Bonus Deep Dive: Cool Breeze Invitational, 2021 vs 2019

OK, so we're a week behind in wanting to break down the Cool Breeze Invitational, but better late than never. Using the Compare Meets function of the MileSplit database, we can get a thorough breakdown of the two meets quickly.

In this case, the overall average time for the 2021 edition of Cool Breeze was almost 29 seconds slower than in 2019. That's not terribly surprising given how much COVID has disrupted training and racing over the last 2 years. Participation was also down by 950 athletes this year. The top 100 runners were all just 5 - 6 seconds slower on average in 2021.

Starting from the subheading Common Athletes, the report deals only with runners that participated both years. As expected, they improved significantly on average, with the top 10% of the common athletes improving the most. This is also not surprising, as it seems likely that training for top-tier runners was more consistent during the pandemic than it was for middle-of-the-pack athletes.