"Everyone in my unit used to run 7 miles at 6 minute pace"

wddxx wrote:

Third, 7 miles at 6 minute pace is hardly exceptioal. Anyone remotely athletic should be able to do that after a period of training. Think about it, there are people running 26 miles nonstop at 4:45 pace.

What percentage of the population is remotely athletic?

Maybe he said sixes even if that meant 6:59s.

Also calling a girl running 18 mid for CC 5k kinda shows some disconnect to running

The standard branches have been using automation, robots, and drones for nearly 20 years. Today only Marines have such extreme (for non-elite runner) requirements. I mean even Pop Warner, HS, NCAA and NFL football is scaling back direct head shots due to brain damage while the Marines keep beating the crap, choking, and torturing each other even the seniors sergeant jar heads.

Actually a mid 18 5k might get a high school girl into Footlocker.

http://footlockercc.com/2011/results/2011championshipgirls.pdf

A mid-18 is enough win, or place in the top three women in a lot of large-scale road races with thousands of people.

Oh, yes. Anybody can just train themselves to 4:45/mi for a marathon. And any reasonably fit person can run multiple 6:00 miles.

Come back to reality. 95% of the population of the world can't run ONE 6:00 mile. Even among well trained runners, multiple 6:00 miles is not that common. Look at the race results of any local 10k. What percentage of people are under 37min?

Military people often say stuff like this. They may even believe it, but it is simply not true. And of course there is no way to confirm unless they raced (and that is how they want it).

Many runners seem to have a serious inferiority complex. They think "If I can do it, anybody can." This is flawed thinking. Runners get serious because they have early results that show they have an aptitude. Those without the aptitude usually stop, but you assume that they have the same as you but just stopped because they were lazy or lacked interest or drive. Reality is the serious runner is more talented and anybody could not do what he/she does. Race results confirm this.

Blowing.Rock Master wrote:

wddxx, are you trying to sound like a moron on purpose? There's probably 100 guys who could have lapped Dibaba when she ran her 5,000m world record. Does that mean she's not really that good?

No, YOU sound like a moron.

A girl running 18min is ok, but it is not pretty good. She's almost half a mile behind the average top-ranked high school girl.

What you said doesnt make any sense because comparing guys to girls is a one way comparison. This is because guys are faster than girls. You can compare a guy to a girl. But you can't compare a girl to a guy (like you did in the quote). This is why the OP using his daughter's capabilities to limit the likelihood of a man's capabilities is misguided. But maybe I misread it and it's a woman military person instead of a man.

I agree. There's no need to demand physical exertion in combat any longer. Soldiers are simply Nintendo commandos these days due to 10 Trillion Dollars in Defence Electronics expeditures over the past 20 years. Soldiers ride in Lexus air-conditioned comfort in APC, Stealth Helos, C141s, tanks, etc.

95% of the population can't run multiple 6:00 miles because they aren't trying to. YOU need to come back to reality. And if they can't, then they certainly aren't well trained then, are they?

Most road race people run these races to finish. They don't care about the time.

It's not an inferiority complex. It's you guys who think that you're so special and that 95% of the population couldn't keep up with your jogging place for even a mile if they tried. That is ridiculous and elitist.

tangently I add: during the 1960s the Army PT Test included the one mile run (combat boots) a score of the maximum 100 points was given to 6 minutes or below.

I'm a reservist and when I was doing some training this summer we would do a few company and battalion runs. Usually we would end up doing about 4 or so miles at 9ish min pace but people would always talk about how we just did 6 miles at something faster than that. It really does come down to people not coming from a running background.

wddxx wrote:

No, YOU sound like a moron.

A girl running 18min is ok, but it is not pretty good. She's almost half a mile behind the average top-ranked high school girl.

Lets pretend that "nearly half a mile" is 2 minutes. (I always try to close my last 880y of a 5k in about 2 minutes and I'm male...) 2 minutes from this girls 18:30 is 16:30.

Now take all the high schools with a girls XC team and average all their top runners.

I conclude you don't know as much about running as you think you do.

I missed where 'pretty good' meant 'among the elite in the activity I partake in'. Where I come from, if you get a 94 on a test, it is pretty good. A 29 on the ACT would be considered 'pretty good'. Sure, a fair amount of people did a lot better at those things, but you were substantially above average.

daf wrote:

wddxx wrote:

No, YOU sound like a moron.

A girl running 18min is ok, but it is not pretty good. She's almost half a mile behind the average top-ranked high school girl.

Lets pretend that "nearly half a mile" is 2 minutes. (I always try to close my last 880y of a 5k in about 2 minutes and I'm male...) 2 minutes from this girls 18:30 is 16:30.

Now take all the high schools with a girls XC team and average all their top runners.

I conclude you don't know as much about running as you think you do.

I conclude that you don't know what you're talking about. The top girl this year so far has run about 16:00 so far. It's been about the same for the previous years (Cuffe, Hasay, etc).

Being half a mile behind is not pretty good to me. It is ok. Also, how good someone is shouldn't be dependent on where they are ranked. Otherwise, in a down year, a 20:00 5k could be considered pretty good. I'm fairly certain that you don't think 20:00 is pretty good. My idea of pretty good is how close they are to the record or to that year's sole best runner.

I worked with a guy who was a marine. He thought he was a badass. He could have killed me in a fight, no doubt, but he was not a runner.

Anyway, he claimed his whole unit used to do runs at 6 minute pace in formation "at an arm's length."

Of course, this jackass was also in disbelief when I made him aware of the fact that the mile world record was, in fact, under four minutes. So, he may have been a little out of touch with running times.

Could you please define the times for high school girls/boys, college men/women, and post-collegiate men/women that are to be considered "okay" and "pretty good". If you could include multiple distances as well that would be great.

The OP was not comparing the soldiers to the high school girl. The soldier was comparing his ability to run 6 minute pace for 7 miles to the high school girl. The OP simply identified that 6 minute pace was most likely not possible for this individual. I would guess the soldier's unit ran an unmeasured course in about 40 minutes and assumed they went 7 miles. When most likely they covered closer to 5 miles.

Just sayin but the high-school girls record for an 800 is 1:57.41 so a girl would most certainly never close a 5k like that, probably more around a 2:30

Like seriously... wrote:

Just sayin but the high-school girls record for an 800 is 1:57.41 so a girl would most certainly never close a 5k like that, probably more around a 2:30

2:30 is about half a mile when on the order of a 16:00 xc 5k (or faster on the track). And 2:30 is the difference between 16:00 and 18:30. The approximation seems within reason to me.

wddxx wrote:

I conclude that you don't know what you're talking about. The top girl this year so far has run about 16:00 so far. It's been about the same for the previous years (Cuffe, Hasay, etc).

In that elite race you speak of where Baxter ran 16:00 she won by 1 min 18 sec. The best time in the country is not a good standard for "pretty good" or "okay". I am guessing the girl who finished 10th (2 min behind) in this race is considered "pretty good" in California. Also that race was 3 miles. So you need to add roughly 40 seconds. With this conversion and 18:30 5k runner would of finished 7th. A "pretty good" result.

I conclude that you don't know what you're talking about. The top girl this year so far has run about 16:00 so far. It's been about the same for the previous years (Cuffe, Hasay, etc).

Being half a mile behind is not pretty good to me. It is ok. Also, how good someone is shouldn't be dependent on where they are ranked. Otherwise, in a down year, a 20:00 5k could be considered pretty good. I'm fairly certain that you don't think 20:00 is pretty good. My idea of pretty good is how close they are to the record or to that year's sole best runner.[/quote]

Seriously dude? Lets extend this argument a little further just so we can all completely understand your point of view. So, I quickly brought up the results to the 2011 NCAA DI XC Champs. I went down through the results and found the woman who finished "nearly a half a mile" behind the winner of the race, finishing in 181st place out of 254. She was the number 6 runner for the 22nd best female DI team last year. Her PR in the 5k is 16:58 and 10k is 34:47. Just being at DI nats puts her above most NCAA DI, DII, and DIII runners. Add to that her times in the 5k and 10k on the track and she is better than a very high percentage of NCAA runners. This doesn't even account for all the people that have tried, but are not good enough to make an NCAA team, and the other college divisions.

This caliber runner is really just "ok" in your mind? Not even "pretty good"?