I (Wayne) was hoping that my track times would improve after running the Seaside marathon my Junior year in High School on February 24, 1973 (see Note 2). When track season started in March, my 880 track times did improve, as I ran a PR on the Mark Morris (MM) cinder track on April 5, 1973. My 880 PR was lowered again on April 14, 1973 at a track meet in Vancouver against Fort Vancouver and Battle Ground. The week of the MM, R. A. Long (RAL) and Kelso meet, I made a mistake and overtrained prior to the "Tri-school" meet, and I wasn’t near my peak performance level. This was a disappointment to me. The week of Sub-District prelims and finals, I had a scheduling conflict, because there was a MM Band function that week. I decided to go to the Band function instead of the Sub-District Track Meet. Although my Band instructor was happy with my decision, my track coach at MM was not; I told him I would definitely go to the Sub-District track meet my Senior year.
When I became a Senior, I set a PR at the Kelso Invitational on Apr. 13, 1974 at R. A. Long's track. I followed through and went to the Sub-District track meet. A week prior to the meet, a 2-miler on the MM track team (Scott) told me that it is a good idea to not train very hard leading up to the Sub-District track meet. I took his advice, and my times were good during my Sub-District heat on Thursday and Sub-District finals on Saturday (see Reference 1 and 2). Through this process, I had learned a valuable lesson: “Tapering” can be helpful in improving one's performance for a goal meet.
I later reviewed articles in the Centralia Daily Chronicle, and I was able to create a table that shows the winning track/running times for the Southwest Washington (SWW) Sub-District meets from 1960 through 1977. The aforementioned newspaper did not post the results for the 1971 and '72 track season Sub-District, but I was able to find the aforementioned results via Reference 4 and 3, respectively. The articles in the Chronicle showed some fine performances were turned in during the Sub-District and District meets during those years.
I tracked my times during 9th grade and High School years. I found that, rather then looking exclusively at Personal Records (PRs), a better measurement may be to look at the improvement of one’s average times (e.g. the 4 best performances) each year.
After I graduated from Mark Morris, I contacted my track coach and he sent me reference 5. It contained the MM Top 10 List for the 880, as shown below. I had moved up from the previous year. I was able to determine that I remained on the MM Top 10 list until 1988; I determined this (see Note 3 below) by looking at www.athletic.net->High School->Mark Morris->records(all).
Another way to evaluate a performance is to calculate the difference between a performance and a current PR; and then sort them between minimum and maximum. A new PR has a difference of 0.0 by definition. This was done for my High School performances in the 880 as shown in photo MyPerformances(HS_880)_RevB. The 3rd column shows the aforementioned difference, relative to my current PR.
The MyPerformance(Summary)_RevB photo gives a summary of the core events I participated in. Column 6 gives my all-time PR in each event. I also ran a 2 mile one time in High School, but did not list it in this table.
The 1974_grad_MM_winning_times(880)_RevNew photo provides some analysis of winning 880 times during my High School years (1974 was my Senior year). This table was created using References 3, 4, 5 and 6. Additional information was obtained in Reference 7. I included the 1971 data, even though I was still in Junior High during that year.
Note 1: The “Sport of Track & Field" web page can be viewed by selecting Sitemap->Sport of Track & Field from menu bar at top.
Note 2: Part 1 of this set of pics can be viewed by selecting Sitemap->Sport of Track & Field->My Junior/Senior High Track Photos [Part 1] from menu bar at top.
Note 3: I converted reference 5) 880 times to 800 meter times using Sitemap->Sport of Track & Field->Table of Comparable Track Times (English/Metric), and rounded them to the nearest 1/10th of a second.
Note 4: Part 3 of this set of pics can be viewed by selecting Sitemap->Sport of Track & Field->My Junior/Senior High Track Photos [Part 3] from menu bar at top.
References:
1. The Daily Chronicle (Centralia, WA), 10 May 1974
2. The Daily Chronicle (Centralia, WA), 13 May 1974
3. “Mark Morris Track Highlights”, prepared for Mark Morris 1973 Track Team by Mark Morris' Track & Field Coach Chuck Byers, Spring of 1973
4. “Mark Morris Track Highlights”, prepared for Mark Morris 1972 Track Team by Mark Morris' Track & Field Coach Chuck Byers, Spring of 1972
5. “Mark Morris Track Highlights”, prepared for Mark Morris 1975 Track Team by Mark Morris' Track & Field Coach Chuck Byers, Spring of 1975
6. “Mark Morris Track Highlights”, prepared for Mark Morris 1974 Track Team by Mark Morris' Track & Field Coach Chuck Byers, Spring of 1974
7. The Daily Chronicle (Centralia, WA), 23 March 1973
