from a female wrote:
Sub 17 for sure!
...for women at least. I run 5:10 and 18:40, which I think is pretty typical. So breaking 5 is a lot more attainable for me than breaking 17 at this point!
Interestingly, on previous threads similar to this, the consensus was that a female at a similar skill level to a man would often have better aerobic development.
You sound more mid-distance oriented, of maybe you just run the 5k like a ...
As a coach of female college runners, I would say a sub 17 is harder. Bucknell Iniversity has had 5 different females break a 17 minute 5k and over 20 females break either a 5 minute mile and/or a 4:41 1500.
Sub 17
That 5:20 mile 3 times in a row is much harder than that 74 second 400m 4 times in a row.
Bad Wigins wrote:
I knew some asswipe would say that. Congratulations, asswipe.
But he's right, Sh*t-for-brains
I consistently broke 17 in HS (15:47 PR, but mainly a low-to-mid 16 runner). However, since HS, I haven't broken 17 in a properly measured 5k, but I've run a 4:41 in a mile road race, when I was 30. Going under 17 is a lot harder, then.
At 37 I ran 4:59 on the track, 4:51 for a downhill mile and 17:46 on the road.(In 1983 I was the slowest guy in our Track Club) Someone else mentioned a 5:00 and 17:46 at age 50! Sub 17 5K is more difficult.
When I was your age sub-17 was easier. I was under 17 a year and a half before i broke 5. In my mid-20s now and find going under 17 much harder. I can still do it, but I find running a 4:30 mile easier.
It does depend on age. For a high schooler sub 5 is easier. For a masters it might be easier to run sub 17, or maybe about the same. That's how it has been for me.
51 - 5:00, 17:01
54 - 5:04, 17:17
Yeah yeah. Old slow, I suck (are you happy now letsrunners?) and it's bloody hard to do now.
It seems the overwhelming consensus is that sub-17 is harder, and I'll agree with that. But as others have said, it does depend on your age. The older you get the more your speed deteriorates while endurance theoretically increases, and so the more the pendulum swings in favor of a sub-17 being the "easier" feat.
That said, I've run comfortably under 5:00, but never under 17:00. In fact, at the time in my life that I could break 5:00, the best I could muster in a 5k was ~18:40. I was always more of a sprinter-type though.
For D1 College women, these times are pretty decent standards. Last year 492 women broke 5 minutes in the mile (indoor) and only 166 broke 17 minutes in the 5K (indoor). Of course, there was a lot of overlap between the latter and the former and there were certainly more competitors in the mile, but I would say 17 is tougher.
Its hard to believe that someone who is in sub 17 shape can't break a 5 minute mile. Think about how there are hundreds of high school girls who can break 5 for the mile, but only a handful that can break 17 for the 5k, and girls are more endurance oriented than guys. I personally have been in the 5:0x range for a decade now and in that decade have been low 19s to high 18s for a 5k on the track. I have horrible endurance, so I am probably an outlier but a 5min mile is probably equivalent to a 17:30 5k on the track for a person with good endurance (and Purdy agrees, McMillan is a tad endurance biased in my opinion)
Bingo^^
In high school I was 1710 and 431. Did no mileage at all and only one year of cross cuz I played football my whole life. Needless to say once I got to college I dropped major time in both
WHen I broke 5:00 in 7th grade I was not in sub 17 shape, but not far from it either. And i'm better at mile than 5k. So ...it is close.
o.O wrote:
Sub 17
That 5:20 mile 3 times in a row is much harder than that 74 second 400m 4 times in a row.
You mean 5:30 mile 3 times.
16:45/4:32 highschool
I was a 16:53/5:01 guy in high school, but I ran the 5k much more frequently than I ran the mile.
Nevertheless, I'd obviously rank them as about equally difficult.
I was 18:34/4:51 in HS. I kept getting hurt during cross, so I was never happy with my 5k. Nevertheless, I would definitely say sub 17 was much more difficult for me to reach (I went on to get it during college).
for a 5:00 Mile:
McMillan's calculator: 17:21
Runner's World predictor: 16:38
Canadian Running predictor: 16:37 (you have to get around a massive bug here)
IAAF Mens: 463 points, so that will equate 17:11
IAAF Womens: 913 points, so that will equate 17:17
Mercier: 17:16
Bro Von Broenstein wrote:
I was a 16:53/5:01 guy in high school, but I ran the 5k much more frequently than I ran the mile.
Nevertheless, I'd obviously rank them as about equally difficult.
And you'd be wrong. Don't rank based on your own wildly biased account, you know you were a lot better at 5k than 1 mile.