Can most (50% or more) of guys run a 5 minute mile?

Wrestlers are in great shape wrote:

I'm willing to bet Jordan Hasay could kick the crap out of 98% of a well trained population in response to the above comment.

Give the guys a 100 meter head start, and things will definitely start to change. I say two thirds of the guys will beat her then. Keep in mind that these will be 25 year old men who have world class coaches, been training for their whole lives, and have lived at altitude before they could crawl. These will NOT be 17 year old boys who have been sitting on their asses until they decided to get in shape and join their HS XC team when they were 14.

(yes, I know that it's kind of late to respond to that post, but seeing the "jordan hasay 4:39 mile" thread prompted me to post this).

Just because someone turns out for xc doesn't mean he/she is a natural running machine. I think some are dismissing any example involving someone who has trained.

In my school (and 4 years in high school is not the zenith of distance training in a male's life) there was not a single guy who did cross and track 3 years, trained in the off-season and did not break 5. There were a handful of guys who were close but skipped track or weren't very motivated. The only guys who weren't close were those who just used xc to get in shape for other sports, a few overweight guys, and 1 tall kid who was never close. (Out of about 50 runners) Not saying that everyone can do it, but there's my experience.

I stumbled onto this thread (and this website) when I was searching for something totally unrelated, but it caught my eye and I've been reading all the posts for the last hour or so.

Let me open with this: There's no way that most (50% or more) of guys, if tested out of the blue today, could run a 5 minute mile. Not even close.

I'm 29 now. Ten years ago I ran track and cross country in high school, and I want to say my best mile time was about 5:10. I never broke 5 min, and I wasn't a standout by any stretch of the imagination, but I definitely remember that compared to the rest of the male population, I might as well have been THE FLASH.

Fast forward to today. I'm in the Army, and a week ago I did the 2 mile run (part of the PT test) in 11:20. Again, not a standout performance when compared to competitive runners, but compared to the average dude...Flash Gordon baby. And that's compared to the rest of the Army too, and most of these soldiers are in shape people, not couch potatoes who haven't worked out in years.

So, in terms of percentages, here's my answer. Even if you narrowed the age range to the "prime" years of 16-35, the percentage of guys who could go out right now and break 5 min would be less that 1%, guaranteed.

On page 7 of this thread, someone proposes an excellent way to get at the ability of the average person using the census and the top marks in the 1500/mile in a given year (2007).

I did this and here are the results for a mile:

Average: 6:10

One in 3 men: 5:32

One in 20 men: 5:01

One in 370 men: 4:35

One in 15.7k men: 4:14

One in 1.7 million men: 3:55

Among the Kalenjin, I bet your average dude can break 5.

Definitely not.

Been in the army 4 years. Basic training, ait, two different battalions....we're talking about 3000 soldiers. ..maybe 5 broke 5:00 or ran an equivalent 2mile. 100 pts on the army 2 mile run is 13:00. These guys are running 3x week. Doing sprints and interval training plus doing 2 days of muscle failure/circuit training along with 3 days running.

Alan

Flagpole Willy wrote:

Sockalexis wrote:

I came to running from hockey and my best mile was a gut-wrenching 5:08 on a grass oval. That was nearly 20 years ago. I bow to anyone who can run sub-5:00.

As well you should! I prefer that you greet me by calling me "O Great One". You can then make a request (either for material things or knowledge) and then I will meet with the other sub 5 minute milers to see if your wish will be granted. I will then say "Be Gone!", and with a backhanded sweep to show you the direction to go, you are to turn quickly yet respectfully and return from whence you came. You are not to contact me to see how your request is being processed. You will be contacted at my whim.

That is all.

One of the best posts I've seen. If only it was like that.

No way? I'm 215 pounds with sub-10% bodyfat, arms almost 18" and I love lifting weights... but I can also run a mile in 5 minutes 49 seconds. Just a couple of weeks ago I was stuck at about 6 minutes 10 seconds. The only limitations you have are the ones that you put on yourself!

Mandingo wrote:

This has been covered. at most 1% of the male population could run a five minute mile. we went over high school athletes, sub 5 milers in a town of 100,000 etc. a couple of soccar players, a few more runners. No way any buff weight lifting guy can run a 5 min mile. Think of the average gym and how many guys that could even do 1 min at 12 mph. When I do mile repeats at 11mph or faster people freak. I once did a 4:50 treadmill mile (it went to 15, I got it up to 13 near the end) and they had never seen anyone do that in that gym.

tyrone magnus here baby

Coach D wrote:

Look up some race results--road races, not NCAA track meets. A 6 minute mile is roughly equivalent to a 17:30 5K. Even after you eliminate all the walkers, you still only have something in the 1-5% range who actually can run that fast.

Look at the crosa country results for the kids that do train and do run their butts off (probably a num,ber of them here)....and run 19-something, because they just don't have the talent.

No offense but are you a real coach? A 6 minute mile is more equivalent to a 22 minute 5K. You don't get faster as the distance gets further, you slow down.

johnny bravo wrote:

Coach D wrote:

Look up some race results--road races, not NCAA track meets. A 6 minute mile is roughly equivalent to a 17:30 5K.

No offense but are you a real coach? A 6 minute mile is more equivalent to a 22 minute 5K. You don't get faster as the distance gets further, you slow down.

It was a typo - he meant a 5 min mile. And a 6 min mile is more like 20:30.

Moose, can you do the math for me and figure out how many women can run a 6 minute mile?

btw since you are using the census, this of course means USA only

age-grade calculator shows just about 70% for ages 16-35 and then starts to fall off before/after that age, so would this be the right logic to inverse the 70% and figure 30%, so roughly one in three women can do it?

runningart2004 wrote:

Been in the army 4 years. Basic training, ait, two different battalions....we're talking about 3000 soldiers. ..maybe 5 broke 5:00 or ran an equivalent 2mile. 100 pts on the army 2 mile run is 13:00. These guys are running 3x week. Doing sprints and interval training plus doing 2 days of muscle failure/circuit training along with 3 days running.

Alan

And of those 3000 soldiers, how many ran more than 50 miles/week? 5? 10? That other training is great but it isn't remotely specific.Nobody thinks a lot of people can roll off the couch and run sub 5 today. Tell someone that they get 10 million bucks for running sub 5 in the next 10 years, I would expect to see 50%+ of guys being able to do it. Obviously in reality nobody is going to put in the 10 years to optimize their mile performance since in the real world there is no reward.

Look at some of the powerhouse high school xc teams (like Joe Newton with York) that recruit like crazy (hundreds of team members) and make everyone run big mileage. Assuming the size of the school is 2000 (1000 males), you'll get about 5 who can break 16 in the 5k if you make them all run 70-80 miles a week. I'd say about 10 can break 5 in the mile on that training. So 1 in 100 high school males has the talent to break 5 on heavy training. Make it age 18-34 and it might go up to 1 in 50 (assuming everyone trained after high school and stayed in shape).

So probably 2% of males at most has the ability to break 5 in the mile with optimal training. In reality it's more like 0.1% since most people don't train that seriously, play other sports, or just don't care.

brakejob wrote:

I disagree. The football, baseball, lacrosse, hockey players in my school were all more gifted natural athletes than the track geeks. The "leftover" runners by and large all broke 5 minute miles and we did not have a strong high school coach.

High school sophomore. Quit varsity soccer for track because I liked track/xc better. Have run 4:47 off of 30 mpw. This places me well in almost all of the meets we run- average sized high school meets. There is one other guy at my school who has broken 5, but right now there's no way he could run under 5:10. You think baseball players are more naturally gifted athletes? Baseball is barely a sport at the high school level- a high percentage of the baseball players are at the very least chubby at my school. I don't want to be rude I just think the inflated numbers are ridiculous.

Asking what percentage of the population is fast enough to run a sub-5 mile under perfect conditions, training, and motivation is like asking what percentage of unicorns could win the Kentucky derby. Nobody or almost nobody has perfect conditions, training, and motivation. Raw physiological ability doesn't mean anything if you never show up to the track.

Additionally I think the physiological ability to do it is more rare than some people seem to think. Consider that a 5 minute is roughly equivalent to a low 17s 5k in the next xc season for most high school runners. That would just barely make the top 7 on the state winning team in my division (granted they had a crazy top 3). This was also a top 10 team at NXR. This is a team with 4 good coaches and over 70 kids on their roster, plus a culture of success in distance running. This is not indicative of 50% of kids being able to break 5.

I'd bet that fewer than 50% of the people on this thread can break 5- in real life not imaginary conditions.

dasasdfa wrote:

runningart2004 wrote:

Been in the army 4 years. Basic training, ait, two different battalions....we're talking about 3000 soldiers. ..maybe 5 broke 5:00 or ran an equivalent 2mile. 100 pts on the army 2 mile run is 13:00. These guys are running 3x week. Doing sprints and interval training plus doing 2 days of muscle failure/circuit training along with 3 days running.

Alan

And of those 3000 soldiers, how many ran more than 50 miles/week? 5? 10? That other training is great but it isn't remotely specific.Nobody thinks a lot of people can roll off the couch and run sub 5 today. Tell someone that they get 10 million bucks for running sub 5 in the next 10 years, I would expect to see 50%+ of guys being able to do it. Obviously in reality nobody is going to put in the 10 years to optimize their mile performance since in the real world there is no reward.

You don't realize the vast majority of people couldn't run 50mi a week without getting hurt no matter how slow they build up.

The world view of this thread is skewed.

Alan

Nearly jumped out of my skin when i saw someone write i should be running a 17 based on my mile time. Definitely a typo. Because... Just... Not a cat in hell's chance xD For what it's worth my mile Is 6:05 and my 5k is between 21:45-22 or something but so can depend on overall endurance. Sure there are people who can run a 6 minute mile flat who JUST scrape under 20min and others who run 24min+

In the 15-30 year old age catorgory for men I think it maybe takes SLIGHTLY above average athletic genetics to be able to run a five flat (about 55th percentile in terms of genetics)

The average potential for males probably being around 5:15-:5:45)

It would be interesting to find out what percentage of the population are endomorphs, mesomprphs and ectomorphs.

I bet about 60-70% of ectomorphs have the genetic ability to break five.

God knows about females though..