How fast could the average American run 400m on the track?

I would say 90-100 seconds would be the average.

I was a 400m guy in college. I wasn't the best on the team or anything, but I ran under 50. So I have decent genetics for running a quick quarter. Anyways, I'm in my 30s now and I can't break 70 unless I train specifically for it. No way the average adult male can do it without training.

Excellent question. I have worked with kids in the past..say 12-18. Perhaps 20% of them can run a 400 meter lap without stopping and walking. I would say that half of the 80% who walk misjudge the distance and thus did not pace themselves correctly however if you take that into consideration i would not be to enthused about their performance.

But 70 seconds is good time. I I would guess that an 80+ 400 meter would be in the range of random 20-30 year olds. I was at indoor facility once and saw a woman pass out while doing a training run for New York EMT. She was on pace for a 8 minute mile.

I watched literally the entire class struggle to achieve a 7:30 mile. It was astonishing. But I ran 4:11 so i am perhaps a bit arrogant?

I would be amazed if 1/4 of your sample size could run under 2 minutes. I'd be more amazed if 1/2 could run for the entire lap.

Look at it this way, a 70 sec quarter is sub 5:00 pace, by a lot. Many runners (high school and college) use 70 as the basis for track workouts. You are delusional if you believe that random Americans can even do that, hell I would say that 90 is out of the picture as well (considering that is about 6:00 pace). I would push it closer to 2:00 mins for a quarter - and they would be happy about that.

About 5 of my friends ran a 200m race back in college. They were in their early 20s of course. None of them were great athletes, but also not fat by any means. One ran 35, and the rest between 38-43. One or two also fell at the finish because they were tired. Somewhere between 1:40-1:50 would be my guess.

I also remember my 30 something coach, who ran about 4 times a week, struggling to run a 75.

70 seconds as an average is amazingly delusional. I'd guess about 10% tops could handle that. I'd guess 50% might be in the 1:30 to 2:00 range. There would be a least 20%+ that would struggle to finish, bonk out and be in the 2:00-3:00 range, if that. Overall average, over 2:00.

tu45u wrote:

orbitboy wrote:

There is no way, literally NO WAY the average American could run an entire lap on a 400 meter track without stopping to walk along the way.

If you don't believe me, just ask them. Ask 20 people you know, and half of them will say, "Shoot, I couldn't run halfway to the end of the street if I had to..."

This. I'd say the median time for 1000 randomly-selected American males in their 20s would be between two and three minutes--and closer to the latter.

This is my story and I'm sticking to it.

Remember, the median time is the one exactly in the middle of the group: half of the others are faster, half slower. And remember that the average American guy in his 20s is about 5-10 and 185+, which means a BMI close to 27 (well into the "overweight" range). And that's not a muscular weight, for most.

LRCers' estimates are probably skewed by their a) being runners, and not understanding how difficult even a 2:00 400 is for most nonrunners; and b) attending or having attended a four-year college, which about half of American men in their 20s don't/haven't done, and so not grasping how unfit most Americans are. (On average, the guys who don't go to college are in even worse shape than the guys who do.)

If anything, I erred by listing two minutes as even a possibility for the median time. Well over half of a random sample wouldn't be able to run around the entire track, at any speed.

2 minutes

This would be a good experiment to use in an advertisement to show that America sucks vs. Other countries with health.

30 years ago, the answer would probably be about 1:20-1:25.

Now? More like 1:50-2:10. Very few would be under 1:30 (less than 5%).

I agree. Huge difference between a) taking someone off of the street and having them run 400m, and b) taking someone off the street, training them for a few weeks, and having them run 400m.Right off of the street with no controlling for obesity or health issues? I'd say they'd average 2:45, but with a HUGE range.Does "The Biggest Loser" do a 400m time trial? That might be telling.I'd put the average American female 20-30 at about 4:00 -- I'm possibly being generous. I remember training at a local college track, and the female varsity basketball team come out to do 200m repeats. They were DYING out there, and hitting about the 50 second range for an ALL OUT 200m. And those are trained (non-running) athletes.

If the "average American" is the mom who is trying to get Running with the Buffalos banned from her son's middle-school library, which would be faster: her time moving herself around the track under her own power, or one of us pushing her around the track in a wheelbarrow?

Randomnessisgood wrote:

If you picked 1000 random American males between the ages of 20 and 30, off the street, and threw them onto a track, what would the average time be? Around 70 seconds?

You runners are really funny. Do you ever associate with non-runners? Most seemingly thin and fit people can't run a 400 in 70 seconds...no freakin' way. Several of you are actually seriously considering 70 seconds for randomly-picked males off the street. Even in that younger range of 20-30, no freaking WAY could the average of them be 70 seconds.

Knowing that 90 seconds is a 6 minute per mile pace or exactly 10 miles per hour, if you set a treadmill at 10 MPH and asked them to run a quarter mile, the vast majority could not do it.

Someone said closer to 2 minutes or 120 seconds as the average. I think that's about right...anything else is too fast.

I run a private, outdoor group fitness enterprise where I motivate close to 100 average people a day to move and become healthier. I can tell you that the average would be considerably higher then most runners think, considering that the average person could not jog that distance non stop, let alone "run" it.I would be leaning closer to the 3 minute range for an average.

Randomnessisgood wrote:

If you picked 1000 random American males between the ages of 20 and 30, off the street, and threw them onto a track, what would the average time be? Around 70 seconds?

If you make the very generous assumption that they can run a 27 Min 5K....then the trusty McMillan calculator say 96 seconds is the equivalent. I think this is very generous for the average American fatass.

I was a DI athlete in college that qualified for NCAA's in 400 hurdles and 4x400. A friend of mine, that played zero sports in high school, asked how close I think he could run to me in a 400m. I said not even close to :15 He thought this was absurd.

Our bet:

It started with him breaking :60 but I got even more lenient and allowed :62. My friend was easily a little heavier then the average american in his 20's. Probably around 190-195 lbs. At age 23 and with 3 weeks of "training", he ran a :66.

He has 2 more tries, but we are now in our 30's and he is only getting bigger.

My guess is the average American between 20-30 would run between :70-:75

About three minutes.

With no training, the average 20-30 year old male could run about 1:45.

I did it in 90!

The first time I ever timed it, though. Now I do it in 55.