4:36 instead wrote:
I would say 4:36.
So you think the High School Girls Record for 1500 (4:03) is equivalent to a HS boy running 3:48 in the Mile??
I guess Alan Webb sucked in HS compared to Mary Cain and Alexa Efraimson.
4:36 instead wrote:
I would say 4:36.
So you think the High School Girls Record for 1500 (4:03) is equivalent to a HS boy running 3:48 in the Mile??
I guess Alan Webb sucked in HS compared to Mary Cain and Alexa Efraimson.
I think there are overall more outlier fast middle distance times among the very best 14-18 y/o girls than for boys. The obvious and well known downside is that many of them never improve on these marks, even in less extreme cases than Mary C.
Interesting theories to kick around in these bleakest of times, and with nothing to do. Keep 'em coming, kids.
Top class men and women run around about 3:30-1 and 3:56-7 on the whole, about 26 secs difference.
Multiply that by 1609/1500 you get about 28 seconds difference over the mile, probably add a second or two for a bit of extra fatigue and you're looking at about 29-30 secs. Feels like it works well as an approximation.
I suppose the question needs to be defined - are we comparing a physically equivalent performance (which is harder to work out exactly) or an competition equivalent performance (bit easier, just by referring to rankings).
it seems pretty consistent that for NCAA indoors, roughly the same number of women run sub-4:40 as run sub-4 each year
rojo wrote:
She's written a column for the Irish Times talking about the possibility of a sub-4 mile for women. What struck me however, was this parargraph.
OSullivan wrote:
In 66 years since that door was opened, over 1,500 male athletes have run a mile in less than four minutes; just 109 women have run 1,500m in less than four minutes. In terms of pure numbers a more realistic comparison would be a sub-4:34 mile for women, equating to a sub-4:14 for 1,500m.
I think what she's saying is that basically the same number of women have run under 4:34 in the women's mile as 4:00 for the men.
Thoughts?
https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/other-sports/sonia-o-sullivan-how-long-before-a-woman-runs-a-sub-four-minute-mile-1.4252607
That's actually probably correct, or possibly doesn't even go far enough.
4 min mile = 4:36 women's mile - Using IAAF scoring tables,
4 min mile = 4:34 women's mile - Using 14.4% advantage of 100th fastest male vs female in last 30 yrs
4 min mile = 4:32 women's mile - Using 13.5% advantage of 100th fastest male vs female in last 30 yrs
4 min mile = 4:28 women's mile - Using 11.7% advantage based on 1500m world records
I'd be willing to call a 4:30 the magical number for women because it is nice and round and close enough. It's important to use 1500m times for comparison in the stats above because women run the mile far less frequently than men. I think the 4:36 mark sounds spot on. Think of high school boys and girls. Just like 4min mile for boys, only the greats on the girl's side run equivalent to 4:36, Hasay, Cain, Touhy, Plumer. The equivalent mark has to be one high school girls actually break because there are highschool boys breaking 4.
EDIT: Note the 4:34 is using the 500th fastest man/woman in the past 30 years
buntcake wrote:
4:36 instead wrote:
I would say 4:36.
So you think the High School Girls Record for 1500 (4:03) is equivalent to a HS boy running 3:48 in the Mile??
I guess Alan Webb sucked in HS compared to Mary Cain and Alexa Efraimson.
Read my post dude. I explained in it the difference in spread for women, compared to men. The high schools girls record for 1500 is 4:04.62. According to my post, this is equivalent to a 3:34.75 for boys (read my post if you want to know how I got that). This is the equivalent of a 3:51.93 mile. That is how good I think Mary Cain was in high school. Remember, Mary was in the final of the world championships even before turning pro. Indoors she won a USA title that year. The next year, though her performances don't count for high school records (like Efraimson's 4:03), she was a WORLD JUNIOR CHAMPION, won her second indoor USA title, and claimed another silver medal at the outdoor USATF Championships. Alan Webb was good, but he had a shot to make worlds in 2001, and failed. His crowning achievement, that 3:53 mile, was only good enough for 5th at Pre. Cain was one of the top women in the world, making the final of the world championships and winning a world junior title. There's no contest. Alan Webb did suck in HS compared to Mary Cain (and if you count Efraimson's fast time, then he sucked compared to her too).
This post was removed.
No way 4:00 equals 4:40 . Closer to 4:30 . Hard to tell with the depth of men runners over women milers. My guess
4:00 - 4:32
I disagree. 4:36 is more like a 4:05 men's mile or slower even.
Look at the elite sport and work backwards. Forget high school. When elite women race to their highest potential we see times roughly 11-12% slower than men. I'm talking about Diana, Hassan, Kipyegon, Muir, Houlihan etc.
If we use your numbers then Houlihan's 4th place finish in Doha in 3:54.99 was equivalent to a 3:24.3 men's 1500. I don't think so.
3:50 = 3:25.3
3:55 = 3:29.8
4:00 = 3:34.3
4:05 = 3:38.8
4:10 = 3:43.2
Even those are a little bit favourable to the women IMO.
A comparison of the male and female 1500m records gives about an 11% slowdown. 11% slower than 4:00 mile gives a 4:29 mile and then dividing that by 1.08 gives a 4:09 1500m.
Alternatively, if you take the men's 1500m conversion for the 4:00 mile, 3:42, and multiply by 1.11 (11% slowdown), you get 4:06.7 for 1500m.
This entire discussion assumes there is a bright line between male and female that science is clearly telling us doesn't exist.
statistically, 4:00 and 4:40ish are the same, but thats due to a lack of dedicated female runners in highschool IMO. My team had about 15 competitive, hard working, put in the mileage boys, and on the girls side, 3 girls that actually tried at practice and none that did additional mileage.
anatomically, I'd think 4:00 is equal to 4:25-4:30
You ignored the entire point of the article to start a contest to see, in effect, who can argue most passionately for or against a 14.1 percent difference between men and women in the mile being perfectly fair.
Sure, that's good for endless pages of bullshit about doping and of course transgender and intersex athletes, but are things really that slow around here?
The answer is no. It's obvious, and I just proved it.
zxcvzcxv wrote:
A comparison of the male and female 1500m records gives about an 11% slowdown. 11% slower than 4:00 mile gives a 4:29 mile and then dividing that by 1.08 gives a 4:09 1500m.
Alternatively, if you take the men's 1500m conversion for the 4:00 mile, 3:42, and multiply by 1.11 (11% slowdown), you get 4:06.7 for 1500m.
True, but if you compare the 500th fastest woman to 500th fastest man over the last 3 decades you get over a 14% slowdown, which gives you your 4:34.
Alternatively, 894 men have run 3:38 or faster in the 1500m in the last 30 years, and 873 women have ran 4:10 or faster. A 4:10 1500m converts to a 4:29.1 mile.
There are lots of different ways to do the conversion. In the end, we can only have a range. A 4:00 min mile for men is probably somewhere between a 4:25 - 4:40 for women. And with some reasonable certainty, I'm willing to narrow down the equivalency to 4:28 - 4:37.
So obviously the barrier for women should be 4:30, it's a pretty darn round number somewhere in the plausible range of what a 4min male mile converts to.
READ MY F*ING POST. You people are ridiculous. I very clearly explained my process using the all-time lists available on alltime-athletics.com, based entirely on thousands of data points from elite runners. Women have a statistically larger spread between elite times (one could argue this is because of a lack of depth, but based on participation numbers I would call that unlikely at best, and most likely blatantly false). Personally, I think this is because women have more variability in testosterone and HGH (as well as several other hormones and enzymes) which causes them to have a 50% greater spread in times. Because of this, you can't use a simple 11% difference (or, god forbid, a 29 second time difference). You need to find equivalent times (as I explained, 3:35.0 and 4:05.0 are as equivalent as any two times you can find), and then use that 50% greater spread to get the rest of the times (so for every second faster or slower that a man runs, a woman would run 1.5 seconds faster or slower to still be equivalent). A 1500m equivalency list would look like this:
3:25.0 3:50.0
3:26.0 3:51.5
3:27.0 3:53.0
3:28.0 3:54.5
3:29.0 3:56.0
3:30.0 3:57.5
3:31.0 3:59.0
3:32.0 4:00.5
3:33.0 4:02.0
3:34.0 4:03.5
3:35.0 4:05.0
3:36.0 4:06.5
3:37.0 4:08.0
3:38.0 4:09.5
3:39.0 4:11.0
3:40.0 4:12.5
3:41.0 4:14.0
3:42.0 4:15.5
3:43.0 4:17.0
3:44.0 4:18.5
3:45.0 4:20.0
3:46.0 4:21.5
3:47.0 4:23.0
3:48.0 4:24.5
3:49.0 4:26.0
3:50.0 4:27.5
3:51.0 4:29.0
3:52.0 4:30.5
3:53.0 4:32.0
3:54.0 4:33.5
3:55.0 4:35.0
3:56.0 4:36.5
3:57.0 4:38.0
3:58.0 4:39.5
3:59.0 4:41.0
4:00.0 4:42.5
4:01.0 4:44.0
4:02.0 4:45.5
4:03.0 4:47.0
4:04.0 4:48.5
4:05.0 4:50.0
4:06.0 4:51.5
4:07.0 4:53.0
4:08.0 4:54.5
4:09.0 4:56.0
4:10.0 4:57.5
4:11.0 4:59.0
4:12.0 5:00.5
4:13.0 5:02.0
4:14.0 5:03.5
4:15.0 5:05.0
4:16.0 5:06.5
4:17.0 5:08.0
4:18.0 5:09.5
4:19.0 5:11.0
4:20.0 5:12.5
4:21.0 5:14.0
4:22.0 5:15.5
4:23.0 5:17.0
4:24.0 5:18.5
4:25.0 5:20.0
Given that a 3:42 1500 is a 4:00 mile, the female equivalent would be 4:15.5 (very close to 4:36.0).
I still disagree. That method simply makes excuses for slower women.
I don't believe that there is a larger spread amongst elite women, it is absolutely due to reduced participation. Reduced interest in sport, particularly in elite sport is well known, particularly in Western countries. Notice how the gap appears to be smaller between elite Africans where elite participation is similar for both
Dibaba has run 8:16 and Hassan 8:18 for 3k, according to your table that would be 7:14 and 7:16 male equivalent.
I did the same analysis for 3k. Junxia's 8:06 (doped to the gills ofc) is as good as 7:16. 8:16 and 8:18 are as good as 7:22 and 7:24, respectively. I found this spread by looking at elite women's times on the alltime-athletics site. As I explained in my OP; 3:35 and 4:05 are equal, but so are 3:33 and 4:02, and so are 3:30 and 3:57.5. These are all easily findable by looking at those lists. This shows a 50% greater spread among elite women. In fact, the spread may be even greater than 50%; at the top level, there is a huge spread. A full 5 seconds separates the top 20 women all-time (only a little over 2 seconds for the men). Personally, I think this is because the best women were more doped (none of the top men were as doped as the Chinese women in the 90s), but either way, it doesn't exactly support your comment. Until you can provide hard data for your claims, rather than this anecdotal evidence, your argument holds no water.
No, no your maths is completely off. You stated that 4:08 is equivalent to 3:37. Therefore 8:16 is equal to 7:14. It cannot be equivalent to anything else by your method!
You can't just change maths based on statistical analysis of historical performances. A 3k is a 1500 times 2! Komen's 7:20 was two 3:40's. You can't say "actually statistically it was only about equivalent to two 3:41s". That doesn't make any sense!