Sub 5 Mile: Tops in Human History?

Hah, good post by the troll. There's probably no one on that baseball team who can run a sub 2:30 half mile, never mind 5 min mile. Probably less than 12% of all people can break 5, even with proper training.

Well, there have already been plenty of opinions made known on this thread. But what the hell, I'll go ahead and throw in my 2 cents worth as well.......

As far as people who have actually broken 5 go, they must be in the 99th percentile of the general population. And people who could currently break 5? Gotta be in the 99.99th percentile. But what would this percentage look like if everyone trained for the mile? I'm thinkin' 1/4 of the general male population could do it. But you have to take into account mental stamina. Most people I know just plain couldn't put in the training to break 5, even if they were physically capable. Why? Because running middle-long distance HURTS LIKE A BITCH. Even if alot of people are talented enough to break 5, you have to give credit to those who have actually gone through the pain of acheiving it.

LouSiffer wrote:

there are probably 10 to 12 baseball guys who could

Look LouSiffer, I'll give you credit, you've had some pretty entertaining posts over the last few months, but there is no way 10-12 baseball guys at your local HS can go sub-5.

You obviously are in awe of HS baseball teams. I remember in another thread you stated that Ted Williams would not have been able to make a state level HS team in this era. You really need to educate yourself on that one....that's almost like saying Jim Ryun would not have run sub 4:00 if he were in his prime today.

Im not sure what the answear is but at our school we average about 4-6 guys every year out of 8 guys and sometimes it takes them a couple of years years to get down under 5 . I think its got to put you down in the top .01 % . now the real question should be is there more sub 16:00 than there is sub 5:00 .

I think it is a very tiny percentage indeed. My highschool had 10 guys break 5 my senior year, in a highschool of 2000 students. Only one of them broke 4:40.

Hector100m wrote:

now the real question should be is there more sub 16:00 than there is sub 5:00 .

Are you joking? Sub 16:00 is WAY tougher than sub 5:00.

easily dude..t5 mins for a woman is elite?? in what 8th grade?come on now... paula/deana can run 5:10/5:15 back to back for 26.2. and sorry but a 61 400 for a woman isnt fast either, esp at the collegiate level.most good athletes simply do not run track they play other sports (i dont like that but its a fact).you do not have to be a good runner to run sub 5, you need a modicum of athletic ability. if you can run a 32/33 second 200 (which most good athletes can) you can run sub 5.

hrunner wrote:

you are dead on wrong, or just full of shit

10 to 12 baseball guys, no way

my girlfriend is a DI runner and naturally fast (she can run a 61 second 400 without too much effort) and she has a lot of trouble breaking 5 in the mile!! breaking 5 in the mile for women is elite level so there is no way in f'ing hell your school has 3 field hockey/softball players doing it

LouSiffer wrote:

there are probably 10 to 12 baseball guys who could and another 2 or 3 field hockey/softball girls

hmmmm nope, never stated that todd wouldnt make a state level team...AND most importantly you do know that T Will WAS indeed a pretty good baseball player right?What i do like about our HS bball program is that the coach has most of the players run XC in the off season. as i said our XC captain is a stud getting a full ride as a pitcher next year. (too bad as i think he could have been a 1:55 type)Honestly tho...what the heck happened to you youngsters that you think a 5 minute mile is anything? were you all raised on galloway and Runners world?

track dude wrote:

LouSiffer wrote:

there are probably 10 to 12 baseball guys who could

Look LouSiffer, I'll give you credit, you've had some pretty entertaining posts over the last few months, but there is no way 10-12 baseball guys at your local HS can go sub-5.

You obviously are in awe of HS baseball teams. I remember in another thread you stated that Ted Williams would not have been able to make a state level HS team in this era. You really need to educate yourself on that one....that's almost like saying Jim Ryun would not have run sub 4:00 if he were in his prime today.

I think some people are making some wild assumptions:

-Most 3rd World/poor nations have terrible runners and athletes. Look at India, huge population, poor, lean people; world's worst athletes.

-HS is not representitive, but is important to measure since if somebody, especially a non-runner is going to go sub-5, they are going to do it in HS.

-Soccer players are constantly overestimating their distance running ability. In college myself and 5 fellow rugby drunks, destroyed, and I mean destroyed, 6 Div 1 soccer players in a 5K challenge they threw at us.

-I think, and someone probably has better stats, running participation in dozens of countries is not existant.

Even amongst runners, sub 5 is a very small group, here is last year's 5th Ave Mile for comparison:

72 of the 2,464 finishers of the 2005, 5th Ave. Mile broke 5:00, including Toby Tanser at 4:57, in a downhill road mile in perfect weather. That's only 2.9% of a pretty selective running population. This does not include the elite groups where 31 of 33 (93.9%) men and women broke 5:00.

Time distribution:

-----------------

4:00-4:59 72 or 2.9%

5:00-5:59 553 or 22.4%

6:00-6:59 1,078 or 43.7%

7:00 + 831 or 33.7%

Sex/Age distribution:

Men – 1537 Women – 927 Total – 2464

Finishers by Age and Gender

Age Group Men Women Total

12 - 14 33 29 62

15 - 19 48 20 68

20 - 29 307 300 607

30 - 39 616 354 970

40 - 44 184 74 258

45 - 49 123 62 185

50 - 54 82 29 111

55 - 59 50 20 70

60 - 64 22 8 30

65 - 69 16 3 19

70 - 74 11 5 16

75 - 79 3 2 5

80 - 84 3 0 3

85 - 89 1 0 1

90 - 99 1 0 1

I think my best 200m is about 24.5 with a jogging start. I could run 26 when in a bit of spriting shape. I've run over 40 miles in a week and am not in terrible shape. However, I don't think I could break 5 minutes unless I had that as my singular goal for 2-3 years and even then it would probably take several attempts. I'd say 00.01% of people could break 4 minutes.

i honestly think you're just baiting people into posting angered responses.

"you do not have to be a good runner to run sub 5, you need a modicum of athletic ability. if you can run a 32/33 second 200 (which most good athletes can) you can run sub 5."

In order to break 5 you need the speed to atleast break 30 in a 200. Its laughable that you claim anyone who can run 32/33 for a 200 can break 5. Thats incredibly slow.

also the type of athleticism it takes to break 5 and the type it takes to hit a home run, or throw a fastball are entirely different, and unrelated. Roger Clemens, and Barry Bonds are great athletes, but i doubt they could break 5 for the mile.

This is to all the people who had few people running sub 5 in high school. My school had 2000 students, about 500 in every class. But just in my senior class we had 17 boys who were able to run sub and 1 girl. we had 9 guys on our xc team who could, 2 more quarter milers who could, (ran 48 and change)2 or 3 hockey players, and 3 guys on the football team could run sub 5 (us track guys were witness to this as we were doing strides on the field while they were timed in the mile, so its believeable.)

Maybe my high school had a wierd athletic population, but others are right when they say testing this at the high school level will give you best results as it is where the most fit people are found.

That post is probably FOS but thats besides the point.

If we are answering the question of how many have the ability to break 5:

It is not enough to say my HS track team out of a school of 5000. Simply because not everyone ran track. The better question is out of how many who ran track. So if your XC/track team is say 25 and 8 people break 5 then that is roughly 33.3%.

Obviously this stat can't be applied to the rest of the school but it is a better (albeit not by much) indicator of potential.

I am in no way indicating that I think 33.3% of people have the talent to run sub 5. Just to clarify.

with few exceptions, i think people who are posting are answering only one of the three possible iterations of this question: (i) percentage of people who ever have had the ability to run a 5 min mile, (ii) percentage of people who currently can, and (iii) percentage of people who at one point in their lives had the ability to break 5 min in the mile.

i'll restate my opinion that the third iteration of the question is the one most relevant to considering how impressive the feat is.

as an aside, it seems like many posters are either in high school now or did not run division one track. perhaps that is a good thing in terms of answering this question as those of us who have run division one track might have a skewed mindset regarding the difficulty of running certain times.

that said, i agree with those who say that it doesn't take much athletic talent for a male to break 5 minutes in the mile. i almost did it within 2 months of beginning competitive running in the first mile of a cross country race at age 14 (the last 2.1 weren't pretty).

Flagpole Willy wrote:

I've know lots of guys who ran a mile even under 4:30 who could not break 16:00 for a 5,000 (some of those milers were 800 guys moving up, but still...)

Count me as one of those guys. PR of 4:29 for the mile and 16:40 for 5k. Yes, I'm terrible aerobically, I know.

By the way, 16:00 flat is 5:09 pace. Of course it's going to be more difficult than a 5:00 mile.

kaitainen,

You are being too modest. If as a 14-year old kid you almost ran sub 5 for the first mile of a 3.1 mile race (meaning you could likely have done it for an open mile) after only 2 months of training, then you have some talent - the VAST MAJORITY of 14 year old kids can NOT do that. I do think that an active non-overweight 14-year-old can probably make great strides in just two months of training, but you've got some talent nonetheless.

A LOT of it has to do with talent. At my high school there were tons of guys that worked their asses off and maybe one or two ever broke 5-min. Then there was one guy that partied all the time, smoked weed and cigarettes, and honestly didn't give a crap. He ran just under 4:30.

Obviously, if you ask the guys that worked real hard and never broke 5, they would think that very few people could do it. If you asked the party man, he would think that anyone could do it, fairly easily. So, if we're just going to post stories from our respective high schools, we're all going to have skewed perspectives. We need to focus more on stats and facts. And I don't have any, so I'll drop off here and check back in a few hours.

very wrong... to run sub 5 one only needs to average 37.5 per 200.. for someone with a 32 best that is a slowdown of 5 1/2 seconds. you really dont think you can put together 8 200's with that kind of slowdown? i know my mile pr was run with much less of a gap (around 4 seconds)I am talking athleticism not skill. what clemens and bonds have is skill, i would not call either an athlete at this stage of their careers.

meh wrote:

In order to break 5 you need the speed to atleast break 30 in a 200. Its laughable that you claim anyone who can run 32/33 for a 200 can break 5. Thats incredibly slow.

also the type of athleticism it takes to break 5 and the type it takes to hit a home run, or throw a fastball are entirely different, and unrelated. Roger Clemens, and Barry Bonds are great athletes, but i doubt they could break 5 for the mile.

KnowItAll wrote:

A LOT of it has to do with talent. At my high school there were tons of guys that worked their asses off and maybe one or two ever broke 5-min. Then there was one guy that partied all the time, smoked weed and cigarettes, and honestly didn't give a crap. He ran just under 4:30.

Obviously, if you ask the guys that worked real hard and never broke 5, they would think that very few people could do it. If you asked the party man, he would think that anyone could do it, fairly easily. So, if we're just going to post stories from our respective high schools, we're all going to have skewed perspectives. We need to focus more on stats and facts. And I don't have any, so I'll drop off here and check back in a few hours.

Or, there are people like me who ran 4:32 in high school and KNEW I was one of the most talented 1600 meter runners in the world! :)