This Saturday four of the best quarter-milers in the entire United States are going to square off in an epic 400m dash to be streamed live on MileSplit. Each day this week we are going to feature one of the athletes lining up to take down Virginia's state record. Our first athlete is Aaliyah Pyatt.
Check Out Aaliyah Pyatt's Athlete Profile
Pyatt enters the race with the fastest 400m PR in the field and as the pre-race favorite. Her personal best from 2019 is 53.60 and ranks her 6th all-time in the state of Virginia. Indoors she ranks 5th all-time in the 300m dash and 6th all-time in the 500m dash so needless to say the 400 is her specialty.
If indoors was any indication of her fitness we should certainly see some improvement in her 400 from a year ago. Indoors she improved 1.0 seconds in the 300m dash and nearly 3 seconds in the 500m dash. She also had noticeable improvements in the shorter races as well including the 55m dash. That leads us to believe she has not only improved her endurance (500) but also her foot speed as well (55/100).
Indoors her strategy was simple, not matter who she was racing she was going for the win. That meant she took the lead early and tried to hold on. It is our guess she will do just that weekend and look for a sub 25 split at the 200m mark. That would put her exactly on pace to where she wants to be.
Our estimates for her goal pace would be 12.5, 12, 13.5, and 14 to bring her home in 52.00. That puts her within a lean at the tape of breaking Britton Wilson's state record of 52.06. She was in that very race as a sophomore and ran a PR in it.
Aaliyah has a lot of big races under her belt and will be the favorite this weekend. She will need to perform to take home the win and execute her race strategy to break the record but both are very real outcomes we could see live this Saturday.