By average I mean a guy who has no chance of becoming an elite runner. Would any of you consider sub 4:30 excellent? Just asking
By average I mean a guy who has no chance of becoming an elite runner. Would any of you consider sub 4:30 excellent? Just asking
4:30. yeah. Maybe even under 4:40. A lot depends on age. up to in your 50's if you approach 5:00 then you're really good.
Sorry, but your question is somewhat oxymoronic.
An average runner is not excellent.
An excellent runner is not average.
The question can not be answered.
Sub 6 minutes. However I think you are looking for the time for a good average runner and in my opinion that would be sub 5 minutes.
I was thinking the same thing. If you produce an excellent time then you'd be an excellent runner.
You have to break them down into categories:
Hobby jogger: 7
Weekend warrior: 6
Semi-serious runner: 5
High-school runner: 4:29
College runner: 4:09
College elite: 4
Professional: 3:55
HRE wrote:
I was thinking the same thing. If you produce an excellent time then you'd be an excellent runner.
If you are only talking average runners and comparing them against other average runners, one could be excellent. You would have to define a range that 'average runners' fall into though. Say. 5:00 - 6:00 is the range to be considered average. A 5 minute runner would be excellent, though the runner is still average, and 6 minutes would suck balls but still average. I think that is what the OP is getting at.
My answer would be under 5:30.
So, assuming the distribution of a statistically significant amount of runners was normal, the "average" runner would be right in the middle of that bell curve. Each point on that bell curve itself has a standard deviation (in addition to the overall standard deviation). To find an "excellent" time for "average" runner, you'd have to look at the 50th percentile performance, then go to the performance that represented just under the 95th percentile for just that point.
As for what that is? How do we define an average runner?
You use so many statistical terms incorrectly, I don't know where to start.
craigmac4h wrote:
So, assuming the distribution of a statistically significant amount of runners was normal, the "average" runner would be right in the middle of that bell curve. Each point on that bell curve itself has a standard deviation (in addition to the overall standard deviation). To find an "excellent" time for "average" runner, you'd have to look at the 50th percentile performance, then go to the performance that represented just under the 95th percentile for just that point.
As for what that is? How do we define an average runner?
Maybe you were joking but,
(1) A subset of a population is typically called "statistically significant" with respect to a hypothesis test, and only if it allows the rejection of the corresponding null hypothesis. (For example, a typical usage would be, "if you are flipping a coin ten times, getting 9 heads is statistically significant; it will allow you to conclude that the coin is not fair".) This is not the way you used this term. Maybe you just meant 'a lot of runners'?
(2) "Each point on that bell curve itself has a standard deviation": Actually, no. Standard deviation is a property of distributions. Specifically, it relates to the average distance of points in the distribution from the mean. Clearly, this is meaningless for a single point (or, you could say it is zero). The idea of a "95th percentile for a particular point" is therefore meaningless (or, it would be the same point).
So, perhaps what you are trying to say is that each runner's PR/potential is uncertain. So you could think of each race as a random sample from an unknown distribution of possible races. Let's assume this distribution is normal. Then we could construct a 95% confidence interval around the sample mean. Perhaps your proposal was to call the upper limit of this confidence interval, for our 'median runner' who is at the center of the bell curve, an excellent performance for our average runner.
This would be a reasonable way to define an excellent performance for an individual. But not for a subset of a population (e.g. average runners). The reason for this is that the confidence interval we have constructed lives in the hypothetical unknown distribution of possible races that individual could have run, not in the overall population of runners. Therefore it tells us how fast that individual, given previous PRs, needs to run in order for there to be a less than 5% chance that they just ran so quickly by a 'fluke', or congregation of fortuitous circumstances. So for a very consistent 5:30 runner, 5:25 might be excellent. However, this may not be excellent for the whole class of average runners, which might include people from 5:00 to 6:00.
Well then, what if we consider a confidence interval around our average runner in the overall distribution? That won't work either. Because what this will tell us is, if we were to pick a runner at random, how fast they would have to be for it to be less than 5% likely that the average runner is the speed that he/she actually is. For example, if you pick a runner at random, they probably won't run 3:50. If they do run 3:50, you're probably sampling from the wrong population. In other words, 3:50 would be outside your confidence interval, so you would have to revise your estimate of the mean.
Ultimately there's not a great answer to this which is grounded in basic statistics. The whole question comes down to defining the subset of runners that you consider average, which is obviously subjective. 40-60%? 10-90%? As long as the distribution is normal, where you draw the line is completely arbitrary.
To get any kind of meaningful answer you'd either have to define your terms,i.e, excellent, average, and so on much more clearly or simply take a large enough sample of men's mile PRs, get an average PR, then define how far from that average time you can go before the time becomes better or worse than average and then how far you have to go from better or worse than average before a time becomes good, excellent, bad, horrible, etc.
But the problem I see is that we categorize ourseleves and other runners as excellent, good, average, bad and so on by performance, i.e, a good runner is one who's run a good time, an average runner is one who's run an average time. So I can't work out how an average runner can run an excellent time without becoming an excellent runner in the process, though I suppose if you establish a range of average performances, say 4:40 to 5:20, and excellent performance would be something around 4:40 and a poor time might be 5:15-5:20.
But how do you know the guy with the 4:40 is an average runner doing an excellent time rather than a good runner (let's say that's the next category) doing a bad time? The best I can come up with would be to compare that runner's mile time with his performances at other distances. If his best 400/800 times are something like 65/2:15 and his two mile/5km times are something like 10:50/17:30 then you might make the case that his mile time is excellent relative to his other performances.
[quote]jakethefake wrote:
You use so many statistical terms incorrectly, I don't know where to start.[/quote
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/archive/7/73/20110128203738
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I wish I had the time to continue this further, but alas, I do not. My other favorite act to pull on my engineer teammates is to claim the p of anything is 50-50, because "it'll either happen or it won't."
If by excellent, you mean being capable of winning/placing at the occasional fun run, all you need is ~4:55 and about a 5:50... This is from a small city/college town (there are a handful of much faster runners, but if you're capable of the above there's only maybe 1-2 races where you'd place outside of the top ten)
sub6:00, even sub6:30 is pretty good for an average male adult who doesn't run regularly
outside of letsrun, you'd be hard pressed to find too many who can go sub5:00 for the mile in most small communities throughout the United States, Your typical weekend road warrior there will be some sub6:00 but not even that many
Find all the mile times ever achieved by Mr. Average. Choose the fastest one. This is an excellent mile time for Mr. Average.
Ur welcome.
Actually, the question answers itself.An excellent mile time for an average male runner is an excellent mile time for an average male runner.Don't think so hard.
Free Advice wrote:
Sorry, but your question is somewhat oxymoronic.
An average runner is not excellent.
An excellent runner is not average.
The question can not be answered.
LiveFreeOrTrollHard wrote:
By average I mean a guy who has no chance of becoming an elite runner. Would any of you consider sub 4:30 excellent? Just asking
What's the biggest little city?
A corrolary question might be "What is a mediocre time for an excellent runner?"
First, your average guy doesn't run. Among runners, it would be easier to answer regarding marathon times, where there are so many times you could establish a putative average. Let's face it: average runners don't race the mile, or 1500m, generally because of lack of competitive opportunities, and the fact that the mile is a talent-oriented event, as is the 800m. Average guys have limited opportunities to race it, and tend to avoid it anyway, because the talent level tends to exclude them.
Where does an average runner get into a mile race?
olyphaunt wrote:
You have to break them down into categories:
Hobby jogger: 7
Weekend warrior: 6
Semi-serious runner: 5
High-school runner: 4:29
College runner: 4:09
College elite: 4
Professional: 3:55
There you go! But you left out the ageing thing. I used to be able to clip off sub 5:00 miles with no problem, now at 50+ I would struggle to break 5:00 even if I trained specifically for it.