Going into the 2021-22 NCAA indoor track season, it was already clear that distance running at the collegiate level had risen to a new and almost unheard of level of competitiveness.
This indoor track season, however, has raised the bar even higher, record-breaking times that would’ve been newsworthy a few years ago, are now becoming a regular occurrence.
Perhaps the best illustration of this is the sub four-minute mile, a goal that runners at all levels strive to achieve. This task was once thought to be impossible until Roger Bannister broke four minutes in 1954.
This indoor season, however, running a sub four-minute mile has become routine and almost every elite collegiate runner is expected to be well under four. An astonishing 77 Division I runners, four Division II runners and one Division III runner have all run a mile under four minutes.
To put this in perspective, in the entire 2018-19 season (the last time there has been a full collegiate track season with all teams competing) only 33 runners broke four minutes in the mile. This has been more than doubled so far this indoor season and there are still three weeks until the national championships.
This staggering time improvement isn’t just unique to the mile, it’s also apparent in the 800m, 3000m, and 5000m race distances. At the Division I level, 87 athletes have run under 1:50 in the 800m this season, while only 57 did in 2018-19. 120 athletes have run under 8:00 in the 3000m, as compared to 51 doing so in 2018-19. Finally, 89 have run under 14:00 in the 5000m, while only 43 did so in 2018-19.
While running under 4 in the mile, under 1:50 in the 800, under 8:00 in the 3000, and under 14:00 in the past years are impressive accomplishments, this year it isn’t even close to qualifying for the NCAA Indoor Championship.
Making the championship meet is relatively simple; run a time in your event that ranks in the top 16, and you’re in. The simplicity doesn’t make it any less difficult, however, and this year qualifying for the meet is more difficult than ever. In the 800m, one must run well under 1:50 to make nationals, and currently Leroy Russell of Arkansas sits in the dreaded 17th spot, the first man out, with a 1:47.89.
In the mile, Nate Osterstock of Southern Utah sits at #17 with a 3:56.16, in the 3000m it’s Ryan Schoppe of Oklahoma State with a 7:46.48, and perhaps most staggering, in the 5000m it is Ehab El Sandali of Iona at #17 with a 13:28.79. In comparison, in every indoor season from 2013-14 to 2018-19 this 13:28.79 would’ve been the number one time in all of division I and this year it won’t even make nationals.
There have been a wide variety of explanations as to why times have been dropping so dramatically and collegiate runners have been running so much faster across the board. I won’t get into all of this in this article, but I think the main reasons are better training methods, advanced shoe and recovery technologies and plain old hard work.