Prove me wrong: Running isn't genetic oriented as people make it out to be.

You don't see pitbulls out in the Dakotas pointing pheasants!

I have a coworker who went to 2 Olympic trials in the long jump. He's trained for local road races to keep in shape - he couldn't break 20:00 in a 5k to save his life, but he's still got a lot of speed and spring in his step.

I worked with another guy in college who was a really good triple jumper. We worked in an athletic shoe store together and things were often really slow, so we messed around a lot. One night we were doing standing long jump ... me being a distance runner, I went nowhere. Then he decides to do a standing jump over the bench that people sat on to try on shoes. It was ~2ft high and 8ft long ... from a squatting position, he cleared it. Meanwhile, I managed to jump onto the bench. ;-)

But no one will ever be a great 5k runner if they can’t run 52 (or realistically even faster). It’s not sufficient to have 52 second speed, but it is a necessary condition.

Precisely. Speed reserve matters, especially with the middle distances specifically, but for all the track distances for sure. It's arguable to what extent a second tier elite marathoner needs basic speed, but for the very best it still helps to be a proven track great.

There's the studies for example this one where genetic components explained 85% of the training effect of an 8 week running program.

journals.plos.org

Responsiveness to endurance training can be partly explained by the number of favorable single nucleotide polymorphisms an individual possesses

Cardiorespiratory fitness is a key component of health-related fitness. It is a necessary focus of improvement, especially for those that have poor fitness and are classed as untrained. However, much research has shown indivi...

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Otherwise a good example is whether you walk up to females on your running team and tell them they're not as fast as the men because they don't train enough and if they were just more determined and mentally tough they'd beat the men? No? Then you accept there are significant genetic differences out there.

There are also significant genetic effects within men (or women). Just see response in other areas in weightlifting or height or weight gain. Its not that unusual to say that while training has a massive impact some people are just vastly better at running than others even with lower training.

Do you have the chart that shows the Hot Girl / Crazyness scale

Abdi never raced in track or xc in high school. When he was a freshman at his community college, his friend invited him to join the xc team for a time trial. The #1 guy on the team barely beat him in a sprint finish.

Now tell all the guys who lost to this complete novice they didn't work hard enough.

When I ran 4:25 in the 1600 my max 400 ability was 60.X (I tried to break 60 many times but failed) but I was training pretty hard. So I there is obviously something a lot more important that accounts for the 30+ second difference with the same speed.

It's genetic, but a lot of hs kids aren't trained to actually access their genetic talent.

People take offense to "needing talent to be fast" because they view themselves as the "not talented ones" and take it to heart. View yourself as talented and find out how talented you are.

It’s an ego thing. It doesn’t stoke the ego as much to credit your success to natural ability. Being genetically endowed does not come across as nearly as “badass” as saying that you owe your triumphs to all the high volume, puke inducing training that you endured…

Talent is price of admission. So elite running is 100% dependent on genetic pre reqs. Then training matters. I have found that to be true for 40 yrs.

Yes I have seen super motivated average kids run 70MPW in HS and get way better (if they dont get injured), but they were still just off Varsity team on a good team.

I've seen a few of those. Neighbor kid, our mailman! Both elite in months after starting running. For those of us who were decidedly average with great effort, ever wonder what it feels like for running to be easy? Admit it, you have. I don't know what these people feel. I get that they go 100% pain in races just like me, but with all the training in the world I will never get to 6-8 mile easy runs at 630 pace having a casual conversation. So while speed does indeed kill, there is clearly a predisposition to aerobic machines.

Totally believable, I was just giving some examples. There's certainly more to it than just speed. I know people who are natural born aerobic machines and could embarrass me in a marathon while doing half the training.

I tend to believe I'm naturally anaerobically strong, which is just another genetic talent. I could always just keep ticking when it started burning and observed this from a young age in soccer and gym.

Running is genetic, species-wise.Championship running is genetic (plus the usual personal qualities) is genetic.

When everyone is training a ton and the margins are small, the difference comes down to genetics. But there is a lot of work that can be done to be better than someone else before genetics is the difference maker.

I think you’ve got that the wrong way round…

At the elite level genetics is the key to being there…then when the margins are small, training makes a difference. Unless you are a true genetic freak like Bolt or Phelps and then genetically you are then a level above…”God tier” if you will.

Sure but the OP isn’t talking about 13:30 runners. He is talking about running 17 min 5ks. That is down far enough on the talent ladder that a lot of people will not be genetic limited.

what you're selling is unhelpful at all because in TF there are usually a tiny amount of truly unique athletes. i mean the people who win olympic or worlds gold relative to every kid who ever shows up for a heat, or even anyone who runs college or D1. for the rest of us, we hit our limits and you have to try to juice the orange a bit more. a dominant HS kid who becomes ordinary in D1 really didn't need to be told too much they were special, because it's fixing to get real. which i think is how your over-determined "talent" analysis works out for 99.999% of us. very few humans are usain bolt. our staying competitive at our peter principle limits comes down to work ethic, technique, etc. teaching otherwise is horrifyingly oversimplified.

i mean, look at a D1 TFRRS performance chart. that 254th best guy at event x was probably the "talent" at his HS, for a few counties around. probably made state. but at a point if he wants to make a regional he's got to up his game more than just showing up. despite your lame suggestion otherwise. and yes, we can pronounced the NCAA #1 talented. but they will graduate and get drubbed by many in diamond league, worlds, olympics. guy who beat me in a college meet and went to the olympics lost out in his semis. you're not acknowledging for 8 billion people in the world minus one they weren't "talented enough." so your chance to win the meet this week you should probably get working and sharpen your technique.

and before you get rolling, have you never won a preseason game or early meet you "weren't supposed to win" because you're in shape and they aren't yet? like they are looking to peak later and there's your window. routine week 1 diamond league trope. x surprise wins, y surprise loses. 3 months later y looks like y, most of the time.

in other words, no one has enough talent to toss their spikes out there cold and win. even in some of your anecdotal stories, the untutored raw star usually loses to the really good ones still. who are in shape and coached up. so raw talent usually can't win by itself. what gets interesting is when they get fit and coached.

which underlines -- it's a mix of the two.

It's sort of a gradient. 17 min 5k doesn't require much talent and many healthy young men can get there with a bit of hard work. 16:00 requires a little more work and a little more talent, and let's not pretend that 16:00 is some elite time. That's a good high schooler, but very few will get there without a dash of talent. 15:30 or 15:00, some run of the mill D3 times, again requires even more talent. So if you're only talking about an average to kind-of-good high schooler, talent isn't a huge factor.