Monday, May 05, 2014

Why Are These Teens So Fast?

This High School Track and Field season has been remarkable especially on the girls distance side.  Eye popping times have been posted throughout the season, seemingly every weekend.  The latest is senior, Elise Cranny, who ran 4:10.95 for 1500m. last night at the Payton Jordan Invitational.  For those of you not familiar with the 1500m., that time converts roughly to 4:29.4 for 1600m.  That's FAST!  The HS record in the 1600m. is Christine Babcock's 4:33.86 while the mile record is Polly Plumer's 4:35.24.  The 1500m. record is Mary Cain's 4:04.62.

Check out this great article in the latest Running Times written by Marc Bloom that tries to get to the bottom of this great explosion of fast times:

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great article. It is indeed a golden age of HS girls distance running. One thing I have noticed is that this attitude of "oh girls run well freshman year and then never improve" is slowly dying out - this is something that CAN and HAS been avoided by good coaching.

Also, I think runners like Jordan Hasay have been huge spearheads for this new golden age. She has proved you can be good in HS and good beyond, and her breakthrough performances paved the way for some of these top runners now (many of whom state Jordan Hasay as one of their favorite runners).

Anonymous said...

Whenever I read an article like this, I always think about how privileged I am to be living in a region that produces some of these top athletes. Watching girls like Anna Maxwell, Sara Robinson, Fiona O'Keeffe, among many, many others is absolutely incredible.

Thanks for posting this Albert!

Albert Caruana said...

No question about the current talent level. I hope that we can continue to see similar type results but the girls you mentioned will definitely be a tough act to follow.

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