Can most (50% or more) of guys run a 5 minute mile?

Here's a rough solution to this argument. First someone needs to post the top 500 or 1000 mile times run by American males age 20-22 in the past year. From the 2000 census data, there are approximately 6 million males age 20-22 right now.

http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DTTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-ds_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U&-mt_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U_PCT012

Assuming the distribution of absolute best mile times for all males is a standard bell curve, then time #380 will correspond to 4 standard deviations from the mean and time #3 will be 5 standard deviations from the mean. If you can all agree that people this high on the list accurately represent the top runners and all of them have nearly maximized their potential, then the range of time from runner #380 to runner #3 will be one standard deviation and the percentage of male American runners that could run under 5:00 can be estimated using the time interval and basic statistics.

kaitainen wrote:

Flagpole Willy wrote:

Also, let's be more clear. It wasn't just that I won races on 15-20 miles a week. I set records that still stand today, and with a 15:48 as a high school senior, I was one of the best high school cross country runners in the state of Ohio in 1984.

when you reread this, don't you think it sounds a bit arrogant?

as to whether i can or have run sub-5 for a mile, again, i don't feel like my running accomplishments alter the value of my comments, it will suffice to say that i have indeed broken 5:00 (you should know this though as we covered the topic on a similar thread a couple months ago) and (i can't resist the following) trust me, i have loads more running talent than you. check out statman's PR thread if you want more detail.

1) No. Not arrogant in the slightest. Fact, and on point.

2) I wasn't challenging you as to whether or not you've run a sub 5-minute mile (man you REALLY haven't been reading my posts long at all if you think so). I was trying to categorize you. IF you've run a sub 5-minute mile AND you think that 50% of all men could run a sub 5-minute mile then you are arrogant for the reasons I mentioned before. IF you haven't run a sub 5-minute mile and you think that 50% of all men could then you are NOT arrogant but just guilty of wishful thinking.

3) Your running talent compared to mine doesn't interest me. Many here have verifiable better times than me. Perhaps your times are verifiable. Perhaps not. I couldn't care less though. My best time EVER was a 14:58 on the track for 5,000 meters. All my other times at other distances aren't as good. Like I said before (and believe it), I'm not arrogant about my times. They are what they are. Lots of people (including many women) are faster. But percentagewise, more than 99.9% of MEN are not.

4) You say you and I covered a topic where your times were revealed to me months ago. I honestly don't remember any of your posts until just this week. Guess they weren't very memorable.

kaitainen wrote:

Flagpole Willy wrote:

Also, let's be more clear. It wasn't just that I won races on 15-20 miles a week. I set records that still stand today, and with a 15:48 as a high school senior, I was one of the best high school cross country runners in the state of Ohio in 1984.

when you reread this, don't you think it sounds a bit arrogant?

as to whether i can or have run sub-5 for a mile, again, i don't feel like my running accomplishments alter the value of my comments, it will suffice to say that i have indeed broken 5:00 (you should know this though as we covered the topic on a similar thread a couple months ago) and (i can't resist the following) trust me, i have loads more running talent than you. check out statman's PR thread if you want more detail.

I'm fairly new to the board. I don't want to take sides in the sense of forming de facto alliances, but I must note that after reading several of his posts I have the utmost respect for Kaitainen. I really liked his earlier distinction between talent and skill in this context, for example. That was profound.

I happen to disagree with him on this issue but reserve the right to change my mind based on new evidence. (re: percentage of 5 min milers -- my guesstimate is 5-14%. If you are interested, see earlier posts in this thread because this post is too verbose as it is.)

I keep coming back to the value of personal experience in relation to evidence. "Been there, done that" is important. There is great value in knowing from the inside how something feels, what it takes to succeed, etc. I don't think that the attitude of "If I can do it, everybody can" is arrogant. That's the way I used to feel; I did it, and I'm nothing special. However with the passing of time I tend to agree with Flagpole Willy's point about talent simply being the luck of the draw (but don't care for the way he derived the conclusion). The psychology of attribution is fascinating. But that's not the point. How can you settle anything with appeals to personal authority and/or accusations of motive on a board filled with pseudonymous posters (and poseurs)? It's entertaining but not really productive. (Of course, if I were so concerned about productivity I wouldn't spend as much time on this board.)

It's funny. The guys who could pull rank based solely on personal experience don't. For example, Malmo and jtupper are great because there's gold in them thar hills -- facts, world class experiences, anecdotes, and solid reasoning. Plus the caustic comment or two from Malmo. Thank-you-sir-may-I-have-another.

Back to my point. Since this is a question of numbers, let's look at the numbers. Personal appeals are subjective, unverifiable, and unavoidably skewed.

Here is a bit of analysis on the skewed perception of talent from Bill James, the baseball scholar who has helped revolutionize the modern game (despite never rising above little league, I might add -- no 5 minute miler he):

*************

"Talent in Baseball Is Not Normally Distributed"

Talent in baseball is not normally distributed. It is a pyramid. For every player who is 10 percent above the average player, there are probably twenty players who are 10 percent below average.

Talent in the general population, when plotted on a graph, looks like a bell-shaped curve, with the largest number of people in the center and the extremes of high and low at opposing ends.

In major league baseball, all talent is drawn from the high-talent end of the general population -- the right side of the bell. Thus withing the pool of pro players, the most common level of talent is the bottom, not the average.

*************

What does this have to do with our topic? The ability to run a mile is almost certainly normally distributed among the general population, like height. What we are arguing about is the value of the mean, or average time, in this case 5:00. The shape of the bell curve for the general population is not really in doubt.

The letsrun community is a self-selected group. We are at the right side of the bell. (How many standard deviations to the right, I don't know.) However, the shape of this subset, this portion of the curve is very different from that of the general populace. It is not a bell; rather, it slopes downward quickly, kind of like an upright hockey stick pointing right.

As runners, how does this affect our perceptions? Because of the shape of the right hand part of the curve, within this subset, the world looks like a pyramid. 5 minute milers become a dime a dozen. In a competitive arena, "For every player [runner] who is 10 percent above the average [runner], there are probably twenty players who are 10 percent below average." This perception will hold double for egalitarian elites like Kaitainen, who with a generosity of spirit maintain that they are nothing special. If you are fast but consider yourself intrinsically average, it will seem like there should be a lot of sub 5 minute milers.

Plus, there is hindsight bias. Most of us like to think that we did not reach our potential, if only because we are now aware of things we could have done differently, whether improved training methods, peaking, tactics, whatever. "If only I knew then what I know now." This bias tends to boost our perceptual mean of ability higher.

In the real world average is average. Maybe letsrun really is Lake Wobegon, where "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the runners above average." Of course, the farther back we go the faster we once were....

i do not think anywhere near 50% could break 5 minutes. when i was in high school i was the only person in my class that broke 5 minutes for the mile, i was the 1st person in my school to break 5 minutes as a freshman and no one else in my class ever went on to go sub 5 any year. in my brothers class 2 years after me he was the only person in his class ever to go sub 5 as well. i think the class ahead of me had 2 that went under 5 minutes.

all this is at a school that qualified for state in cc and did generally well in distance events.

JEH wrote:

Here's another hypothetical way to look at it. If Bill Gates selected a random sampling of 10,000 male babies and wrote a contract that stated that he would give $10mil per child that breaks 5min in the mile in the next 30 years... what percentage of these guys would eventually do it? I think it would be a good amount.

JEH,

I honestly think it would still be right about 5% or less. Someone could have offered me $10 million when I was in college if I could have run 13:50 for 5,000 meters and I never could have done it. Sure some people will try, but when they realize that they aren't anywhere near close to being able to, they will quit. Even if it were a worse thing like they've got a gun to your head, I still say 5% or less. It's not that easy for the vast majority of people. In fact it is impossible for the vast majority of people.

Still though, disagreeing with you makes me feel all weepy inside, so I'll have to quit. :)

W. Mitty wrote:

FW,

You were being facetious in your "Heart of a Lion Post" from a few days ago, weren't you?

Of course brother!

seriously.com wrote:

Flagpole,

BTW- I went to Worthington HS and we had 13-15 guys break 5:00 (out of 30) in the early 90's (and we weren't that great). NONE of us trained as we should...and all but one or 2 at MOST could've broke 5 with the appropriate dedication.

The soccer teams had 4 teams (Vasity,JV Red, JV Blue, Frosh) and those guys ran 5:30 in practice without blinking (another 100 guys). They all could've busted 5. The xc guys were the ones who weren't talented enough to tackle SOCCER...let alone football or basketball.

Give me 10 random male babies born tomorrow at Riverside Hospital and let me start training until they are 20 (1 million bucks to each person who busts 5). D you honestly think after 20 years that 5 of them haven't broken 5 minutes?

Anomalies happen all the time. Thomas Worthington High School (as it is now known) now has no where NEAR that many guys who could break 5 minutes. I went to an even bigger high school than TWHS, and there were only 4 guys in the whole school who could break 5, and we had a bumper crop year -- after my class graduated, the school had no one who could. I think though that there's NO way 100 guys on the soccer team could have busted 5 minutes. I don't believe that they even ran 5:30 -- not 100 of them anyway. I've seen tons of soccer teams run, and that just isn't so.

And yes, given 10 random male babies, in 20 years, 5 of them will NOT have been able to break 5 minutes in the mile no matter how much money you offered them.

You 50% people are really far off. For one thing, what about all the people born with birth defects and genetic diseases? Are you only taking healthy people? (Even with the healthy people though, I still say it's 5% or less). Man, you people need to meet some runners who have NO talent. I know a guy named Doug Nicodemus that you all need to meet. He's most people. NO talent, and it takes talent to break 5 minutes -- not boatloads on a world class scene, but it takes talent.

Good one.

Flagpole, it's fine of you to disagree with me... that just makes me look even MORE sensible to the letsrun populace (smile).

You indeed have a point about the 13:50 and not being able to break it regardless of $ amount. That said, I think 13:50 is a little more difficult than 5min. AND, when I say that 50% could break, I am ALSO saying that 50% couldn't break 5 if their lives depended on it. SO, in a weird way, I am agreeing with you, but just differing on the %s.

You're friend with NO talent is not representative of most people. If you assume the bell-shaped curve Mitty suggested above (and I think most would), then Zero talent would be as far to the left as Bekele would be to the right.

As for the baseball stuff. A 5min mile would be the equivalent to learning how to throw three strikes in 5 pitches from 60ft6in. And, by the way, the avg. baseball player makes $2.6m/yr. Ka-ching!

I really liked the standard deviation proposal, but unfortuantely, I don't think #380 on the list would produce a time representative... it's too far down to be really doing his best.

I'm pretty certain that I couldn't break 5 minutes no matter how hard I trained.

I don't think you can tell. Were you were raised to eat very healthy and be active as a child? Did you get the absolute best coaching from the moment you started? Did you put in several years to train specifically for the mile? Did you train consistently through your peak years? Lastly, how can you tell how much faster you would have been (or not been, I guess) if you had 10 (or 100) times the incentive?

I don't think personal anecdotes, especially the ones about their underacheiving high school teams (I mean, yeah, as a young child, everyone dreams of running HS XC), do much to make an argument.

However, even if you couldn't break 5, I guess you'd be in the lower 50% in the running-talent gene pool. No big deal.

thanks.

Flagpole Willy wrote:

I wasn't challenging you as to whether or not you've run a sub 5-minute mile (man you REALLY haven't been reading my posts long at all if you think so). I was trying to categorize you. IF you've run a sub 5-minute mile AND you think that 50% of all men could run a sub 5-minute mile then you are arrogant for the reasons I mentioned before. IF you haven't run a sub 5-minute mile and you think that 50% of all men could then you are NOT arrogant but just guilty of wishful thinking.

i think you have it completely backwards.

my point is that it is arrogant to think that you are so special because you have the talent to break 5:00 in the mile. those of us saying it is relatively common to have that level of talent believe that having that level of talent isn't very special. thus, less arrogant. it doesn't have anything to do with us thinking that we "earned" it by working hard. and even if there is some merit in your idea, in order for it to apply to someone, he would have to be in that subset of people who had to work hard to break 5:00. it suffices to say that i'm not in that subset.

the other aspect of your arrogance is the way in which you list your accomplishments. you don't just write "i was able to run well under 5:00/mile without optimal training." instead, you mention that you won a race by (approx.) 30 seconds and that you set a course record of some sort in a non-mile race, neither of which have anything to do with this thread. that's naked bragging. and frankly, it's a bit silly given the pedestrian nature of your times and accomplishments as they compare to many people who post on this board.

by the way, W. Mitty, i thought yours was an excellent post.

Oh brother kaitainen, you've got lots to learn. I'm not sure when you first started posting here, but you really don't know me too well if you think I bring up that stuff for "naked bragging". One thing that I am is truthful to the core, and if I were at all bragging while bringing up my times (as pedistrian as they are) then I'd tell you. And again, I know exactly where my times put me. I know that there are some runners here (verified) who are faster than me. Most aren't. In fact the vast majority of those who post here aren't. My times are not spectacular -- 25:15 for 8,000; 14:58 for 5,000; 9:21 for an indoor two-mile. But, the fact that most here aren't faster than me means nothing other than I'm faster than most. Easily in the top 1% of all RUNNERS ever. What does that get me? Well, in the early 90s, I earned about $2000 total ever from money from road races when that was still possible (can't win money now with the times I ran). That's about all it could get me. Why do I mention all this? I'm sure you'll say it is bragging. It is the opposite of bragging. I never was on a national team. I never qualified for trials to be on a national team. At my best I was as good as the best American WOMAN at the time. How is this bragging to mention my times? They are piss poor compared to people with real talent and ability. (actually I'll never know why my ability level was because I never trained properly in my life ever).

You have an odd way of looking at things if you ask me. From what I can tell, most of the runners on this board didn't just hop out of bed and run a sub 5 minute mile (and even I didn't quite do that, but pretty close to that). So, MOST of the runners on this board who HAVE broken 5 minutes for the mile actually had to work to get there. I did it in my first ever race at the distance. Pretty sure that's not true for most. So, while you obviously disagree with me, this should explain pretty clearly to you why it is that I value talent over training -- especially since I did very minimal training in high school and then relatively speaking in college too. I don't think I'm special to have been born with this talent. I cannot be arrogant about it. I am simply grateful and thank God for my many gifts. The majority of you who had to work to get to a sub 5-minute mile DO place a lot of emphasis on your work ethic to get there (hence the arrogance part). I'm not saying you all didn't have great work ethic -- (I actually never really did, but that was mostly due to following the direction of my coaches who were armed with bad training advice, and I suffered because I was successful right from the very beginning and didn't have to work too hard for even moderate success), but I'm saying that the work ethic coupled with talent is what got you to a sub 5 minute mile, the talent being the very most important thing.

In order for you to be more correct about me, you need to wrap your brain around this -- I post in discussions to make points. Period. If bringing up my times or my minimalist training in any way helps to illustrate a point, then I will do it. I don't deal in "feeling special" about having some running talent. On topics on which I've formed an opinion, I usually have a very black and white view. People either have talent for something or they don't. I can't draw worth a damn, and I'm the worst artist (not counting musically) that I've ever known (Pictionary will bring that out). But, I have a talent for running. Not bragging. It's just true. As yourself if someone who knows that there are people way faster than him on this message board could bring up his times then to brag. Just doesn't make sense brother. To talk about winning races and so on also isn't to brag. I do it once in a while to illustrate the piss poor advice given to runners in the mid 80s. I won everything and anything until it got down to the state meet (and due to poor traiing, I was very inconsistent) as a high school senior with times that today wouldn't do much at all. It's because they told most of us to have quality runs and not quantity and to rest up on the weekends. So, a 9:48 wins a big invitational with most runners 30 seconds back. A 15:48 wins the Wood County Cross Country championships by 30 seconds with most of the runners coming in minutes behind. It's never to show how great I was, because I know I wasn't. It is always to show how bad the rest of the field was, and it's the reason I did it in this thread.

We don't NEED to take 10 babies and train them until they are 20. There's already a pool of runners in this country who train hard every day, and they are the ones who are even remotely good at running, and only about 1% of them can break 5 minutes for a mile. I'd even be willing to look at the top 50% of all runners, see what they are doing, and still only MAYBE 2% of them could break 5 minutes for a mile. No way that so many of them are so wrong in their training that different advice would allow so many of them to improve to under 5 minutes.

For those of us who have run faster than 5 minutes, it seems like it's easy. What about someone who has run in the 3:40s for the mile? Maybe they think that 4:30 is super slow and that just a little training could enable 50% of people to run 4:30. 4:30 is not slow. 5 minutes is not slow -- not for the average population even under ideal training conditions. Less than 75 seconds per lap for 4 laps. More than 12 miles per hour for a mile? 5% or less are capable. I think way less. 1-2%.

Flagpole Willy wrote:

My times are not spectacular -- 25:15 for 8,000; 14:58 for 5,000; 9:21 for an indoor two-mile. But, the fact that most here aren't faster than me means nothing other than I'm faster than most. Easily in the top 1% of all RUNNERS ever.

...especially since I did very minimal training in high school and then relatively speaking in college too.

...We don't NEED to take 10 babies and train them until they are 20. There's already a pool of runners in this country who train hard every day, and they are the ones who are even remotely good at running...

"Back in '82, I used to be able to throw a pigskin a quarter mile. "

You are looking at this question the wrong way. It is completely irrelevant what the general population can do now. It is completely irrelevant what times win high school invitationals, or how fast you were. The original question asked how many people could run a sub-5 mile with ideal training, assuming that everyone had the motivation to sustain that ideal training.

Now, the number of people who today have trained ideally is vanishingly small. Almost non-existant. Ideal training, to me, means daily physical acticvity from a very young age, doing plenty of easy and fun running as a child, then beginning to get into more substantative training through high school and college ages. Nobody in our society does this - hence why the question was a hypothetical one. Your statement that "We don't NEED to take 10 babies and train them until they are 20. There's already a pool of runners in this country who train hard every day" is completely false under the premise of the original question. Even the best runners in this country have not trained ideally - the only way to do that is to completely control development from birth (we are assuming that mental burnout doesn't happen).

Hate to drop this bomb on you FP, but I asked Mrs. H, and she says MORE than 50%. In our household, that usually is the end of discussion.