Byron Center/OK White T&F Preview #3 Distance

Continuing the BCTF and OK White Conference preview, now it’s time to get deeper into the individual events. First up is Distance. I’m including 800-3200 in this category, though different coaches draw lines in different places. Some categorize the 800 as a long sprint and group it with the 400, putting the 1600 with the 3200. Others work the 800 and 1600 together as mid distance, with the 3200 by itself with true long distance runners.

When I started at BC I grouped the 1600 and 3200, with the 800 as its own group. That was primarily due to having a group of almost true 800 runners, who in retrospect I even should have stepped down to the 400 more. Now I blend the 800 and 1600 together, but I’ll keep speed based 800 runners with the 400 runners. On the boys side I have a few of those true long distance runners, and I tweak their workouts a bit compared to the 800-1600 group. On the girls side, the group is more condensed and young right now.

The biggest change that I’ve adapted to is going very max speed based, with Scott Christensen and Tony Holler being big influences. We run max velocity sprints (not just strides) weekly in the offseason/preseason, and almost weekly during spring season. We also stay as close as possible to race pace during in-season workouts. Coaching clinics, online articles, twitter conversations, and race results show that it’s not very complicated to have a good distance program. Run lots of miles consistently (though “lots” can be a point of contention, I want to focus on the consistency), do long runs, fast intervals, max speed sprints, tempo runs, and learn how to race. Through it all, getting athletes to buy in and really enjoy their craft is the cheat code.

2021 Results - 800, 1600, 3200

In previous posts I looked at points. Now I want to focus on actual performances. For each event, I did 3 things. Ranked the top 50 times in each event, counted the number of appearances per athlete, and listed the top times of each athlete in that top 50. Then, I counted the number of appearances per boys and girls teams.

Because this is a preview of my team as well as the conference, the numbers for Byron Center are shown at the end.

On the boys side, East Grand Rapids is loaded. They have runners spread over each distance, and that will make them hard to handle when conference time comes. I’ve got 2 seniors in Jason and Nate who could be a factor in any distance, but as much as Nate wants to run “the big 4” (4x800, 800, 1600, 3200), conference meet ain’t the best time to do that.

The East girls are also a power, but the results show something I’m not considering yet, and that’s incoming freshman. Drew Muller won the girls 1600 conference title, and went undefeated until Regionals. Freshmen like that are rare, but they can swing things for a team.

Other than East Grand Rapids, Lowell and Grand Rapids Christian will be strong on each side.

Byron Center is in a much better spot on the distance end of things than when I started here, and we’ve got a big group of freshmen coming in, so that spells very good things for the future of this team. This year, the good news for us is we’ve got balance across all events. I’m hoping the rest of this preview series supports my intuition.

Note* A few of my athletes have already PRd in multiple events this indoor season, those are listed at the end. The best way to evaluate all of this would be to gather incoming freshman data, and other athletes indoor data. But for now, I just worked with performances from OK White conference meets.

Number of Top Runners per Boys Team