How can you tell you are talented in running?

You need raw speed to be successful at any distance. I have all my HS athletes run the 4x4 and look For girls under 62 and guys under 52 as a baseline for the speed needed to be successful in the 1600 or 3200.

You are running with a friend (you both do about the same weekly running), your friend is puffing and maybe asks you to slow down. You are finding it a very easy run, feel like you are running on the spot. You have talent. Your friend does not.

If you can put your hand around your ankle completely.

BZ wrote:

If you can put your hand around your ankle completely.

Can you do that?

just quit David wrote:

You should quit running David, it's obviously not bringing you any joy yet you keep obsessing about it.

You should instead pursue banging prostitutes, something that actually brings joy.

Stop trolling

david45 wrote:

What are the signs of talent? How are you supposed to know if you have talent?

Ran playing soccer, I enjoyed it. I found I could sprint down the field and almost always catch the other players. First test of some kind of running ability, grade 4. Age 9. School has two relay teams with 8 runners each. I make the 'B' team.

6th grade arrives, I'm the fastest kid in the school at all distances. We only did a sprint and 400m but I was the best at those two distances. So I feel good about my running, but I've never really competed. And the talent pool I come from (my school) is very small. Big fish, small pond.

I also ran about 3 minutes for 800 meters indoors when I was 11. No formal training.

7th grade, now in a bigger school. Not the fastest sprinter anymore in my grade. Larger talent pool.

Now there are close to 100 boys in my grade becsause it's a bigger school. I don't know how I rank in the sprints but I'd guess I'm around 3rd best. Not the best anymore. But at the longer distances, I'm right up there.

By the end of junior high, the 9th grade, I am clear an away the best long distance runner in my school. The best at 800m and 1500m. Maybe the best at 400m too. Not at 200m or 100m.

And then in high school I found I was no longer the best in my school at any distance. Well once I hit grade 12, I would say I was the best cross country runner. But a few others would have good arguements to refute that. On the track I was maybe 3rd, 4th best at 1500m and 3000m my last year.

cool story greg

You can run a sub-6 mile

If you have talent you know it.

grazed anatomy wrote:

You need raw speed to be successful at any distance. I have all my HS athletes run the 4x4 and look For girls under 62 and guys under 52 as a baseline for the speed needed to be successful in the 1600 or 3200.

Let's see if I get this correctly: you take athletes that are not necessarily runners, make them run 400 meters and look if they can pop a 52 or a 62 with no formal training? Are you looking for future olympians or are you trying to fill the XC team roster? I think I have seen one or maybe two students in 10 year at my high school that would have qualified for "talented" according to this criteria.

Reported. Everyone here is tired of you dude. Go away.

There are billions of people in the world. Their runnining talent is measured in a bell shaped curve. So what level of talent are you asking about? I am guessing you want to know about the 1%. That group can run sub 5 for a mile in 8th grade. That group can run sub 4:20 while in high school. On the other end are people like you. You are in the bottom 10%. What was your ACT score? The scores also form a bell shaped curve.

Athletic. If you have zero running experience but you are athletic you have chance.

Strength to weight raiot, vertical jump, agility, speed, low body fat % for starters.

You can have all that but if you lack mental toughness, dont try it

This must be David replying to herself. I can’t see any way people actually believe this is a genuine post and want to give genuine answers:

You're not talented.

I think there are at least 4 types of talent related to distance running.

The first is your genetic predisposition. This isn't measurable by the time we're older than a toddler. It's obvious that Shaq was never going to be a great 10k guy, but our lifestyles affect our physical makeup on many levels, so past a certain age it would be difficult to determine what is natural versus created.

A second is your response to training. Some people simply respond faster than others to the same stimulus. If you train consistently in a group for an extended period of time, are you improving faster or slower than the norm? If everyone wasn't in the same shape to start with, however, the degree of stimulus will be too much for some and not enough for others, but I think there are some very large differences in the response to training that can still be observed that can be called talent.

A third is the ability to compete. In a race do you typically beat guys who train at the same level as you?

A fourth is the ability to stay injuy-free. Some athletes go from one injury to another while some almost never have an ache or pain despite very high levels of stimulus. Do you find your training affected by aches, pains, or illness more or less than your peers? If it's less, this might be your talent.

With all of these, there is confounding with prior activities and experiences. I don't think it's useful to think about talent in athletics anymore than it does to think about IQ in a classroom. Find your passion and dedicate yourself to finding out what you are capable of. These other metrics too often become excuses for a lack of achievement.

It's pretty easy really. When there are masses of people behind you and only a few in front of you. during a race. Especially true if the race you are in is something big like the NYC marathon, Peachtree road race, etc

There are a couple ways to find out even if you don't run regularly. fill you mouth with water and run a mile all out without swallowing the water, if its under 6 mins you have talent. Another way I have seen in my years is body type, super scrawny but still strong enough lets to run up a hill. You can have talent as a fatty but neither of these test will work. You have to shed the weight before you can discover the potential.

grazed anatomy wrote:

You need raw speed to be successful at any distance. I have all my HS athletes run the 4x4 and look For girls under 62 and guys under 52 as a baseline for the speed needed to be successful in the 1600 or 3200.

you’re quite right, with your criteria, you won’t have anyone on your team who is unsuccessful