What % of the population has latent sub-4:00 talent?

I consider myself an entirely average runner. Throughout high school I was a mid packer at a huge program (my senior year we had about 150 people total) and I ran 4:58. The best guys were running around 4:20 and our school record was 4:14 (all pre supershoes). Having now trained for 11 years consistently at the age of 25 I have run a lifetime best of 4:26. Maybe within the next couple years I can get down to low 4:20s but I truly don't believe I have the raw leg speed to get much better than that. Most of those top guys in my high school never went on to run much more after graduation but a couple guys that did ended up running in the 4:10 - 4:15 range. I knew a lot of guys that were able to run around 4:30 within two years of starting the sport and maybe if they kept it going they could get down to 4:10 but that's still an order of magnitude away from sub 4. Moral of the story is that having the talent to go sub 4:00 is incredibly rare.

I think my point is that I have been viewed as an untalented kid who worked really hard who took it very far through hard work alone in HS. Turns out I was extremely talented, moreso than probably any of my teammates and that I was just out of shape.

Sub 4:00 isn’t some astronomically rare talent if cultivated correctly but it’s probably closer to 1 in 3000 than 1 in 40

I think a lot of people aren't taking into account the "genetic ability" aspect.

If the only qualification is genetic ability, that means they're getting the best training in the best environment (realistically) possible, and they do it for as long as it takes. Most people don't have anything resembling that. But look at Newbury Park, where a great coach got set up in a wealthy area, and you see that actually there's a bunch of people who can break 4 in high school. Now, I think they're a bit of an outlier, but American Fork and Herriman have kids running in the 8:40s (or faster) routinely right now. If those guys went to Flagstaff and had Mike Smith coaching them for the next 8 years without having to worry about classes or money, I bet more would break 4 than not.

The best of the best HS kids go to college every year and don't (or only marginally) improve, but most people can get pretty close to their peak after 4 years of high quality training. Most of the people who go to college and don't improve are probably not improving due to environmental factors than genetic ones. I think it's probably orders of magnitude more common for a sub-4 talent to have a bad HS coach and run 4:40 so they stop running after HS than it is for a sub-4 HSer to go to college and not improve.

I'd bet it's closer to 1 in 100 men has the genetic ability to break 4, but most people can't train full time to do it.

My two pennies, where did you go to college? How many sub 4 milers were on your team?

I like most of your posts, but can't agree with this. A sub 4 HS talent would easily run 4:15-4:20 even with terrible coaching, not 4:40. I've seen a lot of runners in HS who would skip warmups and run like 4 days a week who managed low 4:20s in HS off of talent. So really, most of the guys running 4:40 in HS with bad coaching are optimistically more like 4:20 guys with better coaching.

Self example - I ran 4:35 in HS and my entire training consisted of 30 mpw, alternating between slogging 9 minute pace on easy days and short all out intervals with races every week. First season of college track with 60 mpw of much smarter training (including controlled threshold workouts and long intervals which I never touched in HS), and I only improved down to 4:22.

Two of my college teammates had a HS coach who would have all of his guys, even the slower ones, run 12 x 400 @ 62 and not slower than 6 min pace at the bare minimum on easy days, and yet these two still ran in the 4:20s / 9:10s (everyone else was constantly injured of course). A year of solid college training and that's become 4:15 / 14:30 which is great, but sub 4 is still an entirely different level.

From my experience the mile is much more difficult to make large improvements in from training alone, yes it is primarily aerobic but basic speed is a very limiting factor for a lot of us. If we were talking about the 5k / 10k then I think it'd be different though.

0.4% seems right. At a HS of roughly 1,000, you certainly have at least one student from each graduating class with lifetime sub-4 potential. 1 out of every 250 people could be trained to a sub-4:00. That’s a conservative estimate.

And yet, far fewer than that do it in college. You guys really don't like data.

I don’t think you are giving enough credit to genetic talent. It sounds like you played catch up all throughout high school because you weren’t very active early on, and possibly overweight. However, I’ll bet your body has the ability to clear lactate quickly, high VO2 max, natural speed, injury resilience, fast metabolism, etc. which when necessarily combined to run sub-4 is the rarest part of the equation. I was unfortunately only missing the durability part. I’ll stick with my 1/100,000 guess and that’s only if the person has the genetic ability, work ethic, coaches, and is lucky enough for it to all come together. Yes, I believe a lot of luck is required too.

I also went to a small college that was once considered a NAIA (later D3) track powerhouse with many track national champions and even a couple relay world records in its prime. And not a single athlete in its 130 year history has gone sub-4 in the mile (or metric equivalent) although several have come very, very close.

Reading through the posts, a lot of people seem to have made one mistake when answer the question: they assume anyone can "train ideally" , which here means the training required to fully realize your running potential, when in reality the vast majority of people would not even sniff at half of that. Their body would break down with injuries.

I have a friend who's serious about the 5k, pretty fit already before starting out, but no matter what he does, "10% rule", "not changing more than one variable at a time in training", "don't run your easy runs too fast"...blah blah blah, only to see himself injured running at around 30 mpw.. Btw, his PB is 19 mins.

Durability is truly the most underrated form of talent., If anything it should top the list. Your Vo2 max, lactate threshold, running economy mean jack squat if you aren't durable enough to train consistently over the years.

the newbury park argument is not true. i don't see where a newbury park kid ever ran under 4 in a HS meet. maybe in some national event or they get allowed in with pros, but not against HS kids. the best HS meet time for them this year looks like 4:20, which is what won their league meet. so to me there may be a difference between "repping newbury park" in a broad sense, and what one might expect if the varsity team shows up for the meet this saturday.

the interesting argument buried in the over-abstractions is the "southlake" approach. southlake carroll shows up dozens of kids to practice and carries tons of kids to meets even if they run 30 mins. the snob theory is run off the slow kids and set a numerical or time limit, to show the coach means business. they don't seem to do that.

to me if you wanted to net the fastest kids, you want bulk participation and then from that sheer amount the winning lottery tickets manifest themselves. but most XC and TF programs aren't built on showing up 100 kids and seeing what emerges months or years later. and to me the "elitist" nature of the exercise is going to run off not just scrubs but also talent who might experiment.

for example, as a sprinter/hurdler playing around in XC i could run mid 4s and sometimes was in first at XC meets mile 1 with sub 5 splits. i was the 5th fastest guy on the team when we ran track time trial mile races. but during TF i never did anything over 800 in HS or college. we had a couple dudes under 4:20 and 2 others who at least for the moment were faster at a mile. the incentives were awkward for me to experiment even though i though i could beat some more if i trained at it.

at some distance oriented schools -- southlake -- that experiment might deliberately get forced. you will then find out how fast a miler or 5k guy you can be. at others, they will look at a high functioning 400 guy, who can drop in and do 800, and that they have "enough" milers, and leave you be. that's my response to your theory on sprinters. most schools if you are one of the fastest at sprints or hurdles, and they have a couple good distance guys, they will view it as you are unneeded to switch.

and even this thread with the whole "latency" spin seems almost more about blaming the kids and coaches for not unlocking some theoretical missing increment, as opposed to accepting that after a fair amount of hard work, the outputs simply are what they are.

but i basically think this thread trades in counter-factual optimality myth. first off, anyone who ran HS or college XC or TF knows for sure that not everyone gets handed a HS coach who is on the way to coaching a top 5 college distance team, along with stepford athletes lined up to do exactly what they say. some teams' distance coach is a football coach or a teacher collecting a check. this is the reality.

second, i think we're exaggerating how many super fast kids exist, at any one good school, or as a sum across HS and college. they might one year have some future NAU kid who does break 4, and still be "good" the next year but the best kid is 4:14. that to me hints the program gets you to 4:14 and the rest is on you. that there is not some constant latency of 4 minute milers at newbury park. that it will vary depending on genetics or the like year to year at even the best programs.

108 d1 runners ran sub 4 indoors this year and fewer ran the metric equivalent outdoors. Most d1 runners get very close to their limit during their career. These guys self select based on running talent. It's not just training errors that don't get the thousands of other d1 runners to sub 4. There is no way this number is 1 in 49, 2 in 3000, .4% or even .001%>. You guys are delusional if you think there are so many potential sub 4 guys walking around if only they would dedicate their lives to running.

1 million high schoolers compete in distance track each year in the US? 1 million? Exactly? Don’t ever cheat on your taxes.

Have you been to the Midwest and Southeast of the US recently? If not, you should take a tour and then get back to us.

NOBODY can answer your question OP. NOBODY knows the answer. Maybe you can get NOBODY to chime in.

The hand waving hear is about what better training does. Is that 4:05 22 year who ran in a solid program with 8 years of training have another 6s in the ideal world? Would another 4 years of training get you another 5s? Some combo? Nobody knows. Back that off to 4:10 or 4:15, and ask the same question.

In the end we are all guessing about what stuff like perfect training means. If Jacob Ing. is running 3:30 with perfect training, the benefits of better training are larger than I think. If he maxes out at 3:42, then I am not sold on the ability for all those 4:20 college kids who have run for 8 years in decent programs to find those seconds.

And it should be pointed that there might be things s we do as kids that really effect things like tendon stiffness and the like. We might had the potential but by the time we are 14 it is too late.

I'd point to the Newbury Park kids who went to NAU vs Stanford as evidence of the difference that things outside of having a solid program can make. Of the 4:20 college kids running in decent programs, how many are doing it at altitude for 4+ years? How many aren't doing extracurriculars so they can focus purely on track? How many don't drink alcohol? How many are going to bed and getting 8-9 hours of sleep every night? How many are eating healthy, nutritious meals every day? How many do that consistently for 4 years of college? I think there's plenty of time left on the table for most college athletes.

And even before that point, how many people had the genetic ability to break 4 in their 20s, but their HS coach got them injured, or made them run a different event, or just didn't coach them well enough to be able to walk on at a nice college. Keep in mind that someone as talented as Abdi Nur, 3:35 guy and US 5k champ, only ran 4:28 in high school. How many Abdi Nurs are out there that didn't spend 2 years in community college getting good enough to run at NAU? How many guys are there with 3:36 talent that only run 4:29 in high school and don't get recruited? How many 3:37 guys? 3:38? 3:39? It's WAY harder to run 3:36 than it is to run 3:39, and it's WAY harder to run 3:39 than it is to run 3:42. Surely if a 3:35 guy can run 4:28 in HS, there are far more people who ran around 4:30 in HS and could've run 3:41 as pros.

Thanks :)

I phrased it a little unclear, I meant it's orders of magnitude more common for someone with the potential to run sub-4 at age 25 to have a bad HS coach and run 4:40 and stop running after HS, than it is for a sub-4 HSer to go to college and not improve.

Would a sub-4 HS talent run 4:15-4:20 with almost no training? Abdi Nur is a massive talent and he only ran 4:28.

And I feel like your personal example works in my favor. In 1 season with better training you lowered your mile by 13s from 4:35 to 4:22? That's HUGE! And imagine if you'd been training like that (smartly) since high school and through college.

And that's before even optimizing your training. You're right that speed is a limiting factor for many, but speed can be trained. I don't think any of the Young brothers have a ton of natural speed, but I know a big part of Brosnan's training was doing speed development days every 1-2 weeks the entire year. If you did that speed development for 4 years in HS, maybe you would have the requisite speed to break 4.