Almost all men in their prime can run sub 20 5k, sub 60 400m, and sub 5 min mile

LMAO you’re either trolling or surrounded by outliers, there wasn’t one person at my school on the football or tennis team that could race sub 85 600yd without some specialised training. Most people do need to train at least a bit to drop a sub 60 lap.

Just wrote:

The 400m time probably the most difficult. Some individuals will never break 29 for 200m which makes sub-60 400m nearly impossible.

I now weigh over 250 and can still break both of these times during interval workouts

Lexar wrote:

Maybe we're skewed here? wrote:

five minute one mile is the closes to world record by percentage, then sixty seconds 400m.

... I think there are a lot of young people capable of sub-60 400m without training.

LMAO you’re either trolling or surrounded by outliers, there wasn’t one person at my school on the football or tennis team that could race sub 85 600yd without some specialised training.

1:25 was at least 95th and maybe 99th percentile for 600 yards for every age group in the AAHPER tests.

Sub 5 is much harder than the other two.

A 4:5x hs miler can usually run sub 19 easily.

Sub 60 is a natural talent question and a different skill set but for a hs "400 runner", sub 60 is easier than sub5 for a hs "miler".

Are you sure you're not my father? You lie like him.

1. I know of a single 14 year old on the track team I coach who is faster than my times (barely). I have my kids running 40mpw.

2. Agreed to some extent, although I think this applies more to the 20-24 age group as they are mostly ocpetitively running in university or if theyre not they are chasing ass.

3. So you're really fully of s hit. Cursory search, not many 40-50s breaking 2 minutes in the 800 meter, and if they were looks like it was mostly in the 90s

The best 50 year olds at our track club are running 17:30 5ks. You say they are routinely breaking 16 in Holland? Again, you're full of it.

4. You are damn right that I'm bumping this thread in 15 years.

5. My son will kick your sons ass someday in track and XC. Bet.

-Duke

Now is the OP an actual exercise physiologist or geneticist or just someone spewing off BS conjecture? I wonder....

Many small high schools don't have 4 guys who can break 60 on their 4x4. The same schools have 1 kid breaking 5 minutes and about 5 breaking 20 minutes. So I will go with 20% in the 5k, 15% in the 400, and 10% in the mile.

Smallish Midwest School wrote:

Many small high schools don't have 4 guys who can break 60 on their 4x4.

That can't be. I grew up in a pretty podunk town in Idaho, and all of us on the 4x400 were under 54 seconds, and we couldn't consistently place in our district, then got throttled at State.

You be trippin' on crack rocks. Simma down which yo fast speeds before you crack yo head open boy.

Idaho has 105 teams with a 4x4 times in milesplit this year. Worst is 4:38 and best is 3:22. 53 per guy as your team ran would have been 14th in the entire state amongst all classes. So your memory is obviously failing you which typically happens to runners. 29 teams ran over 3:50 which means they probably had one guy at 60 seconds.

Anecdotes are dumb wrote:

Idaho has 105 teams with a 4x4 times in milesplit this year. Worst is 4:38 and best is 3:22. 53 per guy as your team ran would have been 14th in the entire state amongst all classes. So your memory is obviously failing you which typically happens to runners. 29 teams ran over 3:50 which means they probably had one guy at 60 seconds.

Man, seeing real data debunk people's "the older I get, the better I was" recollections will never get old.

lmao letsrun wrote:

These times are not fast at all. Humans evolved to run. If there are elite athletes running sub 5 for 26.2 miles, then it would be fair to say most males' quickest mile would be one measly sub 5. I find it difficult to believe somebody can be so genetically inferior as not manage that. Sub 60 is not that fast either. Talent doesn't start playing a part until the low 50s.

I know 90% of you are about to type "I'm in my late 40s and have not managed a sub 5 or sub 60 min 5k after 10 years of hobby jogging!"

Yeah.

No they can’t and you are delusional. Some men can and some men can’t - it’s really that simple.

sbeefyk2 wrote:

False. After 3 years of no running I woke up and ran a local 1 mile race and ran 6:20 all out and tying up at the end and not able to breath. I was 28 and I was a 4:09 miler in high school and when I stopped running I was running 10 mile easy days in an hour so I’m no chump.

I have to believe that you are far from the only one.

lmao letsrun wrote:

These times are not fast at all. Humans evolved to run. If there are elite athletes running sub 5 for 26.2 miles, then it would be fair to say most males' quickest mile would be one measly sub 5. I find it difficult to believe somebody can be so genetically inferior as not manage that. Sub 60 is not that fast either. Talent doesn't start playing a part until the low 50s.

I know 90% of you are about to type "I'm in my late 40s and have not managed a sub 5 or sub 60 min 5k after 10 years of hobby jogging!"

Yeah.

I think many LRC commentators take the OP statement too literally. It is a topic of interest and is

a good choice for a thread. However I take it this way: He is talking about your PERSONAL BEST.

Plus once you pass a certain age or time in your life it becomes impossible to meet all of these goals.

There was a time in my life where I could beat all of those times easily. In fact as a freshman in high school

I ran 18:00 for the 3 mile in cross country so that easily beats the 20 min 5K. I was not @ sub 60 for the 400 or

sub 5:00 for the mile yet. But by the end of college I easily beat those goals and definitely hit the sub 5:00 mile in races into my late 30s. My last 440 was when I was in college. I probably could have ran 60 though into my 40s if I had wanted to though.

But I am a serious runner. If I had stopped after my 8th grade track & field season and started again in my 40s I am not sure how easy these goals would have been. Lifestyle makes a difference.

I did have friends who ran in high school and never met those goals. Some even ran in college competitively and never met some of those goals. For example I had a friend who did run a time comparative to under 20 for the 5K. But he never ran under 60 or under 5:00. That might have been for lack of opportunity. He ran DII cross country for a year and he ran over 100 miles in at least one week.

I think it could be said that: "almost all runners could meet those goals if they ran competitively in college."

More than half would in high school. Less than 25% would if they started after age 40 because the 60 second and 5 minute mile would be hard to get for lack of opportunity to race those distances."

We also should consider that many runners will underachieve. I certainly did!

The OP is a hobby jogger because he doesn't understand those 3 times he stated are not even remotely correlated. Any serious runner can see that.

JustJay wrote:

lmao letsrun wrote:

These times are not fast at all. Humans evolved to run. If there are elite athletes running sub 5 for 26.2 miles, then it would be fair to say most males' quickest mile would be one measly sub 5. I find it difficult to believe somebody can be so genetically inferior as not manage that. Sub 60 is not that fast either. Talent doesn't start playing a part until the low 50s.

I know 90% of you are about to type "I'm in my late 40s and have not managed a sub 5 or sub 60 min 5k after 10 years of hobby jogging!"

Yeah.

No they can’t and you are delusional. Some men can and some men can’t - it’s really that simple.

Also adding to my point, if humans evolved to run then why are we such a slow species conpared to most mammals?

sbeefyk2 wrote:

False. After 3 years of no running I woke up and ran a local 1 mile race and ran 6:20 all out and tying up at the end and not able to breath. I was 28 and I was a 4:09 miler in high school and when I stopped running I was running 10 mile easy days in an hour so I’m no chump.

Yeah you are.

You might have once been an athlete, but now you're a chump.

There is no life membership to the excellence club

What? If you didn't run a sub 60s 400m you didn't run 400m at my high school? Our record was high 49.

60 seconds is retardedly fast to claim as a baseline here. Most guys aint breakin 60 on their own.

I think the caveat here is "can" meaning genetically able, vs. "Want to" or "willing". Given a random able bodied 18 to 25 yr old who obeys my commands for about 2-3 yrs, I could probably turn him into a sub 60 second guy.