My Physics/Engineering friend (who runs) is trying to convince me that most Americans could never run mediocre times

Why is a physics/eng major acting as an authority on a foreign science?

I should note that when he says a majority, he means strictly over 50%

he also believes certain people are genetically incapable of higher mileage. For instance, the average american could never run a 80/90 mile week even with 20 years of training (at a decent pace 7:30-8:30).

Com' on letsrun, this is the top running forum in the world, someone has to have a science background that can explain this to me.

EnglishMajorNeedshelp wrote:

?

As a Science Major, I kind of need research/studies to help back up my point. Surely any American (without serious physical conditions), could run a 17:30 5k with 15 years of training/eating healthy/at their prime/8 hours of sleep/and a great race.

I think the disagreements involve all these qualifications. When he says "most Americans" he doesn't mean they are of prime age or male or have the will to train even with motivation or whatever.

"Most Americans" could include my Grandma's book club. I don't think any of them will ever run an 8:00 mile.

Hardloper wrote:

EnglishMajorNeedshelp wrote:

?

As a Science Major, I kind of need research/studies to help back up my point. Surely any American (without serious physical conditions), could run a 17:30 5k with 15 years of training/eating healthy/at their prime/8 hours of sleep/and a great race.

I think the disagreements involve all these qualifications. When he says "most Americans" he doesn't mean they are of prime age or male or have the will to train even with motivation or whatever.

"Most Americans" could include my Grandma's book club. I don't think any of them will ever run an 8:00 mile.

We are specifically talking about though, male, in their prime Americans, which includes Endomorph's, which he insists have a genetic cardio cap so they can't break a time such as 17mins or something around there.

Endomorphism is not "as opposed" to mesomorphism. It's the opposite of ectomorphism.

Shot-putters tend to be endomorphic and mesomorphic. Bolt is an example of a mesomorphic ectomorph. Boss Hogg from Dukes of Hazzard was a non-mesomorphic endomorph. Skinny Mo Farah is the pinnacle of non-mesomorphic ectomorphism.

Bones constantly reshape themselves to adapt to environmental stresses. Particularly if you start training at 12 years old and continue for 15 years, your body type would be heavily influenced by the training, rather than set in stone at birth. You could also use calorie restriction to limit height, which makes endomorphism less of a disadvantage.

On the other hand, it is probably true that most of the population in general could never run 17:30, but not because of endomorphism. Even most skinny ectomorphs would have a hard time getting that fast, because it requires a level of athleticism that most people don't have. So your friend's hypothesis is trivial and is really just a gimmick to make spurious claims about body type and insult fat people.

His reasoning may be wrong, but he's probably right. Look at the millions of runners in the US. Even your average middle of the pack runner at this mornings 5k may have been running for years. He still only runs well into the twenties.

If everyone were able to quite their jobs, had a coach, and were able to have a program completely tailored to them to break 17:30, then maybe more could do it, but probably still less than half.

These threads about what the average American could run or the average man in his twenties or whatever if they completely dedicated themselves to running are just idle speculation.

Your friend's arguments are weak but the conclusion (17.30 isn't achievable by 50% of the population) is pretty obvious to anyone who looks at the actual available evidence. The most relevant data points being actual 5k performance times of typical 27-28 year old males and the degree to which people typically improve their performances as they increase the amount/duration of training.

Note that your personal skill level as a 5th grader and your (baseless and provably false) assertions that you were slow, in some sense that is useful in understanding population averages, is not compelling evidence.

I suggest you go to a local large 5k and watch the all the finishers go by (and reflect on the likely ability range of the all the folks in the community who aren't running 5k's). Then calculate the percent improvement you've seen personally over your lifetime at 5k (or would hope to see given perfect long-term training). Then do the math as what that same degree of improvement would mean to the 5k runners you saw in the race (and those who weren't in the race).

Feel free to subtract 2 sec/mile/lb (or whatever rule of thumb you like) for estimated weight loss potential as an added bonus for all those people. You still won't get 50% of them under 17:30.

Look at the finishing times in any 5k. Only a small percentage go under 18 minutes. And that is from the group of citizens who are more fit and active.

The current 5k PR potential of the average able bodied American is about 32 minutes. How many 60 year olds, and there are a lot of them, can run even 1 mile at 6 minute pace?

If the entire nation spent a year in training solely for the purpose of improving their 5k time, the average PR might drop to 22 minutes.

For the general population 19 minutes is really, really fast.

EnglishMajorNeedshelp wrote:

Surely any American (without serious physical conditions), could run a 17:30 5k with 15 years of training/eating healthy/at their prime/8 hours of sleep/and a great race.

I'm not sure why so many people on this forum want to believe this sort of statement so badly.

I have a friend who is a nice counterexample to these sorts of claims. He is built pretty big. Not fat, just big, like he could be a successful football player or something. The guy loves to run though, and he trains very seriously, running like 80 mpw with quality. He is in his late twenties. He has gotten a LOT faster - respectably fast, faster than I would expect someone with his build to be - but his half PR is still only 88 minutes. Which is awesome, considering his first half was barely under 2 hours.

xenonscreams wrote:

EnglishMajorNeedshelp wrote:

Surely any American (without serious physical conditions), could run a 17:30 5k with 15 years of training/eating healthy/at their prime/8 hours of sleep/and a great race.

I'm not sure why so many people on this forum want to believe this sort of statement so badly.

I think a lot of them believe in their heads that they are "unathletic" because they did not excel at ball sports, and feel that "athletic" people should also be good at running, and that a lot of other people are "athletic." Of course talent at ball sports doesn't equate to distance running ability, and not that many people are naturally "athletic."

Also, I think a lot of them think they don't have much "talent" for distance running, because they trained their but off and "only" ran 14:45 or whatever. They think they are slow and plodding because they have a large group of friends who participated in competitive running for a number of years, and forget that these people are not even remotely representative of the general population.

I tend to think of myself as slow and plodding because I was close to the slowest guy on my college team; of course out of ~20 guys we had five who had been Footlocker finalists, something that (at the time) only 32 high school boys managed to do every year. I mean, 32?! The kid who was 32d in my high school class of 500 was seen as pretty smart - what do you make of a kid who was among the 32 best in some academic discipline in the country?

I agree with your friend. People on here are slanted towards thinking the average is faster because most everyone on here at one time or another was a really decent runner.

xenonscreams wrote:

I have a friend who is a nice counterexample to these sorts of claims. He is built pretty big. Not fat, just big, like he could be a successful football player or something. The guy loves to run though, and he trains very seriously, running like 80 mpw with quality. He is in his late twenties. He has gotten a LOT faster - respectably fast, faster than I would expect someone with his build to be - but his half PR is still only 88 minutes. Which is awesome, considering his first half was barely under 2 hours.

Based on your information presented, there's nothing here that is a strong counterexample. It actually sounds more like your point is more supportive of your opponent's point. 30 minutes is a huge improvement. Especially if he is heavy. How long has he been training?

Most Americans...do you mean Americans or do you mean residents of the United States? I assume you mean US residents since this is a US website.

so 50% or more of CURRENTLY living US residents.

The median age is reported to be 36.8 yr old. You could easily assume that 90% or more of those above 50 could never run an 8-min mile. A large majority (60-75%) of those above the median age to 50 yr old could also probably never run an 8min mile. Keep in mind obesity is nearly 40% in the US and overweight individuals are nearly 75% of the population.

If you took the obese people under the median age and assume they can't ever lose the 50-300 lbs to get them to a healthy weight then they shouldn't break 8 either.

we assumed it was most (male) Americans in their prime (27-28).

Most people would run mediocre times by definition.

mspo wrote:

Based on your information presented, there's nothing here that is a strong counterexample. It actually sounds more like your point is more supportive of your opponent's point. 30 minutes is a huge improvement. Especially if he is heavy. How long has he been training?

Five years. But 88 is NOT 17:30. 88 is more like mid-19.

crapomorph wrote:

Most people would run mediocre times by definition.

-_-"

Thank you for your contribution....I guess I should have seen this coming as an English major.

..and his 30 minute improvement while 'huge' is an improvement of 25%. If you pick a typical large 5k (e.g. the la marathon one) the 50%ile time for the male 25-30 age group is around 31 minutes. So if you took that group and trained 'em all up for years and got that 25% improvement you'd have the middle of the group running 23 minute 5k's, not 17.30.