Can ANY young serious runner who has at least a little knack for the sport make it to elite level?

kvothe wrote:

Nope. Talent exists. You're born with it or not. An untalented athlete won't get to sub 14 no matter how hard he trains.

Brain sell,

I was a lot faster than him in highschool and never made it as far as him.

johnny dangerously wrote:

many could go sub 15. i'd guess that about 50%.

very, very few would be sub 14. maybe 10% and I think I'm being generous. probably more like less than 5%

I agree with the 50% and less than 5%.

I think it's imperative with a good coach though. During the 70s and 80s it seems like many just ran lots of mileage and in the 90s interval training was all the rage. To reach your potential you would need a coach with a long term plan such as Al Sal had for Rupp. I'm pretty much convinced that dedicated "untalented" runners like those in this thread as well as HRE (hopefully he chimes in) could have run sub-15 if they were followed up by a coach and a medical team during their whole career.

Generally, I would say no, but there is one caveat to this which reflects how I would have done things differently.

If you focus, early on, on developing max speed, and if you are able to develop that speed to an elite level (

I am well above average genetically and my PRs are 5:52 for 1600m and 16:55 for 5K.

No, not the first. Just on that thread.

Anyone who's run at least in a top D1 program, knows there is a special talent.

It has a lot to do with genetics in my opinion. I trained decently in high school, only running 17:x in cross country, 10:x in the 2 mile. Did a lot more in college 70-100 mile weeks consistently, getting to 8:30 3k, 24 high in 8k, but still never ranked better than 20th in the nation D2 in any event.

Fast forward 3 years and I'm racing bicycles at races I used to watch on TV. I'd say it's mostly because of genetics. I remember the first power test I ever did, maybe had 1000 miles- and I scored in the low end of the "domestic pro" power charts. Granted, hard work has helped me improve dramatically, and can help others improve greatly in sports, so I don't want to downplay the importance of hard work.

But, before this experience, I used to believe in hard work, hard work, hard work. But I've seen guys who worker harder than anyone I've ever met barely qualify for the conference meet. And guys who train 30 miles a week break 25 year old school records. In my opinion, the real elites come from the guys with the crazy genetics and the tremendous work load.