Teenage and even middle-school track athletes are running times that would have looked outlandish a decade ago, and the sport has a name for the acceleration: trackflation. The shift is changing who gets noticed by college coaches, how families spend money, and how much stress young bodies absorb before high school is even over.
At the New Balance Nationals in June 2025, an annual championship that draws about 6,000 top youth athletes, more than 100 competitors beat previous meet records. Will Rodgers, a former University of Alabama in Huntsville runner who now co-owns the coaching and events company RunningLane, said the number of high school boys capable of running a full mile under 4:10 may now be around 100, compared with perhaps 20 when he was in high school.
The examples are not confined to one event. A 12th-grade girl from Ohio ran an indoor 2-mile in 9:37.15, breaking a national high school record that had stood since 2013. A 10th-grade boy from Texas ran 100 meters outdoors in 9.92 seconds, close to the collegiate record. In April, an eighth-grade boy ran a sub-4:18 mile, and an eighth-grade girl ran 400 meters in 51.58, faster than any U.S. high school girl had run at that point in the year.
Clubs, shoes and coaching are moving the baseline
Coaches and physiologists point to several overlapping causes. Youth track clubs are drawing younger children as families look for sports where a stopwatch matters more than a coach’s roster politics. Dennis Robinson, head coach of Chicago’s Zephyrs Track Club, said his club once struggled to recruit beyond high schoolers but now has had to turn away children as young as 4.
That early start means some middle-school runners arrive with mechanics, training habits and competitive experience that used to appear later. Brad Peterson, cofounder of Indiana club HP Distance, said he now asks middle-school girls to run eight 400-meter repeats in 75 seconds, a workout far removed from older, looser youth programs.
Equipment has changed too. Carbon-plated racing shoes with light, springy foams, such as Nike’s Vaporfly 4 and New Balance’s FuelCell SuperComp Elite v5, are now common and often sell for under $200. Research cited by coaches has found racing gains of 2 to 3 percent, roughly a second per 400-meter lap. Geoff Burns, a sports physiologist with the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, said the shoes may also reduce mechanical damage during training, letting athletes recover more efficiently.
Private coaching has filled gaps left by underfunded school programs. Caryn Gehrke, a former Columbia University runner who now coaches in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said her own high school coach was a retired Marine with no running background. Today’s athletes can study professional training online, hire former collegiate runners, and experiment with methods such as heat acclimatization, double-threshold workouts and sodium bicarbonate supplements. A 2021 meta-analysis found bicarbonate may improve performance by about 1.5 percent.
The faster system has a price
The record chase is also expensive. National meets with fast tracks, good weather, pace lights and carefully seeded heats attract families from across the country. Burns said a family might spend $2,000 on travel if a faster time could improve scholarship prospects.
The incentives are not all clean. Timothy Goldsack, cofounder of RunCCG, said he suspects some teenagers are using banned substances such as human growth hormone or testosterone-replacement therapy, though he did not claim certainty. High school track has little drug testing, making such claims hard to prove.
Researchers are more certain about overuse and burnout risks. Douglas Casa, a University of Connecticut kinesiology professor who studies elite athletes, said exceptional youth performances can hide the number of runners breaking down behind them. He said young girls in middle- and long-distance events face particular concern because high mileage can delay puberty and contribute to lower bone density.
A 2022 study of 67,600 top-ranked teenage track-and-field athletes found that fewer than a quarter of 16- and 17-year-olds matched that success later, a transition rate the authors called low. Burns described early specialization as a trade-off: it can open doors to scholarships and access, while potentially reducing an athlete’s chance to thrive later.
This story draws on original reporting from WIRED.
