You were on a club or school T&F team, correct? You sure implied you got off the couch as a sedentary kid. I was a middle school (we called it junior high school) kid on T&F team.
ran on my middle school track team. had never done organized sports other than little league baseball until joining track. I never implied I was completely sedentary, I played with my friends as most kids do but I had never done (and didn't start) real training at all through middle school. sub 5:20 is a fine time for a middle schooler, but not rare or indicative of extreme talent. its not impressive for 18-22 year olds who while not trained for distance are certainly well trained, which was the whole point of my original post.
Your first post said you had zero training. Later you said, "I ran at most 5 miles a week, 3 miles of which came exclusively from racing the 3200 and 1600."
That is not zero training. If anything, going from zero to 5 miles will have a much bigger training effect than any other 5 mile increment.
I doubt your post. You are implying you and your 12 year old friends ran 5:15 or 5:17 miles after laying on the couch. I doubt it. You and your 12 year old friends played no other sports and just showed up in p.e. class and ran 5:15 & 5:17 one mile? Didn't happen.
Yeah I think Andrew Wheating ran a 5 minutes mile without any training in high school and his coach instantly knew he had Olympic potential.
I doubt three middle schoolers without any training in the same class could run that time.
5:17 and 5:00 is usually a bigger difference than just 17 seconds.
By that, I mean it's more of natural talent or development versus training and knowing how to pace and push through discomfort sort of situation. My good friend ran 5:10 in 8th grade and I ran 5:36 based on wrestling and soccer fitness. In 9th grade we both ran 4:49.
Plenty of 8th graders run 5:1x but it takes a bit more to get to 5:00 or 4:50's in my experience. Same with 4:30's versus 4:20's for juniors/seniors etc.
I think you have a very broad view of what "talented" means. I ran my first mile in 5:17 when I was 12 with zero training, losing to 2 other 12 year olds who also had zero training. aren't these college athletes? I don't care if they don't train for distance, neither did middle school me, I still ran way faster and I wasn't even that good lol.
I'm involved with youth track, and I'm calling BS big time on your claim.
Your casual soccer and - heh- baseball-lol- didn't have you conditioned for that at ALL.
Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, though, right?
i have had an 8th grader run a 4:40 in the 1600, but nobody who could go sub 5:20 off the couch. that was with 10 weeks of training and racing.
I did have a soph run a 4:19 in the 1500, right out of basketball season, with no "run training" for 4 straight months. did a couple of 2 or 3 mile jogs the week of.
pretty sure if they ran 4:40 10 weeks in they'd be good enough to run 5:20 off of no training. especially if they had other people to pace them along, which I did. I'm not sure why people are so skeptical when well over 1000 middle schoolers run as fast or faster than I did every single year. its not that uncommon.
Yeah I think Andrew Wheating ran a 5 minutes mile without any training in high school and his coach instantly knew he had Olympic potential.
I doubt three middle schoolers without any training in the same class could run that time.
5:17 and 5:00 is usually a bigger difference than just 17 seconds.
By that, I mean it's more of natural talent or development versus training and knowing how to pace and push through discomfort sort of situation. My good friend ran 5:10 in 8th grade and I ran 5:36 based on wrestling and soccer fitness. In 9th grade we both ran 4:49.
Plenty of 8th graders run 5:1x but it takes a bit more to get to 5:00 or 4:50's in my experience. Same with 4:30's versus 4:20's for juniors/seniors etc.
this guy gets it. I'm not saying I'm not talented, I run in college now I've got at least some talent. But theres guys who I was faster than in middle school/high school that would (and do) kick my ass now. there were also a few kids who were better than me who stopped improving. not everyone develops at the same rate, and success at a young age isn't a strict indicator of success at an older one.
Athletic talent is real and it’s not always fair. If you are a D1 caliber sprinter you probably have the talent to be a solid 800/1600m guy at the highschool level.
Early on in highschool I had a teammate who was a very fast 200m/400m guy, he ran about 21.2 and 48.5 if I remember correctly..
He entered the mile at the JV regional championships (they do that in my state) and won it in about 4:50. I think that would’ve made him our 4th guy in the mile that year, we weren’t the best distance program.
I also remember plenty of sprinter guys coming out for XC because my coach encouraged the 400m guys to come do it, and they’d usually be upper JV and sometimes nab a varsity spot for a couple races.
You gotta remember that middle distance is called middle distance because it’s both a test of speed and endurance. Your average highschooler that is running 5:00+ in the mile is usually doing distance because he’s too slow to sprint. It was a good day when our distance squad would break 4:00 in the 4x4 at dual meets. Someone running 48 in the open 400m will feel a heck of a lot more relaxed at 74 second pace than a guy that’s rocking a 64 second 4x4 split, even if the 64 second guy is doing 400/800m repeats on the days the 48 second guy is running 50s/150s.
played little league baseball for a few years, not exactly the best conditioning and soccer at the park with my friends every once in a while. my first time racing a mile wasn't for gym though, it was a track meet. can't speak for the other kids cause they weren't from my school, but my entire training leading up to which was the 1 lap warm up we did to start practice, then the core strength we'd do. 1 week of that and I was ready to go. I think youre vastly underestimating how common sub 5:20 is for middle schoolers.
You're basing this solely off your one gym class dude. There are literally thousands of middles schools. In mine, we had one guy in the low 5s, one guy in the high 5s, a few low 6s and average was high 7/low 8s. Definition of talent is extremely arbitrary so not sure the point in even debating it.
We ran a 1600m time trial on the first day of practice, this was the entire sprint/jump/hurdle squad
My last year in college I finally asked my coach why he has us run the 1600, he said "I wanted to see if you guys took care of your bodies over the summer or not." He basically wanted to encourage us not to pull a Marcus Dupree and become fat slobs over the summer
The week after the time trial we ran 3 x 800m, the week after that 3 x 600m, then after that we never ran further than 350m in practice until the next mile time trial
The mile is a very weak indicator of sprint/jump performance. The same kid won the time trial our freshman and sophomore years (in around 5 flat), he got cut from the team after our home meet sophomore year because he couldn't break 50 in the 400m (and by cut I mean coach did not bring him to any large invitational meets/conferences). He also had the worst performance in the standing broad and vertical jump, I think jumps are good indicators or jump performance but just an okay indicators of sprint performance
30m sprint performance was the best indicator of 100/200/400m performance, it was only an okay indicator of jump performance
So while it was technically called a time trial, my coach did not plan to use the results to identify talent. He just wanted us to stay away from excess consumption of beer, ice cream, and poptarts over the summer
I think you have a very broad view of what "talented" means. I ran my first mile in 5:17 when I was 12 with zero training, losing to 2 other 12 year olds who also had zero training. aren't these college athletes? I don't care if they don't train for distance, neither did middle school me, I still ran way faster and I wasn't even that good lol.
I doubt your post. You are implying you and your 12 year old friends ran 5:15 or 5:17 miles after laying on the couch. I doubt it. You and your 12 year old friends played no other sports and just showed up in p.e. class and ran 5:15 & 5:17 one mile? Didn't happen.
A 12-year old, who is a club soccer player but has never run track or cross country, ran 5:10 in a mile run in PE class at my school last week. He's in great shape from soccer so it explains the performance. His 14-year old brother, who doesn't play sports and, according to his parents, spends all available time outside of school on his playstation, ran 5:09 in PE class yesterday. I asked him where that came from and he said "his brother had been talking smack at home for a week and he really wanted to shut him up." So he was fully motivated and apparently has all that untapped potential. I invited him out to run track in the spring but he didn't seem to enthused with the idea. Some kids just have it I guess.
You're basing this solely off your one gym class dude. There are literally thousands of middles schools. In mine, we had one guy in the low 5s, one guy in the high 5s, a few low 6s and average was high 7/low 8s. Definition of talent is extremely arbitrary so not sure the point in even debating it.
To go along with this, my son's middle school cross country team ran a mile time trial two weeks ago and the fastest time was 5:54. Fifteen other kids were between 6 and 7, twenty-eight more between 7 and 8, the other 30+ kids were over 8.
played little league baseball for a few years, not exactly the best conditioning and soccer at the park with my friends every once in a while. my first time racing a mile wasn't for gym though, it was a track meet. can't speak for the other kids cause they weren't from my school, but my entire training leading up to which was the 1 lap warm up we did to start practice, then the core strength we'd do. 1 week of that and I was ready to go. I think youre vastly underestimating how common sub 5:20 is for middle schoolers.
What a liar haha. For comparison, Alan Webb ran in the 4:50's in middle school. So no, running sub 5:20 (not that far from Webb level of talent) with zero training in middle school is not common, it would mean you'd be among the most talented middle schoolers....not in your school, but in the country.
And you supposedly had two faster kids living near you as well. So either all three of you ended up being among the best milers in the nation in HS, or you're full of it. And the fact that you think sub 5:20 is common for middle school shows you simply have no idea what you're talking about lol. Most kids don't start running until HS, and under 5:20 would show solid good talent for a middle schooler who was training all through middle school. Anyone with your make-believe level of talent who started training let's say freshman year in HS would be sub-4:30 as a freshman, which obviously is anything but common. That's the type of talent that the top kid in the state would have.
I think you have a very broad view of what "talented" means. I ran my first mile in 5:17 when I was 12 with zero training, losing to 2 other 12 year olds who also had zero training. aren't these college athletes? I don't care if they don't train for distance, neither did middle school me, I still ran way faster and I wasn't even that good lol.
I doubt your post. You are implying you and your 12 year old friends ran 5:15 or 5:17 miles after laying on the couch. I doubt it. You and your 12 year old friends played no other sports and just showed up in p.e. class and ran 5:15 & 5:17 one mile? Didn't happen.
I don't think it's that impossible, speaking as a track coach. Depending on how big the school is there probably is going to be a dude or two or three who could get up and run a mile around the times cited by OP. Any coach will know the frustration of hearing about or seeing an untrained kid drop a mile like that in PE, and approaching the kid about running track only to be told "no, I'm a baseball player."
In the video attached, you'll see sprinters run the mile in low 5 minute times. These times would be great first mile times for talented distance runners, and they are okay for distance runners with some extensive training. Many distance runners struggle to break 5 in the mile. Quite frankly I find this embarrassing. These sprinters would outpace many runners on my high school team.
I think you have a very broad view of what "talented" means. I ran my first mile in 5:17 when I was 12 with zero training, losing to 2 other 12 year olds who also had zero training. aren't these college athletes? I don't care if they don't train for distance, neither did middle school me, I still ran way faster and I wasn't even that good lol.
hahaha, no you did not do that. in 2023 that would have put you in top 10 in the country for 12 year olds. and you are telling us that 3 12 year olds ran top 10 or faster in the same race. with no training. troll
I think you have a very broad view of what "talented" means. I ran my first mile in 5:17 when I was 12 with zero training, losing to 2 other 12 year olds who also had zero training. aren't these college athletes? I don't care if they don't train for distance, neither did middle school me, I still ran way faster and I wasn't even that good lol.
hahaha, no you did not do that. in 2023 that would have put you in top 10 in the country for 12 year olds. and you are telling us that 3 12 year olds ran top 10 or faster in the same race. with no training. troll
it takes zero effort to fact check what you just said. straight from athletic.net 25th in the 1600 (for 7th graders only) was 4:52.44. in 2015 when I ran that race, 25th was 5:04.65. Both lists are likely missing a couple hundred kids who ran ~ the same times cause middle school meets don't get recorded that often. if someone had enough time on their hands they could probably figure out what state I'm from cause not a lot of states listed middle school times back in 2015 (I checked cause this thread had me curious) but I'm not gonna purposely give out personal info to make a bunch of letsrun bros believe me lol.
played little league baseball for a few years, not exactly the best conditioning and soccer at the park with my friends every once in a while. my first time racing a mile wasn't for gym though, it was a track meet. can't speak for the other kids cause they weren't from my school, but my entire training leading up to which was the 1 lap warm up we did to start practice, then the core strength we'd do. 1 week of that and I was ready to go. I think youre vastly underestimating how common sub 5:20 is for middle schoolers.
What a liar haha. For comparison, Alan Webb ran in the 4:50's in middle school. So no, running sub 5:20 (not that far from Webb level of talent) with zero training in middle school is not common, it would mean you'd be among the most talented middle schoolers....not in your school, but in the country.
And you supposedly had two faster kids living near you as well. So either all three of you ended up being among the best milers in the nation in HS, or you're full of it. And the fact that you think sub 5:20 is common for middle school shows you simply have no idea what you're talking about lol. Most kids don't start running until HS, and under 5:20 would show solid good talent for a middle schooler who was training all through middle school. Anyone with your make-believe level of talent who started training let's say freshman year in HS would be sub-4:30 as a freshman, which obviously is anything but common. That's the type of talent that the top kid in the state would have.
1. the difference between 4:50 as a middle schooler in 1994 or whatever, and 5:20 in 2015 is astronomical.
2. according to athletic.net, my state had 25 middle schoolers under 5:02 in 2015
3. I ran 4:42 and 2:01 as a freshman, and no I wasn't the best in the state for my age for either of those either.