What percentage of women can run a 6-min mile?

About 98% of them. Their uterus falls out after half a mile which explains the missing 2%.

With a phalanx of pacers in arrowhead formation, following a Tesla pace car and wearing special shoes, I'd say 1.238%

There are females who can run it off no training and females who train hard and will never come close to 6. If you trained an >25 female to her potential most most probably would probably end up around 5:45-6:30 after about 4 or 5 years. As for women over 30; not only would it take longer to train them and for them to adapt but their potentials will be lower so maybe you could train the over 30 female population to arpund 6:45-7:45

Of course the only accurate way to ever do this would be of the entire female population were willing to do this and I'm willing to bet less than 1 out of 100 people are even willing to run.

I will say this, any woman over 30 who can run even a sub 8 minute mile gets my respect. Sub 7 for under 25 girls.

One way to get a feeling for this is to look at results from races. Most runners who bother to enter races do at least some training, so show what a typical "runner" looks like. Those who don't race may be able to get results like runners if they trained, but likely would not be as good on average, because if you are good at something you are more likely to continue doing it.

Mile races are not very common, so to get a feel for percentages, instead look at a few 5km races and see the number of women finishing under the equivalent time to a 6 minute mile. I have 21:11 from a set of tables that are pretty accurate for men, so maybe a bit faster for a women's 5km as women's times for distance tend to be slightly better relative to their middle distance times (so perhaps use 21 minutes flat as an equivalent time).

That is a pretty good time. I just looked at two races - the first had 200 women, and only 3 finished in under 21 minutes. Another had 118 women, and 3 finished under 21 minutes.

Running Dan wrote:

One way to get a feeling for this is to look at results from races. Most runners who bother to enter races do at least some training, so show what a typical "runner" looks like. Those who don't race may be able to get results like runners if they trained, but likely would not be as good on average, because if you are good at something you are more likely to continue doing it.

People who are good at other sports would rather continue doing that than doing something as boring as running. Remember who tried out for the cross country team at your high school? Those who were not explosive or coordinated enough to make teams in other sports. It's the same with hobby joggers. They take up running, because they are not good at anything else. And most of them used to be overweight, and started running to lose weight. Participating in road races gives them an illusion that they are "athletes" which they have never been in their life.

If women who are enjoying other sports decide to enter road races, they will blow those hobby joggers out of the water.

No more than 2-3 out of 2000 women could achieve this. Out of young women aged 18-30, maybe about 1 in 500.

As far as percentiles go, in this widespread study 10:22 for the 1.5 mile run is at the 99th percentile of woman in their genetic prime (20-24). 10:22 requires about 6:30-6:40 mile fitness. The ONLY females at any age running anywhere close to 11 minutes in the 1.5 mile vo2 max test would be females actively involved in sport.

However, just because somebody cannot run sub 6 doesn’t mean they don’t have the aerobic fitness to do so, their legs just might not be trained in the notion of running. Take a female cyclist that can do 10 miles in 30 minutes on a road bike (or about 40 minutes on a heavy MTB) - I think aerobically, that would translate to roughly around 6 minute fitness although said female might not be able to run an efficient mile. The same with swimmers.

https://www.dps.texas.gov/trainingAcademy/recruiting/1.5MileRunFemale.pdf

Sub 6 speed is considerably faster than that what the 99th percentile achieves seeing as I would expect about a 9:45 from a female going sub 6 in the mile.

0.0001%

Less than 5% could even go sub 8.

Do any of the people making posts like this have Strava? Why don't you just check the leaderboards and you'll see that there aren't thousands of women out there jogging on your streets capable of 6 minute miles.

Depends on age wrote:

No.

I know girls on my team who have trained seriously (year round 5 to 6 days a week) who have been 5-15 seconds away. Also depends on the age of the people. Women over 18 or 19 probably have a much smaller chance than, say, a class of middle school girls. But if you took 100 12 year old girls and put them in a rigorous youth track program, then by age 14, probably 40 could break 6.

Your opinion is not the same as many expert coaches and scientists. They realize that by including resistance

training and speed development most girl runners will continue to get better as they get older.

It is a myth that younger girls will automatically be better than older girls in high school.

Training makes a difference and some girls merely give up.

At my high school, only 1-2% of boys in my PE class in California, which is one of the fitter states, could run a 6-minute mile, and they were all XC / track boys. This was about 10 years ago when obesity rates were slightly lower. No girl could run a 6-minute mile. Only the female varsity runners could run 6-minute miles or less, so we're looking at maybe 5-8 sub-6 girls at any given time.

Don't even think about the general population. The average man and the average woman would DNF, no doubt.

I coach girls. We have 5 in our HS of 700 girls who can do it. Add their mothers and you have 1400, add their grandmothers and you have 2800. Maybe 2 of the mothers can do it so that is 7 out of 2800 and you have 1 out of every 400.

Coevett wrote:

Do any of the people making posts like this have Strava? Why don't you just check the leaderboards and you'll see that there aren't thousands of women out there jogging on your streets capable of 6 minute miles.

That would be a flawed group to use as the people using Strava are already engaged in some type of aerobic activity. Therefore your results to infer the general population would be skewed and not reflective of the general population.

I don’t care if this is letsrun where everybody and their brothers are sub 4 milers.. 6 minutes is really f-in hard for women. Anywhere in the 6:XX range displays pretty respectable fitness in my opinion (even though that’s my 13.1 pace).

Out of women ages 18-29:

1 out of 3,000,000 goes sub 5 (genetically blessed, competing heavily since a young age. Could be sub elite.)

1 out of 500 goes sub 6 I say (and this person would definitely belong to a competitive college team or be a great contributor to their local racing club)

1-2 out of 100 goes sub 7 (these would be young women active in competitive sport, decent runners but not racers)

5-10 out of 100 goes sub 8 (these will be hobby joggers who are in kinda good shape)

20 out of 100 would go sub 9 (not really super fit but probably fit enough to stave off heart disease)

9-12 minute miles are more common but there are lots and LOTS of women who wouldn’t even be capable of that.

You’ll probaly get less than 5 in any given town.

Academic wrote:

So much truth here: In the end, we have two possibilities. This is what I teach at university, ultimate probability.

I pity your students.

The probability of a flipped coin landing heads or tails is 50/50.

There is a 50% chance of the coin landing heads and a 50% chance of it landing tails.

You're confusing probability with a statistical fact as to the percentage of the population who CAN run a 6 minute mile.

If there were 100 women and 95 can run a 6 min mile, then 95% of those women can run a 6 min mile. It's not the case that 50% of women can and 50% women can't.

Jesus.

XCXrunner wrote:

Not every man has the ability to run a six minute mile even with the best training which may seem like a sad story but it's also a true story. So based on that I think it requires at least a little bit of natural talent for women. Having said that, I don't think it requires heaps so I am going to say that a good percentage of women (at least half) who have it in them to try for six minutes could actually do it if you gave them long enough to train, had an appropriate diet and could handle 20-25 MPW which I'm sure 90% of the population can providing they are at an appropriate weight or not disabled.

It would take more than 25mpw for most women to break 6, even the naturally athletic ones would probably need around 40mpw in order to comfortably run sub 6.

Honest wrote:

I'm willing to bet even some women on professional soccer teams wouldn't be able to run a 6.00 unless they supplement with track racing regularly.

Are you insane?

It's a tough problem to think about because on the one hand, a girl who can break 6:00 for the mile is not considered particularly remarkable. I've known loads of them, and most of them didn't even seem like great athletes, weren't particularly graceful, etc. And yet, even though just barely breaking 6 won't get you many accolades as a girl, it's still very rare. I'd guess less than 1% of the female population can do it.

The other issue to me is the premise of "hypothetically, if they were properly trained, how many women could break 6?" Well, most females (and males for that matter) would absolutely hate the very idea of training for the mile. They would just refuse to do it. This may seem like I'm trying to be one of those annoying people who question the premises of hypothetical debates, but I really think it is rather meaningless to say someone has the physiological capacity to run a sub-6 mile, if there is no earthly way you could ever motivate them to do it. Imagine some total lazy slob chick who smokes, eats only junk food, and lays around on the couch all day. It really doesn't matter if someone determines that she has the right blood values and muscle type, or whatever, to be able to go sub-6. She would still be mentally incapable.

With or without training?

Just taking random females off of the street and making them run a mile I would say leas than 1%. If you include all females you will find very few females over the age of 40 that can run a sub 6 minute mile.

I am trying to convince my fiance to run a 5k, but also giving her space so she's ready when she can. You brought up good points about the majority not even being able to run with your wife...those are great times by the way for her on a busy schedule.