Has the improvement trajectory of elite U.S. high-schoolers mimicked that of the pros?
Looking only at prep-level times is a good way to reduce, if not completely eliminate, noise created by banned substances
Alex Hutchinson is the best distance-running journalist there is. He has sub-14:00 5,000-meter credentials, a master’s degree in journalism, a doctorate in physics, and no detectable personal or institutional axes to grind. Someone should create an AI program that would scrape the Web for running-related articles and, depending on their salvageability, either rewrite them in the exact style of Hutchinson or flag them for permanent and non-contestable removal from the Internet. Only about 8 percent of existing pieces would survive were this scheme developed and applied fairly.
Hutchinson wrote a story for Outside Online titled “Why Are Runners Suddenly So Fast?” that hit the Web on Tuesday. First, he verifies that times at the world-class level have crept downward in the road distance events since 2016 and in the track distance events since 2019, coinciding with the release of Nike’s Alphafly/Vaporfly road shoes and its and ZoomX-bolstered track spikes, respectively.
He notes that the percentile increases aren’t as drastic as the ambient “sense” of mass improvement suggests, but stresses that there is firm lab data creating a direct line between the increased running economy allowed by the new shoes (which varies considerably between even fast subjects) and the boost in times. And the timing is impossible to ignore.
On the issue of banned substances, Hutchinson writes:
Is there something new on the scene over the last few years? Or are we still seeing the effects of pandemic-related disruptions in out-of-competition drug testing? I certainly hope it’s not the case, but you’d have to be amnesiac to discount the possibility entirely. Once again, the best counterargument is that the performance improvements are noticeable even at the 1,000th-best level—though perhaps I’m being naive.
First, it’s important to note that none of the Outside, Inc. publications ever go even this far when it comes to associating unlikely improvements with banned drugs. The countless pieces extolling the virtues of age-group studs or over-35 top-class American women almost go out of their way to avoid the matter. But Outside has to pay Hutchinson to keep his exclusive services, so, in addition to having more brainpower by himself than the entire roster of drones who have written for Trail Runner, Outside Online, and Women’s Running in recent years (at least if Brian Metzler is removed from the latter pool), Hutchinson is surely afforded more editorial independence than a standard freelancer.
If Hutchinson is naive, it’s in appearing to assume that meaningful, consistent drug testing exists in world-class distance running and that the idea is to catch everyone who pees dirty. In addition to politics meaning far more than the ability to piss clean per se, there are, in fact, always new substances and dealers, and they make more money from people far slower than the thousandth-fastest 1,500-meter runner worldwide in any given year. If the glory of the mere age-groupers didn’t matter, these publications wouldn’t be turning out story after story about the latest physiological miracle from the Gen X or Boomer class and how patience, consistency and self-belief are the keys to gaining access to the same magic yourself.
I doubt drug use has ever slowed or accelerated markedly from a zoomed-out view. Everyone knows the Ethiopians are simply not drug-tested, which by itself gives the rest of the world both all the excuse anyone needs and a compelling competitive reason—actually an obligation—to play along. And Ethiopia is not the only current or historical entry point into this farcical conversation.
That said, the shoes alone have made a tremendous impact. While Hutchinson was working on this, I was already comparing the final 2023 U.S. 1,600-meter and 3,200-meter high-school performance lists from Milesplit to those of past seasons to see roughly how much difference the shoes have made. There is guaranteed to be some background noise that can’t be filtered out owing to, for example, subtly shifting participation trends and a basic increase in numbers (the U.S. has 18.4 percent more people than it did at the turn of the century, which basically means 13 bodies in any space now for every 11 there before). And while a few high-school kids are surely doping, that number, even if it’s rising over time, can’t be enough to scuttle a surface-level analysis.
The spring 2019 season was the last outdoor campaign in which high-school kids lacked access to “superspikes.” 2020 was essentially wiped out, and by 2021, most really fast American high-school kids were racing in Nike Dragonflys.
In addition to comparing 2019 to 2021, 2022, and 2023, I looked at the 2009 and 2014 seasons to see how things changed in the last decade before new shoes arrived.
The 100th-place 3200m time for U.S. boys in the spring of 2009 was 9:11.87. In 2014 it was 9:07.09, and in 2019 it was 9:09.15. That suggests the possibility of gradual improvement with a tendency to return to baseline, but all that can really be inferred is “no dramatic change.”
But in 2021, the 100th-place mark dropped to 9:03.93, in 2022 it was 9:02.27, and this year it dropped under 9:00 (8:59.98). This clearly shows the effect of the introduction and progressive spread of Dragonfly shoes, whatever else might be amplifying or even impeding this force.
For the 1600m, these were the 100th-place times in the same spring seasons:
2009 - 4:14.42
2014 - 4:13.00
2019 - 4:14.11
2021 - 4:12.43
2022 - 4:11.13
2023 - 4:10.03
So, in the boys’ 3,200 meters, the improvement from 2019 to 2023 at 100th place nationally was 9.17/549.15 = 0.0167 = 1.67 percent. In the boys’ 1,600 meters, it was 1.61 percent. Those numbers cohere with the ones Hutchinson supplies, although those are somewhat scattered given their small absolute values.
I couldn’t resist similarly trolling the huge sea of girls in Milesplit’s database in the same two events. This is what that exercise revealed:
1,600 meters, 100th-place times:
2009 - 4:58.83
2014 - 4:54.27
2019 - 4:54.48
2021 - 4:53.30
2022 - 4:51.89
2023 - 4:51.32
3,200 meters, 100th-place times:
2009 - 10:50.17
2014 - 10:39.15
2019 - 10:35.62
2021 - 10:39.18
2022 - 10:31.72
2023 - 10:30.31
I don’t know what to make of the trend in the longer event, especially given that it conflicts with the trend in the shorter one. Regardless, the 100th-place time in the girls’ 1,600 meters jumped by only 1.07 percent between 2019 and this spring, while the corresponding improvement in the girls’ 3,200 meters was only 0.84 percent.
It’s tempting to assume that fast high-school boys and fast high-school girls both utilize and benefit from superspikes to the same extent, but this is merely suppositional. So, while it’s clear that the shoes have made a substantial difference, they may preferentially benefit humans whose stride is like that of a typical highly economical male.
Hutchinson also speculates that a tendency to not over-race and focus on simply training during covid restrictions may be leading to better racing now, although he presents this more as an idea that’s already out there than as something worth looking at closely. But I disagree with him on this. If nothing else, a lot of races started cropping up specifically for faster Americans at somewhat random times, like The Marathon Project in Chandler, Arizona in December 2020 and the various elite track races, especially 10,000-meter races, put on by companies and brands such as Sound Running and Tracklnd.
If chatter about the superspikes is to be believed, these would allow for more frequent track racing at 5,000 meters and 10,000 meters even without any new drugs in the mix. But it doesn’t look from here that covid resulted in a high number of racing opportunities overall so much the greater coordination of boutique events aimed at getting athletes of similar abilities into races aimed at achieving national- or international-scale qualifying times.
Right now, there are Americans and others using substances that would be banned if WADA and USADA knew about them and could test for them. Meanwhile, the antidoping authorities are producing methods besides the Athlete Biological Passport that defy the passage of time by exposing cheating done years ago using analytical chemistry techniques no one anticipated. Although World Athletics, U.S.A. Track and Field, and the International Olympic Committee care about as much about a fair playing field as a pack of Adderall-snorting hyenas, they still need to keep as close to the leaders in the doping-antidoping arms race as possible for strategic reasons. One never knows when a specific nation or national sports governing body might need to be targeted for exquisite, scientifically supported punishment.