There have been a lot of discussions on this over the years. There is no real consensus but generally it seems like someone untalented could probably get around 15/31 by going all in on training and lifestyle through hs, college, and post collegiately. Yes, that wouldn't even be fast enough to walk on a lot of teams. For this to be worthwhile, an individual would have to be motivated by personal improvement, not placings.
But this individual can probably walk on some d2, naia, and d3 teams. Chances are they pursued running either because its fun or they suck at the ball sports. In the latter category, they won't even be good enough to walk on d3 soccer, football, etc. Up to you whether you want to be a college athlete or just a guy who goes to the gym most days and runs the turkey trot.
These individual usually get better as the distance goes up. They can probably get down to low 2:20s in the marathon and around 107 in the half. Those times might make this individual the top runner in their club.
Here is another brutal truth: Due to our modern lifestyle, people have to exercise to stay healthy. Might as well channel that exercise into distance running if you find it fun or aren't talented at anything else.
The sooner you check the ego - and stifle the need to be the absolute best, the sooner you can focus on personal improvement. Pr'ing and beating yourself (plus as many people as you can). is fun. Being sad because you can't run a 3:55 mile and walk on at Oregon is not.
I see similar comments such as yours all the time, but the guys in ball sports suck at distance running and most of them are also limited to one sport. They have the same fraction of a percent chance of becoming a pro, so what’s the difference? Most runners can accept the concept that they’ll never run a 3:55, especially if they don’t have the the necessary 50 400m speed. Were you sad because you didn’t run 3:55 during college?
In regard to your brutal truth, the vast majority of Americans get no exercise at all.
Was I sad I didn't run 3:55? Not really. I was kind of sad that I didn't run slower times that I thought were within my abilities, but life goes on.
The vast number of people get no exercise, true - but do you want to be Joe Everybody who deals with health problems starting in his 30s. There should probably be some baseline between top collegiate runner level and guy who can't run a 5k.
Far too many kids are mismanaged in high school in my humble opinion. How many kids because they can run a 49 400 are treated as sprinters when they are actually milers with good speed, who could have run that 4:15 you talking about?
It's reasonable to assume that there are many athletes across the whole spectrum of ball sports that can naturally run :49. ...And that kind of natural speed is also presumed to categorize that athlete as "fast" within their sport and therefore a "sprinter" type. But just like thousands of good athletes out there doing ball sports, they never try t&f or if they do they never get steered toward the mile or even the 800. There are probably 1000s of HS athletes in ball sports that would be very successful as D1 t&f mid d or distance athletes. Talent matters the most but absolutely guarantee that the most talented runners never find it through xc or t&f.
In HS talented athletes can dominate. But, in college, it depends on how talented. And, yes, size does matter in some situations. Jim Brown was very big and strong, and..fast. If you are avaerage size and talented, and you work hard all day, you're still not beating a guy like that.
I can only assume the OP is only talking about LDR.
Far too many kids are mismanaged in high school in my humble opinion. How many kids because they can run a 49 400 are treated as sprinters when they are actually milers with good speed, who could have run that 4:15 you talking about?
Guys are going to do what they’re good at and are likely to make that determination long before college. Obviously your miler masquerading as a sprinter, would be embarrassed in the 100/200m. Absolutely no one has 100m-mile range. I don’t believe athletes and coaches are the idiots you think they are.
i think the existence of XC with 7 scorers and perhaps a deeper varsity than that, skews this talent-hard work discussion. in sprinting or jumping we would see it as heavy duty talent leaning. a 100m final tends to be the fastest kids from the school, who were the fastest from the school before that, on back to elementary.
if people were honest, the really fast milers are pretty much the same. the dude chasing d1 with times in the low 4s is the dude who broke 5 in your junior high, rewrote the school record book, had endurance in elementary school.
the 7th fastest sprinter in your school is an ok kid on JV or maybe a jumper specialist on varsity. the 7th fastest distance runner is varsity XC. it's that distinction where i think "hard work" arguments sneak in the back door.
i also think distance runners conflate being fit enough to express their talent, with the results being about hard work. if my select team ties week 1 because we ease into the season, then we start destroying teams once we're fit, i think that's talent. if my d3 soccer team beats a d2 in preseason, because the coach runs us a lot in the summer, that's hard work. we can conflate the two as hard work mattering, but it's really that talent still needs to get in shape. you get them equally in shape, my select kick and the d2 team kick the hard workers' butts.
At the d1 collegiate level you will not get ANYWHERE half decent in distance without talent. Sometimes I find it nearly sad when I view others trainings, some can try so hard and just get no where. So many runners will be doing 80+ MPW to get 100th at a conference cross country race, that’s not even getting started on the mile-3K. If you didn’t run sub 4:15 in HS. Unless you are an extremely rare case good luck ever getting near sub 4. It’s understandable why coaches recruit internationally. Coaches know this and there simply just isn’t enough talent alone in the US to recruit and make a successful team. (unless you are 25 year olds attending BYU.)
The US should develop its own. Of course not everyone has the talent to be at the top. They can still enjoy working out and competing. Let other countries develop their own. Your thinly disguised advert for allowing ever more over age foreign athletes in is bunk. As much bunk as your predictable, roundabout attack on BYU, right Morty? Oy vey…
They all became D1 runners. A good number of them earned scholarships and got the opportunity to compete and have the camaraderie of the team. They’ve all experienced the joy of performing at a level few people ever encounter. The vast majority have pursued running careers in a way that built resilience and fostered habits that can serve them well incredibly throughout their lives.
That might not match Olympic glory, but you can build a fantastic life from that foundation, even for those dealt the abysmal genetic hand of 99th percentile talent instead of 99.9999th.
Far too many kids are mismanaged in high school in my humble opinion. How many kids because they can run a 49 400 are treated as sprinters when they are actually milers with good speed, who could have run that 4:15 you talking about?
Lots of HS guys that can run 49 are treated like sprinters because those guys refuse to run the 800 or mile. They would rather be a crappy 200m sprinter and a good 400m runner than move up.
You just have to find the right training group at the right age and do preventive exercises for injuries. I improved tremendously just by running high mileage for a few years and then joining an informal training group with a post-collegiate high D1 guy and his friends, who had run in major conferences as well, and I was already in my 40s at the time.
But even if you're "talented" you're still only going to be a footnote in running history.
So what does it matter?
I’d like to point out that running history is a microscopic footnote in all of history. Like Pheidippides and that running is something people did for exercise and sometimes sport is all that’ll be known in a 1000 years (and Pheidippides only because of all the art, sculptures). So in that sense all of this should only be done if you enjoy it, you’re doing it for health reasons, etc. and nothing external.
Lots of HS guys that can run 49 are treated like sprinters because those guys refuse to run the 800 or mile. They would rather be a crappy 200m sprinter and a good 400m runner than move up.
this is nonsense
yes sprinting is more fun than distance
but WINNING is far more fun than being a mid sprinter. you can easily motivate a 23/49 kid to move up by saying hey do you want to go to nationals? do you want a d1 scholarship? the kid only becomes unmotivated when they find out that was never actually on the table.
yes nearly every 800m superstar is a “failed 400m runner” but that does not mean every failed 400m runner is a secret superstar distance runner. the experiment is always tried and fails far more often than it works.
the transition is not difficult. you don’t need to run 100mpw for 3 years to achieve your potential in the 800m. you dont even really need to run at all.
the 49 kid who goes on to run 1:46 still ran like 1:54 in the 800m off of zero distance training
can you get the 49 kid who runs 2:10 instead down to 1:58 if he wants to do some aerobic work? yes, but who cares?
There have been a lot of discussions on this over the years. There is no real consensus but generally it seems like someone untalented could probably get around 15/31 by going all in on training and lifestyle through hs, college, and post collegiately. Yes, that wouldn't even be fast enough to walk on a lot of teams. For this to be worthwhile, an individual would have to be motivated by personal improvement, not placings.
But this individual can probably walk on some d2, naia, and d3 teams. Chances are they pursued running either because its fun or they suck at the ball sports. In the latter category, they won't even be good enough to walk on d3 soccer, football, etc. Up to you whether you want to be a college athlete or just a guy who goes to the gym most days and runs the turkey trot.
These individual usually get better as the distance goes up. They can probably get down to low 2:20s in the marathon and around 107 in the half. Those times might make this individual the top runner in their club.
Here is another brutal truth: Due to our modern lifestyle, people have to exercise to stay healthy. Might as well channel that exercise into distance running if you find it fun or aren't talented at anything else.
The sooner you check the ego - and stifle the need to be the absolute best, the sooner you can focus on personal improvement. Pr'ing and beating yourself (plus as many people as you can). is fun. Being sad because you can't run a 3:55 mile and walk on at Oregon is not.
Do you just make up numbers... the consensus is someone 'untalented' (whatever that is).. could probably get 15/31 by going all in on training and lifestyle... that's it 15/31? you said it so it must be true,,, lol.
Just stop. You can't even define precisely what talent is much less tell us what limits are for the 'untalented'.
There have been a lot of discussions on this over the years. There is no real consensus but generally it seems like someone untalented could probably get around 15/31 by going all in on training and lifestyle through hs, college, and post collegiately. Yes, that wouldn't even be fast enough to walk on a lot of teams. For this to be worthwhile, an individual would have to be motivated by personal improvement, not placings.
But this individual can probably walk on some d2, naia, and d3 teams. Chances are they pursued running either because its fun or they suck at the ball sports. In the latter category, they won't even be good enough to walk on d3 soccer, football, etc. Up to you whether you want to be a college athlete or just a guy who goes to the gym most days and runs the turkey trot.
These individual usually get better as the distance goes up. They can probably get down to low 2:20s in the marathon and around 107 in the half. Those times might make this individual the top runner in their club.
Here is another brutal truth: Due to our modern lifestyle, people have to exercise to stay healthy. Might as well channel that exercise into distance running if you find it fun or aren't talented at anything else.
The sooner you check the ego - and stifle the need to be the absolute best, the sooner you can focus on personal improvement. Pr'ing and beating yourself (plus as many people as you can). is fun. Being sad because you can't run a 3:55 mile and walk on at Oregon is not.
Do you just make up numbers... the consensus is someone 'untalented' (whatever that is).. could probably get 15/31 by going all in on training and lifestyle... that's it 15/31? you said it so it must be true,,, lol.
Just stop. You can't even define precisely what talent is much less tell us what limits are for the 'untalented'.
I'll agree with you that it's hard to define talent, but I don't think it's useless just because we can't measure it in units. Same way as I think you're putting too much stock in the numbers here. Exact numbers aren't the point, people intuitively understand that certain people are more naturally able to run fast (as any activity) than others. Sure it's more complex than that, some people have stronger work ethics, some people have more ability to improve, etc. Just cause you can't measure it doesn't really prove any of these conjectures wrong
Your success as a runner is all about how close to your talent/physical limit you can get yourself to. An internal benchmark.
I have every bit as much respect for the D3 runner who ran over 10 minutes for two miles in high school, works his tail off for 4 years, and ends up breaking 15 minutes for 5K, as I do most top level D1 guys.
The pros have it all... insane talent, great work ethics, and lots of luck along the way.
At the d1 collegiate level you will not get ANYWHERE half decent in distance without talent. Sometimes I find it nearly sad when I view others trainings, some can try so hard and just get no where. So many runners will be doing 80+ MPW to get 100th at a conference cross country race, that’s not even getting started on the mile-3K. If you didn’t run sub 4:15 in HS. Unless you are an extremely rare case good luck ever getting near sub 4. It’s understandable why coaches recruit internationally. Coaches know this and there simply just isn’t enough talent alone in the US to recruit and make a successful team. (unless you are 25 year olds attending BYU.)
Only thing I disagree with is 4:15 to sub 4. Most high school runners are severely undertrained. The only thing stopping a ton of more sub 4s is the opportunity to race collegiately and continue training post college.
If you took a 1000 guys that ran 4:12-4:15, and allowed them to train as pros for 8–10 years, I think 5-15% break 4 of the 1500m equivalent.
The problem is 4:14 or whatever doesn’t scream ‘dedicate my life’ to this and it there are no opportunities to become a professional.
But top 5k guys run 60-90s faster over 5k.
I think 90% of guys can improve their HS mile by 10+ seconds.
When I was in high school there were always a group of runners ahead of me that I could not beat. By the next year I was faster than what they were the year before. I had injuries that I overcame. I figured out how to get my body to respond.
Now, 50 years later, I am still adapting. Figuring out how to get my body to respond always has new challenges.
I don't care what the rest of the world is doing. All I care about is my game. If I am happy with that, nothing else matters.
Far too many kids are mismanaged in high school in my humble opinion. How many kids because they can run a 49 400 are treated as sprinters when they are actually milers with good speed, who could have run that 4:15 you talking about?
It's reasonable to assume that there are many athletes across the whole spectrum of ball sports that can naturally run :49. ...And that kind of natural speed is also presumed to categorize that athlete as "fast" within their sport and therefore a "sprinter" type. But just like thousands of good athletes out there doing ball sports, they never try t&f or if they do they never get steered toward the mile or even the 800. There are probably 1000s of HS athletes in ball sports that would be very successful as D1 t&f mid d or distance athletes. Talent matters the most but absolutely guarantee that the most talented runners never find it through xc or t&f.
There aren’t thousands of guys playing ball sports that are going to be good at distance running. In football, every player besides the skill positions are way too big and ones at the skill positions are too muscular with too many fast-twitch muscles. It goes both ways, what 140lb distance runner could play football? In my PE classes, baseball players and basketball players weren’t good in the timed mile. When I was in HS, there were about 5 basketball players in the section that ran sub-2:00 but only one of them ran the mile and XC.
Like any other sport, distance running requires specific talents that don’t transfer well to other sports and after running a fast mile in P.E., what kid would want to be just another player on field in another sport. I don’t know why so many of you think distance running is a sport that is comprised of guys that were cut from all the other sports.