Minimum 1500m Time to be Impressed

Man?

Woman?

Kid?

Age?

Fat?

Amount of training they did?

Ah...to me none of it matters. I'm not generally one to be impressed by the running exploits of hobby joggers (and anyone not making a living doing it is just that).

Men and women, respectively.

What about not hobby-jogger times, like 3:50 M and 4:25 F?

It should probably be slower, but 3:53. Probably because the crude conversion is a 4:10 mile.

If you mean runner in terms of anyone (guy) who runs, I guess 4:20 (~4:40 mile?) Woman, ~4:50.

Depends on age and age of the PB.

Lifetime PR. Current or retired athlete.

One second faster than OP's lifetime PB.

Not to sound preachy, but I hate judging people based on times. I’m more impressed by ones journey than their destination. I’m a lot more impressed with someone who works their whole 7-8 year school running career to go sub 4:00 in the 1500m than someone who ran a 4:30 mile their first race off of junk miles, went on to run a 3:5x 1500m their first year in college but quit cause they hated it.

If I have to put specific times down though…

If you can break 5:00 in the mile, you have my respect. This message board tends to underplay the achievement that a sub 5:00 really is. Most high schoolers don’t even go on to break 5:00. So maybe that means 4:35-4:40(whatever the sub 5:00 equivalent is) will impress me. That being said, I think about 3:50 is when I’ll say “dang he’s fast” when talking college running. That could be biased though, I haven’t had the opportunity to race 1500m yet, but I figure I’m in 3:55-4:00 shape and like to consider myself at least decent.

Planters wrote:

Lifetime PR. Current or retired athlete.

The hard part about those rules is if a 65 y.o. guy told me his PB was 3:50 I'd be incredibly impressed. If a H.S. senior told me he ran 3:50 I'd be very impressed, but less so. Age of the PB matters.

Anyway, I'll stick with the 3:53. It's good for any time period.

1500? 4:00 is at least in the game.

I suppose faster than 3:45 would impress me.

There’s always stories behind the times

I helped a kid on my team he was slightly on the spectrum, and his first mile as a freshman was a 6:30, and eventual PR was 6:10, 800 PR was 2:46

This was during the covid summer and I had taken him under my wing and had him running a little more, and just tagging along. Then one day we went for a time trial, saw him go out in 2:47 and thought “he’s dead”, he ended up running 5:47

I saw him work his way down to 5:12 with uneven pacing and can’t wait for his sub 5 this year

Point is, If someone says they’re a 5:12 miler, you won’t think much of it, but there’s always a lot behind those numbers

4:30 for a woman, 4:00 for a man under the age of 40.

Around 3:47 or better

4:30

frail martini wrote:

Planters wrote:

Lifetime PR. Current or retired athlete.

The hard part about those rules is if a 65 y.o. guy told me his PB was 3:50 I'd be incredibly impressed. If a H.S. senior told me he ran 3:50 I'd be very impressed, but less so. Age of the PB matters.

Anyway, I'll stick with the 3:53. It's good for any time period.

Yeah, I mean someone of any age, most people’s PRs are gonna be from their 20s.

Follow up question- at what PR do you mentally say “whoa holy sh*t!!”?

Planters wrote:

If you’re having a conversation with someone you know is a runner and you learn their PR, what’s the slowest you’re impressed with?

They've got to at least be in the 3:28s, but not at Monaco.

3:49 for a Man cause it would have won a gold medal in Rio

I guess I have low expectations…. I say 4:20 (4:40 mile) because I haven’t seen any kid run that with no training. To get below 4:20 they trained for the sport and that alone has my respect.

Planters wrote:

what’s the slowest you’re impressed with?

This would be the maximum time you'd be impressed with, not the minimum.

Planters wrote:

frail martini wrote:

The hard part about those rules is if a 65 y.o. guy told me his PB was 3:50 I'd be incredibly impressed. If a H.S. senior told me he ran 3:50 I'd be very impressed, but less so. Age of the PB matters.

Anyway, I'll stick with the 3:53. It's good for any time period.

Yeah, I mean someone of any age, most people’s PRs are gonna be from their 20s.

Follow up question- at what PR do you mentally say “whoa holy sh*t!!”?

The pb will have probably been set in their 20’s, but running 3:53 in 1960 is a lot more impressive than 3:53 today.

Probably under 3:39 I’d start to say holy sh*t. 4:09 for women, no idea if those are equivalent or not.

Planters wrote:

If you’re having a conversation with someone you know is a runner and you learn their PR, what’s the slowest you’re impressed with?

3.25