There have been hundreds of young American men chasing the goal of running a mile under 4 minutes in the past few years. Out of those hundreds, only 4, however, had fathers who had run under 4 minutes. All 4 of these guys had run under 4:04, but none had quite gotten to sub4. There was an unofficial race between Joaquin Chapa (son of Rudy Chapa, 3:57.04), Sam Bair Jr. (son of Sam Bair, 3:56.7), Matt Centrowitz Jr. (son of Matt Centrowitz, 3:54.94), and Darren Brown (son of Barry Brown, 3:58.8) to be the first to complete an American father/son pair of sub 4 minute milers. Sam Bair had been agonizingly close several times, running between 4:00 and 4:01.
This weekend, that race ended as Darren Brown ran 3:59.99 at the Texas Relays. Click to see his post race interview.
Note, these are the first Americans. The only foreigners I'm aware of who have completed this are the Keinos of Kenya. Martin Keino ran 3:52.33 in 1996. His dad, Kipchoge Keino, who was also an Olympic Champion ran 3:53.1 in 1967.
Notice that of these 5 pairs of fathers and sons, in all but one case, the dad was the faster runner....at least so far. Some of you guys have dads who used to run or still run. Find out what their times are/were and see if you can take them down:) That was one of many motivators for me in high school. Of course as I got faster, it seemed how fast my dad used to be got faster as well:)
About the meet on Tuesday, the weather's forecast to get nasty, although not as bad as they were saying this morning. Let's hope that forecast keeps getting better and better. If the meet is postponed, there's a good chance that they'll reschedule it for Thursday. If that happens, simply do Thursday's workout on Tuesday, and keep the other days the same.