I was at the Hillsdale Gina Relay's last year. I swear there was a guy in the 5,000 wearing a "Rip Hamilton" Jersey. I don't remember the time exactly but it was around 15:00-15:20ish. If that was him, I think he could go 4:30.
I was at the Hillsdale Gina Relay's last year. I swear there was a guy in the 5,000 wearing a "Rip Hamilton" Jersey. I don't remember the time exactly but it was around 15:00-15:20ish. If that was him, I think he could go 4:30.
drain on society wrote:
I was at the Hillsdale Gina Relay's last year. I swear there was a guy in the 5,000 wearing a "Rip Hamilton" Jersey. I don't remember the time exactly but it was around 15:00-15:20ish. If that was him, I think he could go 4:30.
Umm...it wasn't him.
Jim Rome - LATE!
Are we really questioning the cardio conditioning of MBA players? Honestly, these guys are having marathon intercourse sessions with enumerable partners -- and I'm guessing that they're sustaining the effort for more than 5 minutes.
TM wrote:
As far as your club team with it's 5 sub 2:02 800 guys and 3 sub 4:35 milers, I have to ask, what kind of club is this? You call them "kids", so what age are we talking about? Did they run these times in soccer practice, or were they also track athletes? Because I find it hard to believe that you would have that level of running performance during a club soccer practice, and if they accomplished those times while they were track athletes, who cares? The debate as I see it is, can athletes from ball sports just bust out 4:30 miles without doing any special training for it? Few people are denying that a lot of these guys would be good track athletes if they actually trained for track--the debate is whether or not they are good track athletes without training for track.
Sophomore and Juniors in high school. My point is that while we were the only 5 to compete in track while playing soccer as well, we were by no means unique on our team. Others could keep pace with us just as well.
At the end of every practice, and sometimes in the middle we would have to do "suicides" consisisting of 8 lengths of the soccer field, which was 112y long, or 16y longer than 1/2 a mile (yes, a stardard soccer field is 120y long, I know, but we were limited in space). All 5 of us were in pretty good shape, obviously, but we were not blowing everyone out of the water. Matter of fact, there were plenty of our teammates mixed in there with us. And it was a race, as each time we did them, the slowest people had to do pushups and situps, and possibly run more.
I would concur that NBA players are the best athletes in the world. Having set courtside and watched the Mavericks play the Rockets I was amazed at the athleticism, speed, quickness and agility with which they played. Truly amazing! To see all these 6'8"-7 footers move and make it look easy was incredible. I've been up close to NFL and MLB players but none have the the "total package" like NBA players.
Their conditioning is outstanding, too. They don't jog up and down the court, they are flat hauling butt. Look at them, none of them are overweight, all extremely fit cardiovascularlly and with great speed. I bet most all of them could easily run a sub 50 400.
As reported in last year's NBA finals, Hamilton has consistently run a 5 minute mile since high school. Since then, he's only led his undergraduate institution, UCONN, to its first NCAA championship against a heavily favored DUKE team that had something like 4 future NBA players on it, e.g. Brand, Maggette. Then, he led the Pistons to their third champsionship. Wow, to think that running 4:30 would seem so outlandish for such a superbly conditioned and accomplished athlete.
Who cares? That's about as relevant as saying that Jim Ryun once ran 3:51 (or whatever his PB is). Since then, he has become part of the most powerful government in the world. Surely, he can run 3:35.
Basketball isn't training for the mile. I don't care how talented you might be, odds are he isn't, because distance running isn't easy.
I would concur that NBA players are the best athletes in the world. Having set courtside and watched the Mavericks play the Rockets I was amazed at the athleticism, speed, quickness and agility with which they played.--sebcoe59
Well, according to this line of reasoning, Puerto Rican basketball players must be even better athletes, since that collection of all-star NBA Olympians representing the USA found Puerto Rico's basketball team to be more than they could handle.
Americans tend to have this obsession with everything American being the best in the world. But just saying something is the best doesn't make it the case. The bottom line is that whenever there is money to be made from being a good athlete, lots of extremely fit people will appear to try to claim that money. They won't all be from the US. The US doesn't have any monopoly on good athletes. My personal feeling is that top-level soccer players are better athletes and more exciting to watch than top NBA basketball players. Most of those players are not from the USA.
But anyway, who cares who the best athletes are? Just being a good athlete who can run a lot of sprints up and down a field or a court while jumping around or whatever doesn't translate into the ability to run 4:30 miles. Sure, a lot of world class athletes in a variety of sports, with a little specific track practice, could do it. But I think the athlete who can come from another sport and, without any experience in competitive distance running, run a 4:30 mile is very rare indeed.
all you runners out there need to take the sand out and get a life. Give the man his credit... is it so hard to believe that an athletic basketball player can run just as fast as you, starving yourself and running OCD?? GET A LIFE PISTONS RULE!
you need to die. rip is fast and you suck.
rip is my favorite and i love him. even though my name is james madison and i am a guy. he is very fast. i sat courtside at a game and saw him run.
rip = F A S T
unlike you retarted muffinsuckers.
I personally saw Earl Boykins (at 5'4" the smallest player in the NBA) run a 4:40 mile in a preseason time trial the basketball team had at Eastern Michigan. All of the guards and small forwards on the team were around 5:00 and even the big guys were around 6:00.
I believe you, because why would anyone pick Earl Boykins to make a lie about?
If Boykins ran a 440, Rip can beat that and run in the 430s.
All the runners act as if they're the only ones who can run a 4:30 mile....They're soooo self absorbed that it's not even funny. They all think they do the toughest sport. Running does require a lot of endurance and stamina but so does basketball. If basketball players and runners were to switch sports, basketball players would be much better runners than runners be basketball players.
I saw Dan Majerle run mid 4:30's while he was in college @ Central Michigan University. I believe he had a teammate who also broke 4:45.
VitaminR wrote:
Last year at 20 lbs. over my racing weight I was still able to manage a 4:30 mile. Personally I don't doubt that Hamilton could run a 4:30. He runs 3-4 miles per day on top of all of running he does in practices and games.
Must say I'm surprised at the number of posters who have personally witnessed famous basketball players running fast time trials for the mile. I mean, you would think that it was pretty uncommon for basketball players to even run an all-out mile, and even less common for it to happen to be eye-witnessed by some running junkie, but you would be wrong to think that! At basketball training sessions around the country, there are always at least one or two LetsRun.com posters keeping an eye on things, ready to bust out the stopwatch when coach calls for the old standby, the mile time trial.
Up until the late 90's, EMU's hoops team played and practiced in Bowen Fieldhouse. The basketball court was on the infield and our practice times often overlapped theirs. The time trial I witnessed was part of a preseason fitness test. I can't speak for the other stories, but this one is definitely true.
One way to really test Rip's claim is to look at what he has actually done in a running race. I read the article in paper, but in the online version, RW took out the claim to the 4:30 mile. RW also took out the part where Rip claims to have run a road race (and winning it?) for several years during his UConn days. Unfortunately, I don't recall the race that he referred to, otherwise I would have checked the results online. If anybody else has the paper version and can tell us the race, we could check it out.[quote]
I once saw Michael Jordan run a 4:22 mile back in '92.
Michael Vick can run (almost) two sub-5:10 miles back to back - at altitude.