What do you think of these 400m standards?

fitness isn\'t what this site thinks wrote:

Zeropercent wrote:

You might consider yourself a neurotic loser, and I’d probably agree based on your post, but I consider myself to be a normal guy who enjoys professional and recreational running on many levels.

You’ve literally chosen an arbitrary distance, and assigned arbitrary names to arbitrary time ranges. Then you called these “standards” for “general fitness in adults”.

Why not use the 200? Not aerobic enough for you? Why not use the 800? As the 8 is generally thought of as equally aerobic and anaerobic? Why not use the 150, 500, 700, k, or the mile, which has already been used for ages as a metric for kids in school? Your time for 400 meters tells you how fast you are over 400 meters, it doesn’t give profound insight into this “biological fitness and chance for reproduction” that you neurotic losers think it does. And according to pseudoscience bs that “scientists” tell us, long distance running would be much more applicable to biological fitness and survival, as we were supposedly long distance running hunter gatherers.

Of course anyone with a brain would agree that running ability at any distance gives some sort of indication of fitness. It goes without saying, and like I said initially, just makes you come off as attention seeking (and possibly a neurotic loser) and looking to circlejerk about any and everything running related.

That's a whole lotta words. You coulda just told us you can't run a good 400, that's easier.

fitness isn\'t what this site thinks wrote:

Zeropercent wrote:

You might consider yourself a neurotic loser, and I’d probably agree based on your post, but I consider myself to be a normal guy who enjoys professional and recreational running on many levels.

You’ve literally chosen an arbitrary distance, and assigned arbitrary names to arbitrary time ranges. Then you called these “standards” for “general fitness in adults”.

Why not use the 200? Not aerobic enough for you? Why not use the 800? As the 8 is generally thought of as equally aerobic and anaerobic? Why not use the 150, 500, 700, k, or the mile, which has already been used for ages as a metric for kids in school? Your time for 400 meters tells you how fast you are over 400 meters, it doesn’t give profound insight into this “biological fitness and chance for reproduction” that you neurotic losers think it does. And according to pseudoscience bs that “scientists” tell us, long distance running would be much more applicable to biological fitness and survival, as we were supposedly long distance running hunter gatherers.

Of course anyone with a brain would agree that running ability at any distance gives some sort of indication of fitness. It goes without saying, and like I said initially, just makes you come off as attention seeking (and possibly a neurotic loser) and looking to circlejerk about any and everything running related.

That's a whole lotta words. You coulda just told us you can't run a good 400, that's easier.

Splance wrote:

Fully Verified wrote:

I’ll tell you what it means. It means the couch potatoes are in fact faster than 80 mile per week marathoners. It means that the vast majority of marathoners, with the exception of the super elite, are in fact quite slow and are “fit” only in the sense that they can run very slowly for a very, very long time.

I know that no one on this site wants to hear it, but long-distance runners are fit in only one aspect of human performance, and not an incredibly important one. Running slowly for 4 hours straight is a certain kind of fitness, to be sure. But being able to clear a quarter mile in a minute indicates not only a small measure of aerobic fitness, but reactivity, power, acceleration, and lactate buffering. Those things are important too.

***Fully Verified***

Thank you for this! Fairly new to the site and I'm a bit shocked by the amount of pushback I'm getting on this thread. Do folks genuinely believe there are non-fit ppl running 46s in the 400m? Definitely appears to be the case that the distance runner's definition of "fitness" needs a bit of updating.

moorest wrote:

Splance wrote:

Thank you for this! Fairly new to the site and I'm a bit shocked by the amount of pushback I'm getting on this thread. Do folks genuinely believe there are non-fit ppl running 46s in the 400m? Definitely appears to be the case that the distance runner's definition of "fitness" needs a bit of updating.

I actually think it's pretty good and I like the descriptors. I might nudge some of the cutpoints back a second, but it's pretty close to what I would say.

And, as a physical activity researcher, I'm happy to opine that 400m speed is likely a reasonably good test of fitness, as it integrates aspects of coordination, power, and endurance (it's 30% aerobic, so endurance matters). Much better than the 100m as a measure of fitness, maybe not as good as the 800m. As you age, strength and coordination matter a lot to protect against falls and accidents and are key to functional health and a high quality of daily living. Historically, physical activity researchers focused on cardiovascular disease (where aerobic fitness is king), but with rates dropping, there is now interest in other health issues where other kinds of fitness may be of greater importance.