Can I beat a random yank? Even with a hip replacement, probably.
Is that enough to bet my life? Of course not.
Once I was inside a ship on Chinese scaffolding. My return route out was an hour of high exertion, high temperature pain. Someone had balanced a plank across a ten foot gap that would have got me out in 20 seconds. I learnt a lot in the five minutes I stared at that plank.
Risk is likelihood * consequence. If either are excessive, don't.
Let's make this question more interesting - what speed would you have to be to be reasonably sure you could beat whoever popped up, enough to go for the million with effectively 0 risk?
Funny. I was just over at my gym. I'm like a Kenyan compared to the people working out there. But compared to a lot of the running population I'm slow as molasses.
Can I beat a random yank? Even with a hip replacement, probably.
Is that enough to bet my life? Of course not.
Once I was inside a ship on Chinese scaffolding. My return route out was an hour of high exertion, high temperature pain. Someone had balanced a plank across a ten foot gap that would have got me out in 20 seconds. I learnt a lot in the five minutes I stared at that plank.
Risk is likelihood * consequence. If either are excessive, don't.
You are afraid to die. It’s simple.
when you die, you’re gone. You don’t miss anything or feel sadness. The body just stops working. It’s easy.
FWIW I agree with all those who estimate that the average risk of dying is probably 1% or less. But that’s actually substantial. Nothing I do on purpose in normal daily life has a risk of death anywhere near 1%. I don’t drive drunk - the risk of a given drunk driving trip ending in death, (or injury, or arrest) is much less than that. What else do any of you do voluntarily that carries a 1% risk of death?
would definitely be worth the risk. If you can run a mile under 4:30, you are likely faster than 99.99% of Americans. There are probably fewer than 5,000 Americans capable of running a mile faster than 4:20 at a given time. That is 0.001% of the population.
For all those who don't understand how to answer the spirit of a question, here is a question for you to ponder, with enough specifics added that you'll need to try really hard if you want to make your answer stupid:
A magical extra-terrestrial wizard appears to you. He tells you that for the next thirty Earth-days, you have the opportunity to take his challenge.
The challenge is that you and another human, chosen completely at random from all American citizens excluding yourself, will be safely and instantly transported to a 400m track. Approximately 60 minutes later, the two of you will race one Mile in accordance with USATF rules. It will be 50°F, cloudy, and dry. The track will be well-lit. You and your competitor will have access to whatever (USATF-approved) shoes, clothes, nutrition, and amenities you like. Your competitor has been told that they will be killed if they lose; the wizard has assured you, however, that they will not actually be killed--so you do not need to feel guilt about being the cause of someone's death. You are not allowed to make any deals with your competitor that might cause them to give less than their best effort. The wizard will also perform a 100%-accurate drug test; a positive test for an intentionally-consumed performance-enhancing drug is grounds for disqualification. Other intentional rule-breaking is also grounds for disqualification; unintentional rule-breaking (such as an accidental flinch for a false start, or an accidental mid-race collision) will cause the race to be restarted. A disqualification is equivalent to a loss.
If you lose the race, you will immediately be killed (shot in the head until dead), and those who knew you will learn that it was because you accepted a one-mile race against a random American, with a $1 million prize for winning and death for losing. They will not know about the magical extra-terrestrial wizard, but they will assume that the competition was fair.
If you win the race, you are awarded one million US Dollars, and you are safely transported back to your original location, at the time at which you accepted the challenge. No one but you will know that you were gone or that a race occurred.
You may accept the challenge as many times as you wish at any point within the 30-day window (unless you're dead). At the end of said window, the money will be awarded to you by means of a winning lottery ticket whose prize, after taxes are deducted, will be equal to your winnings. No one will know that you earned the money by winning (a) race(s).
One of the magical extra-terrestrial wizard's magical powers is the ability to convince anyone of anything. Because of this, you have zero doubt that everything he has told you is true.
Do you accept his challenge? If you win, do you accept it again? How many times?
Plot twist, you are actually running against a loved one. You win, but the wizard kills them.
There are 23k high schools in the US. You really think that most of them don’t have a single sub 5 miler? Even the sucky small HS in my area always had a couple of kids running 4:50s. Add in middle schoolers, college kids, athletes who never ran a mile(I.e soccer team), adult runners and so on and I would expect the number to be much higher. 5:00 was right around where talent thinned out quickly. My school had a dozen kids who could run sub 5. 3 ran sub 4:40. 1 was sub 4:30.
You are still going to end up with a smallish number and human brains suck at telling the difference between say 1:500 and 1:10k. We call both of them rare
Last year, in Colorado, 580 kids broke 5 for the 1600. In Wyoming, it was about 100. The average state probably has closer to 300-400. With fifty states, that means 6,000-ish hs kids break 5. Maybe that's closer to 8,000.
But those are their PRs. In January, most HS kids who will break 5 might struggle to run sub-5:20. On an average day, probably 3-4000 hs kids are capable of running sub-5. Add to that 1000 college athletes, 500 pros, and 6000-8000 hard-working hobby joggers, and that sounds about right to me.
But even if I'm off by x2 or x3 on that calculation, you're still more likely to die from daily commuting than doing this exercise.
how on earth are you getting your numbers? 680 kids/2% of the us population = 36k.
Now CO has above average distance running. But they are also at altitude. You need to be looking at something like sub 5:10 guys. I would not be shocked to learn that there are like 3-5x as many guys at 5-5:10 because as I said you are right around the pace where the talent drops off.
There 5000 male D1 xc runners, 5800 D3 and 3700 D2. You think less than 10% can run a sub 5min mile? I would bet on more like 70%. And zero woman. And so on.
And yes even a say 500k count doesn’t really change the numbers. It is just your estimate is just absurdly low.
Last year, in Colorado, 580 kids broke 5 for the 1600. In Wyoming, it was about 100. The average state probably has closer to 300-400. With fifty states, that means 6,000-ish hs kids break 5. Maybe that's closer to 8,000.
But those are their PRs. In January, most HS kids who will break 5 might struggle to run sub-5:20. On an average day, probably 3-4000 hs kids are capable of running sub-5. Add to that 1000 college athletes, 500 pros, and 6000-8000 hard-working hobby joggers, and that sounds about right to me.
But even if I'm off by x2 or x3 on that calculation, you're still more likely to die from daily commuting than doing this exercise.
how on earth are you getting your numbers? 680 kids/2% of the us population = 36k.
Now CO has above average distance running. But they are also at altitude. You need to be looking at something like sub 5:10 guys. I would not be shocked to learn that there are like 3-5x as many guys at 5-5:10 because as I said you are right around the pace where the talent drops off.
There 5000 male D1 xc runners, 5800 D3 and 3700 D2. You think less than 10% can run a sub 5min mile? I would bet on more like 70%. And zero woman. And so on.
And yes even a say 500k count doesn’t really change the numbers. It is just your estimate is just absurdly low.
“Average state” is the wrong way to think about it. The four largest states account for about a third of the US population. Including high school athletes in other sports who have no listed track PRs, college athletes, and post-collegiate athletes, California alone probably has more than that.
A random american is selected, it could be anyone from your Gran to Grant Fisher. Whoever it is, you must race them in the mile on the track. If you beat them you get $1 million, if you lose however, you die.
Do you take the challenge?
Here’s an additional twist: If it happens to be your gran, she will insert a puzzy cat into your rear while telling you what a good boy you are.
how on earth are you getting your numbers? 680 kids/2% of the us population = 36k.
Now CO has above average distance running. But they are also at altitude. You need to be looking at something like sub 5:10 guys. I would not be shocked to learn that there are like 3-5x as many guys at 5-5:10 because as I said you are right around the pace where the talent drops off.
There 5000 male D1 xc runners, 5800 D3 and 3700 D2. You think less than 10% can run a sub 5min mile? I would bet on more like 70%. And zero woman. And so on.
And yes even a say 500k count doesn’t really change the numbers. It is just your estimate is just absurdly low.
“Average state” is the wrong way to think about it. The four largest states account for about a third of the US population. Including high school athletes in other sports who have no listed track PRs, college athletes, and post-collegiate athletes, California alone probably has more than that.
It is very simplistic and we are definitely looking at some lower bound. Who knows how many soccer players , swimmers, lacrosse, bikers, BB who have never run a mile but who are athletic and in decent shape. Heck my school had 4 guys who ran sub 2:05 but as they were 400/800 guys never ran a mile. I would not want to bet against them breaking 5. But again to some extent rut does matter. The risk difference between say .3% and .03% just isn’t going to move the needle. Humans aren’t good at evaluating probabilities like that.
And I do wonder how people would run with their life in the line. Is a 5:00 going to run a 4:40 with the added incentive or are they goin b to run a 5:30 cause they are over stressed…
A random american is selected, it could be anyone from your Gran to Grant Fisher. Whoever it is, you must race them in the mile on the track. If you beat them you get $1 million, if you lose however, you die.
Do you take the challenge?
If you count all people, I’m guessing the average time wouldn’t even break 20 minutes. You have to include infants, small children, and the elderly/disabled.
If you include only individuals between the ages of say, 15 to 60 I’m guessing the average mile would still be somewhere in the range of 15 to 17 minutes
Odds are overwhelmingly in my favor that the random selection is not a runner and not in shape at all. I see a lot of people when I'm out, not at my gym, looks to me like most people are overweight. While I'm a Marathon/Ultra runner I am confident I could beat the average American in a one mile race to the death. Lets goooooooooooo
Remember, though, you probably won’t have time to stop at an aid station for pizza and gummy bears during the mile
Absolutely. I usually finish in the top 3-6% of road races I run from 5K thru marathon. If I can always beat 94+% of runners, I'm sure I can easily beat 99+% of people. Only a small percentage of Americans run competitively. Definitely worth the risk. In fact, it isn't much risk at all.
Yes, but you have to beat 100% of the one person selected to race you. Hopefully the person’s name wouldn’t be Yared
I would take this risk for a year in jail as the consequence of losing. My life is quite a bit too much, even if the odds of losing are 1:500... I came from a town of a about 10,000 people. In that town, at any given time about 20 high schoolers could now beat my out of shape self in a mile race.
