What is the swimming and cycling equivalent of a 16minutes 5k on the track?

Triathlon Forum
21

I think I would agree with the Sub 56 min 50k and Sub 19 minute 1500m swim. Consideraly above average, but by no means great
For adult swimmers, going 18:59 is nothing special. Hell, going 18:00 is nothing special. Since I’m not a runner though, it’s hard to tell if 16:00 for a 5k is anything special. To get an idea of what I mean, the time standard for a 1500 for Ontario junior provincial champs for 14-year-olds is 18:15. 19 minutes isn’t even above average for 14-year-olds, though it may be for triathletes.

Another way to look at it: Canada’s national qualifying standard for a track 5k is 14:25. The short-course 1500 national standard is 16:06. Keeping the ratios the same, that gives 17:52 for an equivalent 1500, which is about what the world-record calculation gave us.

So if these calculations are correct, would I be accurate in saying a 16:00 5k runner isn’t anything too special? They might final (but not win) at fairly big (interregional or province) events, but aren’t hauling home truckloads of medals.

I think you’re on the right track. For the masses, a 16 min 5k and a 18 min 1500 aren’t just great, they’re unattainable. For serious competitive athletes, a 16 min 5k is an also ran (for men). In High School, the 5k isn’t run often on the track, but the equivalent 2 mile time would probably make the finals in most states. At a regional level, it would be nothing special.

I was coming up with my marks based on the masses, not on the single sporters. I would wager a roughly equivalent number of athletes could swim sub 19, bike sub 56, and run sub 16.

22

At a state XC meet this year, the top 5 runners for my local H.S. all ran 15:56 or better. They blew away the team event.

Edit for corrected time and link. http://nc.milesplit.com/meets/80007/results/135127

23

Context is important in this discussion. If you are a man between 15 and 50 and can run a 16 minute 5k you are probably performing at around 3 standard deviation above the mean for all men, a 1 in a 1000 individual, and probably between 2 and 3 standard deviations for all male runners in that age bracket - maybe a 1 in 100 to 1-150 kind of performer. While this isn’t special talent, it is talent that not many people possess. You will win your share of local races, local runners will know who you are, you will perform well in regional races, and if you are the higher or lower end of the described distribution perform well against your peers nationally. You won’t go to the olympics, but you are almost always the fastest runner in any room you are in.

The same is true for an equally fast swimmer or biker.

24

I just pulled up the USMS 1500 m free top 10 list for LCM last year. Here are the no. of swimmers going sub 18:

M18-24: 1
M30-34: 1
M35-39: 1
M40-44: 1
M45-49: 1

W18-24: 1
W30-34: 1
This is why I love slowtwich. You say something stupid, you get called out on it and you get called out on it with solid data :slight_smile:
Wow, USMS has a really shallow pool (bad-dum-tisk!). Maybe you should look at college-age performances, because I have seen finals at the OUA (which is considered a pretty shallow conference itself) where most people crack 18:00.

Here’s another way to look at it, which perhaps should have been my first approach: in swimming, there is a ranking system called “FINA Points”. They’re based off the top recent performances. The maximum FINA points rating is 1100, and a world-class swim is 1000+. An 18:00 LCM 1500 for a man is 531 points. SCM, it is 487 points (for girls, 635 SCM and 664 LCM). During my swimming career, I never even made finals at OUAs, and my peak pointage (in a backstroke event) was about 660pts.

https://www.swimming.ca/PowerRankings.aspx - this is Swim Canada’s power rankings tool for club swimming. People generally stop club swimming and go to the university conferences (or to the states) at about age 17. If we look at the 16-17 age group, the 50th-place guy is still doing a 17:27 LCM 1500. Even if you look at the 18+ group, the top 50 are still doing 18:00LCM 1500s.

So I repeat myself: an 18:00 1500SCM or LCM swim, while impressive to a triathlete or someone who isn’t training as hard as a competitive swimmer, is not super-impressive to a single-sport swimmer. It’s an ok swim, but you won’t be showered in plaudits for doing it.

Context is important in this discussion. If you are a man between 15 and 50 and can run a 16 minute 5k you are probably performing at around 3 standard deviation above the mean for all men, a 1 in a 1000 individual, and probably between 2 and 3 standard deviations for all male runners in that age bracket - maybe a 1 in 100 to 1-150 kind of performer. While this isn’t special talent, it is talent that not many people possess. You will win your share of local races, local runners will know who you are, you will perform well in regional races, and if you are the higher or lower end of the described distribution perform well against your peers nationally. You won’t go to the olympics, but you are almost always the fastest runner in any room you are in.

This is an excellent point - my posts have all been with the assumption that you’re comparing against fully-fit single-sport athletes. If you’re comparing against triathletes, then the 16m run and 18m swim become much more impressive. If you’re comparing against master’s swimmers, apparently you’re also pretty amazing. But if you’re comparing against club-level 17-and-younger or college-age varsity swimmers, your 18:00 1500 is nothing special.

25

I think you have to have more leeway the more sports you do. Lets look at possibly the best athletes in the world, decathletes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decathlon

1500m WR Hicham El Guerrouj 3m 26s

DB Robert Baker 3m 58s

For an Olympic performance, that barely under 4 min 1500 is downright pedestrian. That’s why you have to look at the context.

26

I love the direction this post went…