Can i train/coach myself into the olympics?

One year in the woods, you can probably run 3:42 for the mile.

Plenty of Olympic runners trained by themselves in college, it's all on you.

Go to college or find yourself a job that can support you, then worry about running.

The easiest avenue to the Olympic Trials is the marathon.

If you want to make the Olympics, again your best bet is in the 5000 or 10000, where the times are often well off of any records.

I've wondered for years why, in this huge country, someone from a "rural" area, or depressed state, or disadvantaged area, or whatever, is not actually the second coming of The Great American Distance Runner, and does not emerge as a world beater after a few years of work.

Not saying you're The One, but you said rural. Go for it.

You only trained for one year with those times? That's pretty impressive. I would say you have a fair shot, and as others have said the 5000 and 10000 are probably your best bet.

Get yourself a scholarship and go to college. Doing so will greatly increase your chances of making the Olymic team. If that dream doesn't become reality, you at least have a better chance of being able to make a decent living with a degree.

Besides being a very basic requirement, Having a good understanding of training principles doesn’t really matter. There’s a lot of people that can write theoretical, long-term progressive training programs that look good on paper.

At some point, for the vast majority of people, training by yourself- with no interaction with others- takes its toll after a few years. You don’t necessarily need a coach or a team I guess, but you likely need some form of social circle at some point in life-and having people that know a little bit about running in that circle makes it easier. In regards to not going to college, and training by yourself/coaching yourself, I think the biggest struggle you’ll face is in a few years...you don’t really have a great job, and shoes, gear, travel, and entry fees are adding up. You’re only running mediocre times (relative to national or world-class.. maybe you’re running 13:40/28:30 at 21 or 22.. still not going to get you anywhere even though that’s pretty solid).. At some point, it will just get old. It’s most likely you’ll face peaks and valleys with motivation. Sometimes you may not want to continue at all. Without any support, it’s just harder.

You don’t have to compete in college, but I’d at-least go to community college, take some classes, work a part-time job you somewhat enjoy. Make some running friends-even if you just do an easy run with them once every 2 weeks or something. Just have something in your life besides running, and some people in your life.

But to be completely honest, you mention ‘not having to deal with obstacles’. That’s just unrealistic. Whether you go to college or not, you will have obstacles. That’s life. I know good arguments can be made that the college system isn’t ideal for long-term development, but I’m just pointing out that not going to college isn’t going to be perfect and easy either. And even though there’s a few success stories of people “doing it on their own”, I’d guess the majority of people that skip college and try to run on their own stop being competitive after a few years. We all like to think we are the anomaly, and maybe we are, but you have consider what’s most probable as well.

noncomp wrote:

Go to college or find yourself a job that can support you, then worry about running.

Noncomp is absolutely right. You can do anything you set your mind to (you just need to perfect everything such as training, nutrition, sleep, strength, etc.), but even with that, there's no guarantee you will become an Olympic runner. You could absolutely train just as well if you had a job, and that's probably the safer option. I wish you good luck in training.

How will you be paying for food and shelter. How will you pay for all the shoes and super shoes you need for training? What is your access to additional strength training, athletic trainers, physical therapy, etc. to supplement your training and keep you healthy to train harder? Do you have a plan to get into races if you have no academic or corporate affiliation? How will you afford to travel to these races?

Your times are decent for your age, but will need substantial progress to be able to fund your expenses on your own. College is a venue most use as a means of exploring their continued progress as a runner. It isn’t the only way though. Track is a harder path forward in terms of access to meets regionally that will give you the right level of competition to see progress. Marathon training will be easier to get access as most races have open sign up if you can pay the entry fee. Either way, you’re looking at a lot of costs to maximize your progress over the next few years with very little return financially. Either you have someone that will support you like your parents or you have to deal with the obstacles of a job or school. All paths forward will be hard to get near achieving the goals you stated. Most choose college for the side benefits that come from the degree.

I understand your idealism but it's always advantageous to have a second set of (knowledgable) eyes to enhance improvement.

1. Not having to deal with obstacles? Not a great attitude for someone who claims to thrive for excellence. In life it's far better to confront obstacles than avoid them. Plus, in a few years, no college degree will be your main obstacle.

2. No man is an island. This is true in life as well as running.

Best of luck.

There is an enormous body of distance running material available for anyone willing to spend the time to read and study it. Unfortunately, the self experimentation time required to figure out what works is just as enormous, and you don't have decades to figure it out. There is a lot more to success in distance running than copying workouts found in books and magazines. In fact, I believe one of the great destroyers of young runners is the thinking that copying some super runner's workouts is the magic key. In my 45 years of running (which includes the US Olympic Trials) I've found that a lot of great running is counterintuitive. Quite a few things that I thought were the keys to great running when I started, I now realize were wrong or incomplete.