How many people, today, could run sub 5 in the US

uhhhhhh...

There are probably 2000 high school kids that can break 5.

For the mile? That would be an average of 40 per state. I'm pretty sure there are more than 2000 high schoolers that can break 5 in the mile.

200,000 is closer. 2,000,000 is believable. 20,000,000 is not unreasonable.

i'd say 10,000

Ummm...there are 2000 people in Austin, Texas alone who can run sub 5.

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm wrote:

Ummm...there are 2000 people in Austin, Texas alone who can run sub 5.

that makes austin texas the running capital of the world.

Ok, I ran some quick numbers. There are roughly 30 million men in the US between the ages of 15-30. Lets assume that they were all healthy and lean and trained for it that they COULD all run under 5 minute. And if we assume that roughly 60% of those people are overweight (I got that number from the NAASA, the Obesity Society which said 64% of adults are overweight, and Im rounding it down because younger people are healthier) and cannot even get close to 5 min, then there are about 12 million people left. Lets just cut that in half and say that there are 6 million people in the United States who COULD run sub 5. Figuring out how many people could run a five minute mile if the went to the track right now is much harder.

within what time period? waking up right now and having it with possibly some being hungover from being drunk or breaking it within the next race 2 wks from now?

Assumptions:

1) There are 307 million people in the United States.

2) Half, roughly 154 million are women

3) So few women can run sub 5, as a percentage, that their total number will be a rounding difference in the male total, so all women can be excluded.

4) Of the 1400 males in my high school junior and senior classes, five could run 4:59 or faster, which is about 0.35 percent.

5) 153 million men times 0.0035 is 535,000.

6) Assumption number five is an overestimation, as many males are young children, elderly, or sedentary and overweight in middle age, compared to junior and senior year in high school Eliminating 90 percent of the ages from birth to 80, leaves 8 years, or ten percent of 535,000, which is 53,500. The 8 years would be 16-24.

I think the number is certainly less than 53,500, as few of the five of us held that fitness through college, from injury or less intensive training. By the way, the number of basketball, soccer, and football players at my high school who claimed the abilty was dozens, but a mass time trial revealed that the few of the braggarts could break 5:30 and none below 5:10.

Your 2000 seems too low. If I had to pick a ballpark number, as you did, I would pick 20,000, the vast majority of whom are varsity high school runners and collegiate scholarship athletes in several sports.

In a one year period I coach at least 10 high school guys who can go sub 5. I coach 1 high school girl who went 4:58 this year. In my high school conference there are at least 5 more guys who can break 5. We have a very weak distance conference. You go to one of the good ones and they will have 50 or more.

In my state a lone I'm guessing close to 600 or more high school guys who can break 5. We have 4 high school girls who have broken five this year.

This is just high school guys and girls.

the number in my state between all age levels and genders is probably closer to two or three thousand and that is probably being conservative. My state is not one of the big states either.

Having the ability of running a sub 5 mile 6 times in a row has made me underestimate the difficulty of running a 5 minute mile. There are certainly people who are young skinny and healthy who train for years and are unable to run under 5. So my estimate of 6 million is definitely too high, but I think yours is a little low. Your school kind of sucked at track, no offense.

20,000,000 is unreasonable. There are about 309,000,000 people in the US. Only around 121,000,000 of those are ages 15-44. Even if 1 out of every 1,000 males and 1 of every 20,000 females in that age range could manage sub-5, you'd have roughly 60,000 men and 3,050 women.

All of this considered, I would guess there are about 45-50,000 in the US who can do it.

This question should have been on the US Census. Take that # and multiply by 0.25 to eliminate the liars. Someone write a letter to congress and maybe we can get it in for 2020.

There are 5,000 or so xc runners in NCAA d3. Add in NAIA, d1 & d2, and you have at least 10,000, maybe closer to 13,000 or 14,000 collegiate distance runners. Very few of them won't be able to break 5:00. Add to that hundreds of high school runners per state, and a handful of women and junior high boys, plus tons of post-collegiate runners. I'd say anywhere from 50 to 250 thousand.

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm wrote:

Ummm...there are 2000 people in Austin, Texas alone who can run sub 5.

Mr. Ummm, where did you get that "2000" number? Austin has a very popular road race called the Congress Avenue Mile, which was last run in June 2009. 125 runners broke 5 minutes that day and many of them were from other areas of Texas and beyond.

In response to the coaches with "10" sub 5:00 milers or more, that is an atypical result. Most high schools have considerably fewer, if any.

There's about 35,000 high schools in the United States, many of which are quite small. I think my 20,000 sub 5 "today" estimate is about right, perhaps 25,000, but not significantly more.

TCB wrote:

200,000 is closer. 2,000,000 is believable. 20,000,000 is not unreasonable.

how is 20,000,000 not unreasonable? And who in the world would believe 2,000,000? It is amazing how so many people have 0 concept of numbers whatsoever. No offence. But you should have just kept your mouth shut if you have no idea what you're talking about. I get the feeling you just threw out some random numbers.

By the way I throw my vote in for 8,000. 2000 is a lot too small but it's not much bigger than that. Sub 5 is really quite rare.

I started running at age 25. 6'0", 153 lbs, ran 40-60 mpw for many years and never broke 5:00. Made it to 5:07 at age 29, that was the best I ever did. I also never ran a quarter faster than :68, or a half faster than 2:28.

It takes a certain amount of natural talent to break 5:00 (talent many don't have).

The number is surely lower than many believe.

TCB wrote:

Having the ability of running a sub 5 mile 6 times in a row has made me underestimate the difficulty of running a 5 minute mile. There are certainly people who are young skinny and healthy who train for years and are unable to run under 5. So my estimate of 6 million is definitely too high, but I think yours is a little low. Your school kind of sucked at track, no offense.

We set the city record, in a huge city, for the most points every scored when we won the championship. We were loaded with athletes, but not so many distance runners. Even so, the two best of the five sub 5 minute milers were excellent. We had about 20 college scholarship athletes in my class of 700 from other sports and none of them could run 4:59, although most of them, except the linemen and pitchers were sub 5:30. The 4:59 mile takes some specialized training that soccer, football, basketball, etc. don't provide. Many of those guys could run sub 54 in the 400, and sub 2:10 in the 800, but the mile required too much endurance for them, as well as for our sprinters.

Fast Estimations wrote:

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm wrote:

Ummm...there are 2000 people in Austin, Texas alone who can run sub 5.

Mr. Ummm, where did you get that "2000" number? Austin has a very popular road race called the Congress Avenue Mile, which was last run in June 2009. 125 runners broke 5 minutes that day and many of them were from other areas of Texas and beyond.

In response to the coaches with "10" sub 5:00 milers or more, that is an atypical result. Most high schools have considerably fewer, if any.

There's about 35,000 high schools in the United States, many of which are quite small. I think my 20,000 sub 5 "today" estimate is about right, perhaps 25,000, but not significantly more.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, my high school is defiantly not the average.

However, we have 409 High Schools in my state.

I'd say this year the high school I coach at was ranked in the top 20 in the state for men's teams and top 10 in the state for women's. We are defiantly better than most schools.

I'm guessing at least half of those 409 have at least 1 who can break 5. Like I said before my conference is very weak when it comes to distance runners except for my team and every school in the conference has at least 1 sub five guy.

Shot our soccer team finished 4th in the state this year. NONE of these guys run track they all do club teams. Out of the 24 guys on that team I couldn't image how many could break 5 with just a little training. I'd say at least 3 could do it right now with the right motivation.

I know the other teams in my state very well to. The top school in the state has at least 20 guys who can go sub 5. A lot of those would just barely break five but they will break it. They had 10 guys a lone who were running 17 or faster in cross. Let’s say the top 20 teams are just like my school. That’s 200 kids breaking 5 out of the top 20 schools. The second best team in the state has 250 runners on their cross team with a huge number breaking five every year.

Just looking at the regional qualifiers for the entire state men and women there are at least 192 men who qualified for the regional meet with a sub 5 or better mile time between all classifications (there are 4 classifications). This doesn’t even include the guys who qualified for the 3200 and didn't bother to enter the 1600 who could break five. In the largest classification there were 64 men's high school milers who can ran a 4:46 or better to qualify for the regional meet. Remember some of the regions are better than others. The best region had 16 guys going 4:35 or better. In that region a lone there are probably 100 guys breaking 5.

I don't feel that it is very far fetched to believe that there are 500 or 600 guy and girl highschoolers in my state going sub 5 or better.

My state by no means is a stellar distance state. We have a few girls and guys ranked in the top 20 but not as many as Texas or California.

I'd bet that number was doubled or tripled in California.

Add in D1, D2, and D3 colleges in America and your already closing in at 15 thousands. Add in high schoolers and you’re closing in at 25 thousand or more. Add in Amateurs and other sports athletes and you’re talking about closer to 40,000.

I wouldn't be shocked if the number was as low as 25,000. But I would expect it to be closer to 40,000.

I'm not saying it easy to break 5. It’s very hard and challenging and I make it one of the top goals for my freshmen to do. Very few actually do it as a freshman. However, I don't think it is as hard as some of you are making it out to be. 5 minutes is not an elite time it is good but not great. It is a great barrier to break for kids though.

Shot I’ve been doing tris (I know, no jokes please) for the last decade with no serious speed workouts and I make it a point to do one sub 5 (this year was 4:58) a year with my kids to motivate them a little bit. I don’t know how much longer I can keep that up but I’m by no means a supper athlete.