Did Abdi really run his first 5k in 15:10 without ANY training?

No it's been proven by scientists that the East Africans don't have any more of a natural gift to running than people from anywhere else in the world.

thorkelsen wrote:

No it's been proven by scientists that the East Africans don't have any more of a natural gift to running than people from anywhere else in the world.

A kid on my track team ran 10:05 in the 2-mile without ANY training what so ever. While this isn't anywhere close to a 15:10, it shows that there is crazy potential out there.

How much faster did he get after training for 2 months? There are a lot of HS kids in pretty good shape. If you play BB or soccer for 2-3 hours a day you are getting in a lot of running.

Fitnessisamentalstate wrote:

thorkelsen wrote:

No it's been proven by scientists that the East Africans don't have any more of a natural gift to running than people from anywhere else in the world.

A kid on my track team ran 10:05 in the 2-mile without ANY training what so ever. While this isn't anywhere close to a 15:10, it shows that there is crazy potential out there.

My understanding is that he ran the first w/out with the team at a Jr College in jeans and boots, and beat all but one of the guys, then indeed ran something like 15:xx after a week.

He always struck me as something of an underachiever/underdeveloped, hard as it is to believe.

Fitnessisamentalstate wrote:

A kid on my track team ran 10:05 in the 2-mile without ANY training what so ever. While this isn't anywhere close to a 15:10, it shows that there is crazy potential out there.

no INTENTIONAL training

i've done nothing but play basketball before and gotten fairly close to my in-season track times. Sports are not completely independent of each other. Well except for golf. (half kidding)

Fitnessisamentalstate wrote:

A kid on my track team ran 10:05 in the 2-mile without ANY training what so ever. While this isn't anywhere close to a 15:10, it shows that there is crazy potential out there.

BS.

He was on your track team, right?

Unless the VERY FIRST THING your coach did was line everyone up, including people who had never run at all, and had them do a two-mile time trial, your story falls apart.

Fitnessisamentalstate wrote:

A kid on my track team ran 10:05 in the 2-mile without ANY training what so ever. While this isn't anywhere close to a 15:10, it shows that there is crazy potential out there.

It's because he does crossfit right?

We had a freshman on the first day go out with the wrong group. Ended up going for a 8 mile run at 6:30 pace and ran a 16:20 5k by the end of the month.

stupid letsrunners wrote:

Fitnessisamentalstate wrote:

A kid on my track team ran 10:05 in the 2-mile without ANY training what so ever. While this isn't anywhere close to a 15:10, it shows that there is crazy potential out there.

BS.

He was on your track team, right?

Unless the VERY FIRST THING your coach did was line everyone up, including people who had never run at all, and had them do a two-mile time trial, your story falls apart.

So?

Quite a few active kids can run around 18 with no formal training and drop a couple of minutes with training.

Do you think elite guys have to be 25-30 minute guys at some point?

Said Aouita was reputed to have run mid 14's on his first try in soccer cleats so I can believe that Abdi could run low 15's right off the bat.

What do we define as training?

When Haile runs 10km to school because there's no affordable transportation for him in ethiopia, is that training?

I can see this being true. I'm not very athletic or talented, plus I had a poor diet as a kid, but I ran 18:20-something for a 5k in 9th grade off of lawn-mowing and baseball/football/bike riding "fitness." I never broke 30:30 for 10K, considering how much faster Abdi is and the fact that he probably didn't eat a lot of fried chicken and kool-aid as a kid, I can see it.

Abdi's best is 27:20 I think? or 13:40 per 5k. Although I've never run a 10k besides xc, in peak form I'm confident I could have gone 30:00, or 15:00 per 5k. So Abdi doing 15:10 off one week of running would be like me (or any other 30:00 5ker) running 16:30 off one week of running (probably slower since the difference between 15:10 fitness and 27:20 fitness is much much much bigger than the difference between 16:30 fitness and 30:00 fitness). This seems reasonable, so I'd believe it.

If you're referring to a photo or video in your post, link to it.

stupid letsrunners wrote:

If you're referring to a photo or video in your post, link to it.

here it is:

I heard it from his own mouth. I remember him saying 15:05 though.