Is there any NFL player that could currently run a 4:30 mile?

PS I feel terrible for you guys. It blows my mind that you can be such terrible athletes that you think 4:30 is so fast that it just plain can't be done. Sad.

Then you should have no problem doing it tomorrow. Film yourself running sub 4:30 (time stamp it with a newspaper) and then post the youtube video. You can even do it with all your football gear on just to show us how easy it is. Good luck.

No one here is saying it "just plain can't be done". What we are saying is that we have our doubts that a bunch of bulked up football players, who train for a sport that requires short bursts of speed followed by lengthy rest breaks, are capable of waltzing out onto a track right now and popping a 4:30 mile with no specific training. Could they do it if they dropped some muscle mass and did some aerobic training? Sure, I bet a bunch of DBs and WRs could.

You're talking about a completely different athletic ability (being able to run a 4:30 mile vs being able to run the 40y dash in 4.4 seconds). Is 4:30 a spectacular time? No, but it's quite a feat for someone who is built for and trains for professional American football.

By your logic, most world class marathoners should be capable of running well under 11 seconds in the 100m. After all, they are professional athletes who run for a living. For someone who runs marathons, 100m would be a breeze right? They could do it super quick.

dial it up wrote:

PS I feel terrible for you guys. It blows my mind that you can be such terrible athletes that you think 4:30 is so fast that it just plain can't be done. Sad.

Very few elite milers could run 4:30 if they had never trained for it and instead did NFL training. They have the build and physiology to run the mile, NFL players don't! Have you ever seen how quickly elite runners slow up once they retire & reduce their training

As for these people saying they did at HS well the Dial it Guy took half the thread to suddenly (mis) remember running 4:30. I don't know about you but when I was at school I used to run everywhere, play tag every lunch time as school and had to run xc twice a week in winter. That's a lot more endurance running than any NFL player does

Don't bring up this mis remembered times for HS - also forgetting that kids spend there whole time running anywhere + how many people happen to do a mile race without any running training.

Jennifer Ennis does specific 800m training and I'm sure decathletes train for the 1500m. They train for all the events! Then they are training for 400m as well. That involves a lot longer reps than an NFL player ever does. Roger Black who won Olympic Silver and ran low 44xx did an out of season 400m and took about 54 seconds. This is after only a month or 2 or training. You lot have no idea whatsoever about the effect of training on the body. If you could do 4:30 off short sprint training you would be a sub 4 guy easily if training full time. How many sprinters could do sub 4 for a mile however you trained them

I'll respond to you because you are the only one who has made a point that somewhat resembles the fact that you have the ability to think.

I think where we disconnect is that you say running 4:30 would be like a world class marathoner running an 11 second 100. I think for a guy like ted ginn, jerry rice back in the day(yes he isn't a current nfl player, however he did a lot of endurance work so I am assuming since he is the best of all time there are some current guys copying his training as part of their football training) or desean jackson(isnt a pound over 170) it would be the equivalent of a world class marathoner running a 13 second 100.

'it would be the equivalent of a world class marathoner running a 13 second 100'

Plenty of people can run sub 13 for 100m without any training for any sport. Are you even aware that you can improve your distance running by more than your sprint times!

You don't know anything about running.

I also noticed you seemed to only remember that you had run 4:30 (conveniently right on the time of the ops thread) about half way through this. Are you saying you did no running training at all then just happened to enter a mile and run 4:30. BS I don't think you ran 4:30 in HS with or without training. I bet you don't even remember that time you ran.

Have you actually spent any time around runners

I didnt run exactly 4:30, it was in the high 4:20's, I've run the event 3 times in my entire life so its not too tough to remember chief. I would also bet I've spent more time around GOOD runners than you have "coach."

I agree that plenty of people can run a sub 13 without training. I also think a few extremely athletically gifted people can run 4:30 without optimal aerobic training.

ukathleticscoach wrote:

'it would be the equivalent of a world class marathoner running a 13 second 100'

Plenty of people can run sub 13 for 100m without any training for any sport. Are you even aware that you can improve your distance running by more than your sprint times!

You don't know anything about running.

I also noticed you seemed to only remember that you had run 4:30 (conveniently right on the time of the ops thread) about half way through this. Are you saying you did no running training at all then just happened to enter a mile and run 4:30. BS I don't think you ran 4:30 in HS with or without training. I bet you don't even remember that time you ran.

Have you actually spent any time around runners

Nope, not around runners. Not around football players either. Dial a Tub is pure troll (and dumb as a rock at that).

dial it up wrote:

I didnt run exactly 4:30, it was in the high 4:20's, I've run the event 3 times in my entire life so its not too tough to remember chief. I would also bet I've spent more time around GOOD runners than you have "coach."

I agree that plenty of people can run a sub 13 without training. I also think a few extremely athletically gifted people can run 4:30 without optimal aerobic training.

You said; "I also think", well, that's what YOU think. What evidence do you have that support the claim that some NFL footbal players can step on a track in footbal season and run a 4:30 mile??

A 4:30 mile is fast. Not just NFL athlete can do it at any time.

Definitely not, anyone who thinks so clearly has never run a mile before...it's way harder than you think, especially when your as muscular as an NFL guy. Sure, some of them have the talent to do it IF they trained for it, but not in their current form. I bet only a handful of them could even break 5. Think of decathletes...most of the best in the world run like 4:20-4:30 for the 1500, and they'd have a way better chance than an NFL player. As a collegiate runner myself, I can guarantee that there aren't any NFL players that can run a 4:30.

ijenns318 wrote:

Definitely not, anyone who thinks so clearly has never run a mile before...it's way harder than you think, especially when your as muscular as an NFL guy. Sure, some of them have the talent to do it IF they trained for it, but not in their current form. I bet only a handful of them could even break 5. Think of decathletes...most of the best in the world run like 4:20-4:30 for the 1500, and they'd have a way better chance than an NFL player. As a collegiate runner myself, I can guarantee that there aren't any NFL players that can run a 4:30.

You can guarantee it? Please tell me how you can guarantee it? Because you run at some d3 school or a nowhere Mac conference school? Give me a break.

I have a teammate right now (college), who was the starting running back of a very competitive DI football team in high school from his freshman through junior year. He ended up quitting football to run cross country his senior year and ran in the 16:40s for 5k multiple times. Even before he was running cross and still doing football he did track in the spring and ran 50-51, 1:57, and low 4:30s in the 1600, all while lifting for football 9 months out of the year. At the time he was about 5'11", 180. I'm not saying this automatically translates to an NFL player doing the same thing, I'm just throwing it out there that I do believe there are NFL players out there that could do it given the opportunity, if they knew how to race it and didn't go out in say a 60 and died home the last 800. I think some of you fail to realize just how talented and athletically gifted some of these NFL players are.

I don't get it. In any other context on Letsrun, 4:30 is show as sh!t, but when we're talking about whether athletes from other sports can do it, is magically becomes fast. I'm in my mid 30's and am about 40 pounds heavier (mostly pork, not beef) than I was in my prime, have a PR of 4:36 (run at age 18, almost two decades ago), and can still run a mile in 5:15 with my typical training being jogging 6 miles two or three times a week and doing 15 minutes of bodyweight circuit training on days when I don't run. I have absolutely no doubt that there are at least 100 guys in the NFL who could beat me by 45 seconds without any specialized training. Many of them could do so while goofing around and passing the football to each other. Questioning whether there is at least *one* is just plain silly.

This thread is even more retarded than the one on the weightlifting board arguing about how many days are in a week...

ukathleticscoach wrote:

Jennifer Ennis does specific 800m training and I'm sure decathletes train for the 1500m.

Who the f*** is Jennifer Ennis? Your username says ukathleticscoach. Shouldn't JESSICA Ennis be your girl? Isn't that your territory? WTF?

If you can't get THAT right, why should I trust you on anything else you say?

Their talent and athletic gifts are exactly why I DON'T think they could run a 4:30 mile. The ones who make it to the NFL are the best of the strong, incredible accelerators. Those guys can absolutely crush a short sprint. As you move up from high school to college, that ability becomes more important, and as you move from college to NFL, it becomes more important again. Because they are the very best at what they do is why they cannot also run 4:30 while in football shape.

Much the same as a 5k runner might do 10x800m to train for a 5k race, can the same thing be done with very short sprints to produce a 4:30 (or better) mile? 44x40yards is a mile. How many times does a wide receiver or a cornerback run 40 yards in a given day's practice? I really have no idea, but I'd bet that with their raw talent that IF IF IF one of the hundreds of WRs and CBs in the NFL actually does practices that involve that many 40's, then they're going to be capable of putting it together for a sub-4:30 mile.

Furthermore, I've seen numerous posts on this site where people talk about T&F and road-running talent being 'lost' to other sports, and football being listed as one of them. So all those posters were supported when they said that athletics suffered talent-loss to football, yet no one in football can run a 4:30 mile? Are you guys high? I know some of you are going to say that those guys are not training for the mile right now, but they ARE training, and they ARE up and moving a lot, even if it isn't for an aerobic run.

Lastly, just because a football game doesn't involve seeing the players run a mile, 2 miles, etc., doesn't mean they aren't running these distances in practices. Maybe as a warm-up jog. Anyone on this site with sub-4:30 talent and still in their 20's: If you were asked to jog only 1 to 2 miles a day at, say, 6:30 pace, and then the rest of your training was sprint-specific, do you think you could still run sub-4:30? I bet that there are a few who have the talent to do it. I bet there are a few in the NFL who can do it, too.

4:30 is a mediocre high school time - my guess it's roughly equivalent to a varsity football starter (but far from a star).

Given that, I guess another question might be "Is there any professional distance runner who could start on a high school football team"

I say with 100s of NFL guys running 4:30min miles during regular season with no specific training, there must be at least 10 who could shed about a minute with the right focus,endurance training, and right coaching to lower the world records.