Why is everyone so slow?? (Serious Question)

Those kids who run under 15:00 and not score for good DIII teams are not running those road races for the most part and if they do there aren't enough of them to force the winner to run that fast. That seems pretty simple. Most of those races you're seeing are filled with older runners, fitness runners, etc.

I understand that, but I highlight it to point out that a sub-15 is not an extradionary time and achieveable for someone in the top 2-3% of running talent. 10,000 people is a lot of people. That’s the number of people in 300 classrooms, 14 large lecture halls, etc. Now, maybe only 20% of these people are male aged 20-40, but that’s still 2000 of them. Only 1 in 2000 can bust out a relatively mediocre 15:45 to win these races? Marathons have massive groups of guys who go through the first 5k in 14:30. Now, I get those are large races that offer a ton of prize money, but even still, you would think in these races of a massive size you’d have some guys who could run fast.

The sub 15 kids aren’t going to enter a race that is won in 20 minutes.

Even assuming it’s a cheap $20 race, would you pay $20 to do a solo 5k time trial?

Before I sign up for a road race I check previous year(s) results. If there aren't regularly guys running around 15:00 or better then I'll look for another race. I think most college guys do this.

......... wrote:

I’ve seen road races with over 500 people in them where the winning time is above 20 minutes. There are races with almost 10,000 people in them where the winning times are barely under 16. Marathons with thousands of people are being won in 2:40, etc. How is this possible? There are kids who are sub 15 not even scoring for the good teams in DIII who could win some of these massive races easily. How is it possible to have so much of a discrepancy? What is going on?

JF?

It's not that bad, but it is true that the amateur post-collegiate racing scene has been in serious decline over the past 20 years. The main problem has been the trade offs of the running boom and what participants expect from races. Back in the day, a cotton t-shirt was all anyone wanted. Post race was just a couple of coolers with Gatorade. When I was a kid in Atlanta, it was a big deal to have a Peachtree Road Race t-shirt. Now, runners are expecting all kinds of "swag" (hate that term), post race parties with a big stage and cover bands blasting away (hate that even more) and even on course entertainment. Add to all that the ballooning costs for race security and management and declining sponsorship dollars (local shoe retailers are dying and big sponsors are very difficult to land these days), and you have most races eliminating prize purses. Once upon a time, it was almost the opposite. It was very rare to have a race, even a relatively small one, with no prizes for top finishers. Runners I used to train with would spend half the time on a long run talking about which races coming up had the best prizes. When I first became a master, I didn't have a lot of competition because there was a 2-3 year gap between me and the really fast guys. So, I won top masters at a few decent size local races. I got free shoes, $150 gift certificate to a nice restaurant, and $250 cash. Since then, all of those races have dropped prizes for everyone.

I heard everyone truly fast these days do all their races on treadmills

Where I live MEC (an outdoor sporting goods store), puts a great racing series.

Entry fee is 15-25 (depending on length you choose/how early you register), swag is free bananas and sports drink at the finish, and only top 3 males and females get a medal.

It’s cheap enough that I can enter one on a whim. It’s a great break from the $100+ Mega races around town, that I will really only enter if I have done a proper buildup and taper for.

The races are ran on open trials so I can’t imagine they have much overhead to cover.

The times I ran 35 years ago would WIN a lot of today's races. I was lucky to finish in the top 15% of the field. There were a lot of us training seriously (and not all were talented.) Today's races really don't seem like races. They seem to be social gatherings. Times change. Those huge finisher's medals marked the decline.

Because the world is not full of super talented runners, if you ran in college and spent a lot of time around collegiate level athletes whether that be D1 or D3 - you are ALL above average in terms of talent. Most people who enter road races or marathons aren’t naturally gifted athletes and anything under 3:30 is a superhuman effort for these average person.. I have seen people train for years and not break 22 minutes in a 5k, adversely I have seen outliers run those sorts of times from no training but those are usually the people with the talent to go on and run fast. It’s all about inherent aerobic ability, you can train it to a certain point but only raw talent is going to get you a 2 in front of your PB so that’s why sub 2:40 is rare, because believe it or not, it is an absolutely extraordinary effort that 90% of humans couldn’t touch even will a decade of optimised training, and the ones who do will be exclusively peak marathon age (30-39 age group) and male.

Could part of the reason be that there are more races than before? And a there’s ton of charity fundraiser races and “fun runs”, that are designed to make money, instead of catering to fast runners. I mean, a city could have the Run For Rabies Awareness 5k, the Save The Dodo Bird 5k, the Let’s Eat Chocolate 10k, and the Cute Fluffy Alpaca Half Marathon all on the same weekend.

Well, there ARE good runners, like decent HS runners, NCAA guys and grads, and talented older runners who train seriously. I'm sure if there are fewer runners who fit in these categories than there were years ago, but most local races aren't attractive to these people.

I recently ran 14:35 for the 5K and won't run a race unless there are other guys who are at least able to run under 15 for 5K or there is big incentive to do it (money, free entry, etc...). I usually pick out 3 or 4 races in the fall and 3 or 4 races in the spring with a few of them being out of state.

People graduate from college and just want to make money. Making money often means working long hours, not training much, and not caring about running anymore. So people (ex NCAA college xc track athlete alums) aren’t very fit.

LoneStarXC wrote:

Could part of the reason be that there are more races than before? And a there’s ton of charity fundraiser races and “fun runs”, that are designed to make money, instead of catering to fast runners. I mean, a city could have the Run For Rabies Awareness 5k, the Save The Dodo Bird 5k, the Let’s Eat Chocolate 10k, and the Cute Fluffy Alpaca Half Marathon all on the same weekend.

Hmm, bad example. It's obvious everyone fast would go to the Alpaca race.

The answer is simple. There are tons of races now. When I graduated high school there weren't many races and everyone who ran would enter them. Also, the only people who entered the races were pretty serious runners (my bad. I forgot this is letsrun.com. I meant hobby joggers). Even though we were hundreds of miles from any town of over 100,000 people you still needed to break 33:00 to win a 10k. We only had a few races a year. Now there are several to choose from on any given weekend. Also, if you are fast enough to win some money, you'll only enter races with cash prizes. Finally, there are many runners who enter these races just to see if they can finish, which wasn't the case years ago.

Fast people flock to fast races. Those races are fast because there is probably some decent prize money at the top.

If there's no prize money, no one fast is going to go there.

One example, Houston half marathon. Something like 25 people broke 64 minutes there this year, half or more of them were Americans. Not many other races in America where more than 5 people run under 64 minutes. And I'd guess the prize money (roughly $20k-$25k for the win?) at Houston half marathon is more than any of the other half marathons in the United States. If you throw money at it, the top fast people will show up, and then the next tier of fast people will show up to run with those super fast people. It might take a few years for the ball to really get rolling though, so some of these races that throw a bunch of money at it one year, and it's an okay turnout but not what they're expecting, they can't just stop throwing the money at it if they want it to become a big-time race.

Just for fun, let's say a race currently has no one under 40 minutes for a 10k. No one capable of running 36 minutes is going to show up because they'd be running by themselves. Now say we throw in $1k for the win, $500 for second, $250 for 3rd. We're at $3500 of total prize money. If you're charging something like $30 an entry, you need 120 men or women to show up for the opportunity to race against the fast people that come to make that prize money. They might not all show up that first year, but after a couple years and people start hearing about these fast times coming out of this 'so and so 10k', people will start coming to that race and some of these people will have other family members or friends running that race as well. And it's all because they threw some money at the race.

As others have said, faster runners look for competition and are going to go to races where they find it. But there are so many people who run now and so many people who want to make a bit of money from those people that you have road races springing up like dandelions. Most of those races are not attractive to faster runners.

When I was in my fastest years and living in the DC area there was usually ONE road race in the whole area per week. None were as short as 5 km but if that had been the distance you'd almost never see a winning time slower than 15:00 because any good runners in the area who were racing that week would be there at that one race. If there had been a dozen or so races in that week most of them would have been won in slow times.

Awesomeness wrote:

LoneStarXC wrote:

Could part of the reason be that there are more races than before? And a there’s ton of charity fundraiser races and “fun runs”, that are designed to make money, instead of catering to fast runners. I mean, a city could have the Run For Rabies Awareness 5k, the Save The Dodo Bird 5k, the Let’s Eat Chocolate 10k, and the Cute Fluffy Alpaca Half Marathon all on the same weekend.

Hmm, bad example. It's obvious everyone fast would go to the Alpaca race.

Of course, who wouldn’t?

So cute! ? ?

So the other races would be won in super slow times. Probably 19:00/21:00 for the top male/female in the Save the Dodo 5K and 39:00/42:00 in the Let’s Eat Chocolate 10K. The Run For Rabies Awareness 5K would be 18:30/20:30 because the normal 19:00/21:00 runners would get extra motivation from being chased by rabid raccoons along the course. All the faster runners would flock to the Cute Fluffy Alpaca Half. The possibility of winning an alpaca plush toy (and like, $200), would mean it’s won in 1:10/1:15. So, you see, my example works. All the talent flocks to one race.