what characteristics of a runner make you say "he/she has talent"?

VO2max > 80

Typically I consider talent to be a given athlete doing the same training as a group of athletes but dramatically out performing them in races. Such as a group of HS runners doing 30mpw and all of them running 18:00, except one kid runs 16:30.

chadhall wrote:

VO2max > 80

VO2 Max Doesn't Mean Anything (etc...)

Everyone has talent. Some have more than others, but talent is like height - the difference is in the magnitude.

Quintus Cassadamius wrote:

Typically I consider talent to be a given athlete doing the same training as a group of athletes but dramatically out performing them in races. Such as a group of HS runners doing 30mpw and all of them running 18:00, except one kid runs 16:30.

High schoolers are a terrible example of talent because their bodies mature at much different rates, and they come from different athletic backgrounds. Many times the fastest kid on the high school team is not the fastest in college.

Strong adaptability to training.

Watch freshman PE miles during the first week of high school. Any kid who breaks 6:00 without ever having run before has some amount of talent. Any kid who breaks 5:00 is really talented.

Phil Fondacaro wrote:

Watch freshman PE miles during the first week of high school. Any kid who breaks 6:00 without ever having run before has some amount of talent. Any kid who breaks 5:00 is really talented.

What kind of high school kid has "never run before"? Maybe if he's disabled?

Anyone ahead of me has more talent... Any one behind me doesn't work as hard.

I guess it's how quickly they get to the top. That's why HS times matter so much, because they're barely developed but still exceeding others with little work. When people like Ryan Hall explode in their first half marathon, relative to people who have been working on it for years, and an erratically paced 2:06 low second marathon, much faster than almost all the other guys who have been chipping away for years at the marathon, I think of them as talented and having a lot of potential.

(compared to other people running those times)

More accurately, I meant 'train' instead of 'run'. I had never run more than 600m for time before high school. Any kid who has run middle school cross-country will have a disproportionately good PE mile.

Surprising performances while untrained are indications of large talent. Wasn't Abdi's first day of running ever an 8k time trial at a JC where he broke 30:00 running in basketball shoes?

I see sprint speed in a distance runner (up to 5k) as a good talent indicator. Might sound pointless and counterproductive but if you have a good 5k or 3200 runner who also has legit wheels in a sprint (say, 52.xx or faster for an open 400) then you know with some more miles you have a potentially great runner, as opposed to some kid who just cant run fast whatsoever.

Look at their legs. If they are skinny, yet muscular, with little to no fat on them, they could be talented. The longer they are, the better. Thin ankles are best. Skinny up top.

Speed. If a runner is fast, they are more likely to be good later at any distance. All top distance runners are capable of sub55 for the quarter. It's easier to convert speed into endurance than convert endurance into speed (whatever the brojos say). If someone can't break 52 in the quarter, they will never be a world class miler. Period.

Endurance is easier to train long term compared to speed.

Overall, though, running is one of those sports that most people are quite adaptable to. Training matters.

Moderate talent trained>Huge Talent untrained.

And, talent is not always easy to see in running. For basketball or football, etc it often is (oh, he is 6'11" and can jump, lets put him in the basketball line). Someone might be a bit chubby, lose those 10-15lbs and BAM, world class talent underneath those folds.

Using the roads as an example and for runners who didn't get started in HS (although they may come from athletic backgrounds)...

Someone who has been training seriously for 2 years and is able to run mid-15s for 5K has TALENT

So much made up stuff. Do you really believe any of that?

Three things:

1). Adaptability to training

2). Durability

3). Motivation

You hear "he's really talented but never trains" or "she's really talented but keeps getting injured (or has thyroid issues to keep it current)" all the time but neither makes any sense.

Someone who adapts well to training but isn't durable or motivated enough to train consistently isn't, by definition, all that talented.

2 things...

How fast are they without training? By this I mean specific, intentional training. Yes, that means that the happenstance activities of childhood count as talent. Genetics are happenstance too, and we call that talent, why not early environmental factors beyond a young person's control? So one, being fast without trying to be fast is talent.

The second thing is how reactive the person is to the training that they DO do. How well they recover, how they deal with stress, how much their body can handle, how much gain they get from a small stimulus. This one is hard to tease apart from the first half of the equation I mentioned.

I would say those two comprise talent; how fast you are without trying, and how much improvement results when you do try.