Genetics matter. Training less so. Zero to hero…no. Zero to maybe average…possibly.

Reminder to all the runners who doubt themselves: the original poster got downvoted into oblivion (on nearly every post he did here) but that doesn't get him ashamed, doesn't make him doubt himself, doesn't discourage him from posting or changing his views even a little. My guy's on a mission here!! He thinks he's 110% right and no amount of reasonable points will discourage him. Be more like him. :) :)

Genetics play a significant role in every aspect of life, and there are limits to what can be “trained” to improve in sports or other areas. For instance, you can practice shooting a basketball or hitting a ball, but you can’t train a 5’9” guy to be 6’5”, no matter how good his jump shot is. Similarly, you can study hard, but if you have a mediocre intellect, becoming a lawyer or surgeon might not be realistic.
We all start life with certain baselines—intelligence, looks, athleticism—and while you can work to improve them through studying, grooming, or training, those baselines are still foundational.
Running is a great metaphor for life. If you take 100 untrained people and put them on a starting line, some will naturally outshine the competition with minimal effort, while others may reach the top only through rigorous training. The rest will fall somewhere in between.
Life, like running, is a combination of genetics and training. Some people are gifted and seem to succeed with little effort, while others will never rise beyond certain limits. But just as in running, you can always strive to improve, no matter your baseline.

It's just odd that we even have this debate. Nobody thinks that 'anybody' could become a NBA player, or a champion sumo wrestler if they just trained hard enough. You just have to look at virtually any elite runner and see their phenotype, then compare with the people you see at a Parkrun or a Turkey Trot, even the ones at the front. Then there is all the stuff inside the body that you can't see, such as VO2 max.

Even the least genetically gifted considers themselves above average.

You can do a lot, though...

I was a sucky athlete as a kid, ran an 8 minute mile in grade 5-6. Then I went out for team grade 7 with my elder brother only because I had to, otherwise I'd feel worthless and afraid to try out for ball sports. Small school, 7th graders were on varsity.

i was active as a kid, never not moving a lot, but ran and performed average ish at best in PE. I was clumsy, would fluster easily, couldn't react fast enough to catch things, and would trip easily. This persisted into adulthood.

i ran 8:00 pace for normal runs within weeks and did a 6:05 mile TT about 1.5-2 months into XC, from 23 to 20:10 for the 5k over the course of the first season, and ran 5:19 1600m by the end of grade 7. I wasn't muscular or precocious or formidable looking, just a skinny kid with average (old world 1970s-1990s) body fat levels, that is, around 15-16%, no abs visible ever.

many years later as an adult, I betrayed my expectations and became not only competent at distance, but I showed myself to be explosive and quick.

Several years into adulthood, I taught myself cartwheels and juggling. Yet further into my 20s I became actually athletic and improved my reaction time.

At age 26, I performed my best endurance swim by far after years of stagnancy, and age 27-28 I achieved the greatest strength training gym progress since my first year of lifting.

At age 28, I performed my best short sprints on land and in water

When and or how do you know if you have the genetics to be above average? 22 to 25 years old?

How many threads like this can keep creating? Do a thread search, sooo many just like this.

My man can argue about gene expression all he wants, but it doesn't change the fact that winning a not indecent amount of beer money at a local hobbyjogger 5k I would have done anyway is a beautiful thing.

How many kids run an 8 minute mile in grades 5-6? Very few.

You have no proof whatsoever. You can't even identify talent independently of lifetime results.

It takes either good talent and sky-high hard work or sky-high talent and a bit of work. Running 9:00 of 40 mpw is talent.

Exactly, Brosnan said it himself, it is all about the system and the training. Tinman said that there were plenty more Drew Hunters out there, and he trained another sub-4 guy after Drew (Oregon's Rheinhart Harrison). Mike Smith gets a passel of sub-9 guys and they don't all become Drew Bosley or Nico Young, but in his system, guys like Abdirahman who ran 9:20s, become great. Was that talent? Great coaches get large groups of athletes far beyond what other programs can get all but a rare individual to do. And when you talk about the talent of that individual and say it's all about genetics, remember that you aren't taking into account what that kid did growing up. My high school had two brothers in the 70s who grew up at 15000 ft in the Andes. Naturally, they set all our distance records for a long time. Was that talent or adaptation to altitude? Another kid was already a stud as a sophomore, but he played soccer and who knows what his coach had him do there in training. Some coaches have their athletes do explosive stuff and fast repeats, others no running or enforced slow jogs where no one is allowed to pass.

of course it is talent. If it was training tinman would have hundreds of sub4 HS runners and Smith would be cranking out sub 27 runners every year. Notice how neither happens? Do you think that is because they aren’t giving everyone the good training or that people don’t have the talent to be elite? I know where my money is at.

From this description, I am betting that runner A only ran stuff at 5k or faster pace, training only quality miles relevant to xc or track, while runner B did almost all junk miles at a pace nowhere near race pace, being too tired to hit repeats hard. Sure, runner A also had fast twitch muscles. Of course, unless you're runner A, you don't really know what his training was.

Yes, there is individual variation in distance running. But look at any team xc results and you will see group variation much more than individual variation. A few teams will have a stalwart way beyond anyone (and there usually is a backstory there, encouragement and training with a parent who was a runner, a club coach, extra training, a sports background), but the vast majority will group near each other. The results are in no way close to random.

Look at Joe Piane Invitational results and although you see some prime-time Kenyan recruits crushing everyone else on some of these teams (TT, Cincy, Washington St., for example), what you don't see is an ND runner below the top forty or an NAU runner below the top thirty, while you see three TT, Adams State, and Washington St. guys worse than 100 and five App State, plus four Miami and four Youngstown State runners worse than 100. There's nothing random about these general groupings.

ND 8/10/11/12/14/36/39

Northern Arizona 4/13/15/16/20/21/27
CBU 5/6/28/32/41/69/99
Wyoming 9/26/33/35/47/95/96
Michigan State 19/24/34/38/52/74/76
Boise State 23/30/31/54/56/65/117
Texas Tech 1/29/43/49/102/111/131
Grand Valley St. 17/40/50/72/73/86/97
Adams State 7/42/55/61/103/108/112
Purdue 22/37/53/70/88/100/106
Washington St. 2/25/63/92/114/119/122
Cincinnati 3/57/71/80/93/104/123
Belmont 44/58/60/75/87/90/98

...
Miami (Ohio) 46/59/91/116/118/127/132
Youngstown St. 64/79/82/105/109/121/125
App State 67/77/115/120/128/130/133

You're getting closer to understanding the Newbury Park situation and why it was unique (think Loudon Valley multiplied). Brosnan didn't just have the good fortune of having the Youngs and Sahlmans, who were excellent youth runners and obviously uber talented, transfer from their home school district to Newbury Park. He also had the majority of the top youth runners from other high schools in the area transfer to Newbury Park. The talent at Newbury Park was similar to the talent you find at the majority of upper class, suburban high schools in a populated area. That's the Jace Ascbrenner, Zaki Blunt, Thomas McDonnell, Nicholas Goldstein and Daniel Appleford group. That would be an excellent team in any area and Brosnan did a solid job of developing them. Where things got crazy is all the high level transfers who had obsessive parents that provided all imaginable support. The Aaron Cantu, Hector Martinez, Breydon Seymour, etc. So, take away those guys and the Young/Sahlman families and you get what most good high schools would look like. It's true when people say it was crazy that a high school could have that many genetic outliers at one school. What's not true is that Brosnan's coaching was the difference. It was the recruiting that made the difference. It was an unbelievable group of kids from all over that were exceptional runners before they came to Newbury that made Newbury a once in a lifetime situation. And now we have some insight into how that may have happened based on the UCLA situation.

Running 9:00 at any level of training, requires significant talent. It’s at the cusp of receiving a scholarship, so I doubt if many of them are running only 40mpw.

Some participate in athletics for reasons other than to reach "elite" levels.