A sub 4 1500 friend of mine raced against a 4x400 team composed of random co-workers and got smoked

In 1976 I quit the tracks to play soccer for the juniors of a elite team in Norway. The coach made the whole group, 21 players, run against me around a building (300 meters about).

Complete Bs in this thread. A completely made-up opening post and then loads of anecdotal tall tales to try to give it credence. (Probably by the Op/troll).

As if in 2019, there would be no one to record it with a cell phone, at least. I mean it's been planned for a year, so what gives.

The "I was running around checking stuff so I couldn't record it" excuse is mega lame. As if there wouldn't be plenty of other people or opportunities to at least capture a snippet of this momentous occasion.

Hypothesising about what might be possible etc to support the fiction that this ever took place completely misses the point. It's possible that at 40 years old, I can run a sub four minute mile (as in, it has been done before). Saying that I've just done so though, but having no evidence whatsoever is another thing entirely.

With those non-existent standards of proof we can have any number of threads like this.

"Hey, we just set up a 4x100m squad of random taxi drivers. True story, we bet this sub 50 second guy we could beat him over one lap. Guess, what we won by 2 seconds. No one had really ever trained and the lead off guy, didn't even know about using blocks. Cool isn't it? And of course what I am really telling you is that random couch potatoes lie me are actually better at running than runners who train. Please please, some of you be stupid enough to validate my existence by positively engaging me on this. BTW I also have a pretty, pet Unicorn - thread to follow".

Bullsh1111t wrote:

As if in 2019, there would be no one to record it with a cell phone, at least. I mean it's been planned for a year, so what gives.

The "I was running around checking stuff so I couldn't record it" excuse is mega lame.

As pointed out before, Fall 2018 to January 2019 is a lot less than a year, and in any case, what would a video prove? The doubters will just say that he rounded up a bunch of former college teammates and had them run a 4x4.

I was also one of the guys in the race. I ran 52 in HS but we didn’t tell him that.

Meaningless wrote:

Bullsh1111t wrote:

As if in 2019, there would be no one to record it with a cell phone, at least. I mean it's been planned for a year, so what gives.

The "I was running around checking stuff so I couldn't record it" excuse is mega lame.

As pointed out before, Fall 2018 to January 2019 is a lot less than a year, and in any case, what would a video prove? The doubters will just say that he rounded up a bunch of former college teammates and had them run a 4x4.

LOL, the old "If I offer proof, you might question it, so I'll offer nothing at all" non-argument.

You can't do anything nowadays without someone filming it whether you want them to or not. Here we have five competitors and the OP and not one of them thinks it important enough to memorialise this "thread-worthy" event in even a few seconds of video.

The bullsh!t is strong in this one...

JamesD1 wrote:

Average people not imterested in running to not participate in 4x400 relays, they’d do a simple old fashioned “to the end of the block and back” footrace.

There was $100 on the line, and their workplace may have been near a track.

Possible explanation wrote:

JamesD1 wrote:

Average people not imterested in running to not participate in 4x400 relays, they’d do a simple old fashioned “to the end of the block and back” footrace.

There was $100 on the line, and their workplace may have been near a track.

Now they can afford to buy a decent cellphone between them to record the next fictional armchair athlete challenge. Maybe they'll get a shot of a flying pig as well.

This reminds me of a similar story. One of my running buddies - who had just won a 5 mile road race in 25:04 - got teased by a co-worker that his 75" per 440 pace wasn't fast. My friend bet him $50 (this was 30 years ago) that he couldn't do one 440 in 75". The co-worker was around 30 and not overweight and I guess he figured he was in decent shape. They drove to a track and my buddy kept telling him that 75" was really fast. Got the guy so worked up that he went out in 32" - and watched the $50 disappear as he staggered up the homestretch.

Doesn't really sound like a random group of guys. If it really was you would have picked names from a hat.

Random/Norm/Average

I don’t think those words mean what you think they mean.

And yet in a world where everyone has a video camera in their pocket, nobody felt the need to capture this?

OK that’s ridiculous.

Let’s ask some realistic questions:

1) Would it be possible to get a team of 8 from my office (total of about 40), who could go sub 5.

8 x 200 in less than 5?????

Estimate answer- probably not. There are definitely 4 guys and 2 women in the office who can run 200 in less than 37.5 seconds. The problem is that runners 7 & 8 are liable to be slower than 50 seconds.

2) I think I could do 1600 in about 5:10. (I am a 47 year old hobby jogger). Could my coworkers ;approximately 40) put together a team that could beat be?

How many would they need?

What distance?

Estimated answer-

16 x 100 .

9 or 10 could run 15-19

6 or 7 more could go less than 22

Velocibuddha wrote:

2) I think I could do 1600 in about 5:10. (I am a 47 year old hobby jogger).

No you are not 47 or you would know fairly well that running 5'10 on a mile is anything but hobby jogging at that age.... you wish you could run that fast....

average guys are fast wrote:

I'll try to get more info regarding their training once he gets back to work on Monday, but there were about two dozen guys in his company who were under 35. Out of those ~25 guys, only 8 or 9 of them were involved in that initial conversation, though the news might have spread.

Here's what I got:

- They usually had 3 workouts a week, followed by a 10 minute cooldown jog. Workout 1 was sprinting 20 seconds hard, then slowly walking back to the start. Repeat 3 times (they got this idea from a "one minute workout" google search). Workout 2 was running one minute hard, resting for 10 minutes, and then repeating it once more (the one minute hard running was supposed to mimic a 400). Workout 3 was the only workout done on a track and involved 3 laps of jogging the curves and sprinting the straights. They did not do any running specific training on the other days, though they sometimes did various activities such as weightlifting, pick up basketball, and hiking. They almost never practiced together, and although the workouts often varied, the ones I posted were pretty typical.

- One of them guessed that they would need spikes since they would "provide traction on the curves and if the track were wet". He knew of the importance of footwear since one of his friends was a mountain climber and wore crampons or microspikes in icy/snowy conditions. It wouldn't have mattered anyway, as another guy had a cross country friend whom he asked for last minute advice. It basically boiled down to "get spikes", "pace it right", and "don't drop the baton".

- None of them thought that they would need anywhere close to a year to train. The race was supposed to be scheduled much earlier, but it was postponed due to pre-scheduled vacations during and shortly after the holiday season.

- The company wasn't that close to a track, but they did it there instead of on the roads because the roads were either too hilly, too busy, and/or in bad condition.

4x100 and I can believe you.

Otherwise, BS.

Me too move wrote:

I was also one of the guys in the race. I ran 52 in HS but we didn’t tell him that.

I Googled the names of all 4 guys and could not find any race results. I can't confirm it, but I doubt they had previous track experience. Their forms were pretty bad. Some clearly overstrided, others had short, choppy steps with minimal knee lift, and one of them had arms that were swinging left to right instead of up and down.

Ah the OP continues his fictional narrative, although now mostly reduced to talking to himself and his aliases.

We already have you one of the names. We can give you the other 3 if you want to stick to your dumb notion that these guys weren’t previous studs. One was a D1 runner and one was a good HS runner. Do your assertion is nullified.

I can’t imagine finding four guys from one group of any age with no regular running experience being able to break 60 in a 400 even with a year’s training.

I ran 50.2 in high school but couldn’t break 60 training on my own in 9th and 10th grade. And I really tried.

I did split 55 in 11th grade.

The ability to do that isn’t a stretch but the reality that all of these guys really went out and did that much work for this one side bet is a stretch.