Ha ha all you guys saying the reason you weren't elite is because you were wanted to chase women, or that you just had something else to do. Like you had ANY choice.
99.9% of you could do PEDs, get trained by Alberto AND Wetmore, live at altitude, wear super shoes every run and YOU STILL WOULDN'T BE ELITE!
Accept that you are a mediocre at best runner, no matter what other excuse you wanna invent.
According to many on this forum we should all be elites because all it takes are those “super shoes” and you run like minutes faster. Heck we should have all broken world records by now 🤣
There is only one reason, and it's because I am not fast enough. I still train full time 90mpw but work a full time job. At my level (4:02 mile) what's the point of being a 'pro' runner and earning 10k/yr off Instagram sponsorships when I could have a proper job and still run only a second or two slower in the mile than if I was 'all in.' I was never going to make an Olympic team so I may as well chase sub 4 while having a bit of cash in the bank, will only take me an extra year or two then if I was all in I'd think.
After reading all the way to the end, I see school-sponsored coaching is the most-blamed factor. Why is this? Why do all of you join school teams? By your own admission, it ruined your running career or potential for such.
I did not make the same mistake the rest of you did. Ran in high school. Best distance runner in the school district. Track coach was unaware of my existence. Trained pretty well, unlike most of you who obeyed your school's idiot coach. No interest in the NCAA; did not let training on a program designed for someone else, overracing (2-3 times in a single day), sacrificing long-term development for a conference title, or the disadvantages of collegiate life ruin me.
So, coaching was not the reason for me. If you don't obey coaches - or better yet, don't even meet them - they don't hinder you at all. My reason is that I switched to another sport for my 20s and 30s. Pretty successful at that; accomplished more than I thought I might and much more than most people. You can't do both (distance running and that other sport) at the same time.
Surprisingly, none of you had this as your reason. I figured plenty of good teenage runners spent their prime years doing something else. Maybe not a lot, it seems.....
Running HS XC and track is a great experience. Are you saying that if someone is interested in later taking up a different sport he should blow off the opportunity to compete in HS? Doesn’t make sense to me.
I would have liked to have read more details from the poster to whom you responded. Was he a javelin thrower for T&F club during his teens? Did he play in NFL in his twenties & thirties?
Did not have the required 200m speed to be any better at the 800m.
Did not have the stride, efficiency, aerobic capacity to move up to the mile.
I ran a 1:53 in college but I never looked good doing it. Arms never in the right spot. Shoulders twisting on my torso as I ran. Heelstriking during 400m races. Absolutely FRIED on 50-mile weeks.
Never had anything going my way besides great speed endurance.
I qualified for the JrC cross country nationals twice and indoor track 880 and mile relay once. I sat out a few years and then continued running at a D1 school. My coach who replaced the one who recruited me wanted to move me up to the 3 mile and steeple. I resisted then got injured doing something stupid. Anybody want to recruit a 68 year old with some eligibility still left.
I didn't have the genetics, the work ethic, the right training environment or training group, I didn't have any coach, my parents didn't care about running and neither did I. Other than that I was so close you wouldn't believe.
Running HS XC and track is a great experience. Are you saying that if someone is interested in later taking up a different sport he should blow off the opportunity to compete in HS? Doesn’t make sense to me.
I would have liked to have read more details from the poster to whom you responded. Was he a javelin thrower for T&F club during his teens? Did he play in NFL in his twenties & thirties?
This is the author of the post Aztec replied to and 600 asked about. And yeah, I completely lacked school spirit!
Funny that I came back and saw this. Haven't followed the thread at all. First off let me point out that the last post as I write this, so right above this one, blames the school system and coach they hired. Besides the obvious 'I wasn't fast enough' answers (perhaps true but doesn't prompt a fun discussion), this is the most common. Hence, my first post.
I suppose I'll respond to Aztec and 600 both at the same time. I ran in high school; only sport I did at the time. And while I don't necessarily disagree that running on Mondo or grass is a great experience for a teenager, so is running on asphalt or mountain trails or wherever. I didn't say 'don't run'. I said 'if the school, coach, team, training and racing schedule is why you sucked, avoid all that.' Feel free to count how many posts blame that system. As pointed out, there's yet another right above this!
So, yeah, I was a distance runner in high school. The best at school, which was not saying a whole lot, but with a student body of ~3000, in a big running city and area, right in the middle of the 'Running Boom', I did have competition for that distinction. So it is saying aomething, but alas, in the big picture, I was nothing to alert the media about.
I spent about 25 years after that rock climbing and mountaineering. Made my mark in another arena, I would say, then came back to running later. Still not world class!
I have the engine to be an elite runner, as I have a VO2 max of 66 as a female. However my times are much slower than what this VO2 max would predict. My problem is my running form and efficiency are quite bad. I heel strike and overstride. I also seem to generate a lot more heat than other people when I exercise. I drastically slow down in hot conditions, way more than what running temperature calculators predict. I am like an Escalade vs a Prius. I have a huge fuel tank (VO2 max) but poor fuel economy (takes me more O2 to run at a given pace).
I have an achilles heel, that has kept me injured for the last 10 years. Can't bump mileage up, can't do speedwork, can't wear low drop shoes. I can run fast, but then I won't be able to run again for the next week, so can't string together a consistent schedule. Sucks that at one point I was on track to be a stud, but after I first got injured, I could never match my times.
Injury was my initial hangup. I developed strains in both calves from several years of intensive middle-distance training (and likely poor biomechanics due to a back injury as a child). This severely limited my ability to do high intensity work, and forced me to focus on higher mileage and longer distances. I lost the motivation and desire to consistently log 100-140 mile weeks in my mid-20s as my corporate career and marriage started taking more of my attention, and once I got to that point, realized I was never going to progress.