Comment by notacoward | Hacker News Reader

Comment by notacoward | Hacker News Reader

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> ~25 minute 5k which most reasonably healthy adults could build up to quite quickly

For 5km, 25:00 would put you into the top 10% (median is 34:37).

https://runrepeat.com/how-do-you-masure-up-the-runners-perce...

That's out of those who post times in measured/timed events, so it would be an even better result compared to all runners, and better still compared to fit people specializing in other sports such as cycling. It's also for all ages. For example, in my own 50-59 age group that would be top 6% (median 36:36).

25:00 might not be all that impressive when you're looking on Strava, but in a broader context it really is closer to "well conditioned athlete" than to "reasonably healthy adult". BTW, since I know somebody will ad hominem at me if I don't say anything, I'm on schedule for 1000 miles this year and to that end I run 5km continuously (even on hills) at least once or twice a week. It takes a certain level of dedication independent of how generally fit you are.

I'm not sure how much I trust those stats. If you look at parkrun results, 25 minutes is definitely not the top 10%. I imagine you're familiar with parkrun, but just in case: parkrun is a weekly, non-competitive, just for fun 5k -- with millions of participants, and all their stats are online.

I picked a bunch of random events from last week's parkrun, and for most of them, ~>1/3rd finish in <=25 mins and very few of those times are PBs. I'd be absolutely shocked if being able to do a 5k in 25 mins puts you in the top 10% of runners, in fact, I'd go as far as to say, I think the majority of runners could do a 25min 5k -- where "runner" means "someone who runs regularly" (once per week, which parkrun is representative of).

Click a town name in the "event" column on this page to see various results (includes gender and age group) you can also click through to individual profiles: https://www.parkrun.org.uk/results

If we expand the definition of "runner" to include anyone who runs at least once per year, I think maybe you'd get to the 10% figure you're quoting. The other possibility is that the page you've linked is using marathon times and extrapolating out from those to get 5k times, which is not going to produce accurate results.

Yes, those numbers seem somewhat faster, but the medians I got for the four courses I looked at were still 27:27, 29:02, 27:13, and 28:19. 25:00 is still better than median even among runners who participate in official events, so it still seems true that 25:00 is closer to "well conditioned athlete" than to "reasonably healthy adult". Remember, "well conditioned" doesn't mean an elite marathoner, and "athlete" doesn't mean a professional. If you're running 5km in under 25:00 you're well ahead of the vast majority of human beings.

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