Josh Kerr's final big workout before Saturday's world record mile attempt in London...

LONDON--In preparation for Saturday's attempt at Hicham El Guerrouj's 27 year old world record in the mile of 3:43.13 by Josh Kerr (Paul Merca photo) of Great Britain and Seattle's Brooks Beasts at the Novuna London Athletics Meet at London Stadium, Kerr released video of his final major tuneup work on his YouTube channel.

Kerr ran a 1200 meter time trial with fellow Beast Brannon Kidder pacing at the University of New Mexico's track in Albuquerque, where the Beasts have been training for the last six weeks at 5312 feet (1609 meters) of altitude.

In an interview with Jonathan Gault of LetsRun.com, Brooks Beasts coach Danny Mackey said that Kerr, who is pointing towards the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, and the European Championships in Birmingham afterwards, said, “I feel like he’s in that speed shape he was going into Tokyo, but he’s a little stronger right now than he was."

“His tempo work’s a little better than it was last summer.”

Among the workouts that Kerr's run in Albuquerque in the buildup to Saturday includes a 12-mile fartlek session at 5:13/mile average, and four sets of 200-600-200 on the track, with rest of 90 and 60 seconds between reps and 4.5 minutes between sets.

According to what Mackey told Gault, Kerr averaged 25.99 for the 200s and 1:22.26 for the 600s, with Mackey saying the session went “really, really well.”

As noted in our post earlier this week, Brannon Kidder and Slovenia's Žan Rudolf are the designated pacesetters. Rudolf was the main pacer in Azeddine Habz‘s 3:27.49 1500m race last year in Paris, as well as Cam Myers' 3:28.00 in Paris. 

If Kidder and Rudolf can go through in about mid 1:50s through 800, and roughly 2:18 through the kilometer, they'll be on world record pace. Mackey hopes that Kidder can run to about 950, with Rudolf going to 1150 and possibly to 1200.

To put into perspective how difficult it's been to get El Guerrouj's world record, only three men have ever broken 3:45 in the mile since El Guerrouj did it: Noah Ngeny in the same race in Rome where El Guerrouj ran 3:43.13 (3:43.40); Jakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway (3:43.73), and Yared Nuguse (3:43.97 of the USA, when they duked it out at the 2023 Nike Prefontaine Classic.

Kerr's personal best in the mile is 3:45.34, set at the 2024 Pre Classic. That mark is the sixth fastest of all time.

Kerr has raced sparingly outdoors since winning the 3000 at the world indoor championships in March. He set his personal best in the 800 of 1:44.60 at the Sound Running LA Track Festival on May 23rd, then followed it up with a 1:45.46 performance at the USATF LA Grand Prix at USC on June 14th.

Here's the video:

As part of the buildup to Saturday's race, Brooks invited local recreational runners to do a one mile run around the park area surrounding Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and London Stadium Thursday night.

Central Kitsap's Mana Voss (Paul Merca photo), who was in town on vacation with his family, won the high school boys' race, winning a pair of tickets to Saturday's meet.

Voss won the Washington 3A state title in the 1600, running 4:06.55 for Central Kitsap, as well as the 800 in 1:51.09.  Last month, he was second in the 800 at the Brooks PR Invitational in Renton.

Friday, Kerr is expected to meet the media at a press conference at London Stadium promoting the meet.

NOTE: Brooks Running and the Novuna London Athletics meet contributed to this report.

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