What percentage of americans could break 6 hours in Marathon

I say 5 in 10 coulb break 6. Its not that hard.

Sub 6 hour wrote:

What percentage of americans could break 6 hours in Marathon? Assume that they are given no time to train and are awarded a 10,000 dollar bonus for finishing?

Holy crap are you kidding? NO time to train at all? First of all, assuming we're talking about ADULT Americans, only 5% of them at all can run a mile without stopping. Give them time to train and way more could, but you're talking NO training.

So...I say less than 1% could. Yes 6 hours seems easy for those of us who have run marathons, but that's 4.37 miles an hour which is a VERY brisk walk, and NO way could a ton of untrained Americans keep that pace of walking up even for 6 hours...they would HAVE to run a good portion of it, and I don't see it happening. Have you ever been to a shopping mall in any midwest state? Damn!

NotATroll wrote:

I say 5 in 10 coulb break 6. Its not that hard.

I think you are giving many americans too much credit.

I would bet the number is much lower, like less than 10%. Definitely no higher than 25% max.

Considering the average, untrained American would have trouble running a mile, we can assume that they would have to walk much of a marathon. While slow, 6 hours still works out to be 13:45/mile. That is a VERY brisk walk. So brisk that I don't think very many people could do it... or have a chance to maintain that kind of pace for 6 straight hours.

If you gave the person a small window to train (several weeks or a few months), I bet the number increases drastically, but untrained, not many could do it.

evidently was typing my reply at the same time as Flagpole. Funny we both chose the phrase "very brisk walk".

Upon further thought, I think my "lower than 10%" is way high. Lower than 3-5% is probably a very safe bet.

I think 5 out of 10 is too high. Agreed that breaking six hours is not hard, but for an untrained person it will take a very quick walking pace or some combination of walking and running. How many Americans are incapable of walking 26 miles, even if given all day to do it? How many Americans could not run one continuous mile, no matter how slow the pace?

This is a very interesting question. As the flag points out, 13:43 minute miles for six hours is not the easiest thing in the world to accomplish. I'm going to guess a quarter of people could do this (ignoring really young people and senior citizens), but the actual number would be a bit smaller due to injuries on the course. If you had said a 3 hour 1/2 marathon, Id guess closer to a third or a half of people.

Now, THIS would be a government incentive program I could get behind. Screw the TARP, Q.E.#27, first-time homebuyer credits, etc...

$10,000 to anybody that can finish under 6 hours. It would reward the people that have some tiny, remote semblance of health, and cull the herd of those posers who stretch too far beyond their capabilities to try to collect the prize.

Brilliant.

bettr wrote:

evidently was typing my reply at the same time as Flagpole. Funny we both chose the phrase "very brisk walk".

Upon further thought, I think my "lower than 10%" is way high. Lower than 3-5% is probably a very safe bet.

Great minds brother...

You would be even MORE correct if you lowered the 3-5% down to less than 1%. It's really where they would be. Sad, but true.

Nero wrote:

According to the CDC 68% of Americans over 20 are overweight or obese. Even though this would be about a 14 minute per mile pace, few of those would make it. The other 32% are the ones who would have a shot at finishing. I would assume a lot of them are pretty unhealthy or elderly. If I had to guess I would say 15% of Americans could complete your task.

I know some people that are considered overweight because of their muscle mass, but they are very fit.

nice one wrote:

Now, THIS would be a government incentive program I could get behind. Screw the TARP, Q.E.#27, first-time homebuyer credits, etc...

$10,000 to anybody that can finish under 6 hours. It would reward the people that have some tiny, remote semblance of health, and cull the herd of those posers who stretch too far beyond their capabilities to try to collect the prize.

Brilliant.

The only problem with this would be those who try do it (irregardless of finish or not) and suffer health problems from it. The cost COULD be way more than $10k to fix/pay for the injuries/issues.

A few years back, I did some research on running and found that about 10 million people did something like running. That would include any sport that involved running even for only a few steps, like softball for instance, or those who only ran once a month. Ten million is about 3% of the population. Of those, maybe 10% could keep moving for 6 hours. That's O.3%. Add a few more who're active and fit and might be able to keep moving that long... it's still less than 1%

I'd guess that the percent who could cover a mile in less than 13:43 would be less than 20%... probably more like 10%-15%.

nice one wrote:

Now, THIS would be a government incentive program I could get behind. Screw the TARP, Q.E.#27, first-time homebuyer credits, etc...

$10,000 to anybody that can finish under 6 hours. It would reward the people that have some tiny, remote semblance of health, and cull the herd of those posers who stretch too far beyond their capabilities to try to collect the prize.

Brilliant.

The stakes need to be higher. 6 hours or deportation! Send all the fatties over the wall to Mexico.

If we restrict it to healthy males age 15-45 I'd say 60-70%.

Way less than 1%. Probably somewhere closer to one in 1,000 Americans than 1 in 100. I'll go with two out of every thousand, .2%. That's probably too generous.

My wife, kids, and I could all do it, and that's all that really matters.

My guess is that it would be low, but not single digit low, especially if 10k was an award for doing it. I look around in the building I work in, about 2000 people in the full range of adult ages, and surely a quarter of us could do it.

But then again I work in a professional environment, and that does create a bias, so I'd say maybe 15% of the adult population.

fff wrote:

If we restrict it to healthy males age 15-45 I'd say 60-70%.

This is tricky, because how do you define "healthy"? Is a 300-pound guy with no health issues at all (they DO exist) healthy?

Even if you really take the most healthy, 6 hours is not going to happen for 60% of Americans...just no way.

Wolfgang Grajonca wrote:

Way less than 1%. Probably somewhere closer to one in 1,000 Americans than 1 in 100. I'll go with two out of every thousand, .2%. That's probably too generous.

About that many people ACTUALLY finished a marathon (though some were probably >6 hours) in the past year!

I'm not sure how reputable these numbers are, but there is a lot of interesting stuff here:

Okay so there are half million marathon finishers. Some of these are repeat runners. Let's say there are 300K people that ran those 500K marathons. That is your 1 in 1000. I'm willing to grant that 10 to 20 times as many people could do it though. That's still only 3-6 million or one in 25-50 Americans. Obviously that includes a lot of elderly and children. Maybe double this percentage for your 18-60 group. Call it 4-8% of the 18-60 age group.

Lotsa Fatsos/Wimps wrote:

Okay so there are half million marathon finishers. Some of these are repeat runners. Let's say there are 300K people that ran those 500K marathons. That is your 1 in 1000. I'm willing to grant that 10 to 20 times as many people could do it though. That's still only 3-6 million or one in 25-50 Americans. Obviously that includes a lot of elderly and children. Maybe double this percentage for your 18-60 group. Call it 4-8% of the 18-60 age group.

I think we are getting closer to a good guess. I'd say that your 10-20 times estimate is low, but marathons are really popular right now (participant-wise), so this is plausable.

I also think the $10K incentive will help provide motivation for someone that might DNF to grind out those final 6 miles.