How impressive is a sub 15 5k at age 40?

It's a partial database of US road race results. Did Bekele run a 5K turkey trot in the US recently.

Are you trying to argue that sub 15 isn't extremely rare for 40 year old runners?

Even today in the age of super shoes and top training, sub 15 is good for anyone. For a college athlete it means firmly in the middle of the pack in any race. For a road runner its fast enough that you need to pick select races to target a pr and you can hang with anyone in your area traininig wise.

Road? It's huge. Consider the decline of ability at 40. I've seen 13:35 guys from college unable to do it.

What I have learned over the years is genetics plays a huge role after 35. Some of the guys I ssaw run under 14 in college and even their 30's, could not break 15 in their 40's. But, some guys who just stayed with it throughout their 30's, and were more like 14:48 guys in college, still were able to break 15 at age 40, beacuse it was a goal and they stayed healthy.

It doesn't matter how old or young.

15 minutes is not special. The fact that you're 40 is irrelevant. I'm much older, meh

If the bears were chasing you, the 13 minute guys would get away, and you'd eaten.

This is exactly right. Two things can be true:

1. Yes, it's very impressive and in the grand scheme of things exceptionally rare.

2. That master's ranking site is pretty worthless and makes it seem like there are almost zero American 40+ runners running sub-15, when in fact there are probably at least 20 and maybe a lot more than that in the US right now.

I can say the same as the poster above. I'm not exactly a big wheel in the running community and a friend of mine (just turned 40) is running sub-30 for six-mile tempo efforts in training. He is a badass-- don't get me wrong-- but he is not and never has been a professional runner and doesn't even win some of the master's divisions races he's in. There are definitely several handfuls worth of American master's sub-15 guys out there right now.

Would someone please post a link to an actual sub 15 5k performance from someone 40 or older that:

1) happened in the last 10 years,

2) was achieved by someone who wasn't a past Olympian like Lagat, Bekele, Abdi Abdiriham, or outright PED fraud like Kevin Castille.

I'm looking for a race result from a respactable event. Stories about your girlfriend's cousin's strava post don't count.

https://www.athlinks.com/event/1162/results/Event/1044980/Course/2345051/Results

In this race last year, 14th Place

Mourad EL BANNOURI

Born: 27 DEC 1979 MAR

Ran the 5000m in 14:19

He was 42 years old.

Here’s a link to the World Athletics results page

worldathletics.org

Cursa dels Nassos | Results | World Athletics

World Athletics Events and Results

Open link

There was also a dude who used to post on the road racing and training threads who was I believe in his mid 40s that basically ran low 15s every week at like 6k altitude. He had to be mid 14s if he got in the right race.

Interestingly he also ran 85-90 miles a week with no real workouts other than races and all of his miles around 6 flat pace.

OK.

I'm not going to move the goalposts but those result from this year's Carlsbad 5k illustrate the point that a sub 15 5k is achievable for masters runners but it is exceedingly rare.

Sergio Reyes was/is a professional distance runner with 13:52, 28:29, 1:03:31, and 2:13 prs. He was on the US 2011 WC marathon team.

At 41, he ran 14:48 at one of the fastest 5ks in the world. Only 3 other masters men broke 16 in the race.

A 40 year old ran 15:22 in a Baltimore road race in March

And a 46 year old tan 15:58

1. That's a downhill course

2. the non-binary winner ran 34:55 and won $150, while someone ran 15:04 and was out of the prize money lol

I posted the link you were looking for. Another master at sub 15:10 as well. Unless you think Boston 2023 is some random anomaly of masters running I suspect there are a lot more results like this out there.

Couldn't you apply this "logic" to everybody? So would Cheptegei be the only survivor?

If you're working a regular job and pulling sub 15 5Ks at the age of 40, you're in rarified air. I work in an office of 13000 and no one of any age can go sub 15, let alone a 40 year old. You've certainly attained an elite level of fitness that very few % of people experience if you're pulling sub 15 5k at 40.

https://h8e4z5m4.rocketcdn.me/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/23-10-Mile-Masters-Champs-Overall-Results.pdf

This isn't a 5k, but surely these 10 mile results indicate more than sub-15 fitness:

1. Fernando Cabada 49:03 4:54/mile

2. Malcolm Richards 49:40 4:58/mile

I am very confident in saying that someone who is sub-5:00 pace over 10 miles can run a 5k at 4:50 pace. I would not be shocked if either of these guys split a sub-15 at some point in this race en route to the full 10 mile.

The next four master's finishers were between 5:08/mile and 5:14/mile. Macmillan says they should be able to break 15:00. Obviously that is not a lock and would depend on event specific training, but I'm guessing at least one of those four is sub-15 on a good day. So that's three non-Olympians in one race.

going back more than 10 years, but these are top places for carlsbad 5k from 2000-2016. you can see a few things: 1) sub-15, while impressive, is not rare, at least by my definition of rare (for rare, i think of h.s. sub-4s, even now, or h.s girls sub-10 in 3200. others' definitions of rare may be different); 2) i think there's proof that skills do not diminish automatically post-40, regardless of ability--andrew duncan comes to mind in these results, and if you went deeper, you would have seen several of my 16:00 teammates hold fitness through mid-40s relatively well; 3) at least a couple of drug-cheats (eddy, castille), and some olympians (scott, wade, fell, probably others i'm unaware of), yet their times were matched by ostensibly clean athletes (that cushing-murray kid--you'll have to take my word for it, others?).

that's my story and i'm sticking to it....

cush

Simon Karori 13:58
Jon Sinclair 14:54
Steve Scott 14:57
2000
----------------------
Simond Karori 14:12
Eddy Hellebuyck 14:34
Graeme Fell 14:35
2001
----------------------
Eddy Hellebuyck 14:47
Danny Martinez 14:50
Sam Ngatia 14:50
Jon Sinclair 14:52
Peter Magill 15:20
2002

----------------------

Eddy Hellebuyck 14:38
Dennis Simonaitis 14:38
Alfredo Vigueras 14:41
Brian Pope 14:56
Tony Young 15:12
Peter Magill 15:16
2003
----------------------
Peter Magill 14:51
Brian Pope 14:52
Danny Martinez 14:54
Alfredo Vigueras 14:56
Dennis Simonaitis 15:06
2004

----------------------
Brian Pope 14:57
Danny Martinez 15:01
2005
----------------------
Sean Wade 14:53
Dennis Simonaitis 15:03
Peter Magill 15:10
2006

----------------------
Dennis Simonaitis 14:54
Alan Newton 15:06
Peter Magill 15:11
2007
----------------------
Dennis Simonaitis 14:47
Peter Magill 14:50
Christian Cushing-Murray 15:38
Andrew Duncan 15:50
2008
----------------------
Christian Cushing-Murray 14:55

Alejandro Salvador 14:57
Simon Gutierrez 14:58
Dennis Simonaitis 15:06
Andrew Duncan 15:27
2009
----------------------
Christian Cushing-Murray 14:40:00
Dennis Simonaitis 14:45:00
Leonel Avalos 15:13:00
2010
----------------------
Christian Cushing-Murray 15:04:00
Chad Newton 15:10:00
Dennis Simonaitis 15:11:00
Charlie Kern 15:13:00
Andrew Duncan 15:22:00
2011

----------------------
Kevin Castille 14:57:00
Christian Cushing Murray 15:30:00
Tim Gore 15:31:00
Andrew Duncan 15:42:00
2012
----------------------
Christian Cushing-Murray 15:40:00
Rusty Snow 15:42:00
Tim Gore 15:46:00
2013

----------------------
Tim Gore
15:19:00
2014
----------------------
Greg Mitchell 00:14:58
John Gardiner 00:15:22
Nazario Romero 00:15:28
Christian Cushing Murray 00:15:37
2015
----------------------
1 16989 Christian Cushing Murray 15:11
2 16987 Greg Mitchell 15:15
3 16990 Jeremy Deere 15:18
4 16988 John Gardiner 15:21
5 17067 Neville Davey 15:24
6 16343 Jacques Sallberg 15:31
7 17053 Andrew Duncan 16:08
8 15381 Pete Magill 16:08
2016