What are some indicators that a person is untalented, talented and a potential elite?

I can see no one gets logic. Not all of these can be true...

Talent never goes away. But it change due to you get older.

Yes. It becomes the same as untalented people.

Every fit guy on my xc team in hs who actually really cared about getting better was able to break 5 in the mile. And I really became shocked when the fat kid on our team got fit enough to break 5 in the mile and 18 in the 5k honestly one of the most impressive things I've seen.

I still comb through my old hs results to understand how people's progressions were. Noticing so many freshman guys who would quit after running a 5:30 mile and a 22:00 5k, and you realize you can basically get any freshman hs guy there. Look at how many fast high schoolers California produces. They have so many sub 16 guys that don't even make states, I think they have a section where they have 15:30 guys who miss states.

I say this to say it's actually shocking how far you can take a runner with the right training in hs. The fastest guy in my state currently couldn't even break 10 when he was in hs and he actually went to a good running high school. Boom now he's a 13:40 guy NCAA XC qualifier. Lol my state has had numerous guys with really crazy talent, to see a random who doesn't look athletic dropping some of the fastest times in state history is head scratching. And I would argue those guys were definitely more talented, but their bodies couldn't hold up to the training.

I mean look at our current distance goats Fisher and Hocker. Man out of the crazy guys we had for years, this ended up being the cream of the crop. Not Alan Webb, Not German Fernandez, and not Lukas Verzbicas. In a perfect world where only talent matters they're the kings. Hocker and Fisher have something else beyond just talent and it's durability.

Talented I would say are high school boys who run low to mid 15s for 5k with less than 50mpw of training.

Potential elites are the people contending for state/national championships who still have potential to develop more (e.g. based on personality with regards to training and being competitive, not being someone who develops quickly than plateaus).

I think talent gets you to your full potential more quickly. I think time and effort get you there eventually, if you use enough of both. Sub-elite and elite are matters of how high your potential goes.

So, if your best 5k is 23 minutes, but you can get there by jogging ten miles a week, then you are slow and talented. If your 5k PR is under 15, and you got there without doing any workouts, you're also talented. The first runner will never be sub-elite, while the second already is.

Not limited to talent. The athletes need INTRINSIC MOTIVATION vs EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION.

Intrinsic motivation means the athlete WANTS SUCCESS more than anyone. A coach or teammate can spot the talent but can't drag them through workouts.

That's correct. For example there are around 20 genes known to impact V02 max. They can come together to give high-baseline (natural talent)/high response; high-baseline/low response; low-baseline/high-response (a Jim Ryun type); or low-baseline/low-response, or graduations between those extremes...

For a 10:00 runner to improve to 13:40, he would have had to have left the couch only on race days. Otherwise, there’s no way for someone to improve from 5:00 pace to 4:24 for 5000m. Even 9:00 guys rarely go on to run 13:40. There’s a myth on LR that with training, a very mediocre runner can become close to being an All-American in XC in college, but training does not change genetics and I have never seen someone in Sacramento area pull off the feat you described. 10:00 guys don’t even compete in college.

Verzbacis suffered a career ending cycling accident at age 18 and Webb set a mile AR. No elite runner is mentally tougher than other elites. Pre fancied himself to be tougher than other runners, but it didn’t help him when he competed internationally.

first off, i think you're completely wrong suggesting 20-ish is like the 50th percentile of HS age kids. have you ever seen a PE class? have you ever seen a turkey trot type 5k? the leading edge of a HS XC/TF team is the top fraction of a percent of the school. no one else can touch them. and if your 5th or 7th runner is vulnerable, it's most likely to someone in another sport who has recognized speed but hasn't run for a sport.

second, the flaw in your analysis is pretending like some future olympian isn't talented because they start out running 25. i think what y'all miss is a lot of the kids treated as obviously talented got themselves in basic sports fitness around when elementary school kicked over to junior high. a kid who either hasn't played a sport since tee-ball -- or never -- has to play catch up on basic fitness. that takes a bit.

i think the grinder assumption is given training people speed up. but the more average talent they are, not much. i know some adult onset runners who still run 5ks in the 30s even doing the odd training run. i think you're assuming that the training change works in and of itself. what XC did you run for? my experience x% of kids did a day, or a week, of it and quit. others did a season and barely improved. it was a slice of a team that stayed and improved. some dramatically. i think that distinction -- quit vs. plateaued vs. improved vs. rapid improvement -- is actually your raw talent showing up. some people if you scrape the rust off them -- that the rest of us lost playing U12 soccer or little league -- may be similarly talented. but i would think that's a limited percentage.

that being said, if you can manage southlake carroll type participation, you have more athletes to play as lottery tickets, which favors finding more talent in a larger pile. and if you have a fun or popular program, that may also buy you more time to find and chisel out talent.

vs. if you're one of these "standards" coaches, you are basically judging existing talent while calling it your coaching. the kid either shows up capable or not. you then take credit for how you have a lean team of nothing but fairly quick kids. yeah, anyone else got cut. the 25 minute future olympian got cut. because that project would have taken years and embarrassed you year 1......

to elaborate, the presidential fitness test used to have kids do a mile. i buy what the 50th percentile is for that. they had millions of kids do it and the middle sorts out around 9. so even your "slowpoke" 6 minute mile kid is actually above average.

i don't buy the "average" 5k times by age i have seen because i think that data is probably self selected. no one is made to run a 5k in class. you're taking a middle of self selected runners. i think most people could walk 3 miles but be unhappy and tired about it. i think if they were asked to run one, they couldn't finish it without walking a lot. 40 mins - 1 hour+. i think the times thrown around are like people who already jog enough to do a fun run. that's not average. average needs to include the people just off the couch, the 300 pounders, the slow, the smokers, and so on.

There’s no future olympian that started with a 25. I had coworkers that ran faster than that with zero training.

THIS.

It's not necessary that a runner has to run 55 for the 400 on the first day of HS track, but looking great while running a 60-second lap is a very good sign.

Small bones, looks healthy, 19-23 BMI, doesn't get winded easily, and has basic athletic poise and stride when running?

what else would it be

I’m with you. We can (and do) debate ad naseum about what times compared to training milage equals “talent” but I actually think looking at natural form is a more interesting/unique metric. Can any other coaches here weigh in on this notion? Have others noticed things about a runner’s natural form (regardless of their fitness) that can hint at their “talent” level?

'talented, untalented and elite' is gibberish.