Breaking news: Alan Webb to retire from professional running!

Jan 22, 2014

Who remembers this classic photo when MileStat.com began back in 2000-2001???

Despite all of his struggles to remain healthy, numerous coaching changes and relocations, and inability to regain his peak form and return to world level performances and qualify for Olympic and World teams over the last couple of years, the news still came as a shock and a strong wave of emotions, reactions, and thoughts for many that Alan Webb, a Virginia native and 2001 graduate of South Lakes High School in Reston, has finally decided to call it quits in his professional running career and will now turn his attention to training and completely in triathlons. Webb will race in the Wannaker Mile at the Millrose Games in New York on February 15th as likely his very final race as a professional runner. It will be on the same track that he broke 4 minutes in the mile for the first time and set the American high school indoor mile record back in the winter of 2001. Later in his senior year of high school at South Lakes, Webb would go onto shatter Jim Ryun's long standing high school outdoor national record in the mile with a 3:53.43 performance at the Prefontaine Classic.

After a short stay as a collegiate runner at the University of Michigan, Webb would then join the professional ranks as a Nike signed athlete and re-connect with his old high school coach Scott Raczko (who is now currently back at South Lakes as the school's head track coach for the past several years). Back with his original coach, Webb enjoyed arguably some of his best success and stretches of stellar racing as a runner including qualifying for Olympic Games and World Championships and winning several US national titles in the 1500. His best performance came in a summer Belgium meet in 2007 when Webb broke Steve Scott's 25 year old American mile record with a PR of 3:46.91.

Webb has been such a promiment figure not only nationally on the distance running scene, but definitely within his home state of Virginia as his remarkable breakthrough and record breaking performances as a high school prep certainly inspired many youth in the state including myself as a high school sophomore getting the opportunity to be a peer of Webb's in his junior and senior years of high school to watch, witness and race against one of the all-time greats in person. His impact and influence on the sport was too great to be measured. He was one of the first superstar runners of the new age of covering and promoting the sport through the internet running websites like this one that ended up helping develop cult-like followings of fans, followers, and supporters of runners like Webb. He was part of a revival of American distance running at the high school and professional level that started changing the way we trained and believed in our abilities to compete at another level and another gear in this country.

It is somewhat ironic at the same time that I'm leaving my post at MileStat.com in two months that Webb is leaving the competitive running scene in the next month. When this site began back in 2000 and 2001, the excitement and spark of the sport of high school track & field in the state of Virginia to be covered in a more in-depth way giving greater spotlight to the sport was already started in large part due to once in a generation athletes like Alan Webb who created so much buzz around them and drew much more attention to the sport than seen before. Now that we are both moving onto different and new challenges to transition into, it is up to some new people to step up and be the flagbearers of the sport in Virginia as the athletes and media leading the way to promote its growth and improvements.

To Alan: Congratulations on an amazing career in running and we wish you all the best in your next stages of life as a triathlete, husband, and father! You have truly impacted and inspired so many athletes and media members of the sport in many different ways to take the sport to greater heights and continue to break down old and existing barriers.