High school, my junior year. A kid showed up to track with basketball high tops. Never ran track before, but the bball coach said he should. It was his senior year - what did he have to lose?. He was definitely fast for a few 400m repeats, but had little stamina.
His last track meet was him winning the FL State 800m championship in 1:52.
I completely re-made the video I made for Gale Sayers. Sayers is one of the most elusive runners in NFL history. Also a great returner, Sayers scored 54 touc...
It seems like every time a runner is running extraordinary times at a young age they are labelled as just being more "talented," yet whenever you look into their past they always seem to have had a history of running youth track, working out in middle school, or participating in another sport rigorously.
I get that some people are more genetically gifted than others, that's obvious. Only so many people can be professional athletes. But if you were to take the average high school runner, go back in time to when they were in middle school, and have them start running or going to the gym for years prior to entering 9th grade, would they really be any slower than a Young, or a Sherry, or a Sahlman? Would people call that kid talented then, too?
Dude. Some people can run sub 16 for 5k without any training. Talent absolutely is a thing.
A little hard to believe but theoretically possible--more so if he were on the older side of his grade cohort. Still, that freshman time cannot be that much slower than the national record
I dnn't believe that anyone can just go out and run a sub 16 5 K cold without training until they have been honing their conditioning through swimming, lacrosse, soccer or some similar sport requiring a good lung capacity. If you read Jim Ryan's biography, he did not start off nearly that good and took awhile before he gained prominence He was arguably one of the most talented we ever had but he also trained incredibly hard. The Kenyan's also build up remarkable conditioning through years running to and fro school so I think this post is over-emphasizing genetics versus training environment.
A big problem is defining "talent". A definition I found was "a natural aptitude or skill". I find this definition lacking. What skill is "natural"? What skill are we born with? Even suckling can require some teaching.
There are certainly some factors that are "natural" for instance muscle fiber type. You can even throw in that some are more genetically geared toward responding to some form of training. Many twin studies show that genetics play a role in training adaptability.
Being active is important although there are exceptions of course.
Environment is huge to me. First, there needs to be exposure to a sport. Then something has to lure or draw the person to the sport (or parents stick them in the sport). Then the coach can create an environment to keep the kid interested ideally not run them off. Then the kid needs to find intrinsic motivation (extrinsic motivation does not keep people in an activity very long as sport is too hard to rely on external motivators).
Can't believe only one poster mentioned maturity. At, say, ages 12-16, early maturity is often mistaken for talent. Often these people plateau at 16 or so, when the actually talented runners overtake them. This is often accompanied by early-bloomers also being advantaged in other, cooler sports.
I dnn't believe that anyone can just go out and run a sub 16 5 K cold without training until they have been honing their conditioning through swimming, lacrosse, soccer or some similar sport requiring a good lung capacity. If you read Jim Ryan's biography, he did not start off nearly that good and took awhile before he gained prominence He was arguably one of the most talented we ever had but he also trained incredibly hard. The Kenyan's also build up remarkable conditioning through years running to and fro school so I think this post is over-emphasizing genetics versus training environment.
Ryun allegedly ran a 5:38 time trial in the fall of his sophomore year, managed about an 11:00 for XC, had no exercise other than a paper route during the winter and then beat the returning state mile champion in the first meet of the track season. I’m guessing he had untreated asthma during that initial XC season.
Jakob Ingebrigtsen said on a podcast that the concept of "talent" was created by jealous people as an excuse for why they were getting beat by people who had put in lots of work at younger ages and continued to build for a longer period of time.
So is he arguing his brothers trained sub-optimally because it took their father a while to figure out how to train them properly? How do Henrik and Filip feel about being guinea pigs for Jakob?
I dnn't believe that anyone can just go out and run a sub 16 5 K cold without training until they have been honing their conditioning through swimming, lacrosse, soccer or some similar sport requiring a good lung capacity. If you read Jim Ryan's biography, he did not start off nearly that good and took awhile before he gained prominence He was arguably one of the most talented we ever had but he also trained incredibly hard. The Kenyan's also build up remarkable conditioning through years running to and fro school so I think this post is over-emphasizing genetics versus training environment.
Ryun's biggest "talent" was his trainability. He was an extremely high responder, according to Epstein's "Sports Gene" book.
I dnn't believe that anyone can just go out and run a sub 16 5 K cold without training until they have been honing their conditioning through swimming, lacrosse, soccer or some similar sport requiring a good lung capacity. If you read Jim Ryan's biography, he did not start off nearly that good and took awhile before he gained prominence He was arguably one of the most talented we ever had but he also trained incredibly hard. The Kenyan's also build up remarkable conditioning through years running to and fro school so I think this post is over-emphasizing genetics versus training environment.
Ryun's biggest "talent" was his trainability. He was an extremely high responder, according to Epstein's "Sports Gene" book.
Didn’t he have a relay split of 46 seconds? Any runner responds to training, but very few have the genetics to run 46.
It seems like every time a runner is running extraordinary times at a young age they are labelled as just being more "talented," yet whenever you look into their past they always seem to have had a history of running youth track, working out in middle school, or participating in another sport rigorously.
I get that some people are more genetically gifted than others, that's obvious. Only so many people can be professional athletes. But if you were to take the average high school runner, go back in time to when they were in middle school, and have them start running or going to the gym for years prior to entering 9th grade, would they really be any slower than a Young, or a Sherry, or a Sahlman? Would people call that kid talented then, too?
“It seems like every time a runner is running extraordinary times at a young age they are labelled as just being more "talented," yet whenever you look into their past they always seem to have had a history of eating food.
I get that some people are more genetically gifted than others, that's obvious. Only so many people can be professional athletes. But if you were to take the average high school runner, go back in time to when they were in middle school, and have them eat food for years prior to entering 9th grade, would they really be any slower than a Young, or a Sherry, or a Sahlman? Would people call that kid talented then, too?”
The problem is that kids are sold the lie early on that we are all the same and equal. We just need to try and we will be the best at anything.
The truth is there are massive outliers when it comes to intelligence, creativity, music ability, math ability, and athletics. If any of these people apply themselves they will be the best in the world. No one with average ability will be in the same ballpark.
For some reason people here think this doesn’t apply to distance running. Mostly because if you were born on third base you don’t want to admit it. It is better to believe you just work harder than everyone else.
Lost a year of high school running due to Covid and then had another year of reduced competition due to Covid. Graduated with good times but received no responses from programs that he was interested in. It turned him off so he gave it up in college. He hasn't run a step in 9 months.