Garrycherry wrote:
Coevett wrote:
Translation : 'I've run 100 miles a week since the age of five and now can run a 5 minute mile at the age of 22. I want to show off on LetsRun, but will do it indirectly by pretending to believe it's so easy anyone can run at least a 7 minute mile'.
Well my Mile PR is close to 6:45 actually, but then I'm nearly 50 and only been running 10 miles a week for a few months. But I'm quite a fit guy whose had experience of young, healthy looking people coming in to the gym and being completely gassed out after a couple of minutes of skipping and such like.
Maybe you're right and the average male could run 7 minutes flat for the mile. Seems very unlikely to me though. These threads always appear to massively overestimate the fitness of the average 'healthy' male off the street. If the average male could run a 70 second 400m, a 7 minute mile, or a 25 minute 5k tomorrow, then it stands to reason that with only a year or so of training, the average male could run sub 55 400m, a 5 minute mile, or an 18 minute 5k....which is clearly absurd.
Furthermore, as regards the 'national fitness standard', I was correct to point out that these percentiles are for athletes and schools which have chosen to take part in the scheme, and who are therefore training for the mile I presume every week. The 'average male' is also far less active than the average high schooler. So if the average 16 year old training for the mile every week can only run it in 7 minutes, I would say the average 25 year old male off the street, probably couldn't run it in under 12 minutes (in fact couldn't run a mile continuously at all).
Anybody and I literally mean ANYBODY who isn’t disabled can run a 12 minute mile.
And if you’re reading this and scoffing because you THINK you’re not disabled dispite knowing you can’t run a sub 12 minute mile then I have news for you- I would actually consider you either cardiovascularly disabled at this level of fitness if you’re too winded to complete a mere 12 minute mile or mechanically disabled if you can’t power your body fast enough to run a 12 minute mile. The cut off should actually be 10 minutes.
I actually think that “VO2 max” should be considered a vital sign just as important as heart rate or blood pressure and if you fall under a certain score (20 for females, 30for males) then consider yourself disabled.
Also for the record, young males (even fat ones) might run a pathetic mile due to lack of cardio but telling you now, can still run pretty damn fast for a good 10-15 seconds due to muscle power alone. Do NOT underestimate young muscles because I’ve seen it time and time again. I agree that 15mph is doable for 70% of age 20-30 males but most would have their hearts pounding out of their chest for at least a few minutes after going at this speed even for a mere few seconds.
And dont even get me started on women. Females are just dismal runners in general - apart from the olympians with great ancestry/genes - 70% of women just cannot run.. like at all.. This is also somewhat due to lack of training but there’s also quite a lot of science behind it. At least with males running fast for short bursts is programmed into their DNA much more efficiently due to catching and fleeing prey - most women never evolved to deal with anything of the sort so from a genetic perspective - running (especially fast) is way more unnatural to them and doesnt come as easy.
Average in high school:
100m: 14.8 (males)
100m: 18.5 (females)
^ Those are REAL stats amogst 16 year olds from a study taken in a high school. This is about the population average.
If you train yourself to run an 8 minute mile and a 16 second 100m and then are sedentary for a few months then your mile time WILL plummet and you wont be able to get anywhere near 8 minutes until you train yourself to do it again because when you are inactive- endurance is the FIRST thing to go. BUT you would probably lose hardly any speed over a few months because top end speed tends to stick around a lot longer (a few years) so say your PRs were these after some training:
Mile: 7:59
100m: 16.25
Then after a few months sedentary they would probably look like this:
Mile: 9:35
100m: 16.25-16.50
After a few YEARS sedentary (maybe about 5) then that is when sprint speed starts to deteriorate (16.25 down to 17.85).
This is why it’s much more beneficial (maybe not for the heart, but for your DNA) to train speed instead of stamina. Stamina is temporary whereas speed is more permanent.
If you had two highly trained people, one highly trained in sprinting the 100 and one highly trained in marathon running and then asked them to sit on their arses and get fat (put on 40lbs) for ten years then asked them to run their 100/marathon- the sprint guy would still be pretty fast due to muscle power and dna conditioning BUT the ex marathoner wouldnt even be able to finish the marathon let alone hit his previous time due to the fact the conditioning benfits of endurance training do not significantly alter dna function PLUS the benefits that allow people to excel in stamina based sports (large heart, lung effeciency) wear off afyer just a few weeks of not training the system.
MOST males probably grew up sprinting and doing high intensity conditioning without even thinking about it just by playing out with friends as kids (playing football, climbing trees, jumping over walls, etc) and that conditioning STAYS with you until youre 30years old ish... like yeah, sure, they dont do the conditioning anymore so they would get winded doing it as a sedentary adult but the PHYSICAL ability to do it is still there.
That is why I TOTALLY believe any young 20-30 year old male could absolutely run at 15mph. Sprint speed sticks aroumd and most boys can hit 15mph (just over actually according to averages- 15.15mph) in high school.
The mile is much, much different and would probably require walking for some but amogst the ones who dont walk I would say 7-9minutes is a good average.
I know a lot of you will not believe this because this is letsrun where everybody is an olympian wannabe but getting under 7 minutes for a mile takes TRAINING for most people. 7 minutes is slightly above average for males and considerably above average for females so when put into perspective-it is actually not a bad time and I certainly wouldn’t consider anybody who can get under 7 out of shape.
Any male who gets 6:15 or less in the mile and any girl who gets under 6:55 can consider themselves in great shape and will do absolutely fine in 99% of sports (basketball, football, tennis, swimming). Realistically though, most people would be happy with under 8 minutes (which is fine if youre just looking to keep your heart/lungs in moderate condition and dont teally plan on participating in any sport).