Top high school milers Gary Martin and Colin Sahlman will race in the 800 meters. Why not the mile?

Archbishop Wood track phenom Gary Martin, who has run the second-fastest mile in the nation by a high schooler this season, finally will get a chance to run against the fastest miler, Colin Sahlman of Newbury Park (Calif.) High, in the Brooks PR Invitational on Wednesday night in Seattle.

Unfortunately for the fans of running nationwide who have hung on every race in which seniors Martin and Sahlman have participated, they won’t be running a mile.

Martin, whose career best of 3 minutes, 57.89 seconds came June 2 in St. Louis, was entered in the mile at Brooks and hoped to have Sahlman participate as well. But the Californian, who ran the third-fastest mile in history by a high schooler with a 3:56.24 showing May 28 at the Prefontaine Invitational, said after the race that it would be his last mile in competition this season.

Sahlman did enter the 800 at Brooks, and Martin decided to move down a distance for a chance to run against him. While he was willing to make the shift, a piece of Martin wishes that the mile duel against Sahlman and some of the nation’s other best milers would have happened.

“Obviously it would be very cool to run a mile against him because it’d be like a national championship,” Martin said Sunday in a telephone interview. “I feel like getting me, him, a couple of the other sub-four guys in a race would be a true national championship.

“But I know we’re not really going to get this, this year. I know we each have our racing schedule, so I’m not going to sweat it or worry about it too much. I think the 800 will still be equally as competitive, so I’m pretty excited to get to run against him there.”

» READ MORE: Archbishop Wood’s Gary Martin is chasing high school history

Newbury Park track and cross-country coach Sean Brosnan said Tuesday he didn’t think the idea of having Martin, Sahlman, and other high school milers compete in a race to decide an unofficial national championship was a bad one, but preparations had to have begun much earlier to make it happen.

“Let’s say you had three really good guys, or if we took the four guys that broke four minutes, our schedules are so different,” he said in a telephone interview. “This would have had to been decided months ago so that everyone could have been at their best at that meet, because right now, I don’t know their schedule.”

He said high school track fans didn’t think about Martin and Sahlman running together “until Gary ran 3:57. Once he did that, everyone wanted everything to change.” But in his opinion, “it’s too long of a season.”

In an interview with reporters following his run at the Prefontaine meet, Sahlman called Martin “phenomenal. He went 3:57 on his own, so that’s big.”

After Sahlman, whose first sub-four mile was a 3:58.81 clocking indoors last February, Martin achieved the same status with a time of 3:57.98 at the Catholic League Championships on May 14 at Cardinal O’Hara. He broke the four-minute threshold again earlier this month, going 3:57.89 at the HOKA Festival of Miles in St. Louis.

Martin said he was pleased with his St. Louis performance because of the “different experience” — the flight, the hotel room, and running the race at 10:30 p.m.

“I was hoping to run maybe closer to 3:55, 3:54, but the big thing was I was happy to run a 3:57 again and prove that the first time wasn’t a fluke,” he said. “It wasn’t a one-time thing. I’m doing it consistently now. This was different for me and I was pretty happy with the outcome, all things considered.”

Martin will be running one more mile race closer to home, competing Sunday at the New Balance Outdoor Nationals at Franklin Field, where he ran 4:01.04 on April 28 at the Penn Relays.

Martin’s personal best time in the 800 is 1:49.68, which he ran at the John Heins Invitational last April at Upper Moreland. He likes the fact that not only will he be well-rested, not having raced in nearly two weeks, but also that it’s the only race in which he’ll be competing.

“Every 800 I’ve run, it’s been my second, third or fourth race of the day, so I’m coming off tired legs a little bit and I haven’t been fresh,” he said. “So I’m pretty excited to run one where, instead of my last race being an hour ago, it’s going to be my [first] race since 14 days ago. I’m going to have more in the legs hopefully.”

Martin, who will enroll later this summer at Virginia, said he definitely has felt the grind of running so much this season, but he feels he has handled everything well.

“I’ve obviously had a lot going on with all of the attention for the mile and stuff, so it’s been fun,” he said. “It’s been a lot managing that with training, but I’ve done a pretty good job with just staying focused and staying consistent with my workouts and such.”

He is looking forward to Wednesday’s race. By that time, he hopes to have introduced himself to Sahlman, a Northern Arizona signee. The two runners have communicated briefly online, congratulating each other.

And while one race does not a rivalry make, Martin knows that competing against Sahlman will bring out the best in him.

“Whenever you’re one of the top guys in the country and there’s other top guys up there with you, you want to race them because they’re going to push you to be your best,” he said. “So if you get in a race with them and you’re competitive with them, it’s going to make you do your best.

“You can’t fixate on it and make it into this thing where it’s me versus him and that’s it. But if you want to be the best, I think you need to race against the best. So I think there’s always going to be some form of a rivalry there. It’s in the sense of mutual respect and recognizing how great each other is.”