What's the fastest you have seen someone race with little to no training.

12 year old pot smoking fattie ran with me to a 44m 10k.

16s for 5k xc is the fastest I've seen for first race. I've heard of someone running 15s in their first hs xc race. I wouldn't be surprised if some Kenyans could run 14s for their first race.

Honestly that would be myself. I ran 4:50 in 8th grade and all I did was goof around with my buddies during practice. sadly I never got much faster.

Abdi is rumored to have run 15 or 15:something for his first try without training.

He was college-aged.

As for what I've seen, some sprint talents can just hit low 0:5x 400s from the couch.

There was a guy in my dorm who could run under 10.9 right off the couch, I saw him do it and he had multiple people hand timing him. Skinny, average height white kid who won States in Indiana in Highschool. He had done no exercise for two years. He couldn't keep his grades high enough to get onto the football team as a freshman, ended up dropping out. I told him he should train and run a local USATF meet, but he had no interest in getting back into any kind of fitness regimen...

"during practice" ... so you were on the track team? Which would mean you at least ran sometimes. This isn't impressive at all.

Probably me.
I was not a fast kid because I was more into video games than sports.
Than when I started entering puberty and having lost some weight I smoked all my friends who were already playing basketball, soccer and other sports.
They were all like "wtf?".
Few years after I joined a running club and have been running since.

Sub 1:57 800 and :49 400 10th grader first track meet of the year and never ran track prior but was a very good basketball player. He was also 5'11" and could dunk from standing still under the basket.

so now we're back to trying to pimp raw "talent" again. i came from a strong TF state but most people with raw ability and no conditioning there would be like JV level. you might have a soccer, baseball, hoops guy come out who hadn't run competitively and do something but they weren't truly "raw," they were fairly fit. i say this because you can have lively legs -- talent -- but zero conditioning and you will either yank your hammy or run out of gas on your upset attempt before the finish line. it verges on mythical someone with literally no recent sports can walk out there and beat even solid varsity athletes. now, i know people who come over from another sport and instantly flash high ability, but they show up fit. and i know off the couch types who were high level within about a month of putting in the work. but if some guy off the street can walk up, dare you, then beat the whole team, it was the JV team or you suck. i don't buy a walkup runs an 11s 100m, 50s 400m, 2m 800, 4:20 mile. i buy they run a 12 in jeans and it's an impressive but losing spectacle but they are like 5 years too old usually or they don't want to show up and do the work to actually catch and compete with the regulars. vs. we had a kid show up from baseball who i hadn't seen at track since 7th grade, but his dad was a drill sergeant and that kid showed up ready, was already playing baseball, and was on the relay with us.

In HS we had a guy who refused to train. Talked his way out of workouts. Not sure if he played another sport.

Ran 2:00 for 800 every meet. 57-63. Clockwork.

My memory is that coaches finally convinced him to train but he never really got any better. Just didn't enjoy running and training, I think.

We had a freshman who ran a 9:50 3200 in his first ever race. Granted he ran the 2 weeks since practice had started. Had no endurance training before the season. Just shooting hoops with friends

I was riding my bike at 16mph , a random dancing meth head started racing me for almost 800m. He got bored and immediately went back to dancing. I was trying to say what he did was impressive, but he couldn't understand as he was oblivious to the outside world

ummm, ever heard of Jim Ryun?

1:59:40 marathon

jim ryun describes himself as not a natural athlete, cut from this team, cut from that. went over to XC, ran his 2 miles, built it from scratch. think more naguse, less immediate excellence.

Sorry dude.

Raw talent matters.

No one is ever going sub 13, 1:43, or 9.9 without it.

All the training in the world isn't going to make a 11.high sprinter a sub 10 guy and a well trained 18:00 xc runner in HS can run 120 mpw for 10 years but he won't ever run sub 13:30

athletic.net

Jt Kraemer

Jt Kraemer - CA Track and Field results and photos on Athletic.net

Link:www.athletic.net/athlete/23423402/trac...

also seen someone go 21.9 in his first year of track coming in from soccer.

it’s insane how reliant sprints are on genetics. the fast people usually come out FAST with no training.

you can train to become a faster sprinter but at the end of the day the separation between most people and the best is gigantic. you either got it or you don’t and most people don’t got it.

...it really hurts the feelings of most distance oriented LRCers to hear this fact.

Reminds me of a competitor of mine (from a different high school in our league) who for the entire season ran 1:59.x 880y every single time. I would follow his results in the newspaper and he always won and it was always 1:59 (our league was weak in the 880.) He was a very nice guy, came up, shook my hand and spoke with me after my one and only 880 race (I went 2:05 and of course he went 1:59.) At the sectional meet he ran 1:59 in his heat to get through to the final and the following week ran 1:59 for DFL in the final. He was a Senior so that was the end of his track days. I think one of his daughters later became an elite 800m lady (same last name, same town.)

Staying on topic, there were a number of guys at our high school who would show up, run a good time but not continue because they didn't like track. One of the guys on our tennis team hated our top distance star (the two almost came to blows) so our coach let the tennis guy run the 440y in one of our dual meets. The tennis guy ran the 440 in his street clothes (tight bell-bottom pants, tennis shoes) and ran :49 seconds. Our distance guy then ran the 440 in the next meet (in his spikes and uniform) and also ran :49 seconds. (The two had a bet on who would run the 440 faster.) We also had a guy show up late to a meet and he ran his leg of the Mile Relay in his street clothes wearing black dress shoes, black dress pants and a white button-down shirt (he was a waiter) - the guy fell down on the backstretch, got up with chalk all over him (dirt track with chalk lines for the lanes), picked up the baton then proceeded to slowly claw his way back to pull even at the handoff - his split had to have been around 46-47 and if I remember correctly he normally ran 48 in the open 440y.) That guy only ran 3 meets for us then quit because he needed to work. We had another guy who came out and ran the mile for us in a couple of dual meets and he ran around 4:48 with no training then quit the team because he found it boring (our #1 guy ran 4:18 as a Junior but as a Sophomore ran a 9:22 2-mile and was constantly injured as a Senior.)