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It's only ~10-12% for running events and once you get to anything other than 100 meters the numbers aren't things that are going to be intuitive to the average person. There aren't very many people that know how long a 1500m race takes to run off the top of their heads.
This isn't to defend the author's studied obliviousness to easily observed realities, just saying that I bet most people would have no idea if a 10K time was fast or slow from a quick look at the corner of the screen.
Where would you put the threshold for "fast" or "slow"? I run a fair amount, and while I'm definitely not "fast" by my own definition, I have won a race or two when it's a low-key park run or such. I suppose compared to the average American I'm "fast", but my personal mark is "the Boston qualifying time" which continues to be slightly out of reach.
I mean, in the context of the Olympics, it's a high bar. I guess these days it's sub-27 for men and sub-30 for women for it to be considered a fast race.
In general conversation, I would probably call someone "fast" if they could go sub-35. I suspect that my definition works pretty much the same as yours though - that's "fast" because it's faster than me rather than it being relative to a given percentage of the population. For reference, I haven't run a 10K in a couple years, but split the first 10K of my last half marathon at 38 minutes and continued at the same pace for the rest of the race (on a fairly hill course). Other recent race results suggest that I'd run 36-low on a good day on a fast course or track. I'd probably agree that the most common spot for people in the hobby running community to start calling someone "fast" is BQ or equivalent speeds at shorter distances - sub-18 5K, sub-38 10K, sub-3 marathon are probably pretty common numbers.
To be a bit corny, I don't like to call people slow as long as they're trying. It's all so relative, we're all working towards goals, and I'm behind too many people by too much to feel good about calling other people slow. That said, if someone demanded that I tell them whether I think they're slow, I'd probably say that a healthy young male that can't crack 50 minutes is slow.
For all numbers adjust by ~11-12% for women.
Good luck on getting a BQ!
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