Do non runners break 5 minutes in the gym class mile?

what school?

Surely Fisher or Rupp

Appears conclusion is it is pretty rare.

My local jr high outdoor 1600 record for eighth/ninth grade is 5:03.

High school record 4:18.

The high school is 10-12. Many people first start track in grade 10, migrating over from different sports.

No one in hs gym has ever ran faster than 5:00. The track kids jog their gym mile.

When did you do that? Because it was always a one mile (1600m) run when I did the test.

When I was actually in HS (ours started in 10th grade), we'd do 2400m for the Presidential Fitness Test, usually twice a year. By this point I was actually a runner who had trained a bit. My two other teammates and I ran in the 7:50s when I was a sophomore and we were actually trying. Later, when I didn't have them in my class, I ran 7:36 alone. At the time we were all 4:30 guys (I mentioned in an earlier post that I ended at 4:23). The other two guys became D1 All Americans, one ran 4:06/13:59 and the other guy ran 4:18/14:15/29:25 and 2:14 for the marathon (he prob could have run slightly better track times but focused on the marathon.

So I don't think running sub 5 without training is particularly easy for anyone.

We all seemed to have done something different. The running test for the Presidential Fitness test when I was a sophomore (1985) in gym class was the "6-minute run". We ran around the 440-yard track for 6 minutes and then stopped at 6 minutes. The result was the distance run in 6 minutes, but since they weren't going to measure where everyone in the gym class stopped, they rounded down to the nearest 220-yd or 110-yd segment (don't remember exactly). I remember I was just a few yards short of the full mile in 6 minutes as a non-runner at the time, and a good distance ahead of the rest of the gym class.

Here's an old paper that talks about the 12-minute run and 6-minute run tests. . . they correlated well to each other, so I guess that made them interchangeable.

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED103412.pdf

A year later, now as a runner, I ran 4:57 for the mile (not 1600) in my first HS track race.

It baffles me every single time I see you one of these threads. At least it's not the "of course LeBron James could break 4:30 in the mile" type of talk but it's close. I know everyone here has run a 4:10, but a 5-minute-mile is obscenely fast to every non-runner out there, that includes soccer players. Could one of them do it? Yes, but it would be extremely few. There's a lot of walking in soccer by the way. It is much more fast-twitch and less aerobic than you think

Didn't Alan Webb's running career start because he ran a crazy fast gym class mile and was then convinced to give track a try?

But could they bench their body weight off their fitness? Does that mean they have no fitness? Answer: Yes.

A high school football player told me he ran a 4:30 mile. He did not even start on the football team.

It’s interested that you mention water polo. I’ve been a long time runner and a pretty poor swimmer but I’ve hopped into a couple IM water polo games recently and it is wild how i was basically at threshold effort or higher the entire time. Surprisingly intense sport and the speed of play means you generally don’t get to slack off for any length of time unlike soccer.

It was always a 12 minute run 1992 and before. what year did you do it?

Here's what ChatGPT said.

"So, the 12-minute run was officially part of the Presidential Physical Fitness Test starting around 1972 and was commonly used through the 1990s in many schools."

I’m with you. Maybe it’s rare in the overall scope, but it’s possible. I was recruited to track off of solely basketball training as a “freshman” (Gr. 9 Jr high in Canada.)
Ran 55 flat in the 400m and 2:08 flat in the 800m. Aerobically weak but had enough anaerobically I might have been able to hold on.
The next year I remember a Gr. 11 soccer kid came out to duke the 800m out at the school city championships, and he hung with the top club guy, both going sub 2:00 iirc.

I did when I was in 8th grade, I played soccer and tennis

It’s like saying anyone in any ncaa program slower than 4 min mile and thinks they are a runner rather than a hobby jogger

The longest we ever ran in track was the 1500m, never the mile (UK).

Most people jogged the first lap then ended up walking for the majority of the rest.

Don't think the times were anything special at all. It used to be won in around 6-7 minutes for the girls based off training for other sports usually. I broke the school record but not in a particularly fast time as I felt a bit weird running ahead on my own/really going for it when lapping people.