Apr 30, 2021

-Schrader 1600 Press Release

2008

Carl Stones, the inaugural men's champion of our race had just missed the high school state track meet. In Texas, that's nothing to be ashamed of as only 8 athletes per class qualify for the meet. Looking for another race, his coach at the time, Andy Jackson, got together and dubbed the meet "The Schrader 1600." The namesake, Chris Schrader, took the naming of the meet in stride and showed up - firing the starters pistol. With DJ Paul Snyder manning the turntables, and also racing, a simple meet was born. Those in the first race went on to have great running (and academic careers) as Paul went on to run 14:07 for 5k at Columbia University and Carl qualified for the finals at USA's in the Steeplechase in 2015 (Carl was also an All-American at The University of Tulsa).

The years in between

What Carl, Paul, Coach Jackson, and Chris started - Paras has been attempting to take to the next level. In year 2, one of the deepest 1600 fields in State of Texas history was assembled - with the boys fast heat featuring 20+ boys with PRs of 4.20 or better. But more than that, a huge amount of PR's were set in the other heats - which is when we realized, when you put a bunch of runners in heats that they have a real chance to win - special moments happen. One of the best stories comes from Gleb Rudenko, who showed up at our meet needing to run around 4:20 in order to be able to walk on the team at Florida State University. Gleb's PR heading into the meet was 4:26. We put him into a great heat and he came out with an even better results - running 4.20. He went on to have a great running and academic career at Florida State and is just one of the many people we are so proud to have associated with.In between we have had countless PR's, smiling faces, and great stories. We hope you'll join us for many, many more!

Where we are today

2021 marks the 14th edition of this race!The meet in its current iteration is a mixture of a lot of good people and a relentless pursuit to offer athletes of all ages an opportunity to run the fastest 4 lapper they possibly can! We have our meet on the week in between the region and state track meets (usually the first weekend in May) and offer an opportunity to anyone that wants to run fast and have fun.We aim for our meet to be under 2.5 hours, action packed with limited time in between heats, and the smoothest meet you'll ever attend. We only offer one event (the 1600/mile), we put you in a heat with PR's similar to yours, and start with estimated finish times around 7 minutes all the way down to low 4 minutes. You'll always be in a heat you can win!