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

last, "talent" as explanation strikes me as akin to the right wing folks who adore the "invisible hand." which is not all that helpful analytically prospective. people mis-guess on track talent or stocks all the time. is boling the future of US track sprinting or not?

oh, but retrospectively, the machine will claim to explain who emerged. yeah, sure, at the end, medals and records in hand, sure, bolt was something else. and a great U20. but do all U20 stars pan out? hmmmm

but we'll clean up the Next Big Thing mistakes with the later retrospective re-sorting.

if the machine cannot unfailingly predict up front then the machine isn't sorting so much as recording.

The vast majority of people train the same. For example 100-125 miles per week in the marathon, a long run, some easy runs, workouts at threshold pace, some lifting. Pretty much everything people do is 90% he same. When everyone is pretty much doing the same thing, it comes down to genetics.

What’s the genetic explanation for Kenya possessing the area records for 100m and javelin?

I’m pretty sure that everyone knows that distance running is a conditioning sport and that it involves some training. The problem for the less talented is that once you get to a certain level, training hard is a given.

Genetics play a huge role. Not just in potential, but ability to stay injury free, in how much endurance one can build, and overall sprint speed as well. When you look at letsrun, you get a sample of only very genetically gifted individuals because most others quit or focused their energy on another pursuit.

i know you think this is a "diss" but you realize you just said it's a "conditioning sport." QED, thanks. you just gave away the store to try to mock me.

your last sentence assumes your conclusion. you simply assume away that a hard worker never wins. i do not buy everyone is training equally well or receiving equal coaching. you could be overworked. my college soccer team was. there are teams like stanford and oregon that seem to produce better TF guys.

you ignore the "boling" issue where what is wow at HS is no longer wow in college, and we have to wait and see who progresses. what's your argument? he wasn't "that" talented? he couldn't "outwork" anymore? he was The Guy at 18. period. no one looked better that age. and yet. that The Guy age 18 out of HS isn't always The Guy when he begins running college or The Guy age 22, says all we need to know re trying to discern "talent."

like i said, while you pretend like it says something going forward, it doesn't. you can't tell me which one turns out better. you can only look backwards and say, benefit of the races run, "bolt was more talented." that isn't so much predictive when he was 18 at historian work age 37. yeah, duh, this end of his career, GOAT. anyone can come in at the end and say wow was he talented. go back to 18 when almost no one breaks 10 and tell me who will be the ones getting well down in the 9s. and in 20 years you can tell me talent won out.

yeah i thought so.

Funny how you say basketball and volleyball are genetic since they require height (well it is tougher if you are shorter) when being smaller and thinner is partly genetic and improves your odds of being a better distance runner. It is sort the the inverse where being tall at running XC does not mean you can't be successful but it makes it tougher.

Then there is this

mdpi.com

Genes Whose Gain or Loss of Function Changes Type 1, 2A, 2X, or 2B Muscle Fibre Proportions in Mice—A Systematic Review

Adult skeletal muscle fibres are classified as type 1, 2A, 2X, and 2B. These classifications are based on the expression of the dominant myosin heavy chain isoform. Muscle fibre-specific gene expression and proportions of mus...

Open link

at 100 you can be the fastest and blow it tripping out of the blocks. it can also matter how well you execute a whole race and not just get out well.

at 110 or 300 or 400H you can tag a single hurdle and either take yourself out or turn a blowout back into a race. one year i was undefeated at 300H through conference, flying fast time in my final, and caught the final hurdle with my trail leg, dropped 1st to 3rd. is it i was most talented and should have won? i had about 5 yards til i had to stumble home. or is it ultimately an execution sport?

at mid-distance it's often when you decide to kick and who has legs left. and we can pretend talent will out but some good 800 runners are mediocre if they have to go through heats. some people can do it once chasing a rabbit full gas but not 3 times in a more match race context where several have some kick left.

at true distance, the interesting thing is a lot of marathon folks come in their own age 30 and some weren't the best 10k types before that on a track. sometimes it translates. sometimes we're talking someone new.

In regard to your second paragraph, everyone is a hard worker at the collegiate level. Trying to out train the people ahead of you is more likely to cause injury than to close the gap.

You seem to be referring to athletes that matured early but that doesn’t have anything to do with training. Eventually it will come down to talent.

Did you run XC/track in college? There were guys that could easily outrun me and they trained just as hard as I possibly could have. We were all strong runners and the difference was top-end speed and no training will change that.

This ^^

I have meet several of these guys, who ran very fast on just 30 miles a week and then lectured people running 50-60 miles on how they where training wrong.

The funny thing is they could be actually great if they ran 50-60miles but when they get beaten by talented guys that run 50-60 miles per week they give up and move to another sport....

You think running 60-62 seconds in the 400 is "bad genetics"? Wow, welcome to LetsRun.

That guy with "bad genetics" is like superman to me. I ran 4 years in high school at one the better distance running schools in California. Loved running, and would bet I ran more on the side than even our best runners. I kept running until injuries shut me down in my 40s.

But I was never able to break 70 sec in the quarter mile until after high school. As such breaking 5 minutes in the mile was out of the question. Training as hard as I did I never broke 18 minutes for 3 miles. Yes, that means I finished dead last in most of my races, frequently by a large amount. But I loved running, and all my close friends were on the team, and they were very supportive.

I still consider myself fairly athletic. Many, many people could never, ever, ever break 70 seconds in 400, even after 10 years of training, diet and focus. We had some guys on team that were slower than me, but they all quit within a few months. 400m in 60 seconds is not bad genetics.

Kind of crazy how many people think running is 80% genetic. I've been running for 2.5 years now and I'm not 'elite' by any means for the people on here, but I started at 22 minutes and it took me around a month to break 20, I was in good shape when I started from football (soccer for you americans) so wasn't slow because of being overweight or inactive.
It took me 6 months to go from 20 to sub 18, I put my mileage up very quickly running 40-50 mpw but my training wasn't great because I didn't know much about the sport. (I started at 18 as a hobby after school ended). You see someone running 50 mpw and not able to run sub 18 and automatically think he is never going to break anything respectable...
I went from sub 18 to sub 17 in another 4 months, then another 6 months to sub 16. Over time I picked up to 70-85 mpw, started utilising every session and gradually went from sub 16 to 15:30..then low 15's, then a big jump to high 14's, now in 14:3x shape. And the progression from low 16s to 14:3x is in around 15 months.
I understand this forum is toxic and might find 14:3x mediocre, but saying that running is 80% talent is kind of crazy and I imagine if I was in highschool struggling to run sub 18 for a whole season I would just get disregarded as talentless etc.
I think some people have a talent for gradual and steady progression, some might just be born physically gifted and break 16 in their first year.
Ig someone will say 'well you are probably at your talent limit or close', but how do you know? Is jakob the most talented runner ever? It's very unlikely, but he's the best because he's been training like a pro since 10 running 170k weeks.
Idk what the talent limit is here, I'm not denying it exists. But I think people underestimate the talent of not getting injured, the talent of wanting and seriously believing you can be the best, of being motivated, consistency, training 100% smart bla bla bla. And yes I think the 'talent' factor would play a much bigger role in sprinting than long distance.

In the horse racing world, with drugs anything is possible.

OP you've had 4 pages and not one poster has offered any real evidence that genetics is a major factor in predicting running ability. The best they can do is cynical reference to the Y chromosome (see, it makes men faster than women lol) and to extreme body types (see, this family of huge people wouldn't be good at running.)

None of it remotely explains why 150 lb male runner A runs a 4:10 and 150 lb male runner B runs a 5:50. And they know it. They know in this day and age, if any scientist agreed with them, studies to ID the alleged genes involved would already have been done, repeated, reviewed for years on end by now.

There is no "running gene."

Solid post. And answers my question about the Kenyans with the area records in the 100m and javelin. There’s nothing going on there but the fact that there is something of an infrastructure there that doesn’t exist elsewhere in that region.

I’d extend it to the sprints too. There’s no reason but infrastructure for why Jamaica should be so dominant in the sprints.

And yes the Ingebrigtsens are proof that it is 99% training. There’s no other explanation for why that level of success would come out of one family unit.

Of course it is trivially true that a blind, 4’5” or 300lbs athlete won’t break the 100m WR.

It is genetic. I started off with a 32 min 5k. I’m down to 23 minutes after 2ish years albeit I only run 15-20 mpw. I can likely break 20 but I’ll never get down to 16 mins.

There are running genes (plural), and there are genes that set the ceiling on running talent even if other genetic factors are world class, because you're only as strong as your weakest genetic link. "What genetic study?" Well, the way genes interact with other genes to produce a whole athlete is currently way beyond are ability to test it, but not beyond our ability to grasp what should be effectively common sense.

which genes? What study? Not interested in your speculation.

You don't know. Admit it. Stop setting yourself up to be called a LOSER.

I ran 65mpw (actually hit 85 once) consistently for 2 years during HS to peak at running a 17:10 5K and 4:55 Mile. I went as hard as I could possibly go and projectile vomited out stomach acid to break 5. I was 5'6 and 130lbs, lean and in shape. I confess, I've met middle school soccer players who haven't seriously trained distance and could hit my numbers after one season.

In college I started lifting 3 days a week for around 30-45 minutes a session. Two years in and at a still lean 138lbs I could hit a deep 300lbs squat and a 205 bench. I could also do a chinup with an added 100lbs attached to myself, all with flawless form. With no sprint training, blocks, or spikes at all, I could also hit 11.3 for 100m and hit a 10 foot basketball rim.

Talent and genetics are absolutely important above nearly all else in distance. Looking back at the past, I wish someone recognized my natural strength/explosiveness so I could use it in soccer, gymnastics, climbing, sprinting, or wrestling.

It's good to do a sport for the enjoyment of it but it is absolutely misleading to say that anybody can be competitive at the sport as long as they have the will. One of the same runners in high school I knew running 4:30 miles off of half the mileage I ran recently asked me how I got my lifts so high. He had been in the gym for 6 days a week for 2 years and could not lift more than me on any lift we talked about.

I did not have an answer.