Is a 72 second 400m a good time for a 42 year old man?

Oh Please wrote:

Robbie gibbs wrote:

How does it compare to the average person and to the average runner? Im gonna try and train to get better but want to know where i stand fitness-wise for now

It's really hard to say. As a master's 400m runner? Definitely not. Faster than your neighbor over one lap? Probably. If you could do that 4x you'd get a 4:50 mile and that's pretty darn good for a 42 year old.

At the extreme end, Lagat ran 64 second laps for a 5k (13:06) in the Olympics at age 42, and just this year an near 44 ran 70 second laps for a half marathon.

Lagat? Ya...that's with PED's.

Pastiche wrote:

Its ordinary. Especially for a man. I’m a 40 year old woman who has come back to running after years just keeping generally fit, and I ran a session of 2 x 2 490s with a 3 anda 9 minute break in between in 70-72s recently.

I currently run around 19.50-20.45 for 5k and I’m not even the fastest woman in my mainly masters training group.

I’ve noticed that you get a lot if these new male runners who want a lot of attention online for ordinary times. It’s boring, because the track is full of people faster thanthem because they can commit to the training, rather than spending time thinking about how other people rate them.

What makes you think he was demanding attention? Maybe he just wanted to see what level he was at currently and what time he would need to get to, to be considered much better.

What is 'boring' is people on here patronising anyone who isn't an elite runner or excellent standard.

It's also amusing when a topic mentions words like average, and then people start talking about what very good standard runners get when that isn't what was being asked.

As for the OP, 72 secs for a 42 year old is a good time compared to the average 42 year old male. If talking about the average 42 year old male runner, then it's reasonable, not anything special.

Have you ever considered for one minute that this guy just isn’t talented? You have no idea what average looks like because youre all constantly surrounded by people with above average talent. Typically, people on a sprint team or in a sprint group are in that sprint group because they found out they were naturally good at it and continued from there.

This is letsrun where most people seem to think you can run 48-53 with minimal talent and hard work alone but assuming everybody in the world trained to their potential, you’d still get quite large pecentage of people in the 60-75 second range.

Breaking 60 takes natural talent. Breaking 65 is probably just a case of hard work though. Aim for 65 first, I think that’s doable. If youre still willing to train afteer/when/if you break 65 then set your new aim to see if you can crack 60. This could take up to a year or two.

All of these master runners have to take a back seat to humility. These beginner to average runners were only asking for a decent time amongst most people at their same level. Not to be compared or belittled by some arrogant master runners that only have discouraging comments. Why not encourage instead. Its easy to be arrogant but remember everything is relative. There was some good advice but lets take it down several notches with the negative comments.

Timeflies71 wrote:

All of these master runners have to take a back seat to humility. These beginner to average runners were only asking for a decent time amongst most people at their same level. Not to be compared or belittled by some arrogant master runners that only have discouraging comments. Why not encourage instead. Its easy to be arrogant but remember everything is relative. There was some good advice but lets take it down several notches with the negative comments.

True. A lot of these masters guys have been running for decades and have no idea what a 'good' time for an adult starting running would be, let alone a middle-aged man.

I'd really like to hear how OP got on.