Help me cope -- sprinters running distance runner times in the mile

Solid content. Subbed.

I think you have a very broad view of what "talented" means. I ran my first mile in 5:17 when I was 12 with zero training, losing to 2 other 12 year olds who also had zero training. aren't these college athletes? I don't care if they don't train for distance, neither did middle school me, I still ran way faster and I wasn't even that good lol.

College "sprinters" which can include 400M guys being able to outpace many runners on your highschool distance team, that's really a head scratcher there.

I doubt your post. You are implying you and your 12 year old friends ran 5:15 or 5:17 miles after laying on the couch. I doubt it. You and your 12 year old friends played no other sports and just showed up in p.e. class and ran 5:15 & 5:17 one mile? Didn't happen.

played little league baseball for a few years, not exactly the best conditioning and soccer at the park with my friends every once in a while. my first time racing a mile wasn't for gym though, it was a track meet. can't speak for the other kids cause they weren't from my school, but my entire training leading up to which was the 1 lap warm up we did to start practice, then the core strength we'd do. 1 week of that and I was ready to go. I think youre vastly underestimating how common sub 5:20 is for middle schoolers.

regardless, these are college athletes. how is this supposed to be impressive? there's hundreds of middle schoolers and thousands of high schoolers who walk off the street and run this fast or faster every year.

Wait to you see the 1500 times world class decathletes can run with very little endurance training.

Yeah I think Andrew Wheating ran a 5 minutes mile without any training in high school and his coach instantly knew he had Olympic potential.

I doubt three middle schoolers without any training in the same class could run that time.

You were on a club or school T&F team, correct? You sure implied you got off the couch as a sedentary kid. I was a middle school (we called it junior high school) kid on T&F team.

1. that was 20 years ago, times have kinda changed. I ran this in 2015

2. I also ran almost the exact same freshman mile time as yared nuguse, that doesn't mean I have the potential to run 3:43 lol

3. I went back to the year in question, in my state alone there were 25 kids 7th or 8th grade who ran 5:02 or faster. Athletic.net doesn't go past 25 on the descending order list so I've got no clue how many more ran 5:17 or faster, I'd put the number at at least 50. And that would only be counting the times actually recorded to athletic.net, only one of my meets made it onto there because coaches weren't usually uploading dual meet results for middle schoolers back then. Again, I can't speak for the other kids training as I didn't go to school with them, but I ran at most 5 miles a week, 3 miles of which came exclusively from racing the 3200 and 1600. I really really doubt I am the only kid who this would apply to.

ran on my middle school track team. had never done organized sports other than little league baseball until joining track. I never implied I was completely sedentary, I played with my friends as most kids do but I had never done (and didn't start) real training at all through middle school. sub 5:20 is a fine time for a middle schooler, but not rare or indicative of extreme talent. its not impressive for 18-22 year olds who while not trained for distance are certainly well trained, which was the whole point of my original post.

Nothing to see here.

i have had an 8th grader run a 4:40 in the 1600, but nobody who could go sub 5:20 off the couch. that was with 10 weeks of training and racing.

I did have a soph run a 4:19 in the 1500, right out of basketball season, with no "run training" for 4 straight months. did a couple of 2 or 3 mile jogs the week of.

Usain Bolt ran 4:13.67 in the mile. I'm wondering if that is a record.

I would assume that just about all 400 specialists should be able to crack 5:00 with relative ease.

Also, the 400/800 guys, who I still consider to be sprinters, should be able to be close to 4:30 at least.

The lie detector determined that that is a lie:

time.com

Usain Bolt Has Never Run a Mile (No, Really)

The sprinter keeps to short distances, according to his agent

Open link

Either... 1. You are lying. 2. Track was short of a mile. 3. You have misjudged and squandered freakish athletic potential.

This is like the equivalent of college distance runners (milers +) all doing a 200 time trial and the fastest breaking 24 or whatever, a bunch in the 24-26 range. And then being like I know HS sprinters who work all year and only run 24 or 25.xx. So what? They're college athletes who are fit, they should be able to beat numerous high schoolers even running an event that's not their strength.

(2) almost certainly. I'll bet this "mile" was not on a track at all, but a few laps around the school's soccer field, set up by a middle school PE teacher.

At a high school I once worked at, the basketball coach made all the tryouts run a timed "mile," and if they could not break 6 minutes, they were not allowed to be on the team. Not as hard as it might sound, since the looped course the coach set up around the campus was 0.8 miles long at most.

That article is from 2016. Bolt ran that time in 2018.