In 2017, Reed Brown and Alex Maier had unbelievable race battles all season long
The 2017 track and field season was wild and crazy, the track was hot and the field events were rocking. That was the year Texas had three of the top distance runners in the nation that year.
Sam Worley, Reed Brown, and Alex Maier were on top of their game that season. They produced several sub 4:10 1600m races as well as a couple of sub 9 minute 3200m races. The state records in the events were under assault that weekend at the state meet.
We have decided to bring you the epic 1600m battle of Reed Brown and Alex Maier that went all of the way through the qualifying/championship season.
It may never be done that well again. Check it out!
District 5-6A
At District, the youngster, Maier took advantage of the hard pace set by Brown to over take him in the end.
Brown set a hard pace throughout the race, that the other runners were all dropped in the first 100m. Maier battled to catch up and ride the pace. He even started to fall off leading into the final lap.
Brown's unreal 3:02 split through 1200m allowed Maier to stay in the race and he took the first championship battle running 4:10.88 to Brown's 4:13.68
District 5-6 6A Area Meet
A week later, these two were right back at it.
It was a very windy Texas kind of a day, so you would expect them to run a moderate kind of pace, right. Wrong!
Brown took off from the gun once again, forcing Maier to respond or get left behind. Their splits were off the charts (see below), especially in the windy conditions.
It was another battle to the finish with Brown taking this win in a narrow 4:14.69 to 4:15.00
200m - .29
400m - .59
600m - 1:30
800m - 2:02
1200m - 3:07
Region 1-6A
The region meet started off slightly different than the other two races.
Brown didn't shoot out of the first curve like he had previously done; it was Maier who did. Brown did make his way to the front by the 200m mark.
Maier pushed to get next to Brown, but right before the 300m mark, he was tripped from behind and went down hard. He fell to about last place and was on all fours and on the track. He was faced with getting up and trying to make his way back into challenging position.
Meanwhile, Brown started his typical pace pushing. He began to move away from the entire field with only El Paso Americas' Brian Lujan willing to go with him. On the last lap, it was Brown pulling away and taking the win in 4:09.29. Maier, who tried to make up ground the entire race extended so much physical and mental energy that he was only able to finish in 10th place, although in a respectable 4:28.15.