Obama VS Alexi Pappas

Jim Ryun barely broke 60 for the quarter in his first race.

The fact that you got to low 15s show you had a strong bottom line talent.

For all you know, you could be a world class water polo player but may have never tried it.

Sometimes people end up doing what they are best suited for, and in Alexi's case I think distance running is a good fit.

Fashion, maybe not so much.

Heyoooooooo!

Just Another LRC idiot wrote:

So why is she slower than Emma Coburn?

Less talented or not working hard enough?

Or, for that matter, why is she slower than Kenenisa Bekele. Certainly talent level has nothing to do with it, no?

Or 4 Man wrote:

Just Another LRC idiot wrote:

So why is she slower than Emma Coburn?

Less talented or not working hard enough?

Or, for that matter, why is she slower than Kenenisa Bekele. Certainly talent level has nothing to do with it, no?

He had "more support from (his) community" than she did.

reader of the forums wrote:

coach d wrote:

"Hence, part of the genetic component for VO2max expresses itself only in response to an active lifestyle.

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This would explain some of what Daivd Epstein wrote about in his book, i.e., having a high baseline level of fitness being one kind of talent, a high responder being another, etc.

That has ALWAYS been my point about talent that I think so many overlook: that people that paint themselves as blue-collar running heroes with "little or moderate talent" who started off not particularly good, but after years of extremely hard training became stars, often have the MOST important type of talent of all: the ability to absorb and translate ever increasing levels of training (i.e., stress) into improved ability with little to no breakdown or burnout. So many guys who showed initial talent (the first type you talk about), don't have the second, and either plateau quickly with increased training stimulus, or get injured or burn out (and then critics might attribute this to lack of interest or something like that). An incredible training log is more a sign of ability to handle hard training (a talent in itself) than it is a sign of dedication. Yes, this second type of talent, as the article says, "expresses itself {so to speak} only in response to an active lifestyle" (i.e., very hard training in my example of an elite athlete). So yes, a certain level of dedication needs to be exerted in order to discover or capitalize (with results) on such a talent, but in the end, it is still certainly a talent, and one that no amount of will power will create for you if you weren't born with it.

And it's a positive feedback cycle: you work hard, you get better. You work harder, you get EVEN better. So then you work even harder than that and.....

then you convince yourself: if everyone just worked as hard as I do, they could be as good as I am. Nope.

Is it just a coincidence that the best runners have long Achilles tendons?

Black Medical Student wrote:

How old is Pappas? 24? She's right at that age where she will begin to realize that talent plays a much bigger role in her success than she thinks. All it will take is a few subpar season of running even though she is doing EVERYTHING right to get the picture. They were both right here, but Obama's argument is more grown up and realistic.

Hey man! Loving your posts lately. I think I realized that my success in running was due to talent about the same time that I realized that I would only ever be an olympic trials guy, not an olympian. I was 22-23. I did absolutely everything right. There was no one on my team hitting all the details and consistently training as I was. But some of my teammates beat me doing whatever they wanted, missing practices, staying up late, eating Mcdonalds, etc. Guess who went to the olympics?

I wasn't bitter. Quite the opposite. just moved ahead with my life. I've realized its only young people, and immature people, who cling to this notion that anything is attainable if you want it bad enough. By all means set high goals and work yourself to the bone to get them, but don't act like you can be a gold medalist just cause you want it that bad.

jjjjjj wrote:Hard work (meaning at least 80 miles per week, with two to three workouts, will get any man 20-35 years old down below 17:00 for 5k...

Really?

Christian Cantwell (age 34)

Ryan Whiting (age 28)

Joe Kovacs (age 25)

These guys can run sub-17 if they run 80mpw with 2-3 workouts?

Or if you are saying there is no way they could handle 80mpw with 2-3 workouts, what percentage of healthy young males could handle that?

I lost all respect for Alexi after reading this article. Not because she disagreed with him (barak) but because she listened to his advice in the first place. What does some teleprompt reader who took 150 vacation days playing golf know about hard work. She claims to be a hard worker but she doesn't seem to want to work hard intellectually and figure out talent has something to do with it.

Looks like several of you didn't read the whole article.

This experienced forced Alexi to think a little more about the topic, and at the end she concluded, that both Obama and she were probably right:

"I have improved with every season through some wild combination of hard work, patience, support, belief … and also a few drops of the natural talent that Mr. Obama pointed to. "

"I don’t know if a finishing kick comes down to being born gifted, working hard or belief. We can’t know. It is probably some combination of the three."

But now she has thought about talent, and will file it away:

"... since I can only control two of those things – hard work and belief – those are what I am going to spend my energy on."

Huh? If it's so clear, what does VO2max mean then, based on the strength of the scientific evidence?V02max is simply a "scientific proxy" for other variables, like fitness, with is harder to measure, and performance. Some claim it's not a very good proxy for performance. (True, but also somewhat meaningless.) Scientists pick VO2max, because it is easy to measure in a lab. The clarity of the meaning of VO2max did not change as a result of the Heritage studies.The study itself was looking (in part) for genetic contributors to VO2max, and found two sets of genetic components, one set expressed without training, and another set expressed as a result of training.

I just received for Xmas, David Epstein's "The Sports Gene", and managed to read it in about a week, despite many family interruptions/obligations. I could hardly put it down.

It looks like the best treatment of the subject so far, arguing strongly that it's not an "either/or" question. It's both nature and nurture. To reach your potential, you need both talent and training.

I liked his hardware/software model: You need the right hardware (i.e. talent), and you need to download the right software (i.e. do the hard work)

faith in humanity lost wrote:

I lost all respect for Alexi after reading this article. Not because she disagreed with him (barak) but because she listened to his advice in the first place. What does some teleprompt reader who took 150 vacation days playing golf know about hard work. She claims to be a hard worker but she doesn't seem to want to work hard intellectually and figure out talent has something to do with it.

I'm going to say that Obama worked as hard to get into Harvard Law as Alexi worked to get into Dartmouth. You think?

Of course, Pappas would probably say her Dartmouth admission was all due to plain old hard work, not being born upper middle class to a family with history of higher education. All those kids who didn't go Ivy League just didn't want it enough. Same as those women running over 32 for 10k. (See what I did there?)

She gives it away cold when she starts talking about her "6 mile runs becoming 10 mile runs" like it was something special.

How many average and pretty good runners are there out there who where already doing this and not seeing the results she was? As she went to moderately high levels of training, she leapfrogged over less talented people who had been doing that training all along.

I echo those who are saying that the most talented folks are more inclined to believe in hard work as the key variable to their success. It's a more comforting narrative. Lots of them do work hard, but you cannot discount the gift(s) of talent and trainability.

RacingtheCantaloupe wrote:

I echo those who are saying that the most talented folks are more inclined to believe in hard work as the key variable to their success. It's a more comforting narrative. Lots of them do work hard, but you cannot discount the gift(s) of talent and trainability.

There's a great experiment and video on YouTube were all of these participants are put in Monopoly games, but the rules are totally rigged in one player's favor.

The researchers survey the players afterward, and all of the "winners" give themselves full credit for their performance, even KNOWING that it was rigged.

So there you go.

This argument sounds a lot like the conservatives versus liberals in the culture wars. Conservatives like to think that success is solely the result of hard work. Liberals like to think it has more to do with luck and the circumstances you are born into.

The reality is it is a combination of both.

The top level runners have it all. They hit the gene lottery and have also have been motivated to work hard.

I was a D3 runner, and had a few guys on my team that were willing to work every bit as hard as the top D1 runners. They ultimately were limited by their raw talent. I'll always be impressed that they would continue to work as hard as they did just to be able to run a 15:00 5000.

rekrunner wrote:

I just received for Xmas, David Epstein's "The Sports Gene", and managed to read it in about a week, despite many family interruptions/obligations. I could hardly put it down.

It looks like the best treatment of the subject so far, arguing strongly that it's not an "either/or" question. It's both nature and nurture. To reach your potential, you need both talent and training.

I liked his hardware/software model: You need the right hardware (i.e. talent), and you need to download the right software (i.e. do the hard work)

And in other late breaking news, it takes both hydrogen and oxygen to form a water molecule.

+1 for Messi

You guys are putting a lot of thought into a conversation that quite clearly never took place.

In grad school years ago, one of my professors introduced me to the phrase "dubious dichotomy."

That's what we have here.