3:53.43. 25 Years Later. Still Unbroken. Alan Webb on the Pre Classic Mile That Outlasted a Generation and Why It's Still the Hardest Record in High School Sports

THE RUNNING EFFECT PODCAST · May 13, 2026 · 56m

Alan Webb still has the record. Twenty-four years later, nobody's touched it.

The American high school mile record (3:53.43, set at the 2001 Prefontaine Classic) has outlasted every shoe revolution, every bicarb protocol, and every perfectly concocted running shoe PR storm. In this conversation, Webb sits down with Dominic to talk about why that mark still stands, what it actually felt like to run it, and what the sport's fastest generation of teenagers is still missing.

Webb is disarmingly honest about his own race.

Going into Pre that day, he wasn't chasing Ryun's record—he was chasing a…