Any healthy American boy can break 30 minutes for a 5 mile race...

With proper training. i would agree with that.

leshawn merritt is a healthy american dude...no way he runs 5 consecutive miles in less than six minutes without stopping.

With the training and patience, yeah.

Not by the normal definition of healthy. For the vast majority of the population this would require a lot of training. So you would need a lofty definition of healthy to say this statement was true.

I see where your coach is coming from, and sure, sub 30 8k guys are a dime a dozen in college, but its nothing to sneeze at. In reality it takes a well trained special type of person to run a sub 30 5 mile. I've known many people on my college team (D3) who were healthy and trained as hard as anyone else and just weren't made to break 30.

I'd change your coach's statement to be any healthy American boy can break 6 in the mile. Thats much more realistic.

Sounds like your coach is an LRC troll.

runallout (former terrier) wrote:

True or False? Discuss.

My former college coach used to say this all the time. Bearing in mind, I was one of only 3 members of our team that could do so. Therefore, is this a true statement, or an understatement of the difficulty involved?

If by "healthy" you mean just free of disease or birth defects that would prevent someone from doing so, then I say NO FREAKIN' WAY!!!

30 minutes for 5 miles (or 8,000 meters which is a little less than 5 miles) is not a difficult task for most college runners or anyone who has had any experience with running, BUT averaging 6 minute miles for 5 miles is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE for the vast majority of healthy college-aged men, regardless of how much training they put in. There was a guy on my college CC team who ran 4:19 for the indoor mile in indoor track season, but he barely broke 30:00 in cross country.

Some will say that if you just train you can do it...that's BS and arrogant to say so. The reason it is arrogant is that it puts too much emphasis on your training to have been able to do it. You are giving YOUR EFFORTS too much credence and NOT enough toward your inherent talents. Takes at least enough talent to be able to break 30 that less than 5% could do it. I bet even less than that. My very first CC race in college was run in 27:11. How did I do that in my first every race? Training? NOPE. TALENT! Gotta have it to do it.

Flagpole wrote:

Some will say that if you just train you can do it...that's BS and arrogant to say so.

Even if we are to assume that anyone could do it with training, that is not the statement that the coach made. Had he said that any healthy American boy can break 30 in the 5 mile with training, the claim would be a little bit less absurd, but that isn't the claim being made.

I think what spawned his comment was that we had a 1:52 800-meter guy on the team that could not break 30 minutes and every time my coach would say this it would tick him off to no end.

Absolutely false. There are a lot of slow people in the world. You can be young and healthy and have no ability to run at all - I've seen it.

I'm pretty sure that the statement is untrue, although I would say at least half could with proper training & motivation. I was low varsity / high JV on our cross country team, and I ran under 30 during a track 10K time trial.

This is actually true, after 2 years of post-graduation sitting on my butt and gaining weight, I entered a local 8K and registered a blazing 31:30 performance. (I was 30 pounds over my racing weight at this point)

At that time, I was considered "obese" for my height based on some American medical association release.

2 months later I lost half of the extra weight (and dropped into the "healthy" zone for my height) and broke 30 minutes in a tempo run.

I guess it depends on how you took the coach's statement. By saying "Any healthy American boy can break 30 minutes for a 5-mile race" I interpreted it as:

"Americans kids have plenty of free time to pursue hobbies, like running. Assuming the kid is healthy, meaning there is no medical reason to prevent them from running regularly, there's no reason they can't do a 5-miler in 30 minutes. I'm not saying it doesn't take training; it does, and depending on the person, that may be a lot or a little. It may take 3 months, or 3 years, but talent is not a big factor. Sure, not every healthy kid can do a 3:45 mile; that takes a rare combination of talent and training. But I just don't think a 30:00 8K takes more talent than any healthy male individual has."

Why don't you e-mail that to your old coach and ask him if that's what he meant to say, but didn't think he had to give a lecture to make his point clear.

Flagpole wrote:

There was a guy on my college CC team who ran 4:19 for the indoor mile in indoor track season, but he barely broke 30:00 in cross country.

i LOVE the examples people use to prove their points on this site.

obviously, if you can run a 4:19, there is absolutely zero chance you could not run 5 miles in under 30 minutes (on a cc course or not) with very minimal effort.

...

anyway, there's no way every healthy boy could break 30. you have to warp the meaning of healthy to say that they could.

No chance. I'm in decent shape and I run about 30-40 miles per week and it would take a supreme effort from me to break 6:00 in the mile. I could believe that any guy who tries out for track could be able to do it, but the people who try out for track are not a typical cross section of American youth (just as the folks who join Math Club are not representative of what the average American could score on their SAT).

As a high school coach, there are a decent percentage (5% - 10%)of kids that come out that have no chance of breaking 30 mins for 5 miles. For many of them it is because from a biomechanical perspective they could never get sufficient training in to run that fast - they would get injured long before then.

ha.ha. wrote:

Flagpole wrote:

There was a guy on my college CC team who ran 4:19 for the indoor mile in indoor track season, but he barely broke 30:00 in cross country.

i LOVE the examples people use to prove their points on this site.

obviously, if you can run a 4:19, there is absolutely zero chance you could not run 5 miles in under 30 minutes (on a cc course or not) with very minimal effort.

...

anyway, there's no way every healthy boy could break 30. you have to warp the meaning of healthy to say that they could.

That comment wasn't to say that a 4:19 guy can't break 30, but to say that not even all halfway decent milers can break 30. Hell, I've never run 4:19 for the mile, and I've run 25:15 for 8,000 meters.

30 minutes is a decent task that not even close to everyone could accomplish.

I remember playing football and the coach would say after very grueling drills, "what are you boys, a bunch of panty waists?!"

It was intended to say we weren't working that hard and should easily be able to expect more of ourselves. It wasn't true, but it kept the complaining down.

I'm betting you are reading too much into the statement. "come on guys, don't complain/whine/cry/piss and moan over the work! After all, even a decently trained boy can do better than you. Suck it up!". It's not true, just don't be a pussy. Pretty straight forward I bet.

I just ran my first 5 mile EVER today and i did it in 30:25. I've NEVER run competitively in my life, and I'm NOT in great shape. If i can get that close on my first try EVER, then I can't imagine why anybody would struggle with this.