Average person's genetic potential in the 800?

Math didn't wrote:

Math did wrote:

The low end of potential for men is 1:40 but the upper end is infinity so the average has to be much higher than anyone wants to admit. It is probably 5 minutes.

Then the mean is infinity...

Actually, the upper limit is probably 120 years, or the oldest theoretical age for a human. So, the average would be something far less than that.

Boys 3:15

Girls 3:45

110lb 14 year old boys who are probably low as hell on body fat due to an active lifestyle are not representative of an average person.

The average person is 30+ years old, may not even be male and has probably permanently compromised their body in some way due to their lifestyle.

I’m gonna go with 4-5 minutes.

And sorry, but your school was full of outliers that so happened to conjugate in one place. Having said that, healthy lifestyle and trained since birth, I do think the average naturally athletic male could get under 2:30. Definitely not 2:00.

Conditions: able bodied, healthy weight and good activity levels throughout life, start training from ages 16 to 23 (800m training).

Men:

99% would achieve 3:10 or better

90% would achieve 2:50 or better

75% would achieve 2:40 or better

50% would achieve 2:27.5 or better

25% would achieve 2:15 or better

10% would achieve 2:07.5 or better

1% would achieve 2:02.5 or better

0.1% would achieve 1:58 or better

0.01% would achieve 1:53 (women’s WR) or better

Women:

99% would achieve 3:45 or better

90% would achieve 3:25 or better

75% would achieve 3:05 or better

50% would achieve 2:50 or better

25% would achieve 2:37.5 or better

10% would achieve 2:30 or better

1% would achieve 2:20 or better

0.1% would achieve 2:15 or better

0.01% would achieve 2:10 or better

Hdy wrote:

110lb 14 year old boys who are probably low as hell on body fat due to an active lifestyle are not representative of an average person.

The average person is 30+ years old, may not even be male and has probably permanently compromised their body in some way due to their lifestyle.

I’m gonna go with 4-5 minutes.

And sorry, but your school was full of outliers that so happened to conjugate in one place. Having said that, healthy lifestyle and trained since birth, I do think the average naturally athletic male could get under 2:30. Definitely not 2:00.

Yeah, but this thread is about the genetic potential of a typical person, not what the typical person can run now or even after getting a couple of years to train. It seems reasonable to assume that the worst kids on a pretty decent high school team aren't that much better than the genetic potential of the typical person assuming they've been active for lofe and training for several years.

My guesses match pretty closely woth those of the poster right before this. About 50% of men would break 2:30 and around 10% would break 2:10.

Not answering the q, but I thought the following was interesting.

Some Crossfit article reported the average time for a 400m run for males to be 75 seconds. This was healthy, active, experienced CF peeps, running fresh and using a large number of athletes.

The equivalent time on the tf tables for 800 is 3:30.

400 m runna wrote:

Some Crossfit article reported the average time for a 400m run for males to be 75 seconds.

The equivalent time on the tf tables for 800 is 3:30.

WTF? A 75 is a lot better than a 3:30.

It drives me nuts when people come on this board and say "Well I did that, and I'm average" when clearly they are above average.

Anyway, that being said, male "physical" potential from is probably around 2:15 or so, with a standard deviation being about 6-8 seconds

Naturally fast twitch people such as sprinters or even basketball/football players (or other sports too) would have very very high potential in the 800. If you took a random NFL running back and trained him for the 800, I like the chances that he could break 2:00 within a couple years.

But there are also people who cannot sprint to save their lives. Couple that with no fast twitch, poor vo2 max, and a bad body type for running and they'd probably never run faster than 2:30 with a tiger chasing them.

Most people fall somewhere in the middle.

KEEP IN MIND, Most people lack the discipline and mental strength to train for something like this and therefor are very very unlikely to reach their potential. I STRONGLY believe that even most hard working distance runners never reach their full potential. If you put someone in a lab and brainwashed them into basically a training machine, they'd run much faster than they do with the stresses of everyday life.

So after that taken into account, the average male's potential considering all factors is closer to 2:25 for an 800m

Something's not right wrote:

400 m runna wrote:

Some Crossfit article reported the average time for a 400m run for males to be 75 seconds.

The equivalent time on the tf tables for 800 is 3:30.

WTF? A 75 is a lot better than a 3:30.

75 = 2:50 for 800m

yeah, 3:30 did look really bad compared to 75.

I used these tables:

http://cheshireaa.com/statistics/dcescoring.htm

What did you use to get the 2:50? I would have guessed 3:00, so that's a lot closer than 3:30.

Thanks

Average people don’t go out for sports.

Average people don’t want to train to their genetic potential.

Average people are obese.

Average people, even if highly incentivized, won’t make it though a training program.

The median time of a “select” volunteer group ages 20-49 who trained for six months would be around 4 mins for men and 5 mins for women. Btw, I live in LA and grew up in the Midwest so I’ve see all types. Take a min off for median “runner.”

“Average people don’t go out for sport”

Exactly.