I have no talent?

Have you considered the idea that you might be overtraining? your muscles need to rest to get stronger. Specially at your age where you are still growing. You need to let your muscles recover from the workouts and gain strength

I hope that you love running and are not consumed by it. It's hard to give an answer to you without knowing you but you sound like you have talent. Maybe you are a strength runner who is better at longer distances than what high school offers. Don't let the stress get you down. Make sure you have fun with running and maybe really go for it hard when racing. Be proud of your accomplishments.

Good chance you need to get some new parents. Genetics plays a big role, but many here like to act like hard work can make anyone a superstar.

My son showed up at JV tryouts two years ago with no talent, ran a 6:07 in the 1600m and got cut.

Two years later he finished 10th grade with a 4:19 1600 & a 9:31 3200.

You will get out of it what you put in to it

You've got step one down....you're doing it.

My advice for step two? Make sure it stays fun for you.

Good luck.

800girl,

I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but it's not that you don't have talent. You just don't have the same level of talent as those other girls who are are now beating you. As runners we all like to think that time on task brings predicted results, but this is simply just not true. If it WERE true, then any of us could just join an elite Kenyan group and eventually be as fast as they are.

Running as much as you have and training as you have (as long as you don't over train) will get you to as good as YOU can be, but it does not guarantee you will beat others who train as much or even much less than you. I see it all the time...super dedicated high school kids with big dreams who run a ton all summer, do everything they are supposed to do and then they moderately improve while a kid who is dripping with talent comes in after doing nothing all summer and is killing the hard worker within a couple weeks.

To give you some hope however, being able to hang with others during intervals means only that you are good at short practice stuff. The ONLY thing that matters is what happens on race day. If they beat you in the 5,000, then they are better than you at 5,000. If not, even if they kill you in practice, then they are not.

All you can do it to keep training. Maybe you will move up, but we are ALL limited by our inherent talent.

If you have been anemic before, you should get that checked out. If you can stick on road runs, anemia doesn't sound like the problem but, get it checked out now before you don't have time to do anything about it.

This summer did you train to get ready to do cross country or just run a lot? If you train to get ready for cross country and do a Summer of Malmo, you would have started some easy interval and tempo work July 1. Most likely, if you just ran a lot, you are going to have to wait until the intervals and tempos you are doing now have time to build your ability to run fast.

Stick with it, it takes time for all the different types of training to come together and make you faster.

I would say that we, or 800girl, don't have enough information to know if she doesn't have as much talent as her teammates. Maybe her teammates are more fresh now because they took some time off in the summer and 800girlis a little fatigued because she has been training harder. It is important to remember that it is August and that unless you are an Olympian, your important races are not in August.

The odds highly favor that there is only one girl on the OP's team that has enough more talent than she does for it to make such a difference at their level.

The rest of the difference is in how much each type of training helps an individual and how much training they have done in the past. One summer of good training is not enough to catch 2 or 3 years of pretty good training.

You do have talent. You just need to find the right way to train it. Doing other girl's training isn't the way. I don't know what is the right way for you as I don't know you, but don't fall into tha pit of self doubt. And beware, lots of poster here will want to push you into that pit.

I agree, don't doubt the work you put in, it WAS worth it, and wait till a long run, and your team mates can't keep up, that is strength they don't have. Being about to do 800 reps faster, does not mean they will be faster come a hilly 5k, where strength is only gained by the miles you put in over the summer.

I always take a few weeks to adjust to intervals after a long base phase, but always find that building a base pays during tempos and at the end of races, having that a aerobic capacity will pay off.

And I also think its important to run hard in workouts, but do NOT race them...workouts are not races, they should be done at specific paces with specific rests for a specific type of training. If you die at the end, you loose some value to the workout...

Sesamoiditis wrote:

Maybe her teammates are more fresh now because they took some time off in the summer and 800girlis a little fatigued because she has been training harder.

Wishful thinking. For high school kids, running 6 miles a day in June and then 6-10 miles a day in July and August (6 days a week) absolutely prepares them for the upcoming season and should not wear a kid down...especially if they do 2 UP weeks and then step back a week. If she has trained all summer and some girls who didn't are suddenly beating her (again, as I said, it only matters if they beat her in meets), then they have more talent than she does. SOMETIMES those who do that ramp up too quickly and find themselves injured and unable to complete the season.

You Letsrun crowd are a funny lot...it seems whenever there's a question about talent, easily 75% of you are unwilling to accept limits when it is clear that they exist.

Not all runners have the same talent level, and it varies greatly. Time on task or smartness on task does not guarantee results.

Get mastered more often. Athletic performance and overall well-being are always improved by a healthy sex life.

Of course talent varies greatly. The problem is that in most high schools there are fewer than 1000 guys or girls. A population of 1000 is not big enough to have more than one or two that have enough talent to overcome time or "smartness".

It is similar to why you don't understand enough math to get this idea. For example read:

http://qz.com/139453/theres-one-key-difference-between-kids-who-excel-at-math-and-those-who-dont/

ol cm9-8 wrote:

Of course talent varies greatly. The problem is that in most high schools there are fewer than 1000 guys or girls. A population of 1000 is not big enough to have more than one or two that have enough talent to overcome time or "smartness".

It is similar to why you don't understand enough math to get this idea. For example read:

http://qz.com/139453/theres-one-key-difference-between-kids-who-excel-at-math-and-those-who-dont/

Two VERY different things. Learning for MOST decently smart people is almost unlimited and you benefit from time on task.

Running runs into the Law of Diminishing Returns. Most people are WAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYY more limited physically (running) than we are intellectually.

And, you are wrong about such a few people being able to overcome the time or "smartness" of other RUNNERS. There's a freshman boy on my son's HS team who ran every single day all summer beginning the last week of May. He's not fat, he doesn't have a physical handicap, he's just not talented. He ran more than easily more than half the team of 45 runners, and he's the next to last worst runner on the team and ran 26:something at the last meet, and there are SEVERAL on the team who didn't show up until mandatory practice on Aug. 1 and even more who decided very late (i.e. first day of school) that they would like to run cross country, and with one week of training they ALL beat him.

I have seen that kind of thing in varying degress a LOT. Some kids are even hugely motivated, train all season, eat right, buy the right shoes, talk about being great and then run 24:00 for 5k. Not everyone who puts in the time will be good.

"Learning for MOST decently smart people is almost unlimited and you benefit from time on task."

Is also "Running for MOST people is almost unlimited " that doesn't mean they all start in the same place and can improve the same amount or that everyone can run 18:00 or whaterver if they try hard enough.

The difference is that learning provides almost immediate feedback and success that you can't lose. Each time you study, you know what you learned and you don't have to do it again very often, if ever. Running provides almost no feedback and if you are overtraining, more time actually slows you down. So running is takes more perseverance to improve with imperfect training than with poor teaching.

The question, I think, is how you define MOST. Certainly most is more than 50% and less than 90% but how many exactly I don't know. I was emailing with a HS coach the other day. She said she had several guys on her team that had kind of trained all summer and couldn't break 30:00 so your 26:XX kid may have not trained correctly for him but he is not in the bottom 10% that has no hope. The OP, who can stay with the team on the road but not on the intervals, I say is in the top 50% and can have a very nice HS running career.

800girl, trust me you are not the first runner to have a negative response to this kind of training. It does not mean that training is not working, but that you are having a different initial reaction to these specific types of workouts compared to some of your teammates. Give it some time. You know what times you need to run in your actual races and races are run in continuous 3mi./5k , not intervals. Trust the work that you have been doing diligently this summer. The mileage will pay off big, especially at the end of season. It doesn't really matter how well you run intervals, 400 reps or have 30 sec. 200 m speed, if you can't hold a good pace for 3 mi. Keep up the solid work! I love a runner who is not afraid to put in the work.

Don't worry about talent or mental toughness. I thought I had neither as well. Then, I started taking my training seriously, running twice a day and I shaved minutes off my 5k time.

ol cm9-8 wrote:

The OP, who can stay with the team on the road but not on the intervals, I say is in the top 50% and can have a very nice HS running career.

That is not at issue. I didn't answer that question. The question was is the OP less talented than the others on the team who have surpassed her, and the answer is YES.

Now, could the OP be the rare person whose talent isn't unlocked unless doing 140 MPW? Maybe. That is exceedingly rare though and not likely.

Also, could the OP have over trained (yes, but it doesn't sound like it), or could the OP be in the beginning stages of a disease which is causing this plateau (yes, but again, not likely)? The MOST LIKELY scenario and by a wide margin is that those who are now running better are simply more talented. Again though, as I've already said, intervals in practice are intervals in practice. The real test is race day. She gets beaten on race day by those who are much less trained than her, then they simply have more talent.

Except that it's not clear that limits exist. Especially in this case because we don't really know much about this girl and her friends' circumstances. There's not enough info.

But go ahead and keep trolling or being ignorant.