Josh Kerr Has His Eyes on His Next World Record. It Will Be Even Harder to Break

Josh Kerr barely sat still with the mile world record before his mind moved to the 1500.After running 3:42.66 at the London Diamond League on Saturday and taking down Hicham El Guerrouj’s 27-year-old mile mark, Kerr wrote in a first-person Telegraph column that he celebrated with one beer, slept very little, and then got up for a 5 a.m. run. By then, another record was already in his head.“I was soon thinking about a certain 1500-meter world record that has stood since 1998, one year longer than the mile,” Kerr wrote.El Guerrouj’s 3:26.00 remains the mark to catch, and Kerr isn’t exactly coming from nowhere. Kerr split 3:27.70 through 1500 meters en route to his mile world record on Saturday, which is the seventh-fastest time in history, according to World Athletics.His wife, Larimar, was apparently not ready to move on quite as quickly. Kerr wrote that when he told her, “It’s on,” she replied, “Can you just give us 12 hours before you set another goal?”Kerr didn’t need 12 hours.“I could, but the iron’s hot,” he wrote.The 1500-meter world record would be a brutal follow-up act. World Athletics scoring tables list El Guerrouj’s 3:26.00 at 1,302 points. Kerr’s new mile world record is listed at 1,298 points, while El Guerrouj’s old mile record was worth 1,292. By that measure, the 1500-meter mark is still the slightly bigger target.Kerr isn’t pretending the attempt is already locked in. In the Telegraph, he wrote that no decision has been made and that “things would have to be put in place with the right 1500m race.” Still, he added, “I do think that it is in the legs.”The immediate calendar gives Kerr something else first: the Commonwealth Games in Scotland. After that, he said, he and his team will decide what comes next.His coach, Danny Mackey, doesn’t appear to be shutting down the ambition. Kerr wrote that Mackey sees another record chase as realistic, though the coach also gave him permission to choose something far less painful, understanding if Kerr wanted to take a proper vacation instead.That doesn’t sound like Kerr’s preferred ending, though, as he wrote 3:25 for 1500 meters “could be on the cards this season, most likely in one of the remaining Diamond League races.” Kerr’s own words make it clear where his head is. One El Guerrouj record is finally gone, and he’s already talking about the next one.Sean Abrams was the Senior Editor, Growth and Engagement at Men’s Health. He’s a former hip hop dancer who likes long walks on the beach and large glasses of tequila. You can find his previous work at Maxim, Elite Daily, and AskMen.