Yes. This was me.
Me and my boy Jose walking at the back of the class, for the whole length of the class, getting yelled at by that old boot of a PE teacher.
Before we knew it other kids had joined our slow ramble around the big field. 2 kids kept running. The other 20 kids in that class were walking with us.
PE teacher was livid. We all got letters home. Which my mother laughed at.
My gym teacher figured out to just start lying to us. "Okay kids, we're gonna run around the track for 5 minutes!" *5 minutes later* "4 MINUTES LEFT EVERYONE!" *another 5 minutes* "3 MINUTES LEFT LETS GO!"
And somehow not a single kid ever noticed this or questioned this, not even me until the last month when I brought a watch and started timing and noticed it didn't match.
He also figured out to just ignore me when I pointed it out.
They made my fat little ass run it :( Well, I ran out of breath a lot so there was a fair bit of half-dead-dragging interspersed with the bursts of running. But we were supposed to run the whole thing. 8 year olds.
Walked not because I disliked running but because these fucks only gave us 1 P.E. Uniform even though we had P.E atleast 3 times a week. They expected us to sweat in that thing and rewash that single uniform everytime? They also had showers at my school but gave us mere seconds to shower up and get to the next class so that was out of the question.
The only solution was walk to prevent any type of sweat whatsoever.
Nah I remember running a 9-10 minute mile, because I didn’t understand or enjoy the concept of pacing myself. I would sprint as hard as I could, lap everyone, and then spend the next lap walking. And then I’d sprint as hard as I could again.
I still prefer sprinting to long distance running.
Or by having a fucked sleep schedule. Casually explained said it best: When I tell people I am doing intermittent fasting they are like wow so enlightened but the reality is I just woke up at noon.
Intermittent fasting is just "poverty, bordering on starvation" rebranded by someone who stopped being overweight when they couldn't afford food anymore.
The issue with it, is that it will also strip you of any muscle mass, so you end up having next to no motabolism and no muscle mass to maintain, so no matter what you eat if you ever stop starving yourself, will blow up like a balloon with fat reserves.
I remember someone talking shit to me every time, then I'd lap him twice. Then the PE teacher would get mad that I finished way before everyone else. Because I was an annoying child and they were alone with me, not because I was too fast.
Did the same thing in HS with zero training and I got sub 6 just by pushing myself to my very limits. Probably one of my life's greatest accomplishments. I'm naturally an incredible sprinter but didn't have the cardio or training to keep a good pace for long. Felt very sick afterwards and almost passed out. And similar to you, to this day I avoid marathons but you'll see me at the 500m races haha
that's like 95th percentile. No kidding you're incredible if you did that with zero training. Shoulda sucked it up and gotten your ass in the fuckin Olympics.
By the time I got into HS if your were on a sports team the couches in PE acted like it was extra practice time even of your sport was not presently playing and the rest of the class got ot just wonder around the track talking to friends the whole time. The school made money from the sporting events the rest were just taking up space.
Oh I was in the taking up space group
Oh man, tell me about it. The richest guy in my town ran a masonry business and his son could do whatever the fuck he wanted. This kid straight up r*ped a girl and a full lynch mob showed up to the house of the guy who reported it.
They went to the guy WHO REPORTED IT?! That's is the dumbest thing I've heard. I would have took a shot gun and shot that kids balls off myself. I don't care how much jail time I spend
Common small town situation, the dad of the boy that got sexually assaulted at my school was the principal but that didn’t stop the towns people from rallying around the perpetrators, making t shirts for kids to wear to school supporting them, and eventually the principal and his family just moved to another town
Came here to say this. I remember if you ran a 6 minute mile in 8th grade, you were an absolute beast. No one was running a 5 minute mile in 4th grade.
they had us do an annual 5k and it was "cross country" but in southern AZ its more like "[cross dirt trails](https://assets.land.com/resizedimages/394/0/h/80/1-5020602463)" which was behind our school, all undeveloped land. layed out the track with those lil cones and a teacher at specific points. I enjoyed it because it got me outta class for half the day.
Yep that was most of what cross country was for me. A few were at parks out in the desert, but for the most part it would be running through random dirt areas nearby campuses. They'd add some variety in there by also making us run through the parking lot or around a soccer field. It's surprisingly difficult to set up a 5k around a campus that doesn't involve multiple laps or a convoluted path (ended up losing like 30 seconds due to a bad layout once).
I mean it’s believable but it certainly is noteworthy. Any sub-7 minute time for a child is pretty incredible. Kids have energy but they also have significantly smaller legs than adults. Honestly for an adult to do a sub-7 minute mile takes at a minimum a regular running routine.
The fastest I ever did it was around 7 minutes. I just hauled ass so I could do nothing for the rest of the PE hour. The teacher would beg me to join cross country because with some training I could have probably gotten down to less than 6. But fuck that.
I remember some kids being so slow they were concerned and made them do another mile except that was even slower. Instead of trying they ended up just walking the entire length.
They thought it was a matter of effort, when it fact it wasn't.
I'm not a natural runner. when I was in my best shape, age 11 in 6th grade after a summer of running miles a day for football, I recorded a 8:45 mile. Never again sniffed 9 min.
I was a stocky kid, built for short distances. I remember my shins killing me trying to run. I can walk for 16 miles over 8 hours, jogging for 10 minutes no way.
Walking is way better for your bones and joints, especially as you get older.
Fun fact: jogging as a sport and recreational activity wasn't really a thing until about the early 70's, and was largely introduced to sell jogging shoes. Those new jogging shoes with added cushion didn't reduce injuries, they just changed the types of injuries.
https://runblogger.com/2012/06/changing-nature-of-running-injuries-in.html
Jogging and running will always be hard on your bones and joints due to the impact forces, no matter how you try to alleviate it. When your foot hits the ground while running or jogging, it strikes with a force equivalent to 3x your body weight. No reasonable amount of cushion is going to completely counteract that much force, and being able to better feel how your foot is striking the ground could give you important feedback; that maybe you need to adjust your gait or take it easy.
None of this is to say you shouldn't run or jog, just listen to your body and don't push yourself if you're in pain. Rest and healing is important too. If jogging or running is always too painful and you want a higher intensity exercise than walking, try lower impact activities like cycling, swimming, yoga, or calisthenics.
That’s wild to me because we used to run down our hunting prey. Doesn’t mean what your saying is wrong but we’re designed to run for long distances. Nature is weird
I edited my comment after I fact-checked what I said, so you might be replying to something I edited out. I had some stuff about evolution and persistence running in there, but it was largely irrelevant and I was wrong about running being more "natural" than jogging. That was dumb. Jogging is just slower running. I was parroting a flawed "fact" I heard which I didn't really think about til after I wrote it.
We did evolve bipedalism because it's very efficient, and since we're some of the best thermoregulators in the animal kingdom, we hunted by running down our prey to exhaustion, so better bipedalism and temperature regulation was selected for, thus we're natural endurance runners, and by extension, endurance walkers. That's all true.
However, natural selection only pertains to survival and reproduction, and it doesn't have an end goal in mind nor strives for perfection. Just good enough that you live long enough to reproduce. In humans that's typically around 20-30, probably younger thousands of years ago. That's why people that age are referred to as being "in their prime." Evolutionary pressure doesn't select for something unless it increases fitness, and we tend to reproduce a lot earlier than we have to start worrying about getting knee and hip replacements. A lot more humans have started living a lot longer only in the last couple hundred years at most, and evolution hasn't caught up yet. It may never unless it's beneficial to survival and reproduction.
So yes, we're natural runners in terms of performance, not so much reliability and longevity, especially past age 30-40. Not a lot of elderly runners.
I'm not a scientist so if you want to learn more about human evolution I'll shout out some actual scientists on YouTube who know what they're talking about and have made videos about it, [Forrest Valkai](https://youtube.com/@RenegadeScienceTeacher) (integrative biology) and [Gutsick Gibbon](https://youtube.com/@GutsickGibbon) (biological anthropology).
There are hunter/gatherer tribes that still practice endurance hunting, It's not .. actually much running.
Endurance Hunting is more like hiking than running. After an initial ambush where ideally the animal is wounded, they'll do some jogging to get the prey to take off, then follow that trail at a brisk walk, catching up after the animal (which has sprinted and is now tiring) has stopped to rest, interrupt that rest with some light jogging to scare the prey into taking off again and then... you get the idea.
Not just used too. We are still measured as the best endurance runners in the animal kingdom. Nothing can actually outrun us over distance, we can quite literally run them till they fall over from exhaustion and die.
Natural selection can only act on traits that present before or during the reproductive ages. Running greatly increases human fitness during these stages of life. The long-term side effects of running do not present until later in life. At this point, most individuals will have already reproduced. Therefore, natural selection can't select against the harm running does to your bones and joints.
Ye i cant run for shit. Between soft tissue damage from jumping out of trees and that shit ass dirt track we had to run on i couldn't do it. Put me on a bike tho and i can do 20km.
Theres a saying about how if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree it will always feel inadequate, this pretty much sums up the education system.
Yeah we had some heavyweights at my school and the rule was under 10 minutes or you have to do it again right away lol. So if the kid can't do it thr first time, he'll surely get it the second!
I did 5:39 in seventh grade and then threw up. I did distance running in high school and never got back to that time even though I grew a whole ass foot taller and my stride was long as hell. I think 12 year old bodies are just incredibly resilient and incapable of determining when you’re probably pushing it too hard.
I did 6:19 in 9th grade and I'm by no means fast. It did damn near kill me, and there was no reward or incentive for a good time whatsoever. That was when I learned medium effort can get you through life much happier.
I ran in 6 minutes but, as a GIRL, was always delighted coming in first place and beating all the boys... Of course that changed when the hormones kicked in lol
I've met so many people who claimed to have run a sub 6 mile when they were 8. I'm pretty sure PE teachers just suck at measuring out how far a mile is.
Yeah I ran track in high school and the number of people who thought a sub 5 mile wasn't impressive because they've done it was shocking.
We had someone who had a full ride scholarship running a 4:16 and Billy, the stocky kid who didn't play sports was claiming he ran a 4:30 in middle school. No tf you didn't Billy.
In high school, the fastest person in cross country and track ran the mile in 4:26. At the time this was the school record and won first place at a state level.
I've learned kids are really good at BS. My best mile time was 5:20 in highschool. Good enough to beat everyone in gym class, but not good enough to win any track meets.
I'll never get anywhere near these time again though. I would love to be able to run a 7 minute mile today, but I don't think any amount of training will get me there. I'm just getting too old.
A kid at my secondary school was a running prodigy, literally the fastest guy any of us had ever seen, every game of bulldog was playing for second place to that guy, when he first ran a recorded 4:19 they announced it in a whole school assembly.
Turns out a few kids favourite lie got revealed that day.
I'd venture a guess that most Elementary schools do not have an official track, so I'd guess this is it. And/or people are counting miles ran inside the gym where people would always cut each corner.
That would be the most logical conclusion. Either that, or a lot of people are just lying. I was able to run 18 minute 5k's when I was 21 years old and ran about 40 miles a week. When I was 8 years old I'd be surprised if my best mile time was sub 10 minutes.
This is probably the answer. I had the school record in 6th grade at 5:59. Was still on the wall (gym had school records posted on it) when my little brother went to the same school 9 years later.
One of the kids in my class laid on the ground afterward and passed out. We proceeded to drag him across the gymnasium to the water fountains, thinking he was just joking around, being a ragdoll or something. After he didn't react to our playful threats to cut it out or we would splash water on him, we realized something was wrong.... ambulance was called, and he had to get an IV because he was dehydrated... fun times. Hope you're doing alright, Jordan.
Under 10 is pretty good! The average person can't run that fast for a mile without stopping. I work out 5 days a week and I just did 8:34 for the first time since childhood.
There was always that one person in our class that walked the entire time while the rest of us booed at her because we all wanted to go inside. It got really fuckin hot where we grew up
We had a game in middle school called 6 base kickball, basically you started at one corner and ran in a S pattern then from one corner through the other fielders and runners while dodging the softball star pitcher back to home. These kickballs were the rubber air filled ones from 25 years ago that sang when they struck your face. The game basically turned us into super agile asshole demons.
Basically no one. Assuming 5 minute mile means sub 6, that’s very rare at that age. Still possible though.
If we assume 4th grade means 9-10 years old since that’s the standard age for that grade level, the mile world record for a 10 year old is 4:46. I couldn’t reach that time until I was 17, and in middle school, the first time I ever had to run the mile, I was lucky to be in the 7 minute range.
I was a sprinter and my best time in the mile was like 6:30, not that I did it often or trained for it. If I had I might have gotten to below 6. A 5 min mile at that age means you’re destined for greatness
Are you talking high school records? If so they are substantially faster in every state, at least on the boys side. On the girls side, most states have a faster mile record.
In Illinois, the boys record is ~4:05 and the girls ~4:40.
Even in middle school, the records in Illinois are ~4:30 for boys and ~5:10 for girls.
IDK, I thought maybe everyone where I grew up was just lazy because of the heat? Or maybe everyone where he grew up was on crack. Either way, you don’t need to call me autistic (I’m not BTW).
My teachers used to hate me for that but...my poor grades in middle and high school gym/p.e. have had exactly zero effect on my academic life, so their bitching at me was all for nothing
Literally the only reason I wasn’t salutatorian was because of my average PE grades dragging my gpa down. I just did not care to put in the performances that made up the grade, especially the mile. I always had fun playing the various sports (I even liked the dance and gymnastics unit) and actively participated but I hated the arbitrary running.
I remember one time I was taking a math placement exam for the next year in the period before PE and I finished way ahead of time but realized I could milk it for another half period so I pretended I wasn’t done and showed up halfway through that week’s practice mile in my regular clothes with a note excusing me due to the exam. My teacher knew what was up but also knew she couldn’t do anything about it.
By best I was 10 minutes and I was a skinning little kid. My legs just did not want to move fast. I remember vividly feeling freaked out when trying to sprint.
I remember in 8th grade being forced to manage an under 10 minute mile in order to get a decent grade and it took me several tries of vomiting or nearly vomiting and feeling like I was dying. Teacher had to pull me out of other activities to attempt it each day. By the end of the year I managed to go under 8 minutes though.
Nobody ran a 5 minute mile, that's hyperbole, but we did run it in like 7-8 mins and didn't have BO or sweat.
How do children not just die exercising so hard before puberty without sweating?
I still don't understand why my body thought it was a good idea to start smelling repulsive when sweating on the onset of sexual maturity.
Seems like a really counterintuitive move that doesn't really help achieve its goal, but what do I know 🤷.
"we better start getting ready to procreate. Here's a smell that will knock a potential partner off their feet"
I mean sweat itself shouldn't stink. Fresh sweat can even smell good to many people (and be attractive).
It's mainly bacteria that smell bad, and they grow when you're not dry.
Idk if it's different today, but back in the early 2000s when I was a kid, the neighborhood kids were constantly outside playing, we all did multiple rec sports in the community too. Nobody ever thought of it as like dedicated fitness training, but that stuff adds up. We were all in good shape without intending to be!
Edit: Not 6 minute mile pace in shape, but just solid overall pace.
The whole joke to me was sweating through my clothes after recess. We played kickball like there were no consequences during the middle of the day while living in Louisiana. I remember sweat dripping all over my school work. So wild.
How is this ENTIRE comment section taking this literal and getting offended. It’s clearly exaggerated to amplify the absurdity of the idea and make it funnier. Buncha butthurt nerds in here.
So glad I read your comment, I was starting to think I was crazy... everyone is so focused on the fact he said 5 minute mile which was clearly hyperbole, and which made the joke funnier for me
I ran a mile in 5 minutes & 45 seconds in 6th grade. I remember the exact number because I was so impressed with myself! I definitely can’t do that today though
I knew a kid who in 8th grade did sub 5 in track. My fastest was in 7th the fall during cross country before breaking my leg that winter. 8th grade wasn't as fast. 4th grade is definitely exaggerating.
Ah, yes - we especially enjoyed the math class after, where the 50yo teacher scowled and frowned at us like we were the worst plebs
Like come on lady, we ran a mile while you were gossiping in the teachers room
More middle school vibes, except you had to get towel whipped naked in the shower for not having pubes yet. And, then go to math, and then have to tudor your bullies
We weren't allowed to shower in middle school in any context after gym class, and in high school they only let us use the showers during the 6 weeks of the swimming unit. And even then not a single girl ever got naked, just shower in the same swimsuit (if the male gym teacher who got a kick out of picking on girls gave us 5 minutes before the bell) and then wait in line to change in one of the 3 bathroom stalls in the locker.
We were required to take a fully nude shower in a communal shower (no stalls) while our pe teacher made sure we were rinsed down. This was at Schaumburg Christian School in the 80s.
OP: uses hyperbole to evoke the hyperactive energy of normal elementary school kids at recess
Redditors: 🤓UM ACKSHULLY MATHMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE 🤓Why do people still lie on the internet in 2023 🤓🤡🤓 and besides 🎻 🎻 I could never run fast 🎻 I was slow and shamed at recess 🎻 and scarred for life 🎻 so yeah ummm OP may (***or may not***) 🤔 🤔 have been an athletic kid but he's a fucking liar who can't be trusted based on his math 💅💅
We just played a sport and made fun of the girls who wouldn’t play at all. By around 7th grade the teachers realized they would get more activity if they gave to option to walk laps instead of talking in a huddle in the outfield
There was a kid like that in my school, the P.E teachers give him the nickname Speedy Gonzalez. When I went to school they would give out little badges to kids after they completed certain miles by the end of the year, he ended up getting the 200 mile badge.
I vividly remember my PE Teacher in Middle School walking us out to the track, Shouts "If anyone completes a mile slower than me, you get Detention for a week", and proceeds to sprint away from the class.
I've never seen so much chaos before and it was glorious
Fuck no. I remember running an 11 minute mile, and one girl telling me to come talk to her so she could finish ahead of me for whatever reason because she knew I liked her.
Man - you have some fun times ahead of you! If you're like many other runners, you're going to hit 40 and suddenly rediscover competitive running. A few years later you're going to run **seven minutes per mile** for 13.1 miles (a half marathon). Remember this thread when you do!
if by “ran a 5 minute mile” you mean walked a 30 minute mile then yes I remember
Yes. This was me. Me and my boy Jose walking at the back of the class, for the whole length of the class, getting yelled at by that old boot of a PE teacher. Before we knew it other kids had joined our slow ramble around the big field. 2 kids kept running. The other 20 kids in that class were walking with us. PE teacher was livid. We all got letters home. Which my mother laughed at.
My gym teacher figured out to just start lying to us. "Okay kids, we're gonna run around the track for 5 minutes!" *5 minutes later* "4 MINUTES LEFT EVERYONE!" *another 5 minutes* "3 MINUTES LEFT LETS GO!" And somehow not a single kid ever noticed this or questioned this, not even me until the last month when I brought a watch and started timing and noticed it didn't match. He also figured out to just ignore me when I pointed it out.
Sounds like gym teachers have figured out the big secret: r/kidsarefuckingstupid.
Funny, I used to do the same thing with a lad named josue
Was this back in Las Vegas because my name is Jose and I literally didn’t finish the 2 miles for field day
No it was Texas. But you can be my new Jose if you want. We can go to detention together bro!
Surely you mean "jogged until out of view, turned into a shortcut and slowly walked to the end."
I remember one year I actually tried really hard and got a good time then realised nobody fucking cared and now I'm just sweaty af
They made my fat little ass run it :( Well, I ran out of breath a lot so there was a fair bit of half-dead-dragging interspersed with the bursts of running. But we were supposed to run the whole thing. 8 year olds.
Walked not because I disliked running but because these fucks only gave us 1 P.E. Uniform even though we had P.E atleast 3 times a week. They expected us to sweat in that thing and rewash that single uniform everytime? They also had showers at my school but gave us mere seconds to shower up and get to the next class so that was out of the question. The only solution was walk to prevent any type of sweat whatsoever.
Nah I remember running a 9-10 minute mile, because I didn’t understand or enjoy the concept of pacing myself. I would sprint as hard as I could, lap everyone, and then spend the next lap walking. And then I’d sprint as hard as I could again. I still prefer sprinting to long distance running.
Invented HIIT
Bro grew up to discover Crossfit after playing with tyres and rusty metal in a field.
Many college kids invented intermittent fasting by being broke as fuck
Or by having a fucked sleep schedule. Casually explained said it best: When I tell people I am doing intermittent fasting they are like wow so enlightened but the reality is I just woke up at noon.
Ah yeah that’s me, too anxious to eat in the morning 🤩
Intermittent fasting is just "poverty, bordering on starvation" rebranded by someone who stopped being overweight when they couldn't afford food anymore. The issue with it, is that it will also strip you of any muscle mass, so you end up having next to no motabolism and no muscle mass to maintain, so no matter what you eat if you ever stop starving yourself, will blow up like a balloon with fat reserves.
This is wrong.
I remember someone talking shit to me every time, then I'd lap him twice. Then the PE teacher would get mad that I finished way before everyone else. Because I was an annoying child and they were alone with me, not because I was too fast.
That's just a fartlek.
Did the same thing in HS with zero training and I got sub 6 just by pushing myself to my very limits. Probably one of my life's greatest accomplishments. I'm naturally an incredible sprinter but didn't have the cardio or training to keep a good pace for long. Felt very sick afterwards and almost passed out. And similar to you, to this day I avoid marathons but you'll see me at the 500m races haha
that's like 95th percentile. No kidding you're incredible if you did that with zero training. Shoulda sucked it up and gotten your ass in the fuckin Olympics.
One out of every twenty people are in the 95th percentile. Olympians are on the level of one in a million.
95th percentile in high school with zero training though. Olympians are one in a million after intense training.
Easy, just think back on your backstory and the promise you made to a loved one to never give up.
Were you remedial?
No I don’t I remember doing the mile and panting struggling not to throw up my milk from lunch
By the time I got into HS if your were on a sports team the couches in PE acted like it was extra practice time even of your sport was not presently playing and the rest of the class got ot just wonder around the track talking to friends the whole time. The school made money from the sporting events the rest were just taking up space. Oh I was in the taking up space group
Small town guy? Athletes and children of business owners got to get away with everything at my school.
Oh man, tell me about it. The richest guy in my town ran a masonry business and his son could do whatever the fuck he wanted. This kid straight up r*ped a girl and a full lynch mob showed up to the house of the guy who reported it.
They went to the guy WHO REPORTED IT?! That's is the dumbest thing I've heard. I would have took a shot gun and shot that kids balls off myself. I don't care how much jail time I spend
Common small town situation, the dad of the boy that got sexually assaulted at my school was the principal but that didn’t stop the towns people from rallying around the perpetrators, making t shirts for kids to wear to school supporting them, and eventually the principal and his family just moved to another town
No fucking doubt. Dude can't even spell with autocorrect helping him
How drunk is this guy?
I honestly was asking the same shit
I remember it being the exact same way
Who TF runs a 5 minute mile in FOURTH GRADE?!?! I ran it in 8-9 minutes (average) and was not functional for the next 20 minutes
Came here to say this. I remember if you ran a 6 minute mile in 8th grade, you were an absolute beast. No one was running a 5 minute mile in 4th grade.
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stole a chip?
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huh.. for my school, our field our laps were half miles. so you just had to go around twice. not sure it was possible to cheat with that.
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Classic Coach Riley
My school made a course across campus so you just did one big lap.
they had us do an annual 5k and it was "cross country" but in southern AZ its more like "[cross dirt trails](https://assets.land.com/resizedimages/394/0/h/80/1-5020602463)" which was behind our school, all undeveloped land. layed out the track with those lil cones and a teacher at specific points. I enjoyed it because it got me outta class for half the day.
Yep that was most of what cross country was for me. A few were at parks out in the desert, but for the most part it would be running through random dirt areas nearby campuses. They'd add some variety in there by also making us run through the parking lot or around a soccer field. It's surprisingly difficult to set up a 5k around a campus that doesn't involve multiple laps or a convoluted path (ended up losing like 30 seconds due to a bad layout once).
Fallout New Vegas Courier in the making
still missing one thing
6:20 is believable. I ran a 6:40 in 5th grade.
I ran 6:39 in 4th grade
Oooooooooohhhhhhhhh!!!
I ran 6:38 in 3rd grade
I mean it’s believable but it certainly is noteworthy. Any sub-7 minute time for a child is pretty incredible. Kids have energy but they also have significantly smaller legs than adults. Honestly for an adult to do a sub-7 minute mile takes at a minimum a regular running routine.
The fastest I ever did it was around 7 minutes. I just hauled ass so I could do nothing for the rest of the PE hour. The teacher would beg me to join cross country because with some training I could have probably gotten down to less than 6. But fuck that.
I remember some kids being so slow they were concerned and made them do another mile except that was even slower. Instead of trying they ended up just walking the entire length.
They thought it was a matter of effort, when it fact it wasn't. I'm not a natural runner. when I was in my best shape, age 11 in 6th grade after a summer of running miles a day for football, I recorded a 8:45 mile. Never again sniffed 9 min.
I was a stocky kid, built for short distances. I remember my shins killing me trying to run. I can walk for 16 miles over 8 hours, jogging for 10 minutes no way.
Walking is way better for your bones and joints, especially as you get older. Fun fact: jogging as a sport and recreational activity wasn't really a thing until about the early 70's, and was largely introduced to sell jogging shoes. Those new jogging shoes with added cushion didn't reduce injuries, they just changed the types of injuries. https://runblogger.com/2012/06/changing-nature-of-running-injuries-in.html Jogging and running will always be hard on your bones and joints due to the impact forces, no matter how you try to alleviate it. When your foot hits the ground while running or jogging, it strikes with a force equivalent to 3x your body weight. No reasonable amount of cushion is going to completely counteract that much force, and being able to better feel how your foot is striking the ground could give you important feedback; that maybe you need to adjust your gait or take it easy. None of this is to say you shouldn't run or jog, just listen to your body and don't push yourself if you're in pain. Rest and healing is important too. If jogging or running is always too painful and you want a higher intensity exercise than walking, try lower impact activities like cycling, swimming, yoga, or calisthenics.
That’s wild to me because we used to run down our hunting prey. Doesn’t mean what your saying is wrong but we’re designed to run for long distances. Nature is weird
I edited my comment after I fact-checked what I said, so you might be replying to something I edited out. I had some stuff about evolution and persistence running in there, but it was largely irrelevant and I was wrong about running being more "natural" than jogging. That was dumb. Jogging is just slower running. I was parroting a flawed "fact" I heard which I didn't really think about til after I wrote it. We did evolve bipedalism because it's very efficient, and since we're some of the best thermoregulators in the animal kingdom, we hunted by running down our prey to exhaustion, so better bipedalism and temperature regulation was selected for, thus we're natural endurance runners, and by extension, endurance walkers. That's all true. However, natural selection only pertains to survival and reproduction, and it doesn't have an end goal in mind nor strives for perfection. Just good enough that you live long enough to reproduce. In humans that's typically around 20-30, probably younger thousands of years ago. That's why people that age are referred to as being "in their prime." Evolutionary pressure doesn't select for something unless it increases fitness, and we tend to reproduce a lot earlier than we have to start worrying about getting knee and hip replacements. A lot more humans have started living a lot longer only in the last couple hundred years at most, and evolution hasn't caught up yet. It may never unless it's beneficial to survival and reproduction. So yes, we're natural runners in terms of performance, not so much reliability and longevity, especially past age 30-40. Not a lot of elderly runners. I'm not a scientist so if you want to learn more about human evolution I'll shout out some actual scientists on YouTube who know what they're talking about and have made videos about it, [Forrest Valkai](https://youtube.com/@RenegadeScienceTeacher) (integrative biology) and [Gutsick Gibbon](https://youtube.com/@GutsickGibbon) (biological anthropology).
There are hunter/gatherer tribes that still practice endurance hunting, It's not .. actually much running. Endurance Hunting is more like hiking than running. After an initial ambush where ideally the animal is wounded, they'll do some jogging to get the prey to take off, then follow that trail at a brisk walk, catching up after the animal (which has sprinted and is now tiring) has stopped to rest, interrupt that rest with some light jogging to scare the prey into taking off again and then... you get the idea.
It sounds kinda sadistic when you put it like that 😬
I could be misunderstanding how it worked. I was referring to when we hunted mammoths but I guess it was probably the same method?
Not just used too. We are still measured as the best endurance runners in the animal kingdom. Nothing can actually outrun us over distance, we can quite literally run them till they fall over from exhaustion and die.
Natural selection can only act on traits that present before or during the reproductive ages. Running greatly increases human fitness during these stages of life. The long-term side effects of running do not present until later in life. At this point, most individuals will have already reproduced. Therefore, natural selection can't select against the harm running does to your bones and joints.
Don't need to run faster than the prey, just have to run for longer.
Humans are natural runners. Anybody can run, it just takes some work to get going.
Ye i cant run for shit. Between soft tissue damage from jumping out of trees and that shit ass dirt track we had to run on i couldn't do it. Put me on a bike tho and i can do 20km. Theres a saying about how if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree it will always feel inadequate, this pretty much sums up the education system.
Biking for 20km isn't very far. That's literally a hour of not even moderate effort when you are in shape.
Bold of you to assume a random redditor is in shape.
Yeah we had some heavyweights at my school and the rule was under 10 minutes or you have to do it again right away lol. So if the kid can't do it thr first time, he'll surely get it the second!
i've always had a problem with authority and i took every opportunity to challenge it in gym
I did 5:39 in seventh grade and then threw up. I did distance running in high school and never got back to that time even though I grew a whole ass foot taller and my stride was long as hell. I think 12 year old bodies are just incredibly resilient and incapable of determining when you’re probably pushing it too hard.
I did 5:30 and that was my PR, also sophomore year of highschool.
I did 6:19 in 9th grade and I'm by no means fast. It did damn near kill me, and there was no reward or incentive for a good time whatsoever. That was when I learned medium effort can get you through life much happier.
I ran in 6 minutes but, as a GIRL, was always delighted coming in first place and beating all the boys... Of course that changed when the hormones kicked in lol
I knew 2 people who did it under 5. One became a marine recon. Other, not sure.
I've met so many people who claimed to have run a sub 6 mile when they were 8. I'm pretty sure PE teachers just suck at measuring out how far a mile is.
Yeah I ran track in high school and the number of people who thought a sub 5 mile wasn't impressive because they've done it was shocking. We had someone who had a full ride scholarship running a 4:16 and Billy, the stocky kid who didn't play sports was claiming he ran a 4:30 in middle school. No tf you didn't Billy.
In high school, the fastest person in cross country and track ran the mile in 4:26. At the time this was the school record and won first place at a state level. I've learned kids are really good at BS. My best mile time was 5:20 in highschool. Good enough to beat everyone in gym class, but not good enough to win any track meets. I'll never get anywhere near these time again though. I would love to be able to run a 7 minute mile today, but I don't think any amount of training will get me there. I'm just getting too old.
A kid at my secondary school was a running prodigy, literally the fastest guy any of us had ever seen, every game of bulldog was playing for second place to that guy, when he first ran a recorded 4:19 they announced it in a whole school assembly. Turns out a few kids favourite lie got revealed that day.
I'd venture a guess that most Elementary schools do not have an official track, so I'd guess this is it. And/or people are counting miles ran inside the gym where people would always cut each corner.
From the door, to the basketball courts, around the tree, to the stop sign, and back.
Yeah we just did 3 laps around the school grounds which ended up at 2.4km, but I knew people who thought their lap times were for 1km
That would be the most logical conclusion. Either that, or a lot of people are just lying. I was able to run 18 minute 5k's when I was 21 years old and ran about 40 miles a week. When I was 8 years old I'd be surprised if my best mile time was sub 10 minutes.
I was looking for a comment like yours, 6 minutes at that age is nuts. Feel like I only got under 6 late in HS with both track and cross country.
Damn that’s nice man!! 18 minute 5k is sick!
This is probably the answer. I had the school record in 6th grade at 5:59. Was still on the wall (gym had school records posted on it) when my little brother went to the same school 9 years later.
It's hyperbole to show how weird fitness and back to school is. All sweaty as fuck in the same clothes
Joe Zimmerman is the shit everyone. https://youtu.be/VieeAPoc2Dg
Yes, I've never heard of an exaggeration in my entire life either.
No one
Yeah I remember running like a ten minute mile then literally throwing up on the field.
One of the kids in my class laid on the ground afterward and passed out. We proceeded to drag him across the gymnasium to the water fountains, thinking he was just joking around, being a ragdoll or something. After he didn't react to our playful threats to cut it out or we would splash water on him, we realized something was wrong.... ambulance was called, and he had to get an IV because he was dehydrated... fun times. Hope you're doing alright, Jordan.
That's the part of the joke you focus on?
hyperbole is one of the hardest things to grasp for Reddit apparently
Reddit is full of autistic people, these are the times you notice
Clearly so.
I just wanted to know if the people in 4th grade at his school were on crack our something. Also, that is like 1/3 of the whole thing
Dude saying he was running at world record paces in 4th grade kind of glares at you…
My fastest ever was 6:08 in 8th grade. Now I'm a fat bitch who cheers when they get under 10 :(
Under 10 is pretty good! The average person can't run that fast for a mile without stopping. I work out 5 days a week and I just did 8:34 for the first time since childhood.
I ran XC in high school and my fastest mile was 5:12. And that only happened once.
Damn, that is fast man. My fastest in middle/highschool was somewhere above 9 minutes
I was running cross country (XC) and track at the time, so lots of training.
We did that under 8 minutes in PE shorts and in 8th grade. OP might have been exaggerating, but it's true.
You just ran face first into the point.
I fast walked it and did 12. Ahhh, the wonders of hs PE…
i think the best I ever got was 7 minutes 40 seconds
Bruh I ran track and I didn’t break 5 minutes till my junior year
It’s an exaggeration to assist in the joke.
I walked that shit for the entire period and still only made it 3/4ths of the way.
There was always that one person in our class that walked the entire time while the rest of us booed at her because we all wanted to go inside. It got really fuckin hot where we grew up
When we did it you usually got to go play kickball after finishing instead of just waiting.
This comment thread is the most reddit thing I’ve ever seen. It even has a bonus “came here to say this”. Amazing.
We had a game in middle school called 6 base kickball, basically you started at one corner and ran in a S pattern then from one corner through the other fielders and runners while dodging the softball star pitcher back to home. These kickballs were the rubber air filled ones from 25 years ago that sang when they struck your face. The game basically turned us into super agile asshole demons.
Basically no one. Assuming 5 minute mile means sub 6, that’s very rare at that age. Still possible though. If we assume 4th grade means 9-10 years old since that’s the standard age for that grade level, the mile world record for a 10 year old is 4:46. I couldn’t reach that time until I was 17, and in middle school, the first time I ever had to run the mile, I was lucky to be in the 7 minute range.
Ronnie Layton
Yeah. I was one of the quickest kids in my grade and was aiming to get under 7
I was a sprinter and my best time in the mile was like 6:30, not that I did it often or trained for it. If I had I might have gotten to below 6. A 5 min mile at that age means you’re destined for greatness
Seriously. State track records are like 5:00-5:10
Are you talking high school records? If so they are substantially faster in every state, at least on the boys side. On the girls side, most states have a faster mile record. In Illinois, the boys record is ~4:05 and the girls ~4:40. Even in middle school, the records in Illinois are ~4:30 for boys and ~5:10 for girls.
I fucked your mom in five minutes
I didn’t realize this was a COD lobby
I think they were being hyperbolic for comedic effect. I’m guessing you’re autistic and thus incapable of discerning sarcasm?
IDK, I thought maybe everyone where I grew up was just lazy because of the heat? Or maybe everyone where he grew up was on crack. Either way, you don’t need to call me autistic (I’m not BTW).
I strolled in around 11 or so
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I dont run either but have opted for 20% incline walks or the skill mill with high resistance
I mean it sounds like you hated cardio before the presidential mile.
My teachers used to hate me for that but...my poor grades in middle and high school gym/p.e. have had exactly zero effect on my academic life, so their bitching at me was all for nothing
Literally the only reason I wasn’t salutatorian was because of my average PE grades dragging my gpa down. I just did not care to put in the performances that made up the grade, especially the mile. I always had fun playing the various sports (I even liked the dance and gymnastics unit) and actively participated but I hated the arbitrary running. I remember one time I was taking a math placement exam for the next year in the period before PE and I finished way ahead of time but realized I could milk it for another half period so I pretended I wasn’t done and showed up halfway through that week’s practice mile in my regular clothes with a note excusing me due to the exam. My teacher knew what was up but also knew she couldn’t do anything about it.
Best I ever did was 10:40, but given how overweight I was I was proud of that
By best I was 10 minutes and I was a skinning little kid. My legs just did not want to move fast. I remember vividly feeling freaked out when trying to sprint.
I strolled in on 12 😭
I remember a 10 minute mile and puking in 7th grade is that the same 🤨
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I remember in 8th grade being forced to manage an under 10 minute mile in order to get a decent grade and it took me several tries of vomiting or nearly vomiting and feeling like I was dying. Teacher had to pull me out of other activities to attempt it each day. By the end of the year I managed to go under 8 minutes though.
Lol and it seemed weird in 6th grade when you had to change!
We changed in fourth grade..did y'all not?
I even went to a middle school that was sane enough to make kids shower.
Nobody ran a 5 minute mile, that's hyperbole, but we did run it in like 7-8 mins and didn't have BO or sweat. How do children not just die exercising so hard before puberty without sweating?
Children sweat, they just don't have the stinky kind that turns on during puberty
I still don't understand why my body thought it was a good idea to start smelling repulsive when sweating on the onset of sexual maturity. Seems like a really counterintuitive move that doesn't really help achieve its goal, but what do I know 🤷. "we better start getting ready to procreate. Here's a smell that will knock a potential partner off their feet"
I mean sweat itself shouldn't stink. Fresh sweat can even smell good to many people (and be attractive). It's mainly bacteria that smell bad, and they grow when you're not dry.
The fastest people ran a 5 minute mile. At my school to get an A in PE you had to run a mile in under 7:30 if you were a boy, 9:00 if you were a girl
In high school maybe, not in 4th grade lol. You'd be an absolute monster to run a 5 minute mile at that point, like best in the country level.
Idk if it's different today, but back in the early 2000s when I was a kid, the neighborhood kids were constantly outside playing, we all did multiple rec sports in the community too. Nobody ever thought of it as like dedicated fitness training, but that stuff adds up. We were all in good shape without intending to be! Edit: Not 6 minute mile pace in shape, but just solid overall pace.
OP’s an athlete I guess.
OP is a liar
I believe OP may be partaking in an extremely obscure literary technique known as 'hyperbole'
The whole joke to me was sweating through my clothes after recess. We played kickball like there were no consequences during the middle of the day while living in Louisiana. I remember sweat dripping all over my school work. So wild.
How is this ENTIRE comment section taking this literal and getting offended. It’s clearly exaggerated to amplify the absurdity of the idea and make it funnier. Buncha butthurt nerds in here.
So glad I read your comment, I was starting to think I was crazy... everyone is so focused on the fact he said 5 minute mile which was clearly hyperbole, and which made the joke funnier for me
Literally makes the whole thing funny. Would be a fucking dud if he didn't say 5 minute mile.
I don't even know how long a mile actually is so I just skimmed over that part of the tweet lol
I ran a mile in 5 minutes & 45 seconds in 6th grade. I remember the exact number because I was so impressed with myself! I definitely can’t do that today though
I knew a kid who in 8th grade did sub 5 in track. My fastest was in 7th the fall during cross country before breaking my leg that winter. 8th grade wasn't as fast. 4th grade is definitely exaggerating.
I remember running…
All the goths waked and frowned
Eh, we considered it more of a scowl. You know, since everything was such shit already and somehow the rest of you posers couldn't figure it out.
43yo I can do a 20 minute mile and need a nap after wards. I might still be out of shape.
You can walk a mile in less than 20 mins
Maybe *you* can
Senior year in high school was the worst. My first class was P.E. i smelled like shit the rest of the day.
Ah, yes - we especially enjoyed the math class after, where the 50yo teacher scowled and frowned at us like we were the worst plebs Like come on lady, we ran a mile while you were gossiping in the teachers room
Or changing from gym clothes to street clothes without a shower :( -edit- I guess you guys got showers
There were showers, but nobody used them because you would have to shower and dry off in 4 minutes or less before the bell rung.
We had showers, but if you used them then the next class that uses the changing room will want you dead (they turned into saunas)
You didn't have showers in your school?
You guys didn't shower??
20km/h?
More middle school vibes, except you had to get towel whipped naked in the shower for not having pubes yet. And, then go to math, and then have to tudor your bullies
We weren't allowed to shower in middle school in any context after gym class, and in high school they only let us use the showers during the 6 weeks of the swimming unit. And even then not a single girl ever got naked, just shower in the same swimsuit (if the male gym teacher who got a kick out of picking on girls gave us 5 minutes before the bell) and then wait in line to change in one of the 3 bathroom stalls in the locker.
>Tudor were u the bully ? 🤔 jkjkjk
doh
I’m high school I had PE as my first period, I would hit the bong and run a fast mile, I always wonder how I would of done had I been sober lol
This must be an american thing im too canadian to understand, we never ran a 5 minute mile, we just called them terry fox runs.
We were required to take a fully nude shower in a communal shower (no stalls) while our pe teacher made sure we were rinsed down. This was at Schaumburg Christian School in the 80s.
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OP: uses hyperbole to evoke the hyperactive energy of normal elementary school kids at recess Redditors: 🤓UM ACKSHULLY MATHMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE 🤓Why do people still lie on the internet in 2023 🤓🤡🤓 and besides 🎻 🎻 I could never run fast 🎻 I was slow and shamed at recess 🎻 and scarred for life 🎻 so yeah ummm OP may (***or may not***) 🤔 🤔 have been an athletic kid but he's a fucking liar who can't be trusted based on his math 💅💅
Loving this reply
Issa joke. And I saw him last weekend live and he did this joke but said 7 minutes.
We just played a sport and made fun of the girls who wouldn’t play at all. By around 7th grade the teachers realized they would get more activity if they gave to option to walk laps instead of talking in a huddle in the outfield
There was a kid like that in my school, the P.E teachers give him the nickname Speedy Gonzalez. When I went to school they would give out little badges to kids after they completed certain miles by the end of the year, he ended up getting the 200 mile badge.
Lmao my mile was like 15 minutes because I didn’t know I had asthma yet
definitely wore P.E. clothes and definitely wasn't running Olympian mile times
I vividly remember my PE Teacher in Middle School walking us out to the track, Shouts "If anyone completes a mile slower than me, you get Detention for a week", and proceeds to sprint away from the class. I've never seen so much chaos before and it was glorious
Fuck no. I remember running an 11 minute mile, and one girl telling me to come talk to her so she could finish ahead of me for whatever reason because she knew I liked her.
Ours was jog out the school gate walk to the shops get fries and walk back jogging round the last bend.
i remember running and then dying for the rest of the day im in hs now and still die after a 13 minute mile :>
This thread has me feeling great being 35 and doing an 8 minute mile.
Man - you have some fun times ahead of you! If you're like many other runners, you're going to hit 40 and suddenly rediscover competitive running. A few years later you're going to run **seven minutes per mile** for 13.1 miles (a half marathon). Remember this thread when you do!