My 45 year old friend claims that if he breaks a 5:00 mile this makes him the 15th fastest miler ages 45-59 is this true

You were right to assume that no one cares. You were wrong to assume it was okay to post this anyway.

zzzz wrote:

I'll be 45 in May, and this thread provides a little motivation for me to run a sub-5:00 mile this summer.

Thanks God for age-grade calculators.

Dear Speculation Milers,

Sack up or shut up!

Many "runners" do care about how fast runners can run!!!! Are you going to approach any of your PRs at any distance at age 45 ???

If you could do 4:39 three times in a row at the end of a 14 mile run, who are you? There are few runners who could do that. Stop talking like any good runner could do that workout.

ThirdCoastSteve wrote:

If the fastest mile you could muster in your early 20s, the peak of your physical powers, was only a 4:30, you haven't a shot in hell at sub 5 in your late 40s, early 50s, and beyond.

Nah. Not necessarily. Ran track but did not break 4:30 until I was in my late 20s, but still broke 4:40 at 40 and 5 until late 40s. It takes three or four factors, 1) motivation/and sticking to a training plan; health, at least for an extended period, likely 6 months or more injury free out of a year; and opportunity.

The latter is more important than you think. You need a place to train and to have meets. Preferably a competitive race series of some type (whether formal or made up). Where I live you get one chance a year to run a mile--and it's not all that competitive or deep of a race--other wise it's road races and off distance trail races (ranging from 5Ks to ultras).

However, if USATF, maybe the Koch Brothers or even the brojos, offered $1000 for the first 100 age 45+ runners to break 5:00, and ponied up for dozens of meets in which to try, you bet there would be a lot more sub 5:00s every year.

Subfive wrote:

[quote]zzzz wrote:

Many "runners" do care about how fast runners can run!!!! Are you going to approach any of your PRs at any distance at age 45 ???

If you could do 4:39 three times in a row at the end of a 14 mile run, who are you? There are few runners who could do that. Stop talking like any good runner could do that workout.

I guess I wasn't clear. That's one 4:39 mile at the end of a longish run. Then about a week later, another 4:39 for the last mile of a longish run. Then about another week later, another 4:39 last mile of a longish run. I never ran 13:57 for 3 miles ever. I was loath to do workouts by myself then, and generally just did distance runs every day in trails, but found it easy to kick it in for the last measured road mile back to the house when I was feeling good.

I'm probably an exception here, but I was very under raced when I was my fastest because I trained on my own in college and didn't get to run college races. The only PRs that I'm not going to beat at 45 are the mile, 2 mile, 5 mile, 6 mile, and 10K. I've only run one marathon. It was less than two years ago, and a sucky debut at that (2:54), though on a hilly course (800-1,000 ft climbing and some dirt trail). I might be able to PR by 10 minutes there. I've run one half marathon in my life, and it was on a course with ~2,000 elevation gain (1:21) and run when I wasn't training seriously, so I can PR there by a lot. I've only two 5K road races in my life, and they were for fun when I wasn't in great shape, though 15:5X might be beyond me now. Don't know if I don't try. I can also probably set course PRs in most of the local trail races if I step things up in training, since I haven't been in great shape for most of the time that I've been racing them. I'm motivated to train this year because I'm running out of time to do well overall in local races. Maybe it's a mid-life crisis thing. I bought a treadmill in December and will train through the winter for the first time in about 15 years, and am already seeing decent fitness in workouts.

Love it when trolls keep throwing big slabs of raw meat on the grill for master's threads. This one will go to 500+ posts, easy.

zzzz wrote:

*plop*

Parental Advisory wrote:

Love it when trolls keep throwing big slabs of raw meat on the grill for master's threads. This one will go to 500+ posts, easy.

zzzz wrote:

*plop*

Good point there. A lot of caveats and what ifs there zzzz.

Like 4:39 at the end of the long runs. 4:39, 3 weeks in a row. Now that's consistency!

Then the marathon and half marathons with hills and trails, as if those relate much to a mile.

For the effort, 3/10

No one cares about your workout splits on a "measured road" by your house. Race a mile on the track. Sack up or shut up!

NO, you couldn't. Capable and doing are two different things. Even without injuries, some could not handle the hard work needed to get there, regardless of what they ran in college. You are seriously missing the point.

Yep. BUT...even taking into consideration different recovery times (perhaps fewer workout days a week and fewer intervals per workout), injury is STILL the biggest problem for those over 40 even. So, what I'm getting at is that in my opinion, it is still not that big of a deal (more than half who were college runners who could run 4:30 or faster mile) for a 45-year-old to train like a 45 year old (no need to train like a 20-year-old) and still break 5 minutes. The 50% who can't are ones who just can't keep the injuries away even with reduced training load.[/quote]

Anyone up for an age 45+ put up or shut up challenge for 2014? Find a race or a few to aim for, train, race, and have your times listed on Mastersrankings.com.

You come across as ....a troll or a deluded person?

As yet another sub-5 masters miler, I'd like to think it was a rare feat. And it is...depending on how you score it.

But, most runners don't continue into their 40s (let alone their 50s), so it's reasonable to find a higher proportion of us "somewhat high performers" who are still grinding away. Lord knows if I were a 5:20 guy in my heyday I surely wouldn't still be competing to break 6. But because I can still beat 98% of road racers I continue plugging away, and if there are others like me, we're going to be unfairly represented in a survey of older runners making the feat less unusual. That concept is multiplied on this website. Although sub-5 masters are vastly underrepresented in the general population (all those 4:30 kids in HS who ran 4:10 in college and have since quit don't count), those of us who are stupid/motivated enough to keep doing this are overrepresented on this website (which is why you see several posts from people who can rattle off a bunch of guys who have done it).

Ironically, I always swore I'd not become one of those (annoying) old dudes who is still hitting the track every Tuesday night and complaining that kids, age, etc, keep him from his potential, but yet here I am, stereotyped to the max.

Should be elsewhere wrote:

Parental Advisory wrote:

Love it when trolls keep throwing big slabs of raw meat on the grill for master's threads. This one will go to 500+ posts, easy.

Good point there. A lot of caveats and what ifs there zzzz.

Like 4:39 at the end of the long runs. 4:39, 3 weeks in a row. Now that's consistency!

Then the marathon and half marathons with hills and trails, as if those relate much to a mile.

For the effort, 3/10

How was that even close to trolling? That was when I was 29 or maybe 28 year old, not 45. I'm not 45 yet. Maybe 1/3 of LR male posters probably could have done that in their prime.

Subfive wrote:

You come across as ....a troll or a deluded person?

You think sub-5:00 would be difficult for me just because I haven't tried to do it in a dozen years? Or that PRing in the marathon would be difficult? Maybe age hasn't hit me yet because I'm 44, not 45?

These are the results from the 2011 world Master's championship held in Sacramento California:

M35 10000 Meter Run

================================================================

Name Age Team Finals

================================================================

Section 1

1 Celinski, Robert M38 Poland 31:58.96

2 Vega, Oscar M39 Costa Rica 33:39.87

3 Brychta, Jiri M36 Czech Republic 33:56.56

4 Delgado, Gustavo M35 Spain 34:50.87

5 Santoro, Clint M36 United States 36:23.22

6 Acosta Ocana, Alvaro Mau M39 Colombia 37:05.76

7 Tsai, Ming-Chang M38 Canada 37:17.29

If the top American at the World Master's championship in 2011 runs 36:23 which is equivalent to a 5:06 mile, unless your friend is world class, I doubt he could break 5 minutes at 45 when the top American 35 year old can't even run the equivalent of that.

fact checking wrote:

These are the results from the 2011 world Master's championship held in Sacramento California:

M35 10000 Meter Run

Why pick the 35 year olds? Any decent runner that age wouldn't be seen dead at a masters' meeting. We all know you have to be 40. Heck, Lagat is 39.

Here are the UK 1500 rankings from last year. Over here we have a very complete database which gets almost every worthwhile meeting result automatically (whether masters, open, county or club league). Nobody can hide. If you count 4:40 for 1500 as roughly equivalent to 5:00 for a mile, 50 people went under at age 45-49....

A sub-5 mile is impressive fitness at any age. But not that unusual.

It's interesting to see the falloff with age....

Age 35-39: 50th place ran 4:25 for 1500m

Age 40-44: 50th place ran 4:35

Age 45-49: 50th place ran 4:40

Age 50-54: 50th place ran 4:50

Age 55-59: 50th place ran 5:22 (1st and 2nd were 4:31!)

1500m isn't a mile. Post the mile rankings. Sack up or shut up.

ThirdCoastSteve wrote:

If the fastest mile you could muster in your early 20s, the peak of your physical powers, was only a 4:30, you haven't a shot in hell at sub 5 in your late 40s, early 50s, and beyond.

The age graded tables show that

20 year old male 4:30 = 83.3 age graded score

45 year old male 5:00 = 81.7

50 year old male 5:00 = 84.8

Now that's just straight age-graded (there is a age AND WEIGHT graded table somewhere) - someone point out being within 10 lbs of your younger weight.

So from a pure perfomance standpoint 4:30 appears to be a good indicator if you went to college and had good coaching.