What percentage of males in their prime could break 10 minutes in the the 2-mile after 5 years of training?

agip wrote:

these threads are amazingly frustrating - guesses from 5% to 80%.

I'd tend to be in the 5%-10% range...except there exist outliers like Fayetteville Manlius HS. I don't have any facts, but I'd bet they have at least 5 guys, every year, under 10. Probably more. And Christian Brothers probably has 5 guys under 10, every year. Or more.

If it is so hard to run under 10, how do some programs succeed every year, without fail? It ain't luck. if Bill Aris coached eveyone personally, the number of sub10s would be much, much higher than if I did the coaching.

My guess is that it's a combination of factors going into play:

1) Coaching - Obviously the coaches of these programs are doing something right

2) Work Ethic - I'm also sure, probably in part due to the coach, the focus and work ethic on these teams is much higher than usual. Kids that go to these programs are far more likely to really train the way that is needed to start getting the best out of themselves.

3) Culture - this is probably the big one. My guess is that at these big time schools XC becomes more of a big deal. Kids that might not have otherwise tried running are more likely to give it a shot because it's a chance to be part of a massively successful team. If you get more people trying it, you get more of the 5% that are good enough to run sub 10. Instead of 5% of the 5% going out for XC, you might get 25% of the 5% with talent for sub 10. Talent often manifests quickly, so these kids with talent hop in, and especially with good culture and coaching improve rapidly and stick with it.

asdadsfa wrote:

I bet if we set the incentive to that you get to hook up with a victoria secret model for 6 months, the numbers would be well north of 50%:)

For 50% of guys the Victoria's Secret model isn't even their type. How do you guys come up with these ridiculous "incentives".

If incentive worked people running for their lives when attacked would have a much better success rate.

point #3 would suggest that the reason so few runners break 10 is that most of the great athletes play a ball sport. The remnants head over to the track and become distance runners.

So there might be a lot more sub 10s in the general population than our xc teams would suggest.

Maybe, but doesn't general population suggest something absurdly low, like well under 1%?

While I believe it happens, I don't entirely accept the "athletes go to ball sports and then to track/XC" if they can't hack it philosophy to the extent that some on here do, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if people are a little more likely to give running a try if they aren't a star in ball sport at school like Arcadia than they would be elsewhere.

Schools like Arcadia also might be more likely to pick up kids who would otherwise have not done any athletics at a different school, but because of the visibility and success of the program give track a shot, which is more what I was thinking in the case of #3.

Speaking of which, at a program like Arcadia or other big schools...what percent of HSers on the team are breaking 10 min?

Let's twist it a bit...

What percentage of males aged 25-32 could break 4 minutes mile after 5 years of specific mile training?

Assume they have BMI=20 at the start.

sixth june wrote:

Let's twist it a bit...

What percentage of males aged 25-32 could break 4 minutes mile after 5 years of specific mile training?

Assume they have BMI=20 at the start.

Who knows? Incredibly small though. 0.1% or lower.

I'd be curious how many even have the requisite 52s or better 400m speed or flying start 12s 100 speed.

To get a starting point I'd look at what percent of people who went sub 5 in HS ended up breaking 4. The actual percentage would be significantly smaller than that, but it ought to give at least a starting point for the conversation.

Check your data wrote:

Is comparing the guys under 10 to the entire male student population really accurate? Shouldn't you be comparing to a smaller sample of guys within that same grade level to account for age/training time?

what are you talking about

you're beat bud

the percentage is low as hell

obviously in a world where everyone worked out and people were offered 5 mil to break 10 then things might be different, but we don't live in that world

besides, even in that ideal world, the number would still be well under 10 percent

I would say that as an average no more than 10% of HS male distance runners break 10min. And they are already preselected.

Take a look at the 3200m lists per state on a given year.

I got only 10:11 in high school and was second best on the team. My coach was always happy because he could count on me to score points in my last 2 years of high school. After my senior year cross country season I finally realized I had no chance of beating our #1 best. He got sub 10 in his third year on low high school mileage 40-50 mpw however during his 4 years of college was chronically injured on mileage from 70-120 mpw and never could repeat his high school performances. He bounced like a deer when he ran during HS and got the HS record. I ran like a locomotive and never got injured in high school. I used summer to try and get better when everyone would be relaxing. However, back then I realized that any team with several sub 10 runners would make them among the best teams in the state, even if the other runners were mediocre. Our #1 was genetically gifted, he was on the short side, dissipated heat easily, his father was a top marathoner (I think 2:20). I never could understand why it wasn't so easy for others on the team to compete with me, if they just put in the work, and pushed harder. But I had to accept they tried hard and couldnt reach my level. For what it's worth in 8th grade I could stay 3 minutes under water and in college had VO2Max of 68. However, I wasn't gifted with the athletic build to run sub 10 and never looked like the elite runners but came close.

I agree with the under ~5% crowd. I ran 9:43 in high school. Was always the fastest or second fastest kid playing ball sports in my elementary school grades of ~60 people. Went to a large high school of around 2000 kids, which had great coaching---won states multiple times over several years and placed top-10 at NXN.

Second of all, ALL kids know early on in elementary school if they have an aptitude for running. They ALL do the President's Fitness thing or run a mile as fast as they can in PE class, etc. They all play tag (if the school hasn't banned it) and run around at recess. They KNOW if they are good at running, and those that are run cross country and track. There is not a similar percentage of kids in the general population of any given high school who can run what the kids on the CC team do. Those kids in the general population didn't go out for cross country for the same reason I didn't go out for football - no evidence of aptitude or wrong body type, etc.

The 1960's called. They want your "facts" back.

100%. Easily. The best facilities and coaching alone will allow anyone to maximize their potential, and 5 years is plenty of time to do it. This sounds trollish but it's really not. Especially if running is the only thing they're doing in their lives.

HS Runner234 wrote:

100%. Easily. The best facilities and coaching alone will allow anyone to maximize their potential, and 5 years is plenty of time to do it. This sounds trollish but it's really not. Especially if running is the only thing they're doing in their lives.

Try to think.

First of all, I hate to feed the trolls, because I truly can't believe that anyone is so deluded about running ability. Even in places like Iten, Kenya, where all of the above-mentioned incentives actually do exist (a large, desperate population of aspiring runners, where athletic success is the only route to a comfortable life) the percentages are nowhere near 25 or 50%!

Also, for those of you who are Westerners, like me, did you not ever have gym class? Did you never have Ultimate Frisbee/Soccer/Flag Football day? Did you not notice how the explosively talented athletes may have been fast and agile, but they tired in minutes, whereas you as a distance runner could keep going for hours?

To lead the discussion in a slightly different direction, let me point everyone to the FBI's new fitness tests:

http://fortune.com/2015/04/06/fbi-agent-fitness-test/

For adult men,

300m in 60 sec

1.5 mi in 12 min.

The 300m is widely agreed to be the hardest part of the test, though the run also causes people problems. A 10-minute 2-mile??!!!!

Read the Jim Ryun story for the example of the guy that sucked at all that stuff. Trained hard for 9 months and turned into the top HS miler in the nation. Trained another year and made the fricking olympic team. Obviously the outlier of outliers but there are tons of people where if they put in the effort would be surprisingly good. It is hard to tell how people respond to training until they do the work.

Incentives work but yeah there are limits. People will hit genetic limits. I don't think anyone (sane) questions that. The question is where that limit is. For 50% of the population, I am not sure if it is at 9:50 to 11:00 but I would be surprised if it wasn't roughly in that range.

And don't worry about not being attracted to victoria secret models. About 10% of the population has the same issue:)

This is a really, really, really good post, and everyone saying that their high school teams had 10 - 15 guys sub 10 and didn't make it to state / otherwise weren't top teams need to stop bullshitting. If your team has 10 guys under 10, then you've got one of the strongest and deepest teams in the nation in any given year.

My high school regularly has more than 15 break 10 per year. My senior year 90% of our seniors broke 10. I'd say probably 80% of people that go through all 4 years do it. If they are dedicated to doing it no reason it couldn't be at least 60%.

Greenred wrote:

My high school regularly has more than 15 break 10 per year. My senior year 90% of our seniors broke 10. I'd say probably 80% of people that go through all 4 years do it. If they are dedicated to doing it no reason it couldn't be at least 60%.

How'd your school do at NXN?

uh i broke 10 my first yr running.

Listen to my story:

My goal was to win (NOT TO PR)! So basically what I did was I would run as hard as I could every practice (I was training for the 3200, so i would always run 2 miles in practice. So I never warmed uped/ stretched (waste of time) and i ran 2 or 3 times a day, 7 days a week. Average milage was about 35 miles a week.

So my training you ask? Well ok, so mornings it was 400's (8 of them all out, basically 1:10 each, 2 min rest) then midday I would give myself a 2 mile race (i would never time it, just go hard for 8 laps) then afternoon I would do my 800's or mile repeats, they were an A day B day schedule. So I would rotate them everyday, it would be 4 by 800 at 2:00 with 2:00 rest or 2 by 1 mile with 5:00 rest at as hard as possible.

Kids these days don't want to put in work. They are worried about "injury". Well here is a hint- it doesn't exist. If you want to be good, you have to train good.

I say all of them could break 9 if they grew a pair (of balls).

I am 53. My PR for the mile was 3:52. My PR for the 10k was 30:30. My PR for the marathon was 2:23:03. I was more of a short distance guy.