How fast can the average high schooler run a mile if given two years to train?

JohnNgugi wrote:

Anyone who survives the training you suggest is going to run 4:50 or better. The non-athletes will be running 5-flat. Anyone with any talent is going sub 4:30 easily.

You are high.

Anyone with running talent....5:00

Avg high schooler....6:00

Just boys.

There are kids who train for 4 years and can't break 5.

Alan

JohnNgugi wrote:

Anyone who survives the training you suggest is going to run 4:50 or better. The non-athletes will be running 5-flat. Anyone with any talent is going sub 4:30 easily.

Have a small number of 15/16 year old on no more than 60k a week and they are around 4'30" 1500m (improving fast). Seems about right. I dont think any non-athlete can get nowhere near 5' on the mile. But yeah i wouldnt dream to add a third workout a week to these guys (or to anyone for what matters).

Sham 69 wrote:

Given the following variables: that he

- Played sports growing up (standing around sports don't count)

- Does 40-60 mpw 11/12 months of the year

- Does two or three fast workouts every week

- Doesn't get injured

- Doesn't let girls distract them

Sham 69 ??

I think a girl who doesn't let girls distract them could definitely run 4-flat, assuming they are into boys. Oh, was this just a thread to guess what males could do with the assumption that they're into women? LRC never lets me down.

~ 5:00 for men. ~ 6:00 for women. I think those are benchmarks that committed HS runners can hit regardless of talent. Put in the work & you can get pretty close (~ :15-20 of it).

This data say that the top 1% of 17-21 yr old males have a mile time of 6:30. The top 50% are at 8:18. Presumably, the top 1% have some training. My guess is that they're < 40 - 60 mpw for 11/12 mos. But they probably have above average talent.

Net, net, I think the answer is probably a lot closer to 6:00 than 4:30.

But, if the question is, how much faster can a ~5:30 miler (a run of the mill XC sophomore) get with two years of solid training, then I think it's closer to 4:30. Anything below that requires some talent, IMO.

Good luck on your quest!

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326263

5 flat.

I approached this time in 8th grade after two years of running in season and I started as middle to back of the pack running the mile once a week in P.E. Never had better than average natural athletic ability. Some wouldn’t get that fast, others much faster:

everyone here is posting ridiculous numbers when we are talking about "average high schooler".

yeah, there's gonna be the kid that can pull a 4:50 out of his butt freshmen year but some people are really garbage. i'd say its more like a 5:20 - 5:30 average after 2 years on average.

depends on genetics wrote:

everyone here is posting ridiculous numbers when we are talking about "average high schooler".

Irrelevant. Everyone here is a sucker replying to a david45 type. If it's not david, it's someone with an incredibly similar angle.

depends on genetics wrote:

everyone here is posting ridiculous numbers when we are talking about "average high schooler".

yeah, there's gonna be the kid that can pull a 4:50 out of his butt freshmen year but some people are really garbage. i'd say its more like a 5:20 - 5:30 average after 2 years on average.

We aren't talking about average high schooler. The garbage kids aren't going to be able to running 40-60mpw for 2 years with 2-3 workouts/week without getting injured.

I do sort of wonder if there is an age thing. I have zero doubt that kids in the 80s/90s would have done this no problem. But I am guessing if your a 2000s kid and all you see is your fat ass classmates, you have a really distorted view of how slow people are...

Canada Girl wrote:

Everyone here is a sucker replying to a david45 type. If it's not david, it's someone with an incredibly similar angle.

I am surprised that a topic about the average high schooler can get people so antsy, LOL

Yeah even if it is a David topic (I don't think it is) This is a fair question.

Canada Girl wrote:

depends on genetics wrote:

everyone here is posting ridiculous numbers when we are talking about "average high schooler".

Irrelevant. Everyone here is a sucker replying to a david45 type. If it's not david, it's someone with an incredibly similar angle.

It's David ;-)

Not kidding wrote:

It's David ;-)

Hi David

Runningart2004 wrote:

JohnNgugi wrote:

Anyone who survives the training you suggest is going to run 4:50 or better. The non-athletes will be running 5-flat. Anyone with any talent is going sub 4:30 easily.

You are high.

Anyone with running talent....5:00

Avg high schooler....6:00

Just boys.

There are kids who train for 4 years and can't break 5.

Alan

Yup.

here we go again wrote:

5 flat.

I approached this time in 8th grade after two years of running in season and I started as middle to back of the pack running the mile once a week in P.E. Never had better than average natural athletic ability. Some wouldn’t get that fast, others much faster:

You approached 5 flat in junior high and you think you had average talented?

People on this website are truly unaware of the outside world.

macdaddy 1 wrote:

You approached 5 flat in junior high and you think you had average talented?

I think we found the real david

Somewhere between 6:00 and 6:30 for the average time.

Did any of you saying 5:00 see how poorly kids did in the presidential fitness challenge in junior high?

lockness log wrote:

Somewhere between 6:00 and 6:30 for the average time.

Did any of you saying 5:00 see how poorly kids did in the presidential fitness challenge in junior high?

Sure but what does the performance of a bunch of 12 year olds with zero training have to do with like 15/16 year old who have trained really hard for 2 years? Freshman XC teams are loaded down with kids who can't break 7 that first meet of the year who are running 5:30 in track that spring. Thats what 9 months of running 30 mile per week does to you.

Seriously it is like people never ran XC in HS and saw what the average freshman does from that first day of practice to a couple years latter. Sure there were a few kids who came in running in JR high but for a lot of us this was our first real experience at more than doing a bit of running in soccer practice. I know I went from 6:23 (I was skinny at the start) with zero training to running a 5:08. Was that above average talent? Maybe. But not by much. It sure wasn't the high level talent of the kids running 4:40s and 9:50 2 miles.....

I have no clue if David is really this untalented or if he is just untrained. But I have no doubt that if he ran 40npw with 2-3 workouts for 2 years straight, he would be running down around 5. You would need to be in the bottom 10% of mile talent for that not to be true.

You know how Olympians are of that .00001% of people with the genetics? I think it's the same with David, except going the other way.

Sham 69 wrote:

You know how Olympians are of that .00001% of people with the genetics? I think it's the same with David, except going the other way.

That would suck if it is true