My friend claims he can out-sprint, out-run, and out-earn 99% of the population at their peak. True or false?

a truth seeker wrote:

One of my friends has a PR of 12.34 FAT in the 100m (cool time, bro), 5:04 in the mile, and earns $76K/year before taxes.

He claims that 99% of the world's population has never and will never run faster than him or earn more than him*. Does this sound right, and if not, what would the 99th percentiles be?

*could be due to a lack of time/motivation, not genetic limitations

Is your "friend" Chris Lukezic?

Wtfunny wrote:

yeah bro wrote:

Yeah what a bizarre train of thought. Running several hours a day makes people better runners? Only an American idiot would think that.

Practicing soccer, and playing soccer, doesn't turn an average person into a 12.xx sprinter.

Agreed. If anything, soccer makes them slower at the 100. The study that someone posted earlier showed that soccer players were the slowest during the pre-season, a bit faster in-season, and ran their fastest sprint times during the off season.

faster than your friend wrote:

There are a lot of wealthy Europeans who only fly into NYC, LA, Chicago and Miami, then leave. We do not see rich Europeans often. We often forget how many are very wealthy.

It's not that hard to be among the top 74,000,000 in anything.

The number of rich Europeans flying to the states for a fun weekend trip numbers what, 5000 or so? 10,000? 25,000? Either way, it's just a drop in the bucket when you compare it to 1% of the world's population.

I looked up the percentiles for a 300m sprint, often used for police fitness tests.

Median for 20-29 year old guys: 56.0

99th percentile: 42

This is about as impressive as a 13.0 100m. So if you're faster than that, you're probably in the 99th percentile.

For the 1.5 mile run:

Median for guys in their 20s: 11:58

99th percentile: 8:22

This is about as impressive as a 5:10 mile.

Bottom line: OP friends' claim is probably true.

a truth seeker wrote:

One of my friends has a PR of 12.34 FAT in the 100m (cool time, bro), 5:04 in the mile, and earns $76K/year before taxes.

He claims that 99% of the world's population has never and will never run faster than him or earn more than him*. Does this sound right, and if not, what would the 99th percentiles be?

*could be due to a lack of time/motivation, not genetic limitations

Considering this is the whole world, then the income is a certainty. I would wager that the mile time makes top 1% too, but, I'm not so sure about the 100m.

recognizer of irrelevancy wrote:

wer.aiupoasf wrote:

To be top 1% in income in the world, he just has to make $32,400/year.

Irrelevant. Those stats include children and elderly. He's talking about what people would earn at their peak.

It asks for income after taxes, so I put in a conservative $50K instead of $76K. That gets you in the top 0.31%.

If you take out 2/3 of the world's population to account for children, teens, and the elderly, that still puts the OP's friend within the top 1%.

But that's only because he was lucky enough to be born in a first-world country, not because he has any good skills.

poverty is an ugly thing wrote:

Dude. You can earn half that amount and be in the top 1% of the world's richest.

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

Enter: $35,000

Result: Top 0.81% of the world in terms of income.

You must have no concept of global poverty.

Technically true but meaningless in practice.

You can live comfortably on $10/day in many developing countries.

You'll be struggling to make ends meet on $10/hour in the U.S.

more realistic wrote:

Top 1%:

100 - 11.3

Mile - 4:40

Income - $200K

Worldwide? LOL, no. These are all way off.

$76k is the top 0.11% based on this site:

The original post says peak, if you assume that means the best they actually ran vs. the best they ever could run, this is definitely top 1%. That said, running is fairly niche and even people that run regularly have probably never trained for the 100 and the mile at any point in their life, and even fewer would have a professionally timed example of both.

As fa as the income, it has already been said, but you need to look at this in the context of the basket of goods that the income buys and adjust accordingly. While it wouldn't completely debunk the claim, it would push the income percentile lower.

All that said, I have crushed all of the friends PRs, so I must be truly amazing ;).

Faster than me, sadly.

A Real Man wrote:

And what can your slow, poor friend bench?

Letsrun logic:

Anyone slower than me sucks.

Anyone faster than me is on drugs.

Anyone poorer than me is a lazy bum.

Anyone richer than me is a greedy CEO or someone who inherited their money.

stats dude wrote:

If you take out 2/3 of the world's population to account for children, teens, and the elderly, that still puts the OP's friend within the top 1%.

You're stupid. You cannot take out the young or the elderly as they may one year earn (or have one year earned) more than $76k. Read the damn first post again, moran.