Does anyone else have a hard time finding women who can even maintain 7-8 min/mile on a typical run?

I run in a pretty popular area in Denver, and have seen maybe 10 men in a year that are doing sub 8s. Never, out of thousands, have I seen a woman doing sub 8s on my route. They must be out there, but you'll only find them if you join a bunch of serious running clubs.

I would guess less than 0.2% of female runner, in terms of the population you see out and about, or at a standard local 5k, are sub-19.

I've almost never seen this myself, but I recently moved to a new town. I was sub-15 back in the day and could probably sneak under 16 now if someone put a big gun to my head. Just about got ran down by a teenage girl I was jogging really slowly, but still under 8 minutes.

you have to find out when they train. early saturday mornings maybe

i live on a popular bike/running trail, and i hardly ever see people running faster than 8/mi. i never get passed even on recovery runs doing close to 8 minutes.

but if you seek out the collegiate scene or the post-grads, you'll find somebody

I guess it's pretty rare to see someone running that fast. I'm pretty jealous of one of my friends whose girlfriend is a decent runner. He can regularly do his easy runs (maybe at 7:30/mile) with her and they can enjoy a nice conversation/more quality time during it.

Try hooking up with the 5-10 women in your city who run 5Ks around 18-19 mins...just go to the races and meet them there. Try pacing them during one of those races, that's a good icebreaker.

I started dating a girl I met through working together at a local running store a while ago. She made a great training partner for easy runs... good company, easy on the eyes, able to run 7:30-8 minute pace for long runs (I would usually go 7-6:30 when alone, so that is very comfortable).

Anyway, we're engaged now, so I got that going for me, which is nice.

And to answer the original question, yes, it's good for our relationship. Yes it's good for my training. Yes it's good for her training. We have our good runs and our bad runs together, and dealing with little things like that is good practice for actual arguments we may have, which we then subsequently handle and quell with what feels like ease relative to some other peoples' relationships that I hear about. Running together with someone is obviously going to give you a strong connection with that person. I can't see how that could do anything but help the relationship.

On a side note, my fiance does browse letsrun, and she knows I post under this name, and she knows I troll under another name for fun, but she doesn't know what it is. She doesn't seem to mind.

Nice convenient reason for explaining why you don't date much. Most guys, even elite runners are so attracted to females that they would date slow females and even females WHO DONT RUN!But good for you for not having that problem.

Why is this so? wrote:

I guess it's pretty rare to see someone running that fast. I'm pretty jealous of one of my friends whose girlfriend is a decent runner. He can regularly do his easy runs (maybe at 7:30/mile) with her and they can enjoy a nice conversation/more quality time during it.

If you're part of a university, why don't you go after some of the girls on the track/xc team? Surely those girls would be able to keep up. This seems like the most obvious solution. Did you already mention it and I just missed it?

There are 500 women in D1 that ran faster than 17:30 last season.

You are looking in the WRONG place. You should be looking for a bicyclist. Most chicks can keep a 6-7 minute mile pace on a bike and then you can run your regular pace and she can ride along on all your runs.

How about being a little less needy sweetheart. How about just going for a jog with a woman even if it doesn't fit into your precious training plan. Guess what? You're also gong to encounter women that don't want to carb load or go to bed at 9:00 the night before your long run. My god people, the world's elite runners don't act like this about their running, why do so many above average local 5k guys have to be so square? LOL, I can just see it. Dude goes for a 5 mile jog at 9:15 pace with a woman then comes here and asks everbody if that qualifies toward his weekly mileage. The only thing worse than the question is the fact that he will get several different, but serious, opinions.

You're putting the cart before the horse. Find a good girl first, make sure she has at least SOME potential in running, but otherwise use your normal criteria, funny, good-looking, smart, etc. THEN, put her on an intense training plan to get her down to the point where she can run 8:00 pace. Renato Canova's typical plans work well for this because they'll start out with short, fast repeats which is probably all she can do at your easy pace at first, but build into longer, slower ones, and eventually she'll be able to do at least tempos with you, and before long, easy-ish runs.

If she makes it to the specific phase (and doesn't dump you first) and can run 8:00 pace pretty comfortably, you have your keeper. Come back to me in 6 months and let me know how it worked. Good luck.

Because they are undergrads training with the school team and have their own training plan/system?

I'm not complaining, just think it would be a nice arrangement to date someone fast enough to run with on easy days. From what it seems like, this arrangement is hard to find but for those who do find it, it works out really well.

Why is this so? wrote:

Because they are undergrads training with the school team and have their own training plan/system?

I'm not complaining, just think it would be a nice arrangement to date someone fast enough to run with on easy days. From what it seems like, this arrangement is hard to find but for those who do find it, it works out really well.

Why don't you tag along and get to know some of them? Are you doing workouts by yourself? Maybe you could do those with the guys. It might be more enjoyable than doing workouts on your own plus it'd give you a way to meet the girls.

Pretty sure NCAA rules disallow someone like me from running with the undergrad team... plus, I train with mostly other grad students and it's fun, only downside is very few women can maintain 7-8 min/mile so it's usually mostly us guys (and maybe one girl on a typical easy run).

does LetsRun have a personals section for lonely runners? I'd hit that up.

You need to calm down and not be so running obsessed. I realize that I'm posting this on a running board, of which I am guilty of spending a lot of time on too, but goodness man. Meet someone who you like, share values with, makes you laugh, etc. Who cares if she doesn't run? Hopefully your life is more than just running. If not, maybe someone with varied interests could help you.