For the third time this year a HS boy broke 4 minutes in the 1600m. Simeon Birnbaum from Stevens HS in Rapid City SD (same school as Tamara Gorman from the US women national triathlon team) ran 3:59.51 today at the Brooks invite. He beat his own PB by 7 seconds.
Simeon is incredibly the 5th HS boy to achieve the sub 4 this year making him the 17th boy to ever achieve it. More incredible is that he is only the 3rd JUNIOR to ever accomplish the feat following Jim Ryun in 1964 and Connor Burns earlier this month.
Congrats to Simeon on the accomplishment.
Edit: see post 12 below for article and video of the race.
So what you’re saying is when you give teenagers a year off of school and stop forcing them to wake up so early every day, they perform better in sports …
who’da thunk it.
(no idea if this applies in this particular case, or if just spurious correlation, but certainly the research would predict this)
I’m not saying anything. But what I think you are trying to correlate to their performance is directly related to staying home from school during Covid in 2020?
Rapid city and the rest of South Dakota stayed open during Covid. Students did have the option to distance learn if desired. I have no idea if Birnbaum did so. Nor do I have any idea about the other 4 boys to run sub 4. But three of them did it in the same race. One of them paced the event today and pulled out after coming thru 800 in 2:00 flat.
I would see your Covid causation and raise you a fast competition breeds fast results correlation.
I haven’t looked into if any of the improved results are in boys who stayed home from school. Just throwing out a possible correlation that meets the need for sufficiency and time order, plus plausible mechanism.
I wouldn’t bet against your raise. But your raise might also be affected by others staying home from school and further that particular mechanism, raising the level of play.
I’ve done no data digging here, so really this is totally a big guess on my part.
If you were implying they had more time to train due to Covid, fine. But because of sleeping in? Odd one. Many high performing A-types are more productive in the morning, and they get more sleep by going to bed earlier. Not to mention school doesn’t even start that early.
I will say that the level of competition and times these days at the HS level seems to be getting insane. I ran track in HS and for a couple years in college. The times my son and his (faster) counterparts are running in HS for the 1600 and 3200 are faster than what I ran in college. Hell, our fastest HS kids here in TX are running 1600 times (4:05 - 4:20) that would make some of them competitive in D1 races. Glad I am not running today… I would get smashed!
I believe the point Alex was trying to portray was that individuals tend to perform better when they have more recovery. And one of the biggest components of recovery is sleep. Teenagers need more sleep than adults. And that studies in the past have shown that the majority of teens do not get enough sleep. There are also studies showing that school starting later tends to help students get more sleep. This is why a lot of school districts in the US have moved to later starts than they used to (I went to high school in the early 90’s and late 00’s and classes started at either 0700 or 0750 depending on the student)
If Letsrun were here they would probably point out that 1600m in 3:59:51 is not a sub 4 mile pace. Need to knock roughly a second off that (or run another 9.3 metres).
Yes I’m the wanker!! Genuinely though, in US track and field is 1600m broadly accepted as being synonymous with the mile? Asking out of ignorance. Hope this doesn’t kick off a pointless debate, I actually am curious about the answer.
I will say that the level of competition and times these days at the HS level seems to be getting insane. I ran track in HS and for a couple years in college. The times my son and his (faster) counterparts are running in HS for the 1600 and 3200 are faster than what I ran in college. Hell, our fastest HS kids here in TX are running 1600 times (4:05 - 4:20) that would make some of them competitive in D1 races. Glad I am not running today… I would get smashed!
I would get smashed in everything!
I was in HS back in the late 1960’s - early 1970’s. I taught HS science from 1996-2019. There is no comparison. The HS boys where I taught would have crushed any of the teams I played on (soccer, basketball, track) when I was in HS. Heck, today’s girls would have beaten some of our boys teams. Then there’s the academic side. HS students are doing (and excelling in) math and science that I didn’t see until 2nd or 3rd year of undergrad back in the 1970’s. Don’t even mention what HS students can do with technology that we were trying to do with slide rules and French curves.
Genuinely though, in US track and field is 1600m broadly accepted as being synonymous with the mile? Asking out of ignorance. Hope this doesn’t kick off a pointless debate, I actually am curious about the answer.
I would say yes. For years high schools would run the mile (and 440y, 880y, 2 mile etc) and then in the late 70’s high schools switched over to metric races for track (400m, 800m, 1600m, 3200m). However the terminology is still often loosely used and lots of people (coaches, athletes, newspapers, race officials, fans, ect) will interchangeably use 1600m and miles as well as 3200m and 2 mile since for all intents and purposes they are pretty darn similar and since most Americans have a firm understanding what a mile is.
However when it comes to records and what not, times are converted over. So in my high schools record books they would take all the old 2 mile time and calculate out what their 3200m time would be in order to properly place it in the top 10 list
I believe the point Alex was trying to portray was that individuals tend to perform better when they have more recovery. And one of the biggest components of recovery is sleep. Teenagers need more sleep than adults. And that studies in the past have shown that the majority of teens do not get enough sleep. There are also studies showing that school starting later tends to help students get more sleep. This is why a lot of school districts in the US have moved to later starts than they used to (I went to high school in the early 90’s and late 00’s and classes started at either 0700 or 0750 depending on the student)
Correct.
If you were implying they had more time to train due to Covid, fine. But because of sleeping in? Odd one. Many high performing A-types are more productive in the morning, and they get more sleep by going to bed earlier. Not to mention school doesn’t even start that early.
You’re right re: A-types and morning productivity. I am certainly an example of this. I was the opposite in high school. Having coached many youth, I’d posit that even the most type-A youth benefit from later wake times, and that later wake times could raise the level of the whole field of competition.
See Matt’s (user: Chemist) reply for a better explanation.
I will say that the level of competition and times these days at the HS level seems to be getting insane. I ran track in HS and for a couple years in college. The times my son and his (faster) counterparts are running in HS for the 1600 and 3200 are faster than what I ran in college. Hell, our fastest HS kids here in TX are running 1600 times (4:05 - 4:20) that would make some of them competitive in D1 races. Glad I am not running today… I would get smashed!
I would get smashed in everything!
I was in HS back in the late 1960’s - early 1970’s. I taught HS science from 1996-2019. There is no comparison. The HS boys where I taught would have crushed any of the teams I played on (soccer, basketball, track) when I was in HS. Heck, today’s girls would have beaten some of our boys teams. Then there’s the academic side. HS students are doing (and excelling in) math and science that I didn’t see until 2nd or 3rd year of undergrad back in the 1970’s. Don’t even mention what HS students can do with technology that we were trying to do with slide rules and French curves.
Good for them!
While some high school girls of today would beat some high school boys of the late 1960’s, in 1965, high schooler Jim Ryun ran a 3:55 mile. The current woman’s WR is 4:12.
I will say that the level of competition and times these days at the HS level seems to be getting insane. I ran track in HS and for a couple years in college. The times my son and his (faster) counterparts are running in HS for the 1600 and 3200 are faster than what I ran in college. Hell, our fastest HS kids here in TX are running 1600 times (4:05 - 4:20) that would make some of them competitive in D1 races. Glad I am not running today… I would get smashed!
I would get smashed in everything!
I was in HS back in the late 1960’s - early 1970’s. I taught HS science from 1996-2019. There is no comparison. The HS boys where I taught would have crushed any of the teams I played on (soccer, basketball, track) when I was in HS. Heck, today’s girls would have beaten some of our boys teams. Then there’s the academic side. HS students are doing (and excelling in) math and science that I didn’t see until 2nd or 3rd year of undergrad back in the 1970’s. Don’t even mention what HS students can do with technology that we were trying to do with slide rules and French curves.
Good for them!
While some high school girls of today would beat some high school boys of the late 1960’s, in 1965, high schooler Jim Ryun ran a 3:55 mile. The current woman’s WR is 4:12.
I remember watching the 1976 Olympic marathon “preview” on TV a few years after I graduated from HS. Erich Segal was talking about how they would be averaging about a 5-minute mile for all 26 miles, and how that pace would be pretty good for a boy HS mile runner. (We didn’t have a girl’s track team in those pre-Title IX days.) Our HS was pretty small and we ran against other small schools, and it struck me then that, “He’s right! The guys who could run sub-5-minute miles on our team were fast!” We definitely didn’t have anyone running 4:12 miles.
And our boys soccer and basketball teams back then…
My kids’ school has been fighting with the education ministry to change the school hours, because they have research showing that teenagers are basically useless before 9 am (which I can anecdotally attest to), so making them get up and go to school before then is inefficient. I support the better rest time argument.
1600m is standard in track and field for the mile.Not quite sure what you actually mean by this. Are you saying that athletes in the US race over a mile and call it 1600m or they start ‘on the finish line’ and complete 4 laps? Is it it too difficult for the official starter to perambulate over to the far side of the discus cage to start a 1500m?
Is the start where you finish the reason for racing over 3200m? Do you call that 2 miles? Do people in US race 4800m because a 5000m start is all the way the far side of the track? If not, why not?
I can see why many swimming races are in yards: it’s an infrastructure ‘thing’. All properly marked up tracks have a ‘mile start’ curve, about 9m up the home straight.
Apologies for my English ignorance.
Well done, the young man from South Dakota.
Edit: Hope he’s doing loads of other sports, besides just running, and a good parent/coach support equilibrium.
1600m is standard in track and field for the mile.Not quite sure what you actually mean by this. Are you saying that athletes in the US race over a mile and call it 1600m or they start ‘on the finish line’ and complete 4 laps? Is it it too difficult for the official starter to perambulate over to the far side of the discus cage to start a 1500m?
Is the start where you finish the reason for racing over 3200m? Do you call that 2 miles? Do people in US race 4800m because a 5000m start is all the way the far side of the track? If not, why not?
I can see why many swimming races are in yards: it’s an infrastructure ‘thing’. All properly marked up tracks have a ‘mile start’ curve, about 9m up the home straight.
Apologies for my English ignorance.
Well done, the young man from South Dakota.
Yes, in high school track the standard distance is to race 1600 meters. 4 laps of 400 meters - start and finish in the same spot. It’s still often called “the mile” since up until the late 1970’s the standard distance was to race an actual mile (1760 yards / 1609 meters). So they run 1600 meters but will sometimes say they ran a mile. The name stuck since it’s still pretty close in distance. Same thing happens in the longer race - it’s run over 3200 meters but sometimes people will still call it the “2 mile”
High school track meets typically do not have a race longer 3200 meters. In cross country some states still do 3 mile races (which are actually three miles rather than 4800 meters). However many states have started to replace the 3 mile with a 5000 meter race
In college the 1600 meter is replaced by the 1500 meter race. And no one refers to this as the ‘mile’ they way they do with the 1600 meter.
Hope that helps explain it. It’s kind of weird, but that’s what happens when you don’t fully adopt the metric system
