"He's just an All-American type guy - not a contender."

Azaleas wrote:

Cam Levins went from nothing to battling Lalang at NCAA XC. It may not be likely, but it can be done.

...Which is distinctly NOT the type of scenario that the QOTD is referring to.

Is reading comprehension really this hard?

I think the point is that Levins is the exception.

Yes the motto of this website is "Where Your Dreams Become Reality". My improvement after college was the exception to the rule. I like to believe I had a long term plan and trained smarter than everyone else.

Maybe my talent was being able to grind it out for years without the immediate success. We have different talents.

The main point made in the article was just because you are 10th at NCAAs as a sophomore doesn't mean you'll get better as a senior.

When I was in Flagstaff, Travis Laird of NAU was I think 9th as a sophomore, I remember running with him and thinking, "now what he'll try and win this thing?" I don't think he ever got that high again.

JustAnotherAA wrote:

... all the other writing here about "there is no such thing as talent, it is all training."

ALL the OTHER writing here? There is NO writing here that says that. There might be writing about how talent can be undiscovered and then brought out or that lots of talent is wasted or that you can overcome - to a limited extent - other people's superior talent by outworking them, outsmarting them in races or just digging deeper than they do. But those ideas aren't saying there is "no such thing as talent."

The thing about the quote "He's just an All-American type guy - not a contender" that made me wince was the word "just." Sure, the national champion is often leaps and bounds better than the guys in 10th through 40th places, but "just an All-American" sounds synonymous with "merely an All-American." Think about the thousands and thousands of runners who try their best and never even make college teams. Out of those, there are thousands who do make college teams and try their best and never make the national meet. Then only 40 of that group, which is an elite group in its own right, make All-American. There's nothing "mere" about being that good.

Im sorry but Cam Levins is not the exception. There have been many others who have done it as well.

Josh Mcdougal 26th to 1st

Ryan Hall 37th to 2nd

Josh Rohatinsky 32nd to 1st

Martin Fagan 46th to 4th

Andrew Ledwith 57th to 3rd

The list goes on and on. Yes there are more examples of guys going backwards, but that is just basic probability.

You cherry picked 5 people across several years who improved dramatically. Nobody is saying that this doesn't happen. People are saying that it is NOT a rule or a given or even the norm.

Thanks Wejo.

there are more examples of guys going backwards, but that is just basic probability.

So in other words ... Not likely to finish higher as a senior than as a sophomore.

I agree 100% with your second paragraph. An All American is a very rare creature in a vast sea of runners.

"The best runners are not necessarily the most "talented" (although talent helps a lot). But what is "talent" anyway? "

http://www.letsrun.com/2006/collegesuck.php

But even more, I was thinking of all the threads where people discount talent as if those who lose do so because they don't work hard enough.

[quote]Ozzie wrote:

I disagree with the original poster's premise. If all training was equal, talent would be the decider. The reason why we try to train more and train smarter than our opponents is so that we can build an advantage over those who are more talented than us, try to beat those who are of equal talent, and to stay ahead of those who are less talented and also training hard. For an individual to see a jump in performance, some sort of adaptation has to take place and at the college level, that adaptation is probably going to come from changes in training stimuli. In high school, boys can maintain the same training and continue to improve year by year simply on the merits of physical maturation, but by the time that those boys are college age men, most of that maturation is complete so it is no longer a viable means of improvement for most. When athletes transition from high school to college, they often make drastic and immediate changes to their training, which can result in major improvements even when met with some stagnation at the beginning as the athlete adjusts to the new load. By the time sophomore cross country is over, most of that transition is complete as well.

Dude, this is the problem, why do most athletes have to make drastic and immediate changes to their program. Wouldn't it be wiser and more beneficial to make changes over time to allow for compensation and continued development?

If this is the way most college coaches operate then that is pretty sad.

As others have been pointing out, obviously the vast majority of AA sophomores are not going to be in contention for the win as seniors. But as a runner (or a coach) you shouldn't be worried about probabilities, but about what you have the potential to accomplish in a best case scenario. If you train in the best possible way, and you're lucky with staying healthy and things not under your control, how much can you improve? That list of the top 10 sophomores from 2010 is interesting because most of them either placed significantly lower or didn't even race in 2012. To me that doesn't show that they didn't have the capacity to improve, but that they weren't able to take advantage of their potential due to injuries or poor training. Personally I set goals based on what I think I have the capacity to achieve if everything goes smoothly, and I try to live and train in a way that will maximize my chance of achieving that goal.

A Little Logic Please wrote:

If someone did believe this then you and others would accord them no respect. As a result your statement is essentially meaningless (I hope that it is not necessary to spell out all the gory details).

no..."well respected" does not mean, "respected by me"...show me "all the writings" but authorities who have achieved real success in our sport who claim "there's no such thing as talent" and base this on at least reasonably sound scientific principles and your premise is valid...otherwise youre just making things up

if you show me this, I may not necessarily agree but Ill respect the viewpoint

saying "talent doesn't exist" is the track and field equivalent of creationism

The line "The All-Americans, the national champs, they are no different than you or me" is the one from that article that might be taken to mean these people are no more talented than the run-of-the-mill guy.

But use a little logic. Nobody who runs through college and beyond and competes internationally can avoid seeing people get better results with the exact same work (or even less work). Of course differences in talent are obvious to anybody who's run that long. With that in mind, "no different than you or me" can't be referring to levels of raw talent. It means they're all flesh and blood and not superhuman, and saying this is meant to inspire people to think long term and keep aiming high. John McDonnell used to say the same thing. He absolutely recognized differences in talent - in fact, I once heard him say who the "most talented" runners he ever had at Arkansas were. But at the same time, he would instill in every single guy on his teams - even walk-ons - the notion that "You are talented enough to be an All-American yourself." Would all of them end up as All-Americans? No, but a ton obviously did, including some who might have been written off if high school accomplishments were all you looked at. And they all competed as though they were the best.

col co wrote:

Dude, this is the problem, why do most athletes have to make drastic and immediate changes to their program. Wouldn't it be wiser and more beneficial to make changes over time to allow for compensation and continued development?

If this is the way most college coaches operate then that is pretty sad.

Depending on what is leading to the drastic shift, I don't think that it has to be the problem. Of course it depends on what changes are being administered.

The reality is that there are deficiencies in a lot of high school programs that can be immediately addressed in a college program that might not require a gradual progression. When discussing the drastic changes that take place when an athlete arrives at college, we usually think about an athlete jumping from 50 to 100 miles per week, but that is not the only thing that can happen.

Most high schools do not have a very good strength program or the facilities to administer a good strength program. They probably also do not have a training staff, or enough time in their day to allow for double runs. High school coaches might not have a good understanding of biomechanics, so maybe working on an athlete's form will either allow them to be more healthy or produce fast results. Also, for many athletes, college is the first time training with a group of peers, rather than athletes they are already much better than.

Any of the above changes are things that can take effect immediately upon arrival at a school and are not necessarily the result of blindly throwing an athlete into a cookie cutter program. Admittedly, not every coach individualizes well, and certainly that is a reason why many runners stagnate, but if we give the college coaches the benefit of the doubt on this one, the good coaches are going to be able to identify something missing in most freshman runners that can be addressed right away and make a large impact relatively quickly (within the first year and a half). After that change is made though, from there the advances must be gradual.

Also, in response to the person who commented on MacDougal's improvement, wasn't he undefeated going into

nationals his sophomore year. He was already a national level talent who simply underperformed on that day. Though it is not that uncommon for a young guy to be off on an important day, I think we need to be careful to differentiate between athletes taking their running to another level as opposed to simply performing closer to their current ability.

Then another question, which I do not know the answer to. Was Rohatinsky's senior year 2 years after his sophomore year, or did he go on a mission and then come back a few years later and win? There will be more evidence of people improving over a 4 year time span than two years. I don't remember Rohatinsky's circumstances though, so I'm not sure if this applies to him.

I think we see eye to eye.

Yours is an even better quote and is the general theme of what I am pointing to on this web site.

BTW: It could be argued that Arkansas only took the "most talented" runners from high school, never the run of the mill.

Bekeles: Rupp is 19 or 20 and only gets 6th at NCAAs? He's just a domestic runner, not a contender, no need to worry about him.

I don't think it's that these runners don't improve relative to themselves, but rather the incredible difficulty of finishing top 5 in and of itself. I mean, only 5 guys do that every year and at least 3 or 4 of those are Kenyan ringers. There are the regular studs and random flash in the pan ones. You could substantially improve your ability, but that might only give you one spot within the top 10. Bottom line, it's a steep cliff from top 10 to top 5 no matter how much you improve. You'll see these guys track PRs drop, but they might finish the same or worse at NCAA cross than previous years.

What the QOTD really means is:

"I'm just a shitty coach but a good recruiter and I do not know how to take a good sophomore and help him get better."

The truth about this quote is that it is true for so many, many big time coaches.

Gerard was a great coach at Stanford but m'eh at George Mason...

Oklahoma should be SOOOOO much better.

It took Jerry SOOOO many years to win NCAA's...

Joe Vigil coached throwaways at Adams State to beat big time DI programs year in and year out.

The evidence is all around.

There are a small number of coaches who know what they are doing training wise. Mose DI coaches are great recruiters and great administrators. But that ain't coaching.

This is the problem!

prison break wrote:

Bekeles: Rupp is 19 or 20 and only gets 6th at NCAAs? He's just a domestic runner, not a contender, no need to worry about him.

Bekele's agent 5 years later after London: "Science - not sport - has won."

Science is code for drugs.

Also it should be pointed out that until like 2 years ago, Rupp wasn't even regularly doing continuos tempos or at least he said that's what he hated most about training.

prisonk wrote:

Bekeles: Rupp is 19 or 20 and only gets 6th at NCAAs? He's just a domestic runner, not a contender, no need to worry about him.

Let's wait until Rupp actually beats a healthy Bekele