Number of 5 minute miler in US

You are mistaken. Derek Turnbull, that New Zealand sheep farmer, is the only 65 year-old who has ever run a sub-5. He ran 4:56.4 at that age. At 70, he ran 1500 meters in 5:04 for an age record -- a great performance but, obviously, nowhere near a 4:45 mile.

More to the point, the American 60+ mile record is 4:58, set thirteen years ago. Good evidence that there isn't a single 60+ American who could step on a track tomorrow and run a sub-5.

Well, it's no where close to a half, and probably not anywhere close to a quarter of all HS kids. Most high schools don't really have cross-country tryouts. You show up you run. So there are a lot of slow runners out there. Take a look at any road race and you'll see LOTS of runners who can't sniff 6:00 miles much less 5:00. I'd say a 5:00 mile is in the top 1% of ALL runners and around 10% of all high school runners. There are many more teams with no 5:00 milers than those with multi 5:00 milers.

Hey, it was just a guess. I said other people should make that judgement. I was the second-best on my team when I was a senior, and I was barely a sub-5:00 guy. But we were Division I (of three in Ohio). Our league had 13 teams and I was 27th at our XC championship meet, but the top teams had some JV kids that were faster than me. And our league champ in the mile (4:25ish) played WR/DB in the fall. So I'd say there were 40 or 50 sub-5:00 guys in the Toledo City League that year -- about 3 or 4 per school (and they were big schools by Ohio standards) but not evenly distributed. On the other hand, even the roughest most gang-infested parts of town (where it's hard to find kids that want to run distance or have safe places to train) had at least one that year.

My judgements were colored by my experiences, so I still defer to others. 10%? 5%? What do you think?

at least 80 percent of all runners can run a 5 minute mile. afterall john kerry ran sub 5 in what year was that ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

you're probably right about the 20% being off -- probably 10 or less.

is this just people living in the US or US citizens?? I go to school in the US but i am Canadian. I run 4:23. Does that count?

I don't think there are currently any sub 5 women living in SF.

Number of US guys who can break 5 at 50?

Number of US guys who can break 5 at 55?

Number of US guys who can break 5 at 60?

There's more than 200,000 in the US easily, my school alone, with a attendance of about 1300 usually had about 15-20 a year. Other schools like York can have around 30 at the least. Maybe this is just the midwest, but only 3-4 per 500 seems way to low.

Nope, not according to the National Federation. 196,428 boys last year.

data high school sub-5 milers should exist. in gym class in high school you have to do the mile run. in order to score the test, data on a sample of the entire US has been collected, so any time can be given a percentile score. i seem to remember that to get the presidential physical fitness award you had to be top 10% in all the tests, or something like that. anyway, given the percentile score of different mile times, you can assume a gaussian distribution and find the percentile of a sub-5 mile, then multiply by the US high school population. the problem is that the data might not be a normal distribution, but it is probably close. if i have some time later i will try to find the data on this and do the analysis.

Wasn't their a sheep farmer in New Zealand who run a 4:45 mile at 70.[/quote]

No, it was *his sheep* who ran that fast.

Thanks!I'll be here all week...Try the veal...Tip your waitresses...

SF Sub5 Females:

Kathryn Kreiger

Ciara Viehweg

Shannon Rowbury (away at school)

An Impala or NB Excel. member (other than KK)?

Maybe Maja Ruznic (5:09 in HS 3 yrs ago, now at Cal)

others?

according to the fitness standards i mentioned and assuming normal distribution, about 1.5% of all males age 13-17 can run sub 5:00 mile. according to the 2000 census, there are about 31.5million males age 15-19 in the US, so assume about the same number of males age 13-17. that gives in the neighborhood of 400,000-500,000 high schoolers alone capable of sub 5.

of course, i know the distribution is not actually normal because the same calculations would predict 30,000 high schoolers capable of sub 4:00.

I think USF's top girl could break 5. There was also a sub 5 girl at SF State a few years ago too.

A few more:

Sopagna Eap (Lowell, UC Davis), Lisa Lopez(McAteer, CCSF, CAL), Logan Hiroshima(Lowell, CCSF, CAL), Jenny Akana(Lowell, CAL), Katie Apprendot (SI, UCSB).

UC Santa Cruz top girl and perhaps their 2nd can break 5 in a mile. Most of the guys can on the club team.

lots of city athletes going to cal....

Kathryn Kreiger has run sub 5, but I don't think shes been in that sort of shape for a while.

Viehweg..OK I'll give you that one...I wasn't thinking HS.

Rowbury is at Duke.

I don't think there are any Impalas or Excelsior women in SF who could run sub 5 right now. Maybe one or two who live outside the city, I dunno.

curioso wrote:

j squire wrote:

There were almost 200,000 boys who ran HS XC last year. Deciding what portion of them were sub-5:00 milers can be done by other people. Maybe a half? A third? A quarter?

Not even close. Between cross country, indoor track, and outdoor track, we probably had about 30 to 40 middle distance or long distance runners in my high school.

2 of us broke 5. That's it.

Yes, but your school was weak. We had 15 or so BOYS on our XC team that DID DO IT. We had a guy who was a football player who couldn't do any other events well enough to be put in those heats, so they put him in the 1600m. He ran 4:59 and the coach said that he could get a varsity letter for it. He was probably one of ten guys who could have run it that never did.