Even people who start jogging not for competitive reasons but to get in better physical condition have concerns about their pace. Many of those who decide to train for a 5K race, for example, often have fears of finishing last in the field, especially if they have no high-school background in running or sports in general. In any case, it can be fun and illuminating for everyday joggers to compare their speed to the best in the world.
Shorter Distances
There is really no such things as a "normal" jogging speed, because running pace is a function of age, experience, race distance, motivation and more. However, you can get an idea of what the average person's pace is by consulting the results of a large race, such as the CIGNA 5K in Manchester, New Hampshire. In 2011, the race had over 5,000 finishers and the median time was 31 minutes, or 10 minutes per mile. In comparison, the world record for men as of August 2011 was 12:37 and that for women was 14:11.
Marathon Facts and Figures
During the 1980s and 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century, marathon running became much more popular than it was previously. According to the Running USA website, 2010 saw the number of finishers of U.S. marathons top 500,000 for the first time, compared to 143,000 in 1980. The average finishing time in this 26.2-mile event for men during this 30-year span rose from 3 hours, 32 minutes to 4 hours, 16 minutes, while the average time for women climbed from 4:03 to 4:42. With the large influx of more "ordinary" people, this suggests that the average man can run close to 11 minutes a mile and the average woman 12 minutes per mile in a marathon, given adequate training.
Boston Marathon
The Boston Marathon is the world's oldest annual marathon and is widely considered the "holy grail" for marathon runners of average ability. This is because of both its prestige and the fact that its qualifying standards vary by sex and age to limit the size of the entry field. As of 2011, the qualifying standard for men under 35 was 3 hours, 10 minutes, and that for women was 3 hours, 40 minutes. The world records were 2:03:29 and 2:15:17 respectively. Therefore, the Boston Marathon represents a race that features runners who are well above average in terms of speed, but need not come within 50 percent of world-class standards to gain entry.
Factors Determining Speed
According to the University of Texas at Austin, the three main factors determining jogging speed are maximal oxygen uptake, which is simply how much of the oxygen you breath in can be converted to useful jogging energy; lactate threshold, the fraction of your maximum speed you can run before you start accumulating lactic acid faster than your body can metabolize it; and running economy, which is a measure of how efficiently you jog, that is, how little energy is wasted through inefficiencies in form and stride. While all these factors can be improved through training, some people are clearly more genetically gifted than others.
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