How many sub-15 5k runners are there in the US? How many in the world?

The US has 330 million people. For all intents and purposes, the # of sub 15 females is zero (32 outdoors, 11 indoors; some were double counted).

And basically every sub 15 runner is a male between 17 and 35. Of all time, 914 American males broke 14:15 indoors and 933 broke 13:51 outdoors.

I'd say there are about 3000 people who can currently break it.

Population 330M, of which 50% male, of which guessing 20% 17-35, of which guess 1% can run sub-20, of which guess 1% can run sub-15 = 3,300.

Unsure what you guys are talking about. There were 3000 guys in college last year who broke 15.

Are you talking about people alive who have done it or how many people can do it now? First question is 20,000. Second question is 10,000.

In the US, just about everybody on a respectable men’s D1 college team can run sub-15. Say ~100 teams with ~15 guys per team. Then you’ve got the better guys on smaller D1 teams and all the good D2 and D3 guys. And on top of that the 2:2X marathon guys who have graduated but are still at it. The 3,000 number is probably pretty close. It’s at least the right order of magnitude.

Not all between 17 and 35. I know one 50yrar old.

Pretty vague question. You didn’t specify if it’s someone who could in perfect conditions go out and do it right now, or has in the past month, year, or ever in their lifetime. I did it almost 20 years ago but no way that’s happening again, although plenty others my age still can. In the US, maybe a few thousand who can now but it’s definitely in the tens of thousands who have done so. In the world, maybe multiply those by a factor of 10 and you’ll be in the ballpark (US is roughly 5% of the world’s population but some of the very populous places don’t have as strong a running culture).

worldathletics.org

5000 Metres - men - senior - all

Link:worldathletics.org/records/all-time-to...

Roughly 5800 people broke 13'51" in the world (male only of course). It is not exactly what you asked for, but still it is a nice resource to use (of course for more competitive times than 15:00 5k)

No idea.

But they all appear to be on this message board.

When Runners World was a real running magazine they had a yearly issue with every reported marathon time.

I'd love to see a list of certified road and track 5k/5000 finishers.

It's all become so informal now and hobby joggers don't take it seriously.

We have a yearly track 5000 and I was helping count laps. I noticed that the leader (who was trying to run a fast time) was inside the line the whole way- there was a line on the inside of the track. I commented that he was inside and a club officer said- It doesn't matter this isn't official. Whatever that means, I think it was official for that guy!

Sorry, I got off track, so to speak.

In my home town city of population approx 150,000 I knew of approx 10-15 runners who could break 15min. If we take the lower limit of 10 as the average for the world population and divide 150,000 into 8 billion for the world population we get 533,333 people world wide who could break 15min. Sounds like a lot but only works out as 1 in 15,000. Obviously a lot of these people would be out of the age range where you would be expected to have a chance to crack 15min though.

Interesting approach. I guarantee that your numbers are way off though because you didn't check on the thousands of guys running in college from your city. My high school is one of the better ones in the state so ut isn't really representative of the overall population but we have 11 guys who have broken 15 in college from the past 6 years of graduates. There are about 300 graduates per year so that is 11 out of 1800. That is 1 in 150.