Could you outrun a thousand random people of the same age and gender as you?

Horrible deal wrote:

The Death March wrote:

Suppose that you and 1,000 people were placed at the west end of a long interstate highway. All traffic is cleared off the road, and at noon, everyone will start running or walking east.

You're given a 100 meter head start. If you can stay ahead of all of them until 11:59 AM the following day, you'll get $100 million. But if any of them pass you at any point before the 24 hours is up, you'll be shot dead.

The 1,000 people are selected at random from the U.S. population but will be the same age and gender as you. They're given the entire morning to coordinate a strategy and will each receive $1 million if any of them pass you. There's water at every mile, but everyone, including you, will have to carry their own food.

Would you take the deal?

What kind of drugs are you on when you come up with and post this?

1) 100 meters is a tiny lead. The main group would find 5 fastest milers to chase you, followed by a few 5-10k folks and then just some marathoners and a few grinders. They could easily make you hit lactic threshold pretty quickly and tire yourself out while letting the grinders catch you if the 5/10k folks or milers didn't. Maybe a dozen people in the world would have the initial speed to hold off the top milers/then longer distance and still have the endurance to hold off longer distance runners that could go more even pace while still worrying about people that could go slow, stay light aerobic and eventually catch you.

The Death March wrote:

Horrible deal wrote:

What kind of drugs are you on when you come up with and post this?

1) 100 meters is a tiny lead. The main group would find 5 fastest milers to chase you, followed by a few 5-10k folks and then just some marathoners and a few grinders. They could easily make you hit lactic threshold pretty quickly and tire yourself out while letting the grinders catch you if the 5/10k folks or milers didn't. Maybe a dozen people in the world would have the initial speed to hold off the top milers/then longer distance and still have the endurance to hold off longer distance runners that could go more even pace while still worrying about people that could go slow, stay light aerobic and eventually catch you.

How many reasonably fast runners would there be in the general population?

I'm 38, male, and would be tempted to take the bet even though my best 5K time this year is 17:06. If it were 1,000 high school kids, I wouldn't stand a chance, but 99+% of random 38 year olds wouldn't be able to run a single mile at 17:06 pace.

Horrible deal wrote:

The Death March wrote:

How many reasonably fast runners would there be in the general population?

I'm 38, male, and would be tempted to take the bet even though my best 5K time this year is 17:06. If it were 1,000 high school kids, I wouldn't stand a chance, but 99+% of random 38 year olds wouldn't be able to run a single mile at 17:06 pace.

I'm ten years older and about as fast as you and there are a LOT of people I meet regularly my age that could beat me in either a shorter race or the same distance or an ultra.

It is sad at 38 you post this dumb crap. Even assuming you could keep ahead for 5 or 10k, all it would take is a couple to push you to your limit for that distance and wait for marathoners or ultra marathoners to pace properly and catch you once the shorter distance runners wore you out.

Never tell me the odds wrote:

Horrible deal wrote:

What kind of drugs are you on when you come up with and post this?

1) 100 meters is a tiny lead. The main group would find 5 fastest milers to chase you, followed by a few 5-10k folks and then just some marathoners and a few grinders. They could easily make you hit lactic threshold pretty quickly and tire yourself out while letting the grinders catch you if the 5/10k folks or milers didn't. Maybe a dozen people in the world would have the initial speed to hold off the top milers/then longer distance and still have the endurance to hold off longer distance runners that could go more even pace while still worrying about people that could go slow, stay light aerobic and eventually catch you.

I think you might be overestimating the amount of people who can run fast enough to hurt a person if one if faster runner.

The average age in the USA right now is 38.5, so maybe we should go with "the death march's" example

Based on what I found, .68% of the population is male and 38. That's 2,266,440 people if there are 333 million people in the US. That's still a lot of people, you are not going to really increase the chances of large part of that group being super fast.

The average 5k time for males between 35-40 is apparently almost 34 minutes! So you basically don't have to worry about at least half, if not way more of the 1000.

17:06 is pretty fast for the average person, what are the odds you will get multiple people who can push that person for a mile and then more to push them thru 10k and then more to push them thru a marathon.

You're probably only looking at 1-2 people you have to worry about at most, and hopefully that 100 yard lead is enough.

Horrible deal wrote:

Never tell me the odds wrote:

I think you might be overestimating the amount of people who can run fast enough to hurt a person if one if faster runner.

The average age in the USA right now is 38.5, so maybe we should go with "the death march's" example

Based on what I found, .68% of the population is male and 38. That's 2,266,440 people if there are 333 million people in the US. That's still a lot of people, you are not going to really increase the chances of large part of that group being super fast.

The average 5k time for males between 35-40 is apparently almost 34 minutes! So you basically don't have to worry about at least half, if not way more of the 1000.

17:06 is pretty fast for the average person, what are the odds you will get multiple people who can push that person for a mile and then more to push them thru 10k and then more to push them thru a marathon.

You're probably only looking at 1-2 people you have to worry about at most, and hopefully that 100 yard lead is enough.

Great, so nobody would beat him over 5k. But then he's probably got to run a 3hr marathon off of that 17:06 5k. Then probably has to hit 100 miles on the day after that 3 hr marathon. I've run a marathon and 5k before. I know if I went out at 17:06, I would crash hard before even making it to half and even if I held everyone off for a marathon, I'd be going pretty slow for the next 21 hours where I'd have to hold off people that could have been walk/jogging 12 min miles.