READY
READY
Twelve minutes is the Cooper test. Kenneth Cooper designed it for the United States Air Force in 1968: run as far as you can in twelve minutes, and the distance maps onto an estimate of aerobic fitness closely enough that armies and schools still use it half a century later.
Outside that it is a serious finisher at the end of a session, the length of a decent podcast segment, and about as long as a pan of onions needs to actually soften rather than merely turn translucent.
The tip, if you are running it: the Cooper test rewards an even pace and punishes a fast opening lap harder than almost any other test. Pick a pace you believe you can hold for the whole twelve and then start slower than that. Nearly everyone goes out too hard and loses more in the last four minutes than they gained in the first two.
Start it with the button or the space bar. If you want to measure the run rather than bound it, the stopwatch is the other side of the same coin.
It depends entirely on age and sex, and the published tables are the only sensible answer. The useful comparison is against your own previous attempt on the same surface.
A countdown, because the twelve minutes are fixed and the distance is the result. Use the stopwatch when the distance is fixed and the time is what you are measuring.
Yes. The end is stored as a real clock time, so a locked screen or a backgrounded browser does not slow it down, and the alarm sounds when the twelve are up.