How impressive is a sub 15 5k at age 40?

It is sort of like breaking 14 when in college, not in terms of difficulty but probably in terms of rarity.

decent time

Age-graded comparable to a 12:37 on the track and 12:54 on the road. Not sure why they are different.

1% of what? Significantly less than 1 out of 100 40-year old runners break 15 in the 5k. Depending on your definition of a runner, you are off by a few orders of magnitude.

Not too shabby if you identify as a woman

I think those were the world records when the age grading formula was last updated. The comparable time is much slower.

Depends. Is it a guy who used to be faster and slowed to that time? Or is it a guy achieving his first ever sub 15 at age 40? Both are impressive but the latter is more impressive i think

as an old guy who has broken 15 after turning 40, it's not that rare, though i guess it depends what you're comparing it to. pretty sure that it happens mostly every year, though, with maybe at least a couple of dudes. ten years ago i would have said it's less rare than a h.s. kid going sub-4, but i suppose that may not be true any more.

also, in my opinion: i like the age grade percentage--even though i'll never understand the actual math behind it--since it gives you a relative grade vs. your age group peers. but i HATE the "comparable time" garbage because it's more speculative and by and large meaningless.

that's my story and i'm sticking to it,

cush

According to runrepeat, you need to run 19:15 to be in the top 1% of 40-49 year olds. This probably includes a lot of walkers, but it gives some data on the range of times from a huge database of road races.

runrepeat.com

Compare Running Finish Times [Calculator] - 5K, 10K, Half Marathon, Marathon

Compare your running time to the time of your fellow runners. Results are b

Open link

p.s. road 5k times are generally going to be slower than on the track. there's usually around a 15 second difference (or more) between world records...

Would a time like that be clean?

It’s beyond impressive. The amount of pawed and power and fluidity and routine of schedule you need to keep going is what would make it possible: to put in perspective only two American men 40+ has been able to sub-15 since 2020z

It is very very impressive indeed.

Very impressive. It’s faster than most state champions at the high school level, although they are running on grass. That time is definitely good enough to be on a mediocre D1 XC varsity at the mid major level. A sub 15 is easily winning the local 5Ks.

UK last year V40 men

5k road - 11 sub-15

5k track - 4 sub-15

Parkrun (5k) - 1 sub-15

It's 7.9 impressives

Sub 15 5k at any age is awesome. There are 8 billion people in the world today right? Top 1% for anyone is more like it

that was my first thought when the OP said "top 1% right?" letsrun posters are extremely out of touch with how fast even moderately talented HS and college athletes (let alone pros) are relative to the general road race participant population

sub-15 is far, far smaller than1% for the general world population. it's far lower than 1% even among the general RUNNING population. seriously? why does everyone on letsrun think that they're so slow?