4:11 mile to the lay person = fast; to you all it is a chuckle

In HS after PE I had a classmate ask me my 1500m time, I told them 3:59 and then they asked about the world record, I told them it’s 3:26 and they were like « omg you’re so close with some years of training you can get it » I’m not even kidding.

My PR is also 4:11 from 20 years ago. As years pass I'm more and more embarrassed by how slow it is, despite how hard I had to work to run it. However, just last week someone asked me what my best mile was, I told them, and they were like "OMG, a 4 minute mile is so fast!!!"

Normies don't know that 11 seconds is an eternity. I could have said 4:31 and he would have said the same thing.

4:11 in high school will get you recruited to all but 2 or 3 universities in the US (NAU, Stanford, and Oregon; though a sub-9 2 mile and/or sub 14:10 5k might work even if you run "only" 4:12.)

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It is, in fact, very fast. That's like saying a guy who hits league average in MLB isn't very good - he is actually an elite athlete, likely the best baseball player most of us would ever meet in person. If you move to the elite level of any sport, then sure, an achievement equivalent to a 4:11 mile isn't going to move the needle, but for anyone but those people and people in the 'league average' range, it's an unattainable outcome.

No, a 4:11 minute mile is nothing like making the mlb. It's not close. It is faster than most tho.

Since 1954, 1,744 people have run sub-4.

Since 1954, roughly 11,000 people have made MLB debuts (estimated using the graph on this page)

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In more than 150 years of MLB, there have been fewer than 20,000 players. Jordan Shusterman is counting down to Mr. 20,000.

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I don't know how to track down how many people have run PRs between 4:00 and 4:11. But if it's around 6x the number of people that have run sub-4, which feels kind of reasonable, then it's actually an appropriate comparison. Perhaps the numbers are most similar around 4:05 or 4:06 instead. But "not close" is not quite true, imo.

Okay but you have to find a way to factor in how many people tried to do each. How many kids are playing some form of baseball in junior high and high school compared to how many are running some sort of middle distance races? Baseball is drawing from a much, much bigger pool.

There are many colleges (low D1, D2, D3) where a 4:11 mile would even be the school record. I ran at a decent D2 (our dmr made it to nationals a few times) and I broke my schools mile record by running like 4:12. I look at a lot of colleges all time mile list and if you take out power 5 schools a 4:11 mile is going to get you on that list, maybe even break the record.

I will add a caveat to this statement though. With a mile time like that you could be a huge fish in a small pond or just a nobody on a power 5 school (SEC, Pac12). I won a ton of races in college with my mile pr, and broke some school records, I have a friend with a faster but similar mile pr to me, but ran at an SEC school, he got to travel to all the meets, and would always run the conference meet, but never really got the recognition he could’ve at a different school since everyone at his school was fast and he ran with sub 4 guys.

Not so sure I agree. US HS cross country rosters tend to be pretty big, and comparable or larger than baseball rosters at many schools. Now sure, not every XC kid does the mile in track, but a pretty good proportion of them do; especially those who are good enough at XC to one day have a crack at a 4:0X or 4:1X mile.

When you go down in age groups below high school, sure there are many more baseball players than runners. But baseball requires refinement of skills over much longer periods of time, while runners can focus on running relatively later in life, perhaps after playing sports like soccer etc. prior, and still become quite successful at it.

When you expand beyond America, far fewer kids play baseball outside of Latin America and Japan, while many kids still do track. For these reasons I think the talent pool is somewhat similar.

I ran on a D1 team that was top 10 NCAA XC. our school record indoor was about 4:05, 3:40 1500m outdoor. Maybe we were more of a 5k/10k program, but 4:11 was certainly in our top 5. This was early 90s so times have gotten a bit faster, especially with new shoes. Never the less, 4:11 is very good.

2010 NCAA D1 ranking, 500th 1500 is about 3:54 (4:11 mile).

2022 NCAA D1 ranking, 500th 1500 is about 3:50 (4:07 mile).

It translates to about a 1:07-1:08 Half. With that you’d come in about 20th in the 25K runner Brooklyn Half.

I think more importantly is that baseball is an American sport. Throw in some Caribbean countries and a smattering of Mexico and Latin American players. There aren't any Europeans, Africans, Australians, east Asians besides Japan who play high level baseball.

Conversely there are milers in other parts of the world besides here. As a result (and if you take out the people from other countries who live here now) there are less than 700 Americans who have run a 4 minute mile since the first one in 1958.

That whole comparison is kind of poor though simply because getting to the major leagues is subjective, circumstantial and sometimes political. Running a four minute mile isn't any of those things.