If running a sub 16 minute 5K earned you $100,000 per year, 85% of American males 20 - 40 years old would do it.

Ceaser, Little wrote:

Ah, no.

What do you think the % of males 20-40 who can break 16 for 5K is right now? Maybe .005?

Anyone who actually agrees with the OP is probably currently on a college XC team and has a very warped view of the running potential of the general population.

Go sit outside Wal-Mart for a day and then get back to us. The huge majority of men in that age group are not running sub 16 even if you gave them 10 million dollars.

I agree with you- the OP is a bit naive. But, what if everyone actually trained for it?

Still nowhere near 85%

But I was close and I always worked 40+ hrs a week at jobs that kept me on my feet 8-10 hrs a day.

What if I was able to live the life of a pro runner?

If running a sub 13 minute 5K earned you $1,000,000 per year, wouldn't, by your logic, 85% of American males 20-40 year old would do it.

Oh wait, you CAN make $1M/year running sub-13 per year, but just about .0001% of Americans can do it.

jWl wrote:

If running a sub 13 minute 5K earned you $1,000,000 per year, wouldn't, by your logic, 85% of American males 20-40 year old would do it.

Ummm...going sub-16 isn't THAT difficult. Seriously, it really isn't.

All of you jive turkeys on letsrun who are proud as punch about your 3rd place age group medal in some tiny road race. All of you smarmy pants letsrunners who think your 18:15 5K PR is hot shit. It's time for a REALITY CHECK!!! Nearly ANYONE can run the times that you run, it's just that most Americans have no incentive to do so. Give people the proper incentive, and your precious 18:15 would be back of the pack material along with web-footed babies and blind elderly 3-legged dachshunds.

PR is hot shit...yeah right. ANYONE can do that quite easily if they wanted to put in the effort, which most Americans will not. And why would they want to?

What the F*ck is that?!?

Disregard that last sentence. F*cked up my own troll thread here. Damn.

If 85% of US men were running under 16 minutes, this message board would light-up with charges of drug use!

subfive wrote:

A 16 min 5k is beyond 85% of the group in question. It's kinda fast.

No, it's really not that fast. Plenty of college girls run faster than that, and a man in his prime shouldn't be manhandled in a physical sport by a bunch of college chicks. I was a pretty mediocre talent and ran under 15, which leaves a very large margin of error to break 16.

I know this is likely a troll thread, but...

No way could 85% do it.

My son is 17, he's trained pretty diligently over the last 18 mnonths. In middle school he always won the races in gym class by healthy margins. He's easily the best runner on his XC team. He's got above average talent, I'd say. He might break 16 minutes one day, but that day won't be this year.

I didn't break 16 until I was in my mid-twentes. I had spent many years devoted to running before that. Sure I worked then, but not that hard. I was unmarried no kids. Running was the most important thing in my life during those few years.

I just got back from a road race with about 1000 people. For the most part, they were relatively fit, most of them are probably habitual runners. A good percentage were males between the ages of 20 and 40. Winning time? About 17 minutes. Second place? About 18.

Unless these guys are buying PEDs with that 1000 bucks, I'd be surprised if 15% could do it -ever; let alone every year for 20 years.

Breaking 16 is no joke.

I figured I'd give a case-study of sorts from someone that some posters at LetsRun might call one of the "blimps" or "hobby joggers." Scroll to the very last 3 sentences for a summary.

Age: 30

Height: 5'5"

Weight: 155 lbs.

Weight at which I would have a NON-overweight BMI: 150 lbs.

History: I was overweight by about 30 lbs. from 3rd grade to 10th grade. In 10th grade, I chose to join the track team to work out with them. There was no 'making the team' because it was a sufficiently small school in a rural area, even though the team DID have talent and about 25-30 guys on it. In the fall of my 10th grade year (before running), I failed the gym-class mile with a 10:13. In the late spring of my 11th grade year I ran a 7:21 for the gym class mile. Then I started to realize that I could do so much more and set the goal for myself of going sub-6 before I left high school. I joined the cross-country team my 12th grade year, and finished the XC season with a mile PR of 6:45 and 5k PR of 23:08. Spring of my 12th grade year in track my mile PR's became 6:08 in competition, 6:06 in gym class. My weight at the time was 147 lbs., height 5'5".

I then ran on and off for 10 years.

In spring of 2012, I finally motivated myself enough to run multiple times per week without having someone to train/run with. For the last 2.5 years (up through today) I have run 4 to 6 times per week, doing 25 to 40 miles per week, depending on fitness, injuries, or whether I want to work on speed or endurance. Here are my 2014 season-bests (all timed on a track, unless otherwise noted), after 2.5 years of training:

100m: 17.22

200m: 35.50

400m: 1:20

800m: 2:53

mile: 6:05

2-mile: 13:22

5,000m: 21:14 (certified road-race)

4-mile: 28:41

10,000m: 46:32

Now compare to my PR's while leaving high school:

100m: 14.8

200m: 34-ish

400m: 1:17

mile: 6:06

3200m: 14:08

5k: 23:08

As you can see, I lost quite a bit of sprint speed, but gained quite a bit of endurance.

However, 3 years of training in high school never got me under 20 minutes in the 5k. 3 years of training as an adult never got me under 20 minutes in the 5k. I can't believe that 85% of Americans could ever go sub-16, even if they trained for 16 years straight.

No Talent, USA wrote:

Height: 5'5"

Weight: 155 lbs.

Weight at which I would have a NON-overweight BMI: 150 lbs.

Actually, you're BMI is overweight.

Listen fatty, you may very well be one of the cripples that couldn't muster a sub 16. Maybe you have malformed mitochondria or some shit.

You're right--technically, at a height of 5'5", I would have to be strictly less than 150 lbs., not equal to it, to no longer be overweight on the BMI.

Regarding the malformed mitochondria, wouldn't that prevent me from running altogether?

No Way wrote:

There are way easier ways to make 100k per year.

?? Not very hard for the average american to run sub 16.

No Talent, USA wrote:

Regarding the malformed mitochondria, wouldn't that prevent me from running altogether?

No sir. You can still run, but your silly mitochondria makes your form very inefficient.

This IS how you run, correct? Tough to crack 16 moving around like that I grant you.

Couldn't agree more

the truth is in the pudding wrote:

Out of the 15% who wouldn't.

5% would be cripples.

10% would be people who had other talents that would enable them to make more money in other occupations.

surprisingly, you got some people to bite.

1/10

There is no way anyone in their right mind could possibly believe this.

MatthewXCountry wrote:

surprisingly, you got some people to bite.

1/10

There is no way anyone in their right mind could possibly believe this.

Bitch! This thread is worth WAY more than a 1/10 and you know it.

I'd be surprised if 85% of the male population could break 20 minutes, let alone 16. I did not run in high school or college but took up jogging in my mid-20s. I was fairly athletic as a kid and was on my high school hockey team. I have never been a "fatty." I was thrilled to break 19. I was biomechanically unsound and my body would not handle more than about 30-40 miles per week.

What a stupid post. I would say 5% could do it.

A college race does not give you a good perspective on the difficulty at all. I was in a college xc race last week and another older runner said that he'd never been beaten by so many people in a race before. People who get destroyed in those races will be able to take top five or ten in most road races. There just are not a lot of people who can do this. However, in the 1970s, those who ran worked a lot harder and it was pretty common to break 2:30.

A typical LRC idiot wrote:

fools, all of you wrote:

Go to a local road race and count the number of males 20-40 that break 16 minutes. For the vast number of races, that number will be 0. And this is a sample that is training and trying to run fast already.

They might be "training" but not to the max potential. How many of them run 13 times a week? Probably ZERO. Most of them have full times jobs (or full time study and part time jobs), and cannot devote their life to running fast.

Train for 15 years (starting at age 12-13), with the sole focus on running the fastest 5K possible. Most of them could run under 16, unless they are crippled. Whether $100K is enough incentive for doing that is another question.

Wrong.

Going from 30 mpw to 90 mpw is worth about a minute or two on a 5k.