Good Mile Times by Age and Grade: Rate Your 1600m
September 19, 2026 路 8 min read
The real numbers first. Nobody publishes an official "average mile time by age", and the pages that print one are guessing. What IS published: section and state qualifying standards, a youth championship standard, and college recruiting ranges. Every row below is one of those, named and linked, and nothing in it is estimated. All times FAT. One catch belongs to this event alone: the mile, the 1600m and the 1500m are three different races, and each row says which one it is. The section after the tables shows how to move between them.
Rate your 1600m time. Type your time into the box on this page and see which college level it reaches, how far the next one is, and where it would sit on the live board. If the box is not showing, open the 1600m rating tool for boys or the girls version.
| Level (boys, FAT) | Time | Where the number comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Middle school championship level | 4:42.00 (1500m); 5:03.00 (1600m) | FLYRA 2026 Florida youth state championship qualifying standards (a middle school meet, not the FHSAA high school series); the 1600m standard is published but that distance is not contested at the state meet |
| Varsity: advancing from league finals | 4:30.64 to 4:50.14 (1600m) | CIF Southern Section 2026 minimum standards for 2nd and 3rd place at league finals, Division 1 4:30.64 to Division 4 4:50.14 |
| State-qualifier level | 4:16.70 to 4:25.97 (1600m); 3:55.06 to 4:18.35 (1500m) | CIF-SS 2026 at-large standards 4:16.70 (D1), 4:21.40 (D2), 4:20.79 (D3), 4:25.97 (D4); Oregon OSAA 2026 state standards, run over 1500m, 3:55.06 (6A) to 4:18.35 (2A) |
| College walk-on range | 4:10.00 to 4:47.00 (1600m) | Published D3 (4:15.00 to 4:37.00) and NAIA (4:10.00 to 4:47.00) recruiting ranges |
| College scholarship range | 4:05.00 to 4:22.00 (1600m) | Published D1 and D2 ranges, D1 4:05.00 to 4:20.00 and D2 4:06.00 to 4:22.00 |
| Level (girls, FAT) | Time | Where the number comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Middle school championship level | 5:23.00 (1500m); 5:47.00 (1600m) | FLYRA 2026 Florida youth state championship qualifying standards (a middle school meet, not the FHSAA high school series); the 1600m standard is published but that distance is not contested at the state meet |
| Varsity: advancing from league finals | 5:23.14 to 5:51.14 (1600m) | CIF Southern Section 2026 minimum standards for 2nd and 3rd place at league finals, Division 1 5:23.14 to Division 4 5:51.14 |
| State-qualifier level | 5:02.55 to 5:19.43 (1600m); 4:32.92 to 5:09.62 (1500m) | CIF-SS 2026 at-large standards 5:02.55 (D1), 5:09.53 (D2), 5:10.60 (D3), 5:19.43 (D4); Oregon OSAA 2026 state standards, run over 1500m, 4:32.92 (6A) to 5:09.62 (1A) |
| College walk-on range | 4:53.00 to 6:05.00 (1600m) | Published D3 (4:53.00 to 5:38.00) and NAIA (4:55.00 to 6:05.00) recruiting ranges |
| College scholarship range | 4:32.00 to 5:36.00 (1600m) | Published D1 and D2 ranges, D1 4:32.00 to 5:02.00 and D2 4:46.00 to 5:36.00 |
The college ranges are the ones on this site's standards pages, transcribed from Streamline Athletes' published recruitment standards and cross-checked against Fast Track Recruiting, last checked on 12 August 2026. They are published as 1600m standards.
Why there is no official table
An average mile time for, say, a 15 year old girl would need the times of a representative sample of 15 year old girls, and no such sample exists. High school results sit in fifty state association systems and a few commercial databases, and every one of them only holds athletes who raced in a scored meet. The kids who ran a timed mile in PE and never raced again are not in any of them, and neither are most of the back of a JV heat. An "average" built from meet results is the average of athletes who race, a much faster group than kids of that age. Age is also a weak yardstick at exactly the ages people search for: a 15 year old can be a freshman or a sophomore, and at this distance the gap between an athlete in a second season of real training and one in a first is bigger than a year of age.
The mile, the 1600m and the 1500m are three races
Most US high school meets run 1600 meters, four laps of a 400m track. Oregon runs the 1500m at its state meet, which is why the Oregon rows above are 1500m times. The NCAA and World Athletics contest the 1500m. The full mile, 1609.344 meters, survives indoors and at invitationals. When you compare your time with a standard, check which distance the standard is for before you check the number.
The distances convert on their ratio, and the site's converters use these exact factors:
- A 1600m is 9.344 meters short of a mile. Multiply a 1600m time by 1.00584 for the mile: a 4:30.00 1600m is a 4:31.58 mile. That is the 1600m to mile converter.
- A 1500m is 109.344 meters short of a mile. Multiply by 1.07290 for the mile: a 4:00.00 1500m is a 4:17.50 mile. That is the 1500m to mile converter.
- To put a 1500m next to a 1600m, multiply by 1.0667, the ratio of the two distances. Oregon's 6A boys standard of 3:55.06 is worth about 4:10.7 over 1600m, which lands it inside the California at-large band above rather than ahead of it.
Meet seeding uses the same ratios, so a 1500m time entered for a 1600m race is converted the same way.
Hand timing at the mile
Every standard above is fully automatic timing. If yours came off a stopwatch, the two published conversion conventions disagree at this distance. The NFHS rule adds 0.24 seconds at every distance, the mile included. The Track and Field News convention that Athletic.net seeds on rounds a hand time up to the next tenth and adds nothing from 800 meters up. A hand-timed 4:41.9 is a 4:42.14 under NFHS and a 4:41.90 under the Athletic.net rule. Ask which one the meet you are comparing against uses, or run both through the hand time to FAT converter and quote the slower one. The hand timing guide has the reasoning behind both rules.
How to use that if you are 13, 14 or 15
You are not being measured against those numbers yet, and you should not be. Use them as a horizon.
Work out the gap, not the grade. A 14 year old boy at 5:20 for the 1600m is 17 seconds from the FLYRA middle school 1600m standard at 5:03.00, and the CIF-SS Division 4 league-finals minimum at 4:50.14 is the band after that. Those are targets measured in seconds, which is a more useful fact than "the average 14 year old runs X".
Track your own progression. Improvement across seasons is the strongest recruiting signal a young miler has, and this distance rewards training age more than the sprints do. The mile progression by age tool takes a time at 13, 14 or 15 and shows what the same age-graded level is worth at 17 and 18 on the published World Masters Athletics curve. Its own worked example: a boys' 5:20.00 mile at 14 projects to 5:00.84 at 18, and a girls' 6:05.00 mile at 14 projects to 5:47.51 at 18. The 1500m version does the same for Oregon runners.
Race it with real timing before you compare anything. A hand-timed time trial on a training day tells a coach very little. A fully automatic 1600m from a scored meet, with the lap splits, tells them almost everything.
What a coach actually sees
A coach reads a mile by its laps before its total. A 4:40 run 68, 70, 72, 70 is a race that was paced and closed. A 4:40 run 64, 70, 76, 70 is a race that went out too hard and survived. The results sheet shows the same number for both, and the film shows the difference, which is why a coach would rather see your race than read it in an email.
Next to the time, a coach wants the timing method, the meet and the distance actually run. A number on its own is a claim; a race with the conditions attached is evidence. That is what every reel on TrackReels carries: the event, the mark, the date and the timing method, so a coach can judge the race as well as the row. On this site a boys' 1600m under 4:16 and a girls' under 5:00 also earn the Sub-4:16 Club and Sub-5:00 Club milestone badges, which sit on the profile next to the mark.
Create a free profile, post your 1600m, and see where it lands on the boys or girls board. Then check the next band on the boys or girls standards page.
A better question than "is this good for my age"
Ask "what is the next band, and what does it want". Then you have a target rather than a verdict. Type any time into the 1600m rating tool and it places the time on the college ladder, measures the gap to the next range, and shows where it would sit on the live board. Half-milers moving up will find the 800m guide built the same way.