University of Colorado threesome turns in historic performance
Yesterday, in the University of Colorado open held at the school's new indoor track facility, Buffs Ben Saarel, Joe Klecker and Zach Perrin went4:01.49, 4:01.72 and 4:02.27 to sweep the first three spots in the mile.
Owing to the combination of Colorado notoriety as a longtime mecca of elite running and the state never having hosted a sub-four mile on a track, this feat invites a lot of context and speculation, even if its was not (yet) noted even on the CU Buffs own Web site beyond the basic info about times and places.
The fastest mile ever run on Colorado soil, or at least on a track built on that soil if not on the dirt and grass itself, is 4:01.27, which Adams State University's Tabor Stevens recorded in April 2015 in the small town of La Junta. That race was set up specifically to allow Stevens to become the first man to run under four minutes anywhere in the state, the lowest elevation of which is about 3,300' above sea level. La Junta sits at about 4,078'. You can watch Stevens' run here.
Stevens didn't quite get there but his time broke the old mark of 4:03.99, set in 2013 by Rory Nelson, by a substantial amount. Nelson's time in turn had broken Ted Casteneda's record of 4:04.86 from 1976. (Nelson's mark was run in Longmont at close to 5,000', making it closer to Stevens' time than meets the eye, but still intrinsically inferior by about a second.)
In other words, the men's all-comers state record in the mile has only fallen twice in 41 years.
So how do the marks of Saarel et al. compare to other top Colorado efforts in the mile over the years?
Assuming the track in La Junta is close to the town's mean elevation of 4,078', mile times recorded there, according to information from the NCAA's altitude conversions page, would be about 1.63 percent slower than sea-level times. That makes Stevens' mark worth about a 3:57.40 at sea level.
Times at CU's indoor facility, assuming it is at about the same elevation as neighboring Folsom Field (a safe assumption, since I have been to both numerous times) would be about 2.52 percent slower. The times of Saarel, Klecker and Perrin thus translate to about 3:55.55, 3:55.78 and 3:56.31 respectively.
Going a step further and converting the CU trio's times to outdoor times is a little trickier. According to the NCAA's conversion factor between indoor mile times run on oversized tracks and times on standard 200m tracks, it might be valid to knock off about 0.5 percent from the marks of the CU guys to get an idea of what they might have run yesterday outdoors at sea level in perfect (windless) conditions. That's about 1.2 seconds for each of them, so about 3:54.35, 3:54.58 and 3:55.11 respectively.
In summary, then, a rough idea of what the best four miles run inside Colorado's borders "really" look like:
1. Ben Saarel 3:54.352. Joe Klecker 3:54.583. Zach Perrin 3:55.114. Tabor Stevens 3:57.40