Co-workers had a mile time trial yesterday. Results were surprising.

Test

Opie the OP wrote:

Yes. The office of random guys does as well as the self selected guys running a competitive 1 mile road race in NYC.

How is this surprising? There are plenty of cyclists, soccer players, and other active people who could beat the average hobby jogger.

It's a 6:15 and not a 5:15, folks. You don't need tons of specialized training or talent to run that time.

So basically everyone in your work is an athlete of some sort and most of you still struggled to break 6.

I work at baskin and robbin and I assure you we are not more fit than avg

Intellectually Challenged Runners wrote:

You guys are retarded if you couldn't figure out that they likely ran a metric mile, aka 1000 meters, instead of a real mile.

You said the now-forbidden word.

Pick 10 random guys aged 20-40 from 10 different businesses and have them run a mile tomorrow and you will have the following.

15+ minutes -15 guys

12-15 minutes - 20 guys

9-12 minutes - 30 guys

6-9 minutes - 30 guys

5-6 minutes - 4 guys

sub 5 minutes - 1 guy

So what i learned is this wrote:

So basically everyone in your work is an athlete of some sort and most of you still struggled to break 6.

What do you expect when the incentive is only $20?

considering how many posts there are in this new thread, i can see that the people here are pretty triggered that their non runner coworkers can keep up with them in the 10K for a mile. leave it to letsrun to get upset about these things. with that said, the "study" was probably BS or was not representative of the real average guy. there would need to have been a ton of 5 minute guys for the average to be dragged down to the low 6's.

Slow is okay wrote:

Pick 10 random guys aged 20-40 from 10 different businesses and have them run a mile tomorrow and you will have the following.

15+ minutes -15 guys

12-15 minutes - 20 guys

9-12 minutes - 30 guys

6-9 minutes - 30 guys

5-6 minutes - 4 guys

sub 5 minutes - 1 guy

6 and 9 minutes are worlds apart. The 6 minute guy will look fit and healthy and the 9 minute guy would have a BMI of 32.

stupid person 69 wrote:

considering how many posts there are in this new thread, i can see that the people here are pretty triggered that their non runner coworkers can keep up with them in the 10K for a mile.

+1

I would woop them all.

Is it envy, insecurity, or both? wrote:

stupid person 69 wrote:

considering how many posts there are in this new thread, i can see that the people here are pretty triggered that their non runner coworkers can keep up with them in the 10K for a mile.

+1

A few years back a kid right out of college who was a co worker started to talk smack to me and said he could beat me in a mile. He said because I was a marathoner and he was an athlete he could push himself hard enough to beat me over the shorter distance. Obviously he had no competitive running experience and didn't understand as an ex D1 track guy there was no way some random guy was going to beat me in a mile. We ended up racing a mile because a couple of our co-workers egged him on and pushed for it.

This guy was in decent shape. He ended up running 6:20. I'll give him credit, he definitely could have run sub 6 with better pacing, we ran the first lap in 64secs then he fell to pieces. But this was someone in their early 20's in good shape. For non-runners I doubt anyone in the office could have run as fast as he did. If he had been kind of close to me, say within half a lap, and I and I had gone all out I would have been a little "triggered" in your words.

Late in college a guy I sort of knew went on a mountain bike outing with me. I was running 100 mile weeks, and riding a lot off road, training for an XC bike race in fact.

I loaned the guy a bike and helmet, and he dropped me 90 minutes in, at 8000 feet.

Dough boy, said hadn't ridden a bike in ten years. There are outliers. But I doubt there are a few in every office.

Primo Numero Uno wrote:

A few years back a kid right out of college who was a co worker started to talk smack to me and said he could beat me in a mile.

Obviously he had no competitive running experience and didn't understand as an ex D1 track guy there was no way some random guy was going to beat me in a mile. We ended up racing a mile because a couple of our co-workers egged him on and pushed for it.

This guy was in decent shape. He ended up running 6:20. I'll give him credit, he definitely could have run sub 6 with better pacing, we ran the first lap in 64secs then he fell to pieces

Doesn't this prove the OP's point? The average person is a non-runner but will be fit from doing other sports or activities. Without $20 on the line and terrible pacing, one of your co-workers ran a 6:20 mile, which matches the median time of the OP's office (only including males under 40).

Nobody is saying that a random person will go sub 5 and beat a college athlete. The OP is only saying that the typical young man is athletic and can run in the low 6 minute range for a mile.

tarckstar wrote:

Late in college a guy I sort of knew went on a mountain bike outing with me. I was running 100 mile weeks, and riding a lot off road, training for an XC bike race in fact.

I loaned the guy a bike and helmet, and he dropped me 90 minutes in, at 8000 feet.

Dough boy, said hadn't ridden a bike in ten years.

Exactly. I don't understand why people on here keep underestimating the average guy.

I've only raced a co-worker once. I was training hard then, and he gave me flack for taking running so seriously. He said that he could beat me in a short race, and we set up a 70-80 meter race on the street. He took off incredibly fast, and though I was catching up at the end, I still lost by 2-3 feet.

The following week, I ran a 4:11 1500.

Just saying... wrote:

Opie the OP wrote:

Yes. The office of random guys does as well as the self selected guys running a competitive 1 mile road race in NYC.

How is this surprising? There are plenty of cyclists, soccer players, and other active people who could beat the average hobby jogger.

It's a 6:15 and not a 5:15, folks. You don't need tons of specialized training or talent to run that time.

Did you have PE class in high school? 90% of people couldn't break 7 minutes.

6:15 is a time that 98% of the world's population will never touch.

macdaddy wrote:

Just saying... wrote:

How is this surprising? There are plenty of cyclists, soccer players, and other active people who could beat the average hobby jogger.

It's a 6:15 and not a 5:15, folks. You don't need tons of specialized training or talent to run that time.

Did you have PE class in high school? 90% of people couldn't break 7 minutes.

6:15 is a time that 98% of the world's population will never touch.

I did.

25% treated it like it was a 200 and sprinted hard from the start.

50% didn't even try and only ran when the teacher was yelling at them. A big group of friends talking amongst themselves on the backstretch while walking/shuffling was the norm.

10% tried to get out of it by faking injury or sickness.

Of the remaining 15%, almost all of them got under 6:30, most broke 6:15, and about half broke 6.

I'm not buying it, no matter the miracles some of us have seen.

In the men's under 40 division, the winning time was a 5:18, the median time was around 6:15-6:20, and the absolute slowest was 7:24 by a 225 lb guy in his mid 30s

Given the above, you're talking nearly all outliers, given "average" people.

as someone who played hockey growing up and did not run until college i second this take. my first seasons/races i ran a 5:02 mile and a 20:38 5k. before either of those seasons, i ran *maybe* 5-10 miles a month in the summer