If running a sub 16 minute 5K earned you $100,000 per year, 85% of American males 20 - 40 years old would do it.

This 2.5 years of "training" you speak of is not really training, if you wanted that $100k you would train like a real athlete. Structured workouts, 65+ miles a week and some form of lifting. As you are not even close to that don't pretend to be close to your potential

Ridiculousness wrote:

Would be an interesting study, though. Take a random sampling of America and train them for 2 years and see how fast they can run a 5k. Surely there must be some study out there that has done something similar?

Tufts University did something similar with 12 "ordinary" people and training them for the Boston marathon in, I think 10 months.

Didn't work out so well. Fastest (who'd run in college and now a sedentary 30 something male) ran Boston in 4.17. A few didn't make it far through training as they were too out of shape and got stress fractures etc. Most of the others finished the marathon but in pitifully slow times.

It's an interesting watch to see just how out of shape the average American is, and how out of shape they remain even after months of professional training.

the truth is in the pudding wrote:

What the F*ck is that?!?

Disregard that last sentence. F*cked up my own troll thread here. Damn.

No one cares if you were trolling. Consider this thread hijacked. Yiippppppeeeee kaaaaayyyyaaahhh motherfuuuuuuccccccckkkkkka!!!!!!!!!

A typical LRC idiot wrote:

the truth is in the pudding wrote:

Out of the 15% who wouldn't.

5% would be cripples.

10% would be people who had other talents that would enable them to make more money in other occupations.

I think running a sub-2:05 marathon would earn you a seven figure if you are an American. Surely, that should be enough incentive for you, right?

You are a typical let's run idiot. It's not incentive because if every American trained for it and 20 achieved it, guess what? It'd then be worth 20k a year instead.

It's not that hard to break 16:00 for 5K if

A) you have some physical talent for running middle distance

B) you've trained for a few years.

C) you have the head for training/racing

D) you are a dude (women, shall we say 17:20?)

This has to less than 1% of guys.

Me, I ran 16:10 as a post college, 20 mile a week guy. No one offered me 100K to go further...

No adult male who trains minimally (3-4 30 minute runs per week for at least 6 months) has ever improved their 5k performance by more than 15% by increased training (of any kind); excepting cases of significant weight loss.

Given the number of minimally trained adult men with reasonable body weights who show up and run 20-30 minute 5k's we can make reasonable estimates about how many could (given any incentive) break 16. It's a small fraction of a percent. Unless all the 5k's across the country are magically biased to include only the least genetically gift fraction of the population....

typical runner or sockpuppet wrote:

Going from 30 mpw to 90 mpw is worth about a minute or two on a 5k.

Then that would push many 17-18 minute guys to 16 minutes. You could also go higher than 90 mpw (Cam Levins ran 150 mpw in college) or add more intensity to your workout.

Most people cannot do that because they have other obligations. If running is the sole focus of your life, you can train much harder.

ordersofmagnitude wrote:

Unless all the 5k's across the country are magically biased to include only the least genetically gift fraction of the population....

Of course, all the 5k races attract the least genetically gifted, just like high school cross country teams do. People who are more genetically gifted have better things to do in their life. Only those who are horrible at all the other sports run those 5k races. Didn't you already know that?

It's all very well to hypothesize what the masses might achieve if they trained like pros, but that is ignoring that a high percentage would either not have the structural biomechanics to sustain that with injury, or the genetics to recover from that level of training.

From personal experience as a school and club runner in England, I think that breaking 16:00 mins requires a relative high level of genetic ability and a fair amount of training.

I was able to win area x-country championship in high-school, and qualified for the All-England Schools Championship. As a senior, I was able to win area championships, and run for the area in inter-area championships at 3000 s/c.

As a master in the U.S., I've placed in national championships at 5000m, 3000m s/c twice, and 3000m indoors, and made the world rankings (top 25 twice).

While obviously, sub-sub elite, I'm thinking I was fortunate to be blessed with somewhat above average genetics, and I certainly trained hard. While I did break 16 mins on occasion, I certainly didn't find it easy, and had to be at my best.

I'd be absolutely astonished if you could every train more than 10% of 20-40 males to break 16 min, and I guess more like 5%. In fact it would be interesting to see how many could run 1 mile at 16 min pace (about 5:09).

Cavorty wrote:

I was able to win area x-country championship in high-school, and qualified for the All-England Schools Championship. As a senior, I was able to win area championships, and run for the area in inter-area championships at 3000 s/c.

As a master in the U.S., I've placed in national championships at 5000m, 3000m s/c twice, and 3000m indoors, and made the world rankings (top 25 twice).

While obviously, sub-sub elite, I'm thinking I was fortunate to be blessed with somewhat above average genetics, and I certainly trained hard. While I did break 16 mins on occasion, I certainly didn't find it easy, and had to be at my best.

Does not compute. I also grew up in the UK (Yorkshire in the 70's) and moved to the us. I was nowhere near your level of achievement but broke 15 several times. Area Champs guys were generally sub 15 in school, never mind seniors. Maybe I was just born in the wrong area!

the title of this thread is somehow misleading. at first, 85% never will or can do it. second, look at the results through the last decades not only of the ballycotton 10, look up every major race. all these fast guys in the past ran not for money, they were passionate runners. though they were more numerous than nowadays, even 85% of these passionate runners were not able to run a sub 16.

There are so many biases at work here: viewing your personal traits and subjective experiences as universal` complete disregard of contrasting information over-optimism; insensitivity to sample size; hyperbole.

Essentially, it's no different than a sub 14 runner (or someone with a 1500 on his SATs) posting that anyone could accomplish what he had by simply putting in the work. Neither experience, physiological research nor empirical result have shown any basis to support the claim (on the contrary). The OP is also disregarding what David Epstein ("The Sports Gene") called "The talent of trainability" (see - the "Family Heritage Study") - there are vast differences in basic talent levels as well as in response to (e.g. aerobic) training.

If you don't quickly show sub 2:15 ability as a HS runner, you're not getting to sub 16. And it's a big "if" from there as well.

Heck, you wouldn't get 85 percent of the population to run a single 76 second quarter.

good post.

So what? 16 min 5k doesn't earn $100k a year.

It's an easy target to hit - supply and demand pretty much guarantees that it'll never earn that kind of money.

pr100 wrote:

So what? 16 min 5k doesn't earn $100k a year.

It's an easy target to hit - supply and demand pretty much guarantees that it'll never earn that kind of money.

thought experiment

I'd become a track official. With all of the 5000s (maybe some certified road 5ks...was this supposed to be road or track?), I'd be working lots of meets and pull in well over 100k.

If I gave you a 1 day old baby boy and said I will give you $10million dollars if you can train the boy to run sub 16. I would think the success rate would be pretty high, no?

Cavorty wrote:

It's all very well to hypothesize what the masses might achieve if they trained like pros, but that is ignoring that a high percentage would either not have the structural biomechanics to sustain that with injury, or the genetics to recover from that level of training.

If you are given unlimited time to sleep, the most nutritional food you can eat, the best massage/physical therapist, and all the gadget NOP is using for recovery, you can recover from much harder training.

Remember what Kastor once said? Most people who think over-trained are actually under-recovered.

You were definitely in a tougher area.

I only made all-England Champs at x-country at high-school.

Best I got as senior was fifth in South-West Champs as a steeplechaser (because I wasn't good enough at 1500m or 5000m).

Fastest 5k I ever did was 15:22 on a several laps road course in Bath.

I have run age graded equivalent of sub 15:00 as a master, so maybe I just trained wrong!