By Kyle Merber
April 24, 2024
Records are made to be broken, which is the main reason why I am having regrets that I did not win more Olympic gold medals! When I heard the Brooks Beasts were going for the distance medley relay world record in Eugene this past weekend, I immediately updated my resume to include the word “former.”
The team of Brannon Kidder (2:49.60), Brandon Miller (46.60), Isaiah Harris (1:45.75), and Henry Wynne (3:52.64) ran 9:14.58 to break the previous mark of 9:15.50 set by Ben Blankenship, Brandon Johnson, Brycen Spratling, and Kyle “Me” Merber back at the World Relays in 2015.
On the surface, this is probably not quite as hard of a record to get as Bolt’s 9.58, but it’s a World Athletics-recognized event – they send a plaque and everything! Things sort of aligned for this record to stand for a while despite some seconds to give on the 1200 leg. First, the Penn Relays stopped having a USA vs. The World DMR in 2013. And then the World Relays only hosted the event in 2015, before completely eliminating all distance events in 2017 when it cut the 4×800.
You probably didn’t even realize that the World Relays still exist and are next weekend in the Bahamas. Look at how bare this schedule is, even with the repechage rounds. Why not include the DMR or 4×800 in there to engage the distance-loving audience? (Trying to track down our race video, I found this interview I did after that race, and listen to the crowd! Why would you change anything about this meet?)
The DMR is a race of controlled chaos, with baked-in surges and constant lead changes. Fortunately, we still have the NCAA indoor meet to keep the event alive, and with multiple college teams having now run 9:16, it may not be long until this record goes down again.
The Beasts did this one the hard way: after Kidder handed it off to Miller, they broke it open and were all by themselves. And with no one there to crowd the lane, Harris displayed his veteran savvy by taking the handoff as deep into the mixed zone as possible. Wynne was not distracted by the strobe lights and made sure to stay in front of the more important but perhaps less zany pacing ones and got it done.
Kudos to the Beasts for doing something fun to get the season started. Like Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone in the 4×100 at Mt. SAC, running a relay is such a good way to open up. It’s a low-pressure situation and the perfect opportunity to get the feet wet.
I was interested to hear more about the Beasts record run so I briefly caught up with Henry Wynne to get his insight into how it all went down. Aside from now being a world record holder, the Connecticut native was an NCAA champion while competing for UVA and has personal bests of 3:34.08 for 1500m and 3:51.26 in the mile.
This isn’t an event that is run very often on the pro side anymore, so why did The Beasts decide to put together a DMR?
It was honestly a very last-minute thing. Danny [Mackey| texted it into our group chat and Brandon Miller responded with the eyes emoji. And he came to practice the next day pumped like, “We could get this world record, let's do this!” And at first, we're all just like, “oh, okay… maybe!”
And throughout the last few weeks, we've been talking about it more and started getting excited about it. And it was a fun way to open up the season as an opportunity to do something you don’t get to do very often. So we just did it for fun.
Where does this fit into the season? I think this was the first time most of you raced so far outdoors.
We wanted to get the world record, but it was also a bit more of a low-key, not as stressful – like you're not doing your main event – way of opening up. If it goes well, then we're super happy. And if it hadn't gone well, it’s okay because it’s the first race of the season and we're just kind of shaking off the rust. It was a good stimulus to prepare ourselves for when things get more serious down the road.
When you guys added up the possible splits beforehand, what was the best-case scenario? I would say the 1200 leg was probably the place where you could easily improve upon the record, which in my defense… it was tactical! But what was the potential of this team?
Look, I'm a big fan of the last record’s 1200m runner, but that was where we could make up the most time. We knew Brannon could buy us some wiggle room because he should be one of the best 1200m runners in the world. If it was an Olympic event then he’d be all over it. The other splits were very, very fast, so we knew it would be close and so honestly this was close to the best case scenario.
When Brannon went out in like, 29, I was thinking, “What are you doing?You're throwing it away!” But it worked out. Did you guys invite any other teams or did you know it was going to be solo?
We thought there was a possibility that the UW guys were going to come. We knew some of the guys that train with Powell like Sam Prakel and [Sam] Ellis were going to be there so at least Brannon would have someone. In the last few weeks of practice we’ve been yelling at each other at practice to think about this relay and we were envisioning doing it solo.
How much tougher is it to solo the 1600 versus being in an open race? Were you running scared or did you know that you had it? You had the lights, but it's still easy to get lost out there.
It was definitely tough. I went out a bit too hard and then backed off too much. In an open 1500, you obviously have people around you to keep you accountable and awake. It was nerve-wracking not knowing exactly what my splits were but Danny, [assistant coach] Julian [Florez], and Josh [Kerr] were yelling at me. I was just running hard and I didn’t see the light so I was like, “I must be doing alright!”
How much trash talk was there from Josh about how a theoretical Team GB DMR could take this record down?
He's always trash-talking, but we are willing to take on Team GB. They have an amazing squad. And the good thing about having Josh on the team is you can't run poorly or you're going to hear about it for the next couple of months – that adds a little bit of positive pressure!
Kyle Merber
After hanging up his spikes – but never his running shoes – Kyle pivoted to the media side of things, where he shares his enthusiasm, insights, and experiences with subscribers of The Lap Count newsletter, as well as viewers of CITIUS MAG live shows.
