The Brutal truth about talent vs hard work.

Having stuff isn't fun - it's chasing stuff that's fun. It's not the pursuit of happiness - it's the happiness of the pursuit. It's not about the destination, it's about who you become on the journey. Self-esteem doesn't come from the 10K or marathon PR that you get from training. It comes from becoming the type of person who runs every day.

Talent is the only factor. Your logic is ridiculous that shorter distance runners hsve more talent than marathoners. The most talented are winning at every distance. There are millions of people training for marathons. There are far fewer people training for the 1500.

What 4:20 miler that trained reasonably hard in HS went on to have tremendous success in the longer distances? There’s no chance that one is going to run 3X4:30 for a 14:00.

The vast majority of collegiate distance runners can stack (can’t you just say x mpw?)consistent aerobic weeks until they’re blue in the face and still not be competitive.

I agree that a kid those kids SHOULD move up, and they would have success, but it's not "nonsense" meaning it doesn't happen. Just like there at a lot of kids that would rather sit the bench on the soccer team, than be good> very good XC runner. These kids hate the work and middle-distance workouts and hate the race.

In distance running , 1500 meters and up you can get pretty far up with hard work. You don’t need tremendous speed to run a 3:59 mile. I think the genetic ceiling starts to hit around 3:54 for the mile , you need a certain body type to be able to run elite times like that.

Talent is needed in any sport for high level success (what factors and counts as talent may differ though).

Sometimes jaded runners get too wrapped up in a "why bother" mentality, but just because a person is not an All American does not mean they should quit or are wasting there time.

It does take most people a ton of miles to run sub 25:00 for 8k (and you can't do that without decent talent). Yet that is relatively pedestrian these days. But every sport has depth guys and develoupers.

The 4th man on an college XC team who is not all Conference and no where near track first round marks is not wasting their time any more than a left fielder who hits 7th in the order.

And the 9th man on the team, logging miles and trying to make/help varsity is not wasting their time any more than a 2nd string Center on the O line.

If you enjoy running and being fast to a point that most people can't even comprehend, than what does it matter what other people think?

Sure it's not "cool" to outsiders to say that you are a 5 man on a college XC team. But most people also don't care that someone rode the bench for a cellar dweller mid.majot basketball team either.

If it’s so easy, why didn’t you break 4:00? There’s been a significant increase in the number of HS milers in recent years, but out of 240K runners that competed in XC last year, only nine broke 4:00. For an elite strength runner, it’s going to take at least 54 400m speed and for a middle distance runner, at least 51 speed.

You guys are nuts. 99% of people can't break 5 minutes regardless of how much they train. 95% can't break 6. Do you know any regular people who run? I know several who have trained for years at 75MPW doing everything in their power to run fast and they have PRs of 24 minutes for 5k. One of my sons ran 4:15 in high school. The other one ran 5:30. They did the same training but one has my genes and the other has my wife's genes. My wife has never broken 26 minutes for 5k.

I agree the effort is worth it if you're the 4th man, and if it brings you joy. But the 9th man? I don't think it's worth it. You have to think about the opportunity cost. All that time spent running can be spent doing other things.

I considered walking onto the cross country and track teams at the D1 school I attended in the 90s. The school I went to didn't have a particularly strong team, but I don't think I had the talent to ever be top 5. Instead, I did club crew. I ran for fun and did local 5Ks. I played in the orchestra and started a small musical ensemble that I believe still exists to this day. I studied abroad for a full year and got great grades. I honestly think I would have struggled to do any of those things if I'd been pouring all my energy into being the 9th woman on the cross country team. If I'd gone to a D3 school, I could have run and thrived I think, but the D1 school offered me an academic scholarship (no one was going to give me a running scholarship) and was a top school in my field of study.

As for talent vs hard work, my sister was runner up in our mid-sized state on 15 mpw. She was regularly written up in the paper. We started running at the same time and ran the same mileage. I was around a minute per mile slower than her in a typical race. I continue to run 30+ mpw, and she basically doesn't run at all (prefers HIIT classes and that sort of thing) but every so often she'll hop in a race and go way faster than I've ever run in my life. So I do think talent trumps work.

you better tell Gerry Lindgren this because I do think he got the memo.

and by the way Jim Ryun wasn't that good when he first started. I think he might have even been cut from the team his first year.

funny how only after someone gets good that people say they have talent

funny how people will watch 10 kids do the exact same training with hugely different results and say it's all about hard work.

Millions of kids would run the same times as Ryun if they replicate his workouts.

Seth has both. The champ!

Runners like you need to get that 80 mpw for part of the year is not particularly "hard work". I averaged over 80 mpw over a full 365-day period (4,160+ miles) as a 50-year-old hobby jogger who had stopped racing four years earlier. 80 miles is only 9 hours a week for those 100th in conference college runners, and probably not for the whole year. I did more like 11+ hours a week as a high school soph road biking on my own without any training guidance and not even having the parental support to do any races. Cross country skiers are more like 15-20+ hours a week average over the full year.

The question you forgot is what is talent?

it’s only someone with a low entry bar/level for a stimulus to get you an above average performance.

it does not correlate with being the best at performing only that you get a head start. Someone with “talent” might not break 4min mile or 14min 5k vs someone who has to work hard to get there.

If you take an extreme case with someone run 15mins 5km with little training but have to put in disproportionally more work than another to break 14min than another who initially couldn’t break 17 mins

Teams used to be bigger awhile back, but at one point early in my college career I was probably outside the top 15 on my team.

I stuck with it, ran a lot, and eventually scored points on the track, and made two conference XC teams (only one where I was top 5).

While I came close to All Conference in a 10k once, I never made a first rounds, won a college title or even got a top 20 XC Conference finish.

But the grind was worth it.

Free shoes and gear was nice. Traveling the country when I finally made meets like Drake, Mt SAC and Stanford was awesome. And the friendships I made logging those miles has lasted two decades thus far.

Most people can't break 25 minutes for 5k regardless of training.

2 guys, same age, same school, same coach, same training program. Are they going to have the same results? If not, why? To me, that’s talent.