How common is it for HS track runners to not be able to break 5 in the mile?

200 runners and only 6 broke 5? No freaking way dude. No way. My crappy bumblef*** wisconsin high school had maybe 10 or 12 distance guys on the track team, of which at least 6 or 7 could break 5 easily. Unless you're counting all the sprinters and you had a disproportionate number of sprinters, there's no way you only had 6/200.

I think it is common among experienced runners and young runners with talent. There is a freshman in my state that runs 4:25 but he is talented and been running for a long time. I think someone with even a little bit of talent and good training can break 5. I also believe that a certain drive is needed because I know an 800m runner that ran 2:10 but only ran 5min in the mile. Bottom line you need to have determination, training, and maybe a little talent to break 5.

maybe u should try to see if u have a little talent in sprinting david. if it doesnt work out. maybe try to get on a rec soccer league or something

gulenRupp wrote:

200 runners and only 6 broke 5? No freaking way dude. No way. My crappy bumblef*** wisconsin high school had maybe 10 or 12 distance guys on the track team, of which at least 6 or 7 could break 5 easily. Unless you're counting all the sprinters and you had a disproportionate number of sprinters, there's no way you only had 6/200.

i think he may have also included the girls in the numbers. 6/100 sounds reasonable to me, though a few more people in that group probably have sub 5 potential

What team? We had 13 guys break 5 and didn't even win state and we were nowhere near making it to NXN.

if u assumed that there are as many boys as there are girls then the real number he shouldve posted was 6/100. 6/200 if they r all boys is not impressive

out of 200 boys on the team, not 100. maybe 60 girls additional on the team, school of 4000 students. female gender standards were way different, fastest girl was right around 5:30 and she destroyed. boys we had a 4:12 but you would always place if you were under 5 until conference finals, i guess not everyones experience the same but maybe 4 others on the team could have cared more and just gotten under 5 but same problem people eat burgers and dont care

high school xc coach wrote:

david45 wrote:

Is it common?

I couldn't give you an exact number, but it's less than half. a 5 minute 1600 is far more impressive than a 20 minute 5k.

5 mins is much closer to 18 min 5k. 5 mins is moderately hard. I went to a pretty decent HS. We would have like 10 seniors every year and only about half them were sub 5. The other other half though tended to be real close (5:10 type guys). The slower guys tended not to be as serious (i.e. running on sunday or over the summer) but they still had put in 40-60 mpw during the school year for years.

I know it is hard to believe but if you were running a 4:40 mile in HS you were extremely talented. Same thing if you could run sub 57 in the 400m. But the gap between a top 5% talent and a top 1% talent is huge

This is the result of participation medal mentality. Either give up or go out and run at least 50 miles per week. Young kids are so pathetic these days.

Your stats are bogus. As I said, we had 13 guys break 5 and were not close to qualifying for nationals.

how much did they break 5 by?

Fastest 5. 4:18-4:25-4:27-4:32-4:38.

Fast teams like CBA. Top 5 ran 4:10-4:11-4:15-4:17-4:17.

The Predictor wrote:

my school has about ~2000 people, yet, only myself and a senior teammate have done it over the past two years

that being said, i did see like maybe 3-4 others on the team who couldve done it but they were too lazy to train.

there are also people in other sports or people who dont know what talent they have.

actually, a senior ran ~4:40 for 1600 off no training. in basketball tryouts

Yea I go to a school of about 700-800 and I am the first person to break 5 since 2006

dadsfadsfdasfdsafdas wrote:

I know it is hard to believe but if you were running a 4:40 mile in HS you were extremely talented. Same thing if you could run sub 57 in the 400m.

Those times are not even close to being equivalent. There were more than 10 sub 57 guys on my HS team, and you had to run a 55 to even have a small chance of running the 4x4. But we had only 2 sub 5 milers, and neither of them were close to going sub 4:40.

I'm legitimately curious where this took place. Where I live a school of 4000 is gonna be competing with the big suburban schools that have literally dozens of sub-5 boys on their squad no question. I assume by "place" you mean top 8/scoring. Placing with something over 5:00 did actually happen among my HS competition but this was a small WI town competing against schools with 1500 students, 2000 at the most.

Way off! wrote:

dadsfadsfdasfdsafdas wrote:

I know it is hard to believe but if you were running a 4:40 mile in HS you were extremely talented. Same thing if you could run sub 57 in the 400m.

Those times are not even close to being equivalent. There were more than 10 sub 57 guys on my HS team, and you had to run a 55 to even have a small chance of running the 4x4. But we had only 2 sub 5 milers, and neither of them were close to going sub 4:40.

Scratch that. We had one sub 5 miler, not 2. One of the two people I had in mind ran the 1600 in 4:58.8 or 4:58.9, which converts to a 5:00.5 or so when you factor in the extra 9.344m. The other ran the 1600 in 4:53, so he would count.

ELong1229) wrote:

I know an 800m runner that ran 2:10 but only ran 5min in the mile.

It's not that uncommon. 2:11 800, 4:43 1500, 5:13 mile:

You guys are just making stuff up. We had a 7th grader and two 8th graders break 5 last year. That is above our 13 high schoolers who did it. Even the smallest high schools of 100 kids normally have 1 or 2 guys who break 5 minutes.