just saying! wrote:
Wow, you really have no idea, do you?
At my high school there were 1,100 students, plus probably 100 teachers, janitors, and various staff people.
For 3 of my 4 years of high school I was the only person who could run sub-5 for the mile. By my senior year one of my buddies broke 5 also.
That's 1 to 2 people per 1,200. And you really think 1 in 6.5 people could run that fast with a gun to their heads? I don't think so.
(By the way, you may be thinking that the soccer players, for example, were capable of running 5 minute miles but never got the chance. No way - the varsity standard for soccer was that you had to run 2 miles in 12 minutes. Only two guys ran that fast, and both were also on the track team and neither ran sub-5 for the mile).
WOW did your HS suck. WE had 1400 at our school and there were many people on our track team that could do it. WE had seven guys on XC that actually ran under 4:50 for 1600 (4:19 to 4:48 for 1600). I didn't pay any attention to the others but there were a bunch of other guys just behind that top-seven that could not sprint or throw or jump so they ran the 800, 1600 and 3200 and some of them were sub-5:00. I would say five.
At least 10 other guys could have run sub-5:00 but were so far from that event that they never would have tried it. We had four sprinters that ran 10.70 to 10.90 and all hit 50-52 in the 400 (their endurance was poor). Two of them could have run under 5:00. We had a guy run :49 and 1:56 and he could have done it. We had a bunch (five or six) second-tier guys who ran :53-:55 and 2:05-2:10 in the same year and they could have all done it when their 800 was under 2:10.
We had one guy who was just too slow at everything, but he was a football player and coach made him run track and he wanted a varsity letter and coach made him run the 1600. He ran 4:59 in a dual meet.
The girl's XC coach jumped into a workout with us boy's one time and he was pushing me pretty hard and we did that rep in 4:58 on the track, so there is at least one teacher.
SO, there were conservatively just 10 boy's who actually did it and one teacher, but there were easily 30 could have (swimmers and soccer players could have). We had four sub-5:00 1600 runners on my freshman track team alone. One guy went 4:44 (he was a national-class age-grouper the year before), I went 4:50/10:20, Mike Johnson went 2:11/4:59, and Forrest Driggs went 2:11/4:56.
We were not a super-power HS from the sunbelt either.