Speed vs. Endurance
Clearly, you can see what side I'm leaning towards
in this discussion but in no way am I trying to discredit one over the other.
Speed and endurance are both valuable traits for any 800m runner to possess but
if you gave me two athletes and one could run a 4:30 mile and the other could
run a 50 second 400m and tasked me with turning one of them into sub 2:00 800m
runner... I would have a hard time not taking the sprinter and I think Nate
Kirsch from Whitehaven would agree.
Carlton Orange, Tennessee 800m Record Holder, anchoring Memphis University School to victory in 2015.
The main challenge in Tennessee is the fact that the 400m and 800m are divided by only one event and if you're trying to maximize their point output over the course of a single track meet the reward in attempting that double isn't worth the risk of your runner flat-lining on the second lap of the 800m run 10 minutes later. Unfortunately for most, they do one or the other but not both.
This is just one opinion from one Milesplit
contributor though. Feel free to discuss further on the discussion board.