Leah Clear continued her remarkable breakthrough season at Delaware with another PR at 1,500 meters.
Clear, a freshman from Cherry Hill and Camden Catholic, ran 4:35.73 for 1,500 meters Friday afternoon at the Virginia Challenge in Charlottesville, Va.
That converts to a 4:57.79 full mile (or 4:56.05 for the high school 1,600), which is about 17 seconds faster than Clear ever ran in high school.
Clear closed in 2:25.14 and 70..71.
Clear never even ran the 1,600 or mile until her senior year at Cherry Hill, and she only ran it twice – a 5:13.85 at the Cherokee Final Countdown Last Chance last May and then a 5:13.56 at the state Parochial A meet in Somerset. She did run as fast as 2:17.40 for 800 meters at the Olympic Conference Championships at Rancocas Valley.
This past winter, Clear ran 5:12.46 and 5:10.53 in her first two mile races before a huge breakthrough 4:58.49 in February in a meet at Ocean Breeze. So her PR dropped from 5:13.56 to the equivalent of 4:56.05 in the span of just over three months.
Her previous 1,500 PR was a 4:36.57 late last month in Raleigh, N.C. She PR’d in the 800 at 2:16.56 in her last race, last weekend at Princeton.
Clear’s 1,500 time is No. 13 in the CAA and 5th-fastest among freshmen. She’s not quite on the all-time Delaware top-10, but she’s only about a second and a half off, and her time is 4th-fastest ever by a Blue Hen freshman.
Clear is a biomedical engineering major.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 