Aidan Cox runs 8:50.45 for 2M for 5th at New Balance Nationals after leading Coe-Brown to a silver in the 4 × mile
There really is just too much running to unpack here in coronating this kid's endless high-school career
Top-level track and field could use a little breather. This weekend includes three American high-school championship-level meets, although only the expected two (Nike and New Balance) are proving consequential. This blitz comes right after a set of outrageously quick times at the Bislett Games in Oslo, the fifth meeting on the 2023 Diamond League shedyool, which almost immediately followed the NCAA Division I Championships for collegians in the U.S. and the Meeting de Paris that produced three world distance records, including a 7:54.10 two-mile. Somewhere in here, and closer to my purported focus, are the New England Outdoor Championships, which took place in Maine a week ago.
I have no ambitions to cover here even 20 percent of what most people would consider meaningful running news, and even if I did nothing else with my time and cared as much about the running of strangers as I used to, I’d be unable to keep up by myself. But if Bill Gates et al. would accelerate their population-reduction project, it would help mitigate my obligatory ignorance; there are simply too many human bodies whirling purposefully around in too many physical places to keep track of in real time.
Aidan Cox of Northwood, N.H. and Coe-Brown Academy is the most accomplished male distance runner in New Hampshire public-high-school history. (For all Cox’s achievements, and even allowing for changes to the sport since the 1980s, no one has yet matched what Cathy Schiro, Dover High School Class of 1985, did.
Cox has become familiar to many readers as a consequence of signing up for a newsletter with a strong and unapologetic New Hampshire youth-running bias. But a smallish subset have known of him, and known him and his family directly, for many years. Although he won’t turn 18 until August, some coaches have been anticipating the peak youth version of Aidan Cox for a long time.
In 2015 and 2016, Cox set single-age world records (9 and 10) for 5K, running 17:24 in the second of those efforts. The video below is from the SEA 5K in Concord, N.H. (a race I, unlike Aidan Cox, have already won at least three times).
Cox headed to Franklin Field in Philadelphia late this week to take part in the New Balance Nationals Outdoor meet (results). On Thursday, running the anchor leg in the 4 × mile relay, he took the baton in ninth place and worked his way into first before being edged in the final straight. He split around 4:10, running his usual 440-yard splits of approximately 62.49 to 62.51 seconds to achieve this.
Coe-Brown (running as the Black Bear TC) notched a second-place time of 17:30.12, an average of 4:22.53 per leg. This means that Cox’s three teammates averaged about 4:26.7, or 4:25 per 1,600 meters.
On Friday evening—very late, in fact—Cox ran in the championship heat of the two-mile run. After holding second place for the first six laps, he held pace but was rolled by three kickers, including Nathan Lopez of Saint John’s Prep in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. Lopez, in windup up second, became the first Massachusetts kid in history to break 8:50 for the distance, his 8:44.54 laying waste to Chris Barnicle’s 2005 state record of 8:50.52.
Cox popped off the line a tinge too aggressively in the deuce, passing though the quarter-mile mark in around 63.2 based on his 418.69-meter split. Other than that, it was as close to a perfect way to end his high-school career as he was likely to get.
On World Athletics points, an 8:50.45, which translates to 8:47.37 for 3,200 meters, represents the best track performance Cox has submitted. According to WA, this is equivalent to 4:07.48 for one mile and 14:04.54 for 5,000 meters. It also marks the third time this season he’s broken 9:00 for 3,200 meters.
Cox’s other personal bests:
According my preferred conversion scheme, a 4:12 mile is equivalent to a 9:00 two-mile. WA assigns the same 933 points to these marks, but because WA is EPO-tolerant, it requires a better performance over 5,000 meters (14:20) than mine does (14:26.7) to attain the same score.
Cox will join the University of Virginia Cavaliers this fall, where his sister Addie, who just finished her sophomore year in Charlottesville, will be able to show him around. Based on how little mileage he has actually done, and how he’s grown to embrace competing the way he loves running, he has a lot of upside. And contrary to what many people might thing, I’m pretty sure his dad Tim, a Coe-Brown coach since 1999, is happy to finally turn Aidan’s training over to someone else.
My first season of coaching at Bishop Brady High School, then like Coe-Brown also a D-II school, was also in the fall of 1999. But Tim Cox and another coach of the Black Bears (formerly the Comanches) who was around then, Brent Tkaczyk, didn’t leave after two years. Together, these two—with much reported help from their spouses—have made excelling at distance running a primary source of pride for the entire community, even causing many local adults to become joggers against their will and other coaches to not fall utterly to physical pieces in their dotages. They built NewHampshireCrossCountry.com and NewHampshireTrackAndField.com and operate it for free along with a shifting crew of capable, and often hilarious, volunteers.
I don’t know how long they will keep coaching, but their effects will more than “linger”; Cox and Tkaczyk are essentially the index cases of a Granite State youth aerobic pandemic. It’s all been beautiful to watch and play little roles in here and there for as long as it’s lasted already.
So I guess that’s really it. And what a show it’s been. We’ve appreciated every second of it.
(Social share photo of Aidan Cox winning the 11-12 division at the 2015 USATF Junior National Cross Country Championships courtesy of Exclamation Services.)