Mile conversion between guys n\' girls?

You also have to remember that as you go up in distance men and women become more equal. In other words, if you look at a marathon, the best woman is beating some pretty decent men. Or a girl who runs a 5 minute mile may run 2:15 for a half, but a guy who runs a 5 minute mile may run 2:05. I think I read somewhere that women will eventually be better than men in endurance racing, I dont know what the distance would have to be though.

We've had this discussion before. I also agree with the comparison of 1 min./per mile, or 50sec.-1min/mile. As you compare more "elite" female and male runners, the "difference/gap" is much closer. However, if you look at the winners in any "average" high school track meet, road race, etc., you will usually see a difference of 50sec.-1min/mile.

54 year old MALE wrote:

For example I have found over the last 30 years of coaching both males and females that a 12:00 3200 for girls is fairly equivelant to a 10:00 for boys.

That's very fair. In the mile, you often see the male winner running 4:20 verses 5:20 for the female winner. On the roads in the 5K, you often see the male winning in 15:30 verses 18:30 for the female winner.

the girl's h.s. mile record is 4:35

Well yes girls are more mature...but that doesn't make them more aggresive, competitive, or driven than their immature male counterparts. Men have this thing called testosterone that magically creates a far greater level of competition in the male track events. Now sure, there are alot of girls in high school track who also have that aggresive, competitive mindset. But there are far fewer and thus there is less competition. There are far fewer females pushing their physical limits than males. And that has nothing to do with maturity, but rather, estrogen.

jaguar1 wrote:

In the mile, you often see the male winner running 4:20 verses 5:20 for the female winner.

A 4:20 for a guy is way better than 5:20 for a girl. I like the 1.16 factor an earlier poster proposed but I don't know where he/she came up with it.

Here's what i say, coudl be wrong though. 4:20=5:00

2:00=2:20 however, i do not think that 2:10 is anywhere close to 1:50...because 2-3 girls a year dip under 210...not the case with 150

besides the obvious greater depth of men's athletics, my theory is that higher body fat levels of all but elite women runners slow them down more.

say a normal high school male runner is at 8% body fat and an elite is at 4%

a high school girl might be at 15% vs an elite at 8%

the 7% differential produces elite women results that are far superior to non elite women where as the difference among men is smaller relatively

just a theory

running fan wrote:

A 4:20 for a guy is way better than 5:20 for a girl.[/quote]

My guess is you're a guy.

54 year old MALE wrote:

Girls tend to be far more mature at the high school age and realize that the comparisons are meaningless.

Yeah, right!?! I've been around some pretty bitchy girls who act sweet in front of coaches and teachers and then tear each other apart...

Comparisons are meaningless? I thought the whole point of running a race is to see who's fastest. I think compasison is pretty important. And as many other people have mentioned, the depth for females is nowhere near what it is for male runners. There are many ways to quantify this.

i think the only "fair" way of doing this is based on the world record miles for each sex. As far as we know the fastest a man can run one mile is 3:43, the fastest a women can do it is 4:12. I do believe that a woman could possibly run a second or two faster, but thats just me. My rationale comes from the closer you are to a world record the faster you are. People say Ryun's 3:55 is better than Webb's 3:53 becuase he was closer to the worlds record at the time but who knows

acehole wrote:

i think the only "fair" way of doing this is based on the world record miles for each sex. As far as we know the fastest a man can run one mile is 3:43, the fastest a women can do it is 4:12.

Using standards of elites to make a "general" comparison is not accurate. The "gap" is much wider for the average race (1 min/mile).... narrower when comparing elites (~30-40 sec./mile). If you took the middle ground the difference may be around 45-50 sec./mile.

jaguar1 wrote:

Using standards of elites to make a "general" comparison is not accurate. The "gap" is much wider for the average race (1 min/mile).... narrower when comparing elites (~30-40 sec./mile). If you took the middle ground the difference may be around 45-50 sec./mile.

Well, are you trying to justify your own level of performance, jaguar1? I am not trying to attack you, but why we shouldn't compare to the best? Are there 2 standards for men and women?

The world record for men's 5000m is 12:37, NCAA this year was won in 13:22- 45s slowlier (around 6% difference); The world record for women is 14:24, let's not take the winning time in NCAA (it was a shameful time), but rather "gold" standard 15:45 of quality race in NCAA. That would be 1:21 slowlier (around 9% difference).

Thus, women at collegiate and high school level perform at far superior level than men do. Not to take anything from girls, but even not-so-talented girl can be very highly ranked if she puts the effort, miles and necessary time into training. That is not true fur guys. You have to have a big amount of talent to place anywhere close to the top, no matter how hard you try.

Ooops, CORRECTION.

I meant to say- women at collegiate and high school level perform at far inferior level than men do.

As a collegiate coach of both genders, I would never be interested in making contact with a 4:30 male miler. I begin to see hope at 4:20 and I probably can find some help at 4:15. On the ladies side I begin to see hope at 5:20 and I will find help at 5:10.

Now whatever those percentages are, they change drastically at 3200 metrs in favor of the females.

Sub 11:25 for the girls is worthy of money. I will never offer a male money if they haven't run sub 9:15.

Now are those equal performances? They are when it comes to financial help at the college level. It is silly to say who is further away from a world record because that comparison is meaningless for nearly all high school and college kids. The comparison I am talking about is something concrete that means something concrete to athletes and their parents. Sorry guys.

To the point wrote:

Now are those equal performances? They are when it comes to financial help at the college level. It is silly to say who is further away from a world record because that comparison is meaningless for nearly all high school and college kids. The comparison I am talking about is something concrete that means something concrete to athletes and their parents. Sorry guys.

Well, that's exactly what most guys pisses off. To run 11:20 3200m you need to get your ass off the door 5-6times a week, do some quality training and keep your weight within reasonable limits. You get money for that... that's just sad.

To run 9:15, you need to have a talent- that's undeniable, AND run your ass off, 7 days a week, lots of quality running and quite high volume for most of the guys. Where is the equal opportunity in that?

Now to understand me correctly- I am not a disilusioned HS runner (in fact I am 27, had run some decent times and got full ride years ago), but I find it ridiculous to compare some fat ass jogger (11:25 runner is just slightly over this description) to 9:15 very good runner who trains very hard (unless he is some kind of aerobic freak).

I am a 29 year old male runner. When I was in high school, the girls team worked way harder than we did in the off seasons, but we seemed to out improve the girls. When I look back I realize that we improved off of physical growth where as the girls that improvment had to do with hardwork. I ran 4:17-9:19 my older brother ran 4:15-9:21 and my sister ran 5:08-11:11. I have no idea which one of us had the most talent, but I know that my sister worked the hardest in both high school and college. This was fairly typical in my experiences. I also would have never admitted that the girls worked harder when I was in high school, and hell I still won't give my sister that satisfaction.

OK, so what I'm hearing is that the standard for HS and college female runners is further from world standards than is the case for males. So my question is not "what's the equivalence for male/female times", but rather, "why is this the case?" No one is arguing that female times AREN'T slower than world marks by larger percentages. We apparently all agree that they are. Why are they? Lack of talent pool? Lack of good coaching/incentives/opportunities? Is it physical (i.e., if we look at other countries are their young female athletes in a similar situtation)? I really don't know.

JimFiore wrote:

No one is arguing that female times AREN'T slower than world marks by larger percentages. We apparently all agree that they are. Why are they? Lack of talent pool? Lack of good coaching/incentives/opportunities? Is it physical (i.e., if we look at other countries are their young female athletes in a similar situtation)? I really don't know.

I am. Our women had no problem putting 3 women on the starting line in the 5k-10k and the marathon in Athens. Our men could not do the same. The numbers that were used by the IOC were to create the same number of entries in both the mens and womens fields. Thus the times were equivelant on a world scale. So yes are women are certainly as competitive on a world scale as the men (according to the IOC and IAAF). Obviously this board is male dominated. Therefore you have a large contingency of men trying to justify there own inadequacies. The question is why couldn't the men put three 5k runners on the starting line? Lack of coaching/incentives/opportunities? Is it physical. I really don't know.