Of the 380,000 people in the US last year that finished a marathon only 6300 of them or 1.5% broke 3 hours.
Of the 380,000 people in the US last year that finished a marathon only 6300 of them or 1.5% broke 3 hours.
I think that across the entire country, 2-3 HS kids per school can break 5, probably closer to 2. Most schools aren't in running hotbeds. My brother says there is only one kid in his entire (large but rural) county who can do it.
I would guess that about 150,000 people in the country can do it at any given point.
Runningart2004 wrote:
I remember high school in 1996. NO school in my conference had 5 guys under 5:00. I also remember college. 30? You think every college has a 30 man XC roster?
You can't count soccer players and football studs. If they haven't done it, they haven't done it.
Alan
You don't need 30 people on the roster to have 30 people at the school who can break 5:00. I know several guys who have run 4:20-4:30's AT MY SCHOOL who haven't run on our school team, and I'm sure there are dozens of others in sub-5:00 territory. There are also a few girls on the team who can do it. My brother didn't run for over a year, just played pickup sports and lifted a little, stepped out one day and ran 4:54 weighing close to 190, it means nothing. Oh guess what, he never ran competitively just played soccer.
I was the only kid at my school of about 2300 last year to break 5 in the mile. We usually have about 1-2 per year go sub 5.
I'd think even fewer. In a recent popular road mile race, the Fifth Avenue Mile here in New York City, only 78 out of 3000 runners were 5 flat or better. Add Fam and a few of the local elites that had their own race and we're looking at 100 total sub 5s.
So in a city of 8 million people there were about 100 sub 5 minute milers showed up that day.
I did some rough calculations and in the words of Frank Abingale Jr. in Catch me if you can; I concur.
In my town where I grew up of 100,000 there was maybe 50 sub 5 min milers, 25 or so you knew about and guessing 25 or more in other areas; fit soccer players etc. This rate of .05% applied to 300 million yields 150,000. As far as masters, I would guess closer to maybe 1,000 could break 5min.
If you're talking college maybe...we had a few guys walking around campus that ran 4:30 or so in the frat olympics (although they did run much faster in high school). In high school no way... you might have one or two sub 5 guys on the soccer or basketball team at best.
On a different note...
A kid I used to coach in JO T&F, who also played baseball, claimed that all pro baseball players had to run 5 min. or better mile times.
I got a good laugh out of that. My guess is that If each pro baseball team had one who was even close (+/- 5.10), they would be lucky.
No way is it 5, it's probably less than 1 on an ave. for all the US. For LR posters, sub 5 is training pace, however, having watched my kids run HS XC and Track, there is no way there are that many people running sub 5 miles. As a collegiate and post-collegiate runner, I took a sub-5 mle for granted, wait till you get to be 40+ and then you'll have a lot more respect for a sub-5 mile.
I would say that 5 is a good average for high schools around the nation. I went to a large high school (3300 kids) and we were by no means a running school and we had 8 kids sub 5 (5 of those kids were only 4:55 +, but sub 5 nonetheless). For a school known for it's running there could be as many as 15-20 high schoolers to break 5, where as you could have high schools that have nobody break 5.
As for Universities, I go to a very large one (45,000 +) and we have a 9 man roster on our XC team (obviously all sub 5), but there are many students in the regular student body that are capable of sub 5....I would be as bold to say that 30 might be a little soft (after all 30/45,000 is only 0.067%).
I will agree that the number of master's runners is too high because, as you get older...you lose much of your fast twitch fibers (still needed in the mile) a 16:30 for a masters runner, probably doesn't equal sub 5 whereas a 16:30 guy who is in their 20's should break 5 pretty handily.
That being said I pretty much agree with the original poster with approximately 500,000 people on any given day to run sub 5.
sebcoe59 wrote:
No way is it 5, it's probably less than 1 on an ave. for all the US. For LR posters, sub 5 is training pace, however, having watched my kids run HS XC and Track, there is no way there are that many people running sub 5 miles. As a collegiate and post-collegiate runner, I took a sub-5 mle for granted, wait till you get to be 40+ and then you'll have a lot more respect for a sub-5 mile.
this is true. 5 sub 5 per highschool on average is way too high. I know many highschools that have 0 kids that can break 5
Coming from california in the southern section i was going to say that 5 was too few my school had 12 last year on a down year, now som of them are in the 4:55-4:58 range but they still count.
Coming from a top-3 ranked distance hs in South Carolina (yes, joke away), we have 5 guys who could sub-5 on any given day. To be generous, maybe 5 other schools could say the same or better. 6 schools in an entire state isn't exactly an "average" crowd. Before the flames begin, I acknowledge that SC is a shit running state, but it's important for the people with the "good running state" perspective to consider that their states, much like SC, aren't necessarily representative of the national average. I think 1-2 would be a pretty good estimate.
And does anyone else think assuming a fit soccer player could go sub-5 is a bit preposterous? Maybe with a bit of running-specific training, sure, but you'd have to be a pretty damned fit soccer player to step on the track without training for it and go sub-5
You go to a top California high school and I am sure you can find 10 sub five minute milers in the student body. Ryan Halls high school comes to mind here.
There are some school with only a few sub 5 minute milers, but if you include all the large county schools in the nation the figure of five 5 minute miler per school sounds more accurate.
Any school with only 2 five minute milers would get clobbered in cross country. Actually, come to think of it they wouldn't even have a cross country program.
Every High School I been to has had at least one guy on the cusp of 4:30 for the mile.
If 1 out 300 people can run a five minute mile than it stands to reason that there are 1 million five minute milers in America.
It is a lot harder for girls to run sub 5 minute miles than guys, too.
My old high school of 250 has 6 guys under 5. When I went there, it was always 1-2.
I am going to say there are probably about 5000 40+ year olds that can run 5 minutes for the in the US. I am sure many 1500 meter runners that were at the Olympic trials from 1976 to 88 can still run a 5 minute mile. It is not uncommon to have these types of athlete running a 5 minute mile at 50.
My h.s. had only 11 guys break five min. mile in the last 25 yrs. With the avg. student body at approx. 1,000. We must also aknowledge that virtually all women in the nation are excluded which consists of over half the population in the US. Maybe only a couple of thousand women can match this feat. Then there is guys who are under the age of 13, which also makes up nearly another 15 percent of the pop. and over 60 another 5 percent. That leaves only 25 percent of the pop. that is at the optimal age and gender. Then we must ask how many people actual run out of this 25% not many. I would guess ultimately that only 1 out of 10,000 people can break the 5 min. mile, which leaves 30,000 Americans to be capable of this feat. By the standard of having an avg. of 5 people in a h.s. to achieve it then you would be looking at 125,000 alone in h.s. (in the avg. state would be 2500 h.s. students). Then there would have to be at least just as many in college, and just as many outside of college and h.s. that would mean there would have to be nearly 400,000 by this standard or aprox. 12 times higher than my prediction.
My h.s. had only 11 guys break five min. mile in the last 25 yrs. With the avg. student body at approx. 1,000. We must also aknowledge that virtually all women in the nation are excluded which consists of over half the population in the US. Maybe only a couple of thousand women can match this feat. Then there is guys who are under the age of 13, which also makes up nearly another 15 percent of the pop. and over 60 another 5 percent. That leaves only 25 percent of the pop. that is at the optimal age and gender. Then we must ask how many people actual run out of this 25% not many. I would guess ultimately that only 1 out of 10,000 people can break the 5 min. mile, which leaves 30,000 Americans to be capable of this feat. By the standard of having an avg. of 5 people in a h.s. to achieve it then you would be looking at 125,000 alone in h.s. (in the avg. state would be 2500 h.s. students). Then there would have to be at least just as many in college, and just as many outside of college and h.s. that would mean there would have to be nearly 400,000 by this standard or aprox. 12 times higher than my prediction.
No way there is on avg. 5 per h.s.. This would mean that there would be 125,000 h.s. runners who could match this feat and on avg. 2500 per state. With that many there would be a thousand h.s. runners in each state under 4:30 when in fact even in the most competitive states for distance running can only produce a few hundred runners under 4:45 which Im guessing in the ball park of a 1,000 under 5. Also if there was 125,000 h.s. kids who could match this feat that would mean a million people total could do it, no way! Im going to have to guess about 1 in 5,000 people in America can reach this standard which would make around 50,000 people in the nation.
Geez, I'm running in the wrong place I guess cause last spring I was 5th on my track team with a 4:55 and didn't even make the top 10 list in the local paper for the mile...If all of you guys have 1 or 2 people per county that can run under 5 tell me where you live so I can move and finally get to run in some invites!!!