Sub 15 5k or sub 2:30 marathon. Which is more impressive?

Having gone under 2:30 by a few minutes several times but with a 16:30 5k pb I'd have to go with the sub-15 5k.

*a mix of pavement and grass for the 5k, but a reasonably flat course otherwise. In solo time trials on track during marathon training I've managed 16:18, but that's it.

18rabbitskiing wrote:

Gauging the results of the largest 5K and 10K road races in the country think Peachtree and Hot Chocolate and comparing them with the largest Marathon's especially Chicago there are far more sub 2:30 Marathon finishers than there are sub 15 5K and sub 31 10K finishers. For instance the 2019 Peachtree 10K which had ~56k participants and is larger than the Chicago Marathon at 45K participants yet only had twenty-three sub 31 minute finishers whereas the Chicago Marathon had over 140 sub 2:30 finishers.

There aren't a lot of 5Ks with massive fields but in general you will find fewer sub 15 minute finishers on a % basis than for the big marathons.

Peachtree is a TOUGH course.

I don't think it works to compare that race to something pancake flat as Chicago.

Plus, as another poster said, few people set a 5K or 10K as their goal race.

That + you see a lot more hobby joggers in 5ks than marathons simply because the distance is so much shorter so the %s can get thrown off.

I could do both on the same day, and my wife would still not be impressed.

Great debate. I've run 2:21 in the marathon, but not cracked 15:00 on the roads. From my experience, the 5K on the roads is the tougher act.

I think a lot depends on what you're physiology is. My times would get relatively slower once I got past 3000m.

I could scrape under 15:00 for 5000m, but never had a day when I could have run under 2:30 for a marathon.

I actually struggled to run significantly under 75:00 for a half, for which my best was high 73:xx I think.

The only way I could get through a marathon was to basically jog it at about 70 seconds per mile slower that 10k pace.

It might be different in England where I come from as, with a lot of club competition, people who were sub-elite, or sub-sub elite carried on with training and competing in track events through their 20s and 30s and have more of a speed background.

While I totally agree with your point (I made a very similar one at the top of page 3), I can't help but boast that I made it into top 20 open in LA with a result significantly worse than 2:30 ;) It was a skewed race though – just one week after the trials so sub-elite field was swept away.

Something tells me the heat of the summer olympics in Rio played a huge factor in this as well.

That's my point - pulling it off to order on a set day/date, with all of the variables there are.

Sub Elitist wrote:

Great debate. I've run 2:21 in the marathon, but not cracked 15:00 on the roads. From my experience, the 5K on the roads is the tougher act.

5k on roads is indeed different than 5000m track, and tougher to hit those speeds.

Here's another question (somewhat related to your post):

Impressiveness of either one to a person, obviously relates, to some degree, to what that person can themselves currently do. I'm impressed by both.

But does either time theoretically impress someone more when these times are miles away (like me, say 5k in 18 and marathon in 3:30 I think is the rough VDOT) or if they're within possibility but a person knows what it takes to have gotten within reach (say someone with a 5k in 15:59 and marathon in 2:40)?

fetullah al gulen rupp wrote:

interesting discussion. my answer is the 5K because while i personally know a few 2:30 guys, i do not know any 14:xx guys (unless they're hiding it). so that's rarefied air to me. i do think it requires a higher degree of genetic talent.

just for kicks i looked up 2019 results for the one fast 5K in my area and our big marathon. interestingly, there were 5 local guys that broke 15, and 5 that broke 2:30. granted, the 5K course is pancake flat and our marathon course is not. i was surprised we didn't have more sub 2:30 guys to be honest.

When I was running back in England in club competition in the 80s even in a relatively small club (towards top of Southern League Div 1) we had several guys who could run under 15:00 for 5k and probably five or six who could run under 30:00 for 10k.

Hardly any of them even tried a marathon, so I'm a lot more familiar with the sub-15 5k runners.

For me, as I say in previous post, I was so distance limited, I was 10 minutes slower in a marathon than guys that I would take a minute or more out of over 10k.

Cavorty, as someone with a similar phenotype who one day hopes to translate shorter distance times to the full... how much do you think you could have closed that gap if you focused entirely on the marathon for an extended period of time?

I ran a 14:07 3 mile on the track back in 1971 (age 22, just out of college)) equal to 14:37/5K. I ran it to see what kind of shape I was in. I was very fit! In 1972 I ran 2:28:55 to qualify for the Olympic Trials in Eugene. I did not train for it and faded in last 10K. Later on in 1979 (age 30) I tried again to qualify for the Olympic trials. But I went out way too fast (1:08:30/5:13 pace at 1/2 marathon) Still hit 1:47:00 at 20 miles (5:21 pace) then suffer a extremely painful last 10K. I took a week off and retrained for three months and tried again. I did run a smarter race with a 2:25:56 PR.

So the marathon training and race itself is challenging. You do not get very many chances. Where as racing a track race, you have more opportunities and recover quicker. I knew a lot of guys who ran a sub 2:30, but could never run a sub 15 in the 5K. they were very strong, but not fast.

It helps to come from a track and xc back ground.

I'll grant you that road and track are definitely different animals. I ran 14:30's on the track in college, but it wasn't until my late 30's that I ran my best marathons.

Another vote for sub-15. As someone who has done both, it took being in absolutely phenomenal shape to do break 15. When I went sub-2:30, I was coming back to running after my first kid, was a long ways from ideal fitness, and ran solo from miles 9-26.2.

I averaged 75 mpw during 5k training and 90ish during the marathon build. I don't really consider volume an indication of "impressive." Anyone who makes the time for it can do it. And neither training goal is inherently more prone to injury. Yes, the volume takes its toll in the marathon, but 5k training requires a lot of track intervals. Both carry risks.

The nice thing about VDOT is it offers objective equivalence between marks.