Outside: 'How Our Totally Average Runner Broke the Sub-Five Minute Mile'

Not my main event, but think I was just north of 5 minutes in HS--which wasn't anywhere near good enough to compete for any awards of significance. Even my 800 pace was just slightly faster than the pace at which the best ran the 1600. (Not that I was very good at the 800 either--just passable enough I could limp across the finish line to help the stars on our team medal in county and conference relays).

 

I was covering a state high school track meet last weekend and saw that the national girls high school record is now 4:33. I suddenly didn't feel so good about the six minute pace I run.

 

Because sports goals like this are so measurable, I think it gives you a good sense of how damn hard you have to work to excel at anything - and how much is dependent on natural talent as a limiting factor.

 

Girls' 1500 high school record is 4:04.62. That's 4:25 for the mile. Chew on that one for a while

 

Same here. Once I get rolling, I can run forever but I don't think I could do anything near a 6:30 minute mile, no matter what kind of shape I'm in.

 

This.
Swimming was my sport. When I was in shape, I was respectable -- about 30 seconds for a 50-meter freestyle and 1:10 for a 100 the last time I competed about four years ago -- but neither is even close to being great. And no matter how hard I worked, how much I worked out, there was just no way to shave off the five seconds in the 50 or the 10 seconds in the 100 that would make me great. There's a natural barrier that you hit where all you can do is cut fractions of a second with better technique. If you're not fast to begin with there's only so much you can do, and the skill becomes making your limitations work in your favor as best you can.

 

We used to do interval training on the bike paths and roads around Microville. After several half-mile pulls with a half-mile interval, we had a mile pull (probably not exact, but measured by an automobile odometer) on campus way at Microville Tech. We generally did those in about 5:00-5:05. It felt fast. Never ran T&F in HS, but did get my 10K time down to 35:34 before my body started falling apart. I know on a track when we did 800m pulls I could run one or two just under 2:20.

 

35:34?

Damn.

 

I had to run a 6-minute mile in high school just to be allowed to start basketball practice. A few years ago, I ran a 3:06 half-mile on the treadmill and thought I was going to die. Today, if you put a gun to my head and tell me to run a 6-minute mile, I have a better chance of taking that gun away than I do of running that mile.

 

I've never been much of a runner, and to the extent I was able to it was sprints and not distance. In high school, we had to do a mile in third-period gym class once. I made it without walking or stopping, which I was proud of, but I think I was right at 10 minutes and looked afterward like I'd run 50 miles in the desert.
My next class was history, and the teacher was the soccer coach. He noticed my haggard appearance and asked what happened. I told him I ran a mile in gym class, and what my time was. He laughed and asked one of his soccer players, "John, tell him how fast you have to run a mile in soccer practice."
"Five minutes, coach."
The teacher just laughed again, probably thought, "God, this generation is full of pussies," and got on with the class while I died a little inside and had my small personal achievement squashed like a bug.
Way to inspire, Mr. Potenza.

 

Potenza? Putsinya!