I feel that this differs by age because an 18-year-old who is inexperienced with anything over 5K won't run as fast as a 22-year-old who is experienced and running 50 miles per week.
Off 50 miles a week last year, me and my teammate went 24:50 and 25:30 in the 8k. As well as 14:23 and 14:46. Bumping up to 60-70 this year we are around 23:50- 24 low shape and hoping for 14:00-14:20 5ks. So yeah its possible to get really fit off 50.
I would say super talented outliers can even run in the mid-23s, but for the merely talented, mid-24s to 25-flat is about right. Of course, put those merely talented runners on a steady diet of 100+ mile weeks and they will develop into mid-22 runners.
Everyone here has different definitions and standards for what qualifies as a "talented runner".
Whenever I think of someone who is talented but not necessarily elite, I think of someone who could run 4:15-4:20 in HS off of 30 mpw and make it to the CA XC state meet as an individual.
For this person I would expect low 24s, maybe 24:30 if more mid distance oriented, off of 50 mpw of solid training by their sophomore year of college.
I ran low 25s off of that kind of training as a college soph coming from HS as a 4:35 guy, so not even good enough to walk on to most respectable D1 programs
This post was edited 14 minutes after it was posted.
Everyone here has different definitions and standards for what qualifies as a "talented runner".
Whenever I think of someone who is talented but not necessarily elite, I think of someone who could run 4:15-4:20 in HS off of 30 mpw and make it to the CA XC state meet as an individual.
For this person I would expect low 24s, maybe 24:30 if more mid distance oriented, off of 50 mpw of solid training by their sophomore year of college.
I ran low 25s off of that kind of training as a college soph coming from HS as a 4:35 guy, so not even good enough to walk on to most respectable D1 programs
This was me. Long time ago. Ran 4:19 off 30 miles per week. But in college, never really ran high miles because track wasn’t my focus so I ran 25:30 cross country off 40-45 miles per week.
I had a college teammate who ran low 26 for 8K XC, sub 15 and low 31 for 5K/10K outdoor his freshman year never running more than 50 mpw. Obviously there are examples of more talented runners but for a random 18 year old from the Midwest to run those times right away was impressive. He eventually got down to sub 25 for XC and low 14 low 30 for 5K/10K as a senior. Not sure what mileage he was running though as I'd already graduated by then.