New Yorker: How Fast Would Usain Bolt Run The Mile? - Yours truly bets his house it would be over 5+

Rojo's Wejo wrote:

ukathleticscoach wrote:

Adding what he could do with training makes the question redundant and is a ridiculous supposition.

He's not breaking 5. Even 400m runners do no mileage as a 100/200 guy he loses it after 600m and falls off a cliff after ,800m

^ yet another poster who believes a 5 minute mile is fast. Lol please. Just because you can't do it at age 40 doesn't mean the worlds fastest man can't do it at age 30

Friendly tip:

You are taking this discussion just a tad too seriously, man.

By the way, did you previously post as "formerD1"? You have a lot of the same characteristics as that guy.

Dumb@ss article!! The reason (LRC) brings it to the question is because we know how tough it is for sprinters to run long distance and vice versa sprinting for long distance runners. This article is as dumb as the guy who wrote it!

1) Bolt's 800 PR is not 2:10. He probably has never run an all out 800 but has run 2:10 for an 800 "tempo" in practice. If you think a long striding 45.x 400 man can't break 2 for the 800 you should rethink your logic. I don't care how fast twitch your muscles are, no one falls off the cliff that fast.

2. Bolt is a long sprinter who moved down to the 100 for the money and glory. He is not asafa powell or Chris Johnson or Carl Lewis. His so called laziness is at worst a form of relaxation and more likely a marketing ploy.

3) Obea Moore ran 4:30ish for the mile in hs and was probably a more prototypical power sprinter than Bolt. Similar to other posters, I know 6'8 inch high jumpers and 50 second quarter milers that broke 5 minutes in a time trial start of track season straight out of basketball season. Some people are just naturally efficient runners. Doesn't mean they'll ever be able to break 4. It just means their turnover is clean enough to get them around 4 laps in a respectable time.

4. Bolt weighs around 200 lbs. not 300 lbs. His weight might be a limiting factor for a 4:20 mile or faster, but for 5 minutes, come on.

4) If rojo transferred the $200k rossi challenge money To a Bolt 5 min mile challenge, Bolt would collect in less than a week and head to the disco.

5) if this post were about the marathon or even a 5k I would agree that Bolt is unlikely to do much better than your average

Thank you for making rojo's case against the Fridge for him.

Unimpressive stats, no matter how you cut it.

one of the best 400 specialist running an 800

http://www.flotrack.org/video/765248-mens-800-h02-jeremy-wariners-first-800-15302-ftw

and talking about it

http://www.flotrack.org/video/765311-jeremy-wariner-after-first-800

Those of us with a modicum of experience (say 35 yrs or older) say no way to Bolt breaking 5:00. The nubiles & young'uns are about the only ones who mistakenly think he has a chance.

I'm been friends with Charles for years. I keep forgetting how big he's getting in the sports- journalism world. Man this all rocks! Show him so love everyone he's one of the most humble, yet awesome people I know!

Renewed Marathoner wrote:

I'm been friends with Charles for years. I keep forgetting how big he's getting in the sports- journalism world. Man this all rocks! Show him so love everyone he's one of the most humble, yet awesome people I know!

Whatever, nobody gives a 5h1t about Charles here.

This is a strange thread. Given enough time to specifically train for it (maybe a year) and lose 15-20 lbs, of course Bolt could break 5:00 for the mile very easily. That fast-twitch muscle fiber argument would likely hold if he tried to do it tomorrow with no preparation. But it's not very interesting to talk about what people can do with no preparation.

In fact, give Bolt 2-3 years and he could become very good at soccer, football, basketball, tennis, or any number of other sports. If he had started as a teen, maybe one of the greatest.

Great athletes are not like the rest of us. Most can do nearly anything athletic very well, even if they are world class in only one narrow specialty.

Older guy wrote:

This is a strange thread. Given enough time to specifically train for it (maybe a year) and lose 15-20 lbs, of course Bolt could break 5:00 for the mile very easily. That fast-twitch muscle fiber argument would likely hold if he tried to do it tomorrow with no preparation. But it's not very interesting to talk about what people can do with no preparation.

In fact, give Bolt 2-3 years and he could become very good at soccer, football, basketball, tennis, or any number of other sports. If he had started as a teen, maybe one of the greatest.

Great athletes are not like the rest of us. Most can do nearly anything athletic very well, even if they are world class in only one narrow specialty.

This is a really stupid question. May as well debate how many Physics 101 exams Einstein could pass. Compared to sprints, the mile is extended-length mediocrity.

Metric Miler wrote:

Lots of them can run a decent 800m too, yet still struggle in the 1500m. SURELY a decathletes who can run 45/46 in the 400m and likely sub 1:50 should EASILY break 3:50 in the 1500m? Right? Makes you wonder...

This is a very similar topic to a thread someone started about swimming. Physiologically, the mile is far, far closer to the marathon than it is to the 100m/200m.

Yeah but those FT decathletes who need to carry more mass than a sprinter to do all the throws still run 4:20-4:30 1500ms after competing in 9 events. Not blistering but say 20s faster than 5:00.

The thing about bolt is that he is big (something like 200lbs). Make it someone just as fast but more normal weight (say Tyson gay at 165 or Gatlin at 185) and I would like the odds better.

I don't know how much the 2:10 800 PR has been discussed, but with an 800 PR of 2:10 and a 400 PR of ~45, an athlete is not breaking 5 in the mile. 45/2:00 still doesn't indicate sub 5 mile ability--50/2:00/5:00 is a common line for sprint based mid-d guys; I'd expect a 5 minute miler with 45s quarter ability to be a 1:55 guy or thereabouts (45/1:55/5:00).

Good predictor is 400*(6/5) + 1600/5 to give overall 800 time. You can reverse the numbers to predict mile or 400 based off 4/8 or 8/16; a 45/2:10 puts Bolt's mile at 6:20. The predictor definitely isn't super accurate at extremes such as this one, but you'd still be nuts to assume a dude who has such a tremendous drop-off from 400 --> 800 is going sub 5.

Has this been said?

4 X 402+ in 60 seconds with 20 second recovery would be 5:00.

If he walked the recovery he could even run the repeats a little slower.

whattheheck wrote:

Metric Miler wrote:

Lots of them can run a decent 800m too, yet still struggle in the 1500m. SURELY a decathletes who can run 45/46 in the 400m and likely sub 1:50 should EASILY break 3:50 in the 1500m? Right? Makes you wonder...

This is a very similar topic to a thread someone started about swimming. Physiologically, the mile is far, far closer to the marathon than it is to the 100m/200m.

Yeah but those FT decathletes who need to carry more mass than a sprinter to do all the throws still run 4:20-4:30 1500ms after competing in 9 events. Not blistering but say 20s faster than 5:00.

The thing about bolt is that he is big (something like 200lbs). Make it someone just as fast but more normal weight (say Tyson gay at 165 or Gatlin at 185) and I would like the odds better.

Tyson Gay has the roid user posterior chain muscles that make up 30% of his weight.

Take Trayvon Bromell instead, he's 5'7 157 lbs. Honestly, he's a "little guy". He'd easily crush 5 minutes.

And the best part is, the LetsRun geniuses with their "physiological" arguments would still argue that he can't run sub-5 due to being way too fast-twitch and glycolytic. Yeah right. He can't run sub-4 but he'll go sub-5 no problem.

It's easy to lie with statistics, but:

http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED103412

From 1969-70 in North Dakota. Sample size is 125 males in the phys ed service prog at Univ ND.

Table on page (PDF page 7) says that the mean was about 11/12 of a mile in 6 minutes, with a standard deviation around 0.9/12 miles. Assuming 1.2 miles in 6 minutes is a 5 minute mile, this would put it at the nearly 4-sigma level (3.4/0.9) to run a 5-minute mile, so I'm guessing no one in the small sample (already a decently fit group, with no slobs) hit that.

(Ultra)Endurance athlete Tobias Mews:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/active/10875747/Could-you-run-a-5-minute-mile.html

5:07

So it took him 6-8 weeks to reduce from above 6:00 to below 5:00 by training.

Rojo's Wejo wrote:

Easy as in an untrained athlete can break 5 (bolt, myself, soccer players, basketball players etc)

Easy as in the overwhelming majority of men could train specifically for a 5 minute mile and achieve that goal.

5 minute mile is easy just like doing 30 push-ups is easy

I highly doubt your second sentence. I even doubt that a majority of men aged 18-35 who trained specifically for a 5-minute mile or better would achieve that goal.