When did you realize you had no talent in running?

Ran 60-80 miles per week for a couple of years in my late 20's. Did a ton of hard intervals from 200m sprints to mile repeats. 5 mile tempos every other week with 12-14 mile long runs. 10 x 150m steep hill repeats. I was tested at 67 Vo2Max.

Never ran faster than 17 minutes for a 5K. Never ran faster than 4:57 for the mile. 38:00 was my best 10K. Best half marathon was a 6:55 pace. After failing to reach my goals on top of my career/job taking up a lot of time, family, marriage, and getting old.....I just decided that it was no longer worth the effort.

I decided to cut mileage to 30-40 per week, do some intervals once per week to burn fat and just clean up my diet. I wish I had more talent, and it sucked getting dusted by people who ran less mileage and trained far less.

david45 wrote:

calfshrug wrote:

It’s weird, I ran mid pack at best in lower and junior high in the PE mile, like 8-9 minutes probably. Then, I went out for xc grade 7 and held my own in practice with the older kids preseason , until a TT of 6:05 in practice early in the season. Ended up running 5:20 that track season

You are talented in terms of improving from training

5:20 as a7th grader is pretty decent. YOu sort of have to ignore stuff before a year of training when looking at talent. You hear about the no training person comming in and running a 16:40 5k or a 2:05 800m. But then you hear they have been doing 90mins of fartlek every day at soccer practice for 2 years or playing hoops for 3 hours/day. You can get pretty darn fit off just general conditioning like that.

dadsfadsfdasfdsafdas wrote:

david45 wrote:

You are talented in terms of improving from training

5:20 as a7th grader is pretty decent. YOu sort of have to ignore stuff before a year of training when looking at talent. You hear about the no training person comming in and running a 16:40 5k or a 2:05 800m. But then you hear they have been doing 90mins of fartlek every day at soccer practice for 2 years or playing hoops for 3 hours/day. You can get pretty darn fit off just general conditioning like that.

Sure, but if you start off at a mile time like 8:00 , you aren't going to ever be good at running even if you never exercised before

david45 wrote:

Sure, but if you start off at a mile time like 8:00 , you aren't going to ever be good at running even if you never exercised before

In elementary school or 6th grade? Puberty does some things to people, so I wouldn't write someone off for a time they ran when they were 11 or 12.

Just make your own goals (that are achievable) and enjoy running. Or find some other sport that brings you more challenge and fulfillment. Eventually you stop comparing yourself to people who are more talented than you are and just start competing against yourself (specifically your previous self).

Well the 8 mins was at age 8-12, and the first TT on a couple months training at age 12 was 6:05. Genetically, my mother is rather unathletic and has only shown decent progression in yoga and spin class later in life, and my father was a mediocre HS baller who managed to dunk a few times.

I went on to only get down to 4:46 for 1600m (17 yrs) and senior year I hit 17:20 to finish out the cross season. I then started lifting weights and hit 2:06 for the 800m and split 54 high in a relay and failed to break 4:50 that year the 1600. I always had trash pacing, the 8 I went out in 1:30 and blew around the final turn, and the 1600m pr went out in 2:20 and closed in 2:26.x, getting passed in the final straight.

Since then I’ve shifted gears entirely, and am now self coaching myself to get as explosive as possible. Just a couple months after my high school training ended, I did a 300m in 37.low in midD spikes, basically disproving what I thought then, which is that I was only geared for distance running. They’re mediocre times across the board but my speed and endurance are about equivalent. I’m hoping that I can get pretty fast since my broad jump is about 9.3’ and have run under 12 a couple of times in training

Please define what talent in running is?

Yet you still run very fast relative to your starting point. On the other hand, I only cut off 3 minutes from my 7th grade season PR up to my 12th grade PR (20:20 to 17:20).

Since high school, the best effort I’ve put out for distance running is an 8k in 31 minutes, while training about 5-7 miles per week.

While a lot of people would call that shitty, as my specific endurance in other disciplines- swimming, yoga, and cycling - is absolutely terrible, I’ve found some untapped speed potential since finishing high school (9.3’ standing broad, 4.67 over 40 yards, 1.6 over 10 yards), and I hope to get reasonably impressive marks on all distances up to and including setting a new 5k PR in the 15s a few years from now

If talent doesn't go away, I now realize I have very little talent as a runner.

In college after years of consistent running, I started winning bigger races my senior year. Went on to become a decent runner, just over 30 for 10k.

Was still running well at 58 years old. Could easily do 10 mile runs @ 7:00 per mile. Then I took a year off running and gained 10 lbs. but everything else seemed the same When I started back running again a 60, I was incredibly slow and It was a struggle to break 9 min for one single mile. After 2 years of focused training, I now have finally only broken 8 min for one mile-but that is slow.

If talent does not go away, I must not have had much talent at all as a7:58 all out mile is slow even with age grading.

THIS IS IT

That’s just an example of use it or lose it. I think the focus of the thread is really the question of - when did you/I discover that I /you don’t have the potential to run around times , at slowest, of 15-16 minutes for the 5k, or equivalent times for a female , or at shorter or longer distances.

Since there are some young teenagers on here, the question for some of them could be one of, what year of high or middle school did you realize you couldn’t ever train to become a 13-14 minute 5k guy, just because you were far ahead of your age grade until you were around 14-16 years old.

At age 60, it is time to scale back the goals. I turned 60 two months ago and concluded that a reasonable goal at this age is under 30 minutes for 5K and under 60 minutes for 10K.

How many 60-year-olds are runners ? Not many.

In elementary school when I could only get 20-25 on the pacer while most of my classmates were getting 40-50. Or in middle school when I could only run a sub-10 mile after mighty struggle and running 2x a week before school to train.

While being quite tall and lean btw

Uh, there's a 70 V02 lad in this thread who gave it up. V02 means little, but still.

I was all chuffed up about breaking 35 in a 10k after a year of training then a co worker pointed out the winning time was 28;)

The correct answer for most of you should be the day you came to this website.

ok bro david, we've established running isn't for you, go lift, get some girls, study well(mechanical engineering if I remember correctly), as maybe do some elliptical to keep the blood moving once in a while

When I could no longer break 15 in the 5k. I did not want to be seen as a loser. So I left

In high school when I put in the most training but still got beat by my teammates who barely ran and didn't take it seriously. Been running for 4 years now but can't seem to get faster than 4:55 mile and 17:00 5k.