Nordås "Track Is for people with talent, the talentless run marathons and half marathons.

Conversely, one could say that track is for those who can't handle the marathon.

It's pretty funny you chose Eliud Kipchoge, since one can't really say a man who beat Bekele and El Guerrouj on track is not very talented on track :D

Usually GOATs on track become GOATs on the marathon as well.

I didn't make my point clear. I picked the two because they are both exceptionally talented track runners, but at the marathon Kipchoge is much more talented, though Farah couldn't have run 2:05 without a great deal of talent. Kipchoge probably never could have run 3:28 for 1500m, but I figure you have to have a fair amount of talent to run 3:33. There is an overlap in their talents, which would probably mean they would have been fiercely competitive over 5000m and 10000m if their peaks had aligned, but Farah would have likely won every 1500 matchup, while Kipchoge would have won every marathon matchup.

This attitude assumes that any elite 5000 meter runner can find success at the Marathon distance whenever they want to at an elite level and we know that is not always true.

He forgot to add, nowadays track is for people with more support and which are not necessarily the most talented.

I would look at it this way:

Why do most runners move up in distance (and in particular I am talking about people who are highly competent)?

Often they feel they have maxed out at a distance, either in terms of speed/times or achievement, and want to translate what they can do to longer distances, in search of more success. Or, to put it another way, they have maxed out their talent at the shorter distances.

In this case, I think he simply believed he had maxed out at shorter distances ("lacked the talent") long before he really had, and with different coaching and training partners, he figured that out.

I think the term "talent" leads to some incorrect assumptions though. We could look at two high school teammates who run the event on the same training, and deem the faster one to be more "talented." (a 4:25 miler, compared to his 4:35 teammate, for example). We could then assume that faster runner will also be faster at longer and longer distances, and that simply is not necessarily true.

Kipchoge always has said when his talent (what made him special) on the track went away, he explored marathons.

I suspect what he means, is that it takes much less talent to gain entry into a world-class field on the roads. Sure, any major will have a few people around 2:03 or under, but plenty of people around 2:10-2:20. If you are not in the top 20 or 30 people in the world in your track event, you will have extreme difficulty getting into a diamond league or something of that caliber. He is not saying people who run roads are talent-less, he is saying world class competition on the track requires much more talent to gain entry.

You need to have talent to be able to handle the high training volume needed for marathon success.

Distance runners claiming to have no talent always come off as extremely egotistical. If you have no talent, all your success is due to hard work. In reality, the genetic lottery and things that happened without any effort on your part during childhood (like whether you started with sports at a young age) place a soft ceiling on your performance that would prevent most people from ever breaking 3 hours in the marathon, much less 2:10.

You sure about that? How many people have gone sub-13 versus sub-2:05? With all due respect to Klecker and Kincaid, I'll be damned if either goes sub-2:10 should they pursue the marathon.

You've made this point several times in this thread. And yes, you're absolutely right that running a good half-marathon or marathon requires a specific talent (call it "endurance") that is distinct from the talents required to run a good mile. Anyone who's truly "talentless," as Nordas puts it, will run a terrible marathon, as will most people who have enormous talent at shorter distances.

If Nordas truly believes that it requires no talent to run a good marathon, then he's an idiot. But I suspect he's using the word talent differently than you are. As a would-be miler, he's talking about the talent needed to run a mile. Is it true, as you suggest, that most people value that sort of talent more highly than the ability to grind out a good marathon? Of course.

Let's be honest. Why does anyone run the 200m? Because they couldn't win the 100m. Why does anyone run the 400m? Because they couldn't win the 200m. And so on up the ladder. Physiologically, there may be no reason to value speed over endurance. But socioculturally, almost every kid would rather be the fastest one on the playground than the one who can keep going the longest.

I'm a huge marathon fan, and love watching the Kipchoges of the world do what they do. But it doesn't bother me when people use the world "talent" to refer preferentially to speed. That's just the way we live.

Don’t really think that is what he means. He repeatedly cited his lack of 400 and below speed as the reason for why he considered himself untalented. Later he got into his projected 800 speed to describe himself as “slow.” Again, that is a pretty oversimplistic view of the whole thing, but he still believes it it appears. His views on the 800 are even more naive as he’s completely surprised himself in the 1500 and doesn’t consider that would apply to the 800 if he ever raced it.

You are correct that an assumption that a 5K runner can find success at the marathon whenever they want is not always true.

However, it is true far more than the opposite, a marathoner moving down to 5K.

The fact that many can move up in distance successfully and far fewer can move down in distance successfully is why many see those running shorter distances as more talented.

Many, apparently including Nordas, see excelling on the track as an option of their choosing and those excelling in marathons as their only option in most cases.

I doubt if they’re a single competitive distance runner or competent coach that doesn’t understand your 4:25 and 4:35 comparison. Just one interval workout or temp run will solve the mystery.

So when does that logic end?

Is Nordas still an untalented turd because thousands of highschoolers could beat his best performance in the 100m any day of the week?

It was said as a joke but I had an old school coach who would reply to distance runners crying that the sprinters did little work, "We'd all be sprinters if we could." Maybe there is something to that.

Quite a way between this and what the tread starter claims he said.

Yeah, at this point if someone starts a thread saying that anyone said anything interesting, I'm looking it up before I even think about having an opinion.

Another down side to not requiring registered names on here. You can't trust anyone to accurately portray anything.

there are always exceptions like your kiptums and kipchoges. but those with speed can always transition to longer distances in the future whereas the "talentless" will never be able to get that speed. the 15 hundo is the premier running (not sprinting) event, the perfect combo of speed and endurance. those sub 3:30 guys got the TALENT or the TALENT+PEDS who knows.