn’t explain how Clark’s sub-4 legend was started, nor why he didn’t correct it at any point over the years. Basically if this thread hadn’t happened and LRC approached Stanford as a result, he’d still be claiming to be a sub-4 guy. So yeah, Clark gets zero points for integrity on this one.

malmo wrote:

socalcush wrote:

this almost irritates me as much as the dude who claims he could have run a 3:59 mile the day he ran 3:45 in the 1500m.

steve scott and john walker would probably be the first people to tell you that the 1.08 is a precise (though not perfect--there's a difference) conversion method, with a whole lotta data to prove it. walker's 15/mile PRs are identical using 1.08. scott's mile PR is actually a good 1 second faster than his 1500, so obviously this is not perfect, but fairly precise. el

Obviously neither you nor scott nor Walker were STEM majors. No conversion method is precise. By definition none of them are accurate to two decimal places. All conversion factors are just wildassed guesses.

With that said, by convention, most people accept 3.42.2 = 4.00.0 as an agreed upon wildassed guess.

for the record, i was an english major at a lowly state university, so as far away from STEM as you probably can be.

while i cannot be sure exactly what the scientific definition of precise is (in terms of % difference/variation), i have no problem saying that there is a vast difference between "wildassed guess" and the agreed upon conversion that uses a wealth of data, but maybe that is a linguistic interpretation, and an area where i feel more confident in. sorry to have spoken for scott or walker--i shall not presume. next time i see steve, though, i'll ask him what he thinks of the 1.08 conversion--again, i think there's a difference between precise and perfect--and there is definitely a difference between precision and accuracy. i have no problem admitting my limited understanding of these differences, though...

Just change it to sub-4 mile equivalent. Done.

POPPYC*CK! Watch just about any distance race, and you'll see some people excelling, and some tying up or failing to maintain, down the stretch. 1 mile = 1609 meters, or so. Hmm, that's roughly 109 METERS beyond a 1500. Some will crush those final 109 meters, and some will be crushed. To predict a mile based on a 1500 is one thing, but to convert a 1500 to a 1609 is POPPYC*CK! It will accurately reflect what some can run, and it will be also prove inaccurate for some.

Which is why, in part, JJ Clark can't claim he ran a sub-4 mile.

Is this last chance meet the same as the Essex city twilight meet? If not, anyone ever heard of or raced there?

1988 Olympic Trials 1500m results below.

Pages 212-213 of this link:

https://www.usatf.org/statistics/champions/OlympicTrials/HistoryOfTheOlympicTrials.pdf

Looks like 50 entrants in four heats of 12, 13, 13, 12.

8th place of 13 in heat 3 - 3:45.98 (heat won by Falcon in 3:43.87).

I wonder why Bannister didn't set out to run "a sub-4 equivalent"? Doesn't quite have the same ring as actually doing it.