Natural talent vs. hard work

Almost everyone loses almost every race to another runner, or a group of them, or a large group of them. Even most Olympic track runners would come in last in the finals of most Olympic track events that are not their own one or two best events.

Running cannot be about being the fastest. Otherwise is makes no sense for virtually everyone who runs. It's about being faster today than yesterday, or next week, month, or year, over today.

You have improved a lot and will continue to improve, if you continue to train. It makes you tougher, stronger, better and faster. Stick with it. You have had much success in the self progress the sport fosters.

People are born with varying abilities to run fast, whether in sprints, or long distances. Some are fast at both, some neither, some one but not the other. This varying level of physical traits is similarly true for height, 5 foot 1, 5 foot 6, 6 foot 1, 6 foot 6, 7 foot 1. Wanting to be taller is nice, standing up straight helps a bit, but people at one of those five heights have the traits for that one, not the other four.

People are born with varying abilities to respond to training. Some get better faster, others more slowly. Some break down with injury with certain training stresses, others do not. These differences are wide among people.

Running more, or faster, helps get you in progressively better shape, barring injury that causes a break in training, so in that sense, the one who runs the most runs the best, but given the varying traits we have, today's race is likely won by a very talented person, who had less improvement to make from where they started to where they are today.

I went to a very large high school, approximately 2500 boys. Every year, there were freshmen who had never run long distance who, after a month of training, beat most sophomores who had trained for a year. Once every few years, after about a month, one freshman could be most all of the junior and seniors, who had been training for two or three years. Generally speaking, there was one kid out of the 2500 who had high ability. Sometimes that kid knew of his ability and came out for the team, other times, no one, including him ever knew. Maybe he played baseball, maybe no sport. That level of talent is unmistakable in an cross country meet, but perhaps unrecognizable without competing in a long run with little training.

Even with so many students, for decades, we never had a kid within 40 seconds of the current U.S. high school record in the two mile, although we had a good number between 40 and 50 seconds away. It's a entire separate level of talent, very rare, to go under 9:15 with high school training. With essentially the same training as high school freshmen, some kids break 12:00 by the end of freshman year, some 11:30, some 11:00 and a few break 10:30, after nine months of training. Still, once in a great while, we had a kid who could break 10:30 after a month, with some four year runners never breaking 10:30.

Yes, how fast you run, at the beginning, in the middle of your career, and for your lifetime best, is partly a factor of talent, but it's the running itself that you do that is the real actvity, not whether or not it was easy for you, or whether your best race made you the fastest in the world, or your city, or just your own family. It's a joy of life. Don't stop because others are better. Keep running for what it does for you, strengthening you in many ways. The fastest runners I ever ran with lost every international race to someone. The happiest runners I ever ran with lost almost every race they ever ran, to someone. The hardest working runners I knew all knew more talented people who trained less diligently, who beat them. These three types of people all kept running for their own reasons, not to be the best runner they ever met today, or even this year, but a better version of themselves today, then again next month, and so forth.

You are looking to improve to get to 5:25. It's the same challenge you had when you were working to get to 7:25 and 6:25. The 4:30 miler has the same challenge to get to 4:25. The challenge is within. Everyone's combination of talent and training gets them to where they are today. Character traits, guts, persistence and training get a runner the next five seconds off of his mile time. It's a worthy pursuit. It gets progressively more difficult, but if it's hard to do, it's a welcome accomplishment. Since it was a bit harder for you to make progress over these years, you likely learned more from the process than those with more talent did. Distance running training and striving for progressive improvement has many real life analogs for success in life that will come more quickly and more obviously to you because you learned how to fight for progress slowly and doggedly. Much of success life is like taking 5 seconds off of your mile time. Very little of life is like winning a race with 10,000 people in it. Much of life is continuing to do a task you can already do, but now you have to do it a little better.

Good luck.

A Philosophical Perspective wrote:

Distance running training and striving for progressive improvement has many real life analogies for success in life that will come more quickly and more obviously to you because you learned how to fight for progress slowly and doggedly. Much of success life is like taking 5 seconds off of your mile time. Very little of life is like winning a race with 10,000 people in it. Much of life is continuing to do a task you can already do, but now you have to do it a little better.

Thank you sir. You have shed light on the matter more comprehensively than anyone I've heard from.

Makes perfect sense now.

Well there is a possibility that a lightning bolt can zap you causing genetic expressions to mutate perfectly causing you to be the fastest man in existence.

That would take all the fun out of it

ventolin^5 wrote:

Well there is a possibility that a lightning bolt can zap you causing genetic expressions to mutate perfectly causing you to be the fastest man in existence.

The Real Slim Shady wrote:

So my question is this: Is it really true that everyone is a blank slate at birth and the fastest runner is the one who trains the most (this is what I've always been told)? Or is running ability genetic?

If so, to what degree is it genetic and how far will hard work really take you?

It is not true that everyone is a blank slate. Genetics are the primary factor, but once you get a group with roughly equal genetic talent, superior training, efficiency, and will become the deciding factors.

You can train up to your potential. Most people, no matter how talented, never even touch their potential. Unfortunately, I feel your potential in the mile is not extremely high as most average - above average runners can break 5 after just a few weeks of training. Perhaps your potential lies elsewhere.

FYI: 6'1, 145 is verging on too scrawny, especially for the mile. Bulk up some. You probably need more leg and shoulder muscle. If you were 6'1, 155 with the same body fat then you would probably be faster in the mile all things being equal.

Aiden Burley wrote:

FYI: 6'1, 145 is verging on too scrawny, especially for the mile. Bulk up some. You probably need more leg and shoulder muscle. If you were 6'1, 155 with the same body fat then you would probably be faster in the mile all things being equal.

Thanks, good to know. I weighed 145 last Spring (when I ran that mile) while taking a weight training class. Who knows, I might weigh even less now haha

Aiden Burley wrote:

...above average runners can break 5 after just a few weeks of training. Perhaps your potential lies elsewhere.

that is not true

fisky wrote:

It is not true that everyone is a blank slate. Genetics are the primary factor, but once you get a group with roughly equal genetic talent, superior training, efficiency, and will become the deciding factors.

How exactly do you gather a group with equal genetic talent?

jnkjgiuhiughi wrote:

fisky wrote:

It is not true that everyone is a blank slate. Genetics are the primary factor, but once you get a group with roughly equal genetic talent, superior training, efficiency, and will become the deciding factors.

How exactly do you gather a group with equal genetic talent?

I believe he was speaking hypothetically

jnkjgiuhiughi wrote:

Aiden Burley wrote:

...above average runners can break 5 after just a few weeks of training. Perhaps your potential lies elsewhere.

that is not true

I ran 23:00/5000m and 6:10/1600m as a freshman. My initiation to becoming a better runner was getting jacked in the weight room. Anyway, I ran 4:25 as a junior.

The Real Slim Shady wrote:

tutsi wrote:

90% talent

you can train to reach your potential, but your potential may not be very high. By, now with normal HS training you should have run faster, if you had real talent

Ouch. At least you're honest

I have to agree. I might quibble with the 90% a little, but only a little.

NO ONE seriously thinks that a sprinter could break 10.00 in the 100m just by "working hard" (though he could certainly get faster with training)--why does anyone think that distance running would be different?

Actually, distance running *is* different, in a small way: sometimes it takes a little while for the talent to show up, while sprint talent is usually there from Day One.

[Ex: Jim Ryun ran an all-out mile, early in his first (soph) season of high school XC, in 5:38, and was the last man on the JV squad; But by the end of that season, he was sixth at State.]

I posted some advice in the "I been training for years, little improvements" thread that I really think might help you. But yeah, by now you'll have to accept the reality that you probably picked the wrong grandparents (as I did--never broke 6:00 till college!).

A lack of talent kept me from ever running on a college team, much less representing my country. But it didn't keep me from having fun and from getting better than I'd ever dreamed.

lease wrote:

I posted some advice in the "I been training for years, little improvements" thread that I really think might help you. But yeah, by now you'll have to accept the reality that you probably picked the wrong grandparents (as I did--never broke 6:00 till college!).

A lack of talent kept me from ever running on a college team, much less representing my country. But it didn't keep me from having fun and from getting better than I'd ever dreamed.

How do you know its a lack of talent that held you back? Maybe something was really off with your diet. Did you ever seriously try to solve your lack of improvement? Or is training the only thing you thought about?

I hope you realize that things like diet affect you they are really marginal. If you are struggling to excel to a large extent, it is not due to diet. If you want that last 1% then things like ploymeterics or diet may help.

hshsuusjs wrote:

How do you know its a lack of talent that held you back? Maybe something was really off with your diet. Did you ever seriously try to solve your lack of improvement? Or is training the only thing you thought about?

Diet is a MAJOR factor. Cut your food intake in half and see what happens.

Diet can hurt you a lot more than not training.

Talent matters a lot. There isn't a lot of difference in the work ethics of the top D3 guys and the D1 guys really, the big difference is in their natural talent.

But, this is why running is such a great sport: there probably isn't a sport in the world that returns more to you from working hard. Even someone with moderate talent can get pretty good if they really want to.

hshsuusjs wrote:

Diet is a MAJOR factor. Cut your food intake in half and see what happens.

Diet can hurt you a lot more than not training.

Absolute nonsense.

"I didn´t know a damn thing about diet. If there was a hot dog on my plate, I ate it". (George Young, 4 time Olympian).

The Real Slim Shady wrote:

Now before I say anything else: Flagpole, you are prohibited from this thread. No ifs, ands, or buts. No exceptions.

You are prohibited from saying such things, no ifs, ands, or buts. No exceptions!

Sounds silly eh?

Sorry dude, but I'll respond to any thread I like. At the moment, other than telling you so, I don't feel like much responding here, because talent is king as we all know. Hard work for a talentless person is like a 4'5'' dude trying to dunk a basketball...it just won't happen. Have talent, then hard work unlocks the ability. Have NO talent, then hard work unlocks THAT ability...which is little.

I still go with:

The more I worked, the more talented I seemed to get.

Having said that, the OP should not expect to be an Olympian or even win his age group.

However, he could be a late bloomer. He could fill out over the next year and be challenging 4:00 the year after. He could change his diet, fix a low grade iron problem, and break 4:00 for 1500m in 6 months. He might have a sleep apnea problem fixed and drop 45 seconds in less than a month.

The point is work is not all about calories expended in training, it is about doing whatever you need to do to improve.