If 15% of all male athletes can break 5 minutes in the mile assuming they are in peak shape, how many shrimp would be included in the seafood gumbo at Joe's Crab shack, given that Joe's Crab is buying shrimp at $1.25 to the pound?
If 15% of all male athletes can break 5 minutes in the mile assuming they are in peak shape, how many shrimp would be included in the seafood gumbo at Joe's Crab shack, given that Joe's Crab is buying shrimp at $1.25 to the pound?
Everybody is missing athletes in other sports. Yeah, yeah, there's often a lot of bravado from other sports about how "easy" track is, but a 5:00 mile is not an extreme goal (I've seen soccer players run 4:30 on a whim with no additional training). I would wager that over half of all collegiate or professional soccer/lacrosse/cyclists/Ultimate frisbee players could run it. Much lower percentages in other sports like football/baseball/basketball/tennis/wrestling.
I think the right ball-park is ~100,000 people in the U.S., including about half of varsity high schoolers, nearly all collegiates, most professional athletes in any sport, some recreational runners, and some amateur multi-sporters. This is a really tricky question to answer accurately!
20,000,000 is not unreasonable??? You have got to be friggin kidding me!
Let's just count it off. Me, that's one.
I was using low estimates of runners that could run right now sub 5 and just showing how fast they add up. Every state is going to have 400 which would bring you to 20,000 and most will be closer to 1000. Then state like Cal,Tex,Ari,Fla and Colorado with more colleges, elite runners and active communities probable have 2 to 4 times that number.
This discussion will be completely colored by our own HS experiences.
One guy went to a school with 400 people with 4 sub 5 guys.
I had an opposite experience - I went to a 1,600 person HS with 1 sub 5 guy (me). The whole 10,000 person school district had maybe 5 sub 5 guys, with 3 high schools (1,500 people each) had no one below 5:30. They didn't really have xc teams.
My nephew, at a 1,000 person hs in CA, tells me that their best xc guy runs 18:40 for 3 miles.
I suppose this shows the influence of anecdote over facts, which we don't have.
My experience tells me that saying every high school has one sub 5 guy is wrong. Or at least was in the 1980s.
Missing population wrote:
Everybody is missing athletes in other sports. Yeah, yeah, there's often a lot of bravado from other sports about how "easy" track is, but a 5:00 mile is not an extreme goal (I've seen soccer players run 4:30 on a whim with no additional training). I would wager that over half of all collegiate or professional soccer/lacrosse/cyclists/Ultimate frisbee players could run it. Much lower percentages in other sports like football/baseball/basketball/tennis/wrestling.
I think the right ball-park is ~100,000 people in the U.S., including about half of varsity high schoolers, nearly all collegiates, most professional athletes in any sport, some recreational runners, and some amateur multi-sporters. This is a really tricky question to answer accurately!
I would take your wager in a second. Maybe a collegiate soccer team would have 1 or 2 guys. Lacrosse: 0. Cyclists: 0. Frisbee players? Maybe you are pulling my chain here.
You are far underestimating the challenge of sub 5. Maybe half of soccer players could run sub 6.
A sub 6minute mile was a prerequisite to try out for my high school soccer team. It was on a cinder track and they gave you a second chance if you didn't make it (and goalie had a pass), but to say only half of collegiate soccer players can run a 6min mile is crazy.
[/quote]
I would take your wager in a second. Maybe a collegiate soccer team would have 1 or 2 guys. Lacrosse: 0. Cyclists: 0. Frisbee players? Maybe you are pulling my chain here.
You are far underestimating the challenge of sub 5. Maybe half of soccer players could run sub 6.[/quote]
I'm not certain I could run a sub-5 in the US, but given a chance to go to Europe and run, I'm confident I could go sub-5.
Given 2000 Census data, there are approximately 19million males 15-24, 20 million 25-34 and 23 million 35-44. Assuming 1 in 200 can go sub 5 in 15-24, 1 in 400 in the 25-34 bracket and 1 in 700 from 35-44 with every other demographic being negligibile puts you in the area of 180,000. It seems a little on the high side to me, but 100,000-200,000 is probably the right range.
anton chigurh wrote:
Given 2000 Census data, there are approximately 19million males 15-24, 20 million 25-34 and 23 million 35-44. Assuming 1 in 200 can go sub 5 in 15-24, 1 in 400 in the 25-34 bracket and 1 in 700 from 35-44 with every other demographic being negligibile puts you in the area of 180,000. It seems a little on the high side to me, but 100,000-200,000 is probably the right range.
um, grabbing a 1/200 figure from where?
Fast Estimations wrote:
Assumptions:
1) There are 307 million people in the United States.
2) Half, roughly 154 million are women
3) So few women can run sub 5, as a percentage, that their total number will be a rounding difference in the male total, so all women can be excluded.
4) Of the 1400 males in my high school junior and senior classes, five could run 4:59 or faster, which is about 0.35 percent.
5) 153 million men times 0.0035 is 535,000.
6) Assumption number five is an overestimation, as many males are young children, elderly, or sedentary and overweight in middle age, compared to junior and senior year in high school Eliminating 90 percent of the ages from birth to 80, leaves 8 years, or ten percent of 535,000, which is 53,500. The 8 years would be 16-24.
I think the number is certainly less than 53,500, as few of the five of us held that fitness through college, from injury or less intensive training. By the way, the number of basketball, soccer, and football players at my high school who claimed the abilty was dozens, but a mass time trial revealed that the few of the braggarts could break 5:30 and none below 5:10.
Your 2000 seems too low. If I had to pick a ballpark number, as you did, I would pick 20,000, the vast majority of whom are varsity high school runners and collegiate scholarship athletes in several sports.
Pretty good reasoning and conclusion. I'll concur. The only thing is that we can't forget all the middle school boys who can run sub 5:00. My daughter runs middle school track, and I saw several boys go sub 5:00 over the course of the season including one 4:45, and their ages range from 12-14 (not very many are still 12 by spring though).
I went to a high school with less then 400 people. Our entire cross country team could run under 5 min. We had like 8 or 9 on the team. I'd say half of our baseball and soccer team could run sub 5. Of course, I'm not sure if they were legal. On our basketball team we had maybe 3 of us that could break 5. Our football team ran a mile with all of our pads on. And 3 of us broke 5.
Out of all the road races out there. Your avg 17:20ish guy can break 5 min. My wife can break 5 min. All my brothers can break 5 min.
In college my entire cross team could break 5 min. Including a few of our girls. I know for a fact that we had 3 guys on the Basketball team break 5. And we had a lot of soccer guys who could break 5. I sat there in the stands and out of curiosity timed them run the mile. There were at least 9 guys go sub 5 on the soccer team. Our two decathaletes both broke 5. I'm 30 years old now and I can still break 5 pretty easy for the mile.
I'm guessing the number would be in the millions.
I'd have to agree that the number would be very high, since I just ran sub-5 with not too much training, and I suck at distance.
However, what if we limit it to people over 20 yrs of age? I think the majority of sub-5 would be kids. Or are all kids fat and lazy these days?
Not as good as I once was wrote:
I went to a high school with less then 400 people. Our entire cross country team could run under 5 min. We had like 8 or 9 on the team. I'd say half of our baseball and soccer team could run sub 5. Of course, I'm not sure if they were legal. On our basketball team we had maybe 3 of us that could break 5. Our football team ran a mile with all of our pads on. And 3 of us broke 5.
Out of all the road races out there. Your avg 17:20ish guy can break 5 min. My wife can break 5 min. All my brothers can break 5 min.
In college my entire cross team could break 5 min. Including a few of our girls. I know for a fact that we had 3 guys on the Basketball team break 5. And we had a lot of soccer guys who could break 5. I sat there in the stands and out of curiosity timed them run the mile. There were at least 9 guys go sub 5 on the soccer team. Our two decathaletes both broke 5. I'm 30 years old now and I can still break 5 pretty easy for the mile.
I'm guessing the number would be in the millions.
not sure if you are serious here, but only 12 decathletes in the Beijing olympics ran 4:42 for the 1500. Sure they were tired, but they are olympians. You're saying your decathletes could do that? Doubtful. Half the baseball team? Now I don't believe a word you are saying.
Nice to be married to a national class wife though.
Our estimates are definitely biased by the fact that we are runners and hang around other runners. Sure, people on these boards exaggerate, but I would bet that most of the posters here can run sub-5, or have done it at some point in their lives. And we personally know many others who have. So, to us, the sub-5 mile is seen as something commonplace and pedestrian. And our estimates of how many people can do it will probably be too high.
While it's true that many males who can't run sub-5 could do it if they trained for it, we need to consider the reality that many athletes who stick with running/track long enough to acheive that feat are people who have at least a little bit of talent. At my high school we had maybe 4 guys who could break 5. But we had at least a dozen guys who typically ran the 800, 1600, and/or 3200. So, we had at least 8 distance runners who were young, thin, and training daily who could not break 5.
Furthermore, like most schools, all students were required to run the mile as part of a physical fitness test in PE class. To my knowledge, no one ever broke 5 during this test. And my school had close to 2,000 students. Granted, many weren't really trying, but do you think those individuals were capable of sub 5 if they tried?
1800 kids go to Hoover High School in Alabama (grades 9-12). 12 kids break 5 in the 1600 (the last guy ran 4:58.5, but we'll give him the full mile sub 5). 12/1800 = .666% of the total student body but if you figure just guys 12/900= 1.3% of all guys in the student body.
if you figure all of the age brackets, the high school and college age will probably have the highest number of sub 5 runners. if i had to guess, i would take the .666% figure and say that is twice the amount of sub 5 milers across all equal size (number of people) age brackets. Most schools in AL don't have as many sub 5 guys as we do, but a lot of schools in TX and CA will and it should even out.
So I'm going to guess that .333% of the population can run sub 5.
.333% of 307 million = 1,023,332 runners that can run sub 5 in the U.S.
That's exactly what I was thinking, and I bet the number still falls around 40 to 50 thousand.
I can't do it now, likely 5:15 at best, but I think I will make it eventually as it's a goal I'm shooting for.
Our Decathletes were better runners, than they were throwers, jumpers, etc. One of our two decathletes was a half miler turned Decathlete. He was a 1:53 guy. The other was actually the better decathlete but he ran his 1500's in the 4:30's. You don't have to believe me.
In highschool, we didn't have your typical baseball players. We didn't have your barry bonds, jose cansecos and Mark Mcgwires. We had a bunch of skinny ass mexicans. I went to a school that was like 7 miles from the border. Kids would litterly walk across the border every day to come to school.
My wife really can break 5. Again, you don't have to believe me if you don't want to.
Wow, so you think that basically 1 in 300 people can run sub-5???
Have you SEEN the general population?
I have trouble believing that figure. I'm in good shape, and doing a 4:58 was REALLY HARD for me. Granted I don't train for it, but I work out every day, and run all the time, and I did train a little bit for it.
1 in 300? I can't believe that. MAYBE 1 in 1000, more like 1 in 10,000. Let's say we have 5,000,000 people living here in Minnesota--that would mean 500 sub-5-minute milers in the state, and that sounds closer to reality to me.
Looking at results from various meets around here, including HS, I would have to say it is even less, because after all, those in the meets are runners, and even many of them don't break 5.