Well said.
--- "Wayne T. Armbrust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Netters,
>
> While we are on this thread I'll take the
> opportunity to sound off about
> one of my pet peeves, the indoor mile run. The mile
> run was retained as
> the only non-metric, non-standard event when indoor
> track went metric
> over twenty years ago , supposedly because it was
> thought that fans
> wouldn't attend a meet that didn't include the mile.
> Well, It doesn't
> seem to have worked too well. With only one or two
> exceptions, all of
> the classic indoor invitational meets of twenty
> years ago have fallen on
> hard times, with most having gone belly up. In
> fact, at least two of
> the classic meets that had sell-outs while
> contesting the 1500 ( the
> Cleveland K of C and the U. S. Olympic Invitational)
> disappeared after
> going back (in the case of the former) or switching
> (in the case of the
> latter) to the mile. It's obvious that the mile has
> not been the
> salvation of indoor track in this country and it's
> difficult to see how
> things could be worse if we ran the 1500 like the
> rest of the world.
> The indoor mile is not quite (because it is
> recognized as a record event
> by the IAAF) but almost in the same class as the
> truly wacky events we
> run in this country, the 1600, 3200, and 8 hurdle
> 300 hurdles run in our
> high schools which are contested nowhere else.
>
> If it were simply the fact that running the mile
> indoors put us out of
> step with the rest of the world I wouldn't be nearly
> as concerned.
> There is, however, a much more important reason not
> to run the mile
> indoors: It makes qualifying for the Indoor World
> Championships very
> difficult to do in the indoor season leading up to
> the Championships.
> In fact, there are only two U.S. men qualified for
> the World Indoor
> Championships who got their qualifying mark indoors,
> Paul McMullen and
> Richard Boulet, and both got their marks last year
> en route to a mile
> time. The closest any man has come this year is
> Alan Webb - off by over
> a second. Looking at women's marks, there are four
> who have qualifying
> marks made indoors, Regina Jacobs, Amy Rudolph,
> Sheri Kenah, and Debbie
> Marshall-Grant. All but Rudolph's mark was made
> last year, and like the
> men, all were en route times. Thus, we have a grand
> total of one
> athlete qualifying with an indoor time from this
> year, and that with
> standards that seem relatively soft. I never ran
> the 1500 or mile, but
> I have coached a lot of people who have, and I know
> that qualifying with
> a 1500 time en route to a mile is certainly doing it
> the hard way. What
> is even worse, it seems that of all the major indoor
> meets, only the New
> Balance meets run in New York and Boston over the
> two years even took
> 1500 times.
>
> I do realize that it is possible to qualify for the
> World Indoor
> Championships with an outdoor time, but a person
> ought to be able to do
> it indoors, in a domestic meet, and without having
> to run another 109+
> meters!
>
> --
> Wayne T. Armbrust, Ph.D.
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Computomarx™
> 3604 Grant Ct.
> Columbia MO 65203-5800 USA
> (573) 445-6675 (voice & FAX)
> http://www.Computomarx.com
> "Know the difference between right and wrong...
> Always give your best effort...
> Treat others the way you'd like to be treated..."
> - Coach Bill Sudeck (1926-2000)
>
>
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