macker wrote:
...I remember when Geb set a 5k wr a while back, I thought it would be an excellent thing to bring up in a class I was teaching. I relayed that that was like doing almost 4 minute miles for a 3 miles. There was a huge passive silence. One of my students then said "Don't people run 4 minute miles all the time?" I was stunned.
With all due respect, you need to get a sense of proportion. Only 13% of Americans of prime military age can find Iraq on a map, 3 in 10 can't find the Pacific Ocean -- these are stunning statistics. That the general ruck of Americans don't know the difference between a 4 min mile and 16 min mile isn't surprising or disturbing. Where would they pick up this information? Maybe from the 3 minutes of combined coverage the Olympic distance events get every four years?
I can't tell you the top 5 biathletes in the world, nor the countries they represent, nor a typical pace they ski at. The fact of my ignorance and the ignorance of 99% of humans on the planet of that trivia doesn't prevent those athletes from pursuing their sport, nor does it prevent the rest of us from cross country skiing with rifles to our hearts content.