Who here became a good runner after first showing little to no potential? (Need stories)

Nop200 wrote:

Typical runner or sockpuppet wrote:

I doesn't work that way. Read this article by David Epstein, or better yet, read his book Sports Gene.

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2013/08/the_sports_gene_want_to_improve_your_aerobic_capacity_better_hope_you_have.html

By anyone, I mean more like 95% of people.

Anyway, I'm not sure what you mean? All I asked for was stories about how people changed as runners, in order to understand a bit better.

I think he's referring to the Epstein's discussion of trainability. Some people's talent is the ability to respond to training. The classic example of high responder to training is Jim Ryun who was pretty slow at the beggining of HS and beat the world record holder only a few years later. A very different story is the case of the poster HRE who has described a vast improvement accumulated slowly over decades of training.

Steven Kapes from Solon, Ohio. Runs at Ashland, Frosh year of HS ran 27min for a 5k. Didn't break 17 in the 5k till his senior year of HS and ran 9:31 for 3200 and qualified for states. Frosh year of college ran 32:02 for 10k last weekend at Regionals, top true freshman. Almost quit the sport after his sophomore year of high school. Now a potential all-american in the future.

Pas da dutchy wrote:

Started running age 16. Ran 13:10 first 3200 got lapped by everyone and made fun of..

Senior yr ran 11:10 my best time. Ran 9:45 3k that summer.

Walked on to college team. Struggled for 2 yrs running 5ks started to get burned out..

Got a new coach who let me try new events after finding out I didn't really like running high mileage and was injury prone.

Switched to the 800m. Ran 1:57 my first one and 1:51 by end of season.

Senior yr ran 1:47 made nationals

Ran 1:46 as a post collegiate before starting coaching. Was one hell of a ride

HOLY SHIT!

Senior year in high school, 1st day of school, just finished a smoke. Cross country team walked by and friend on team talked me into running with them. Was a two mile run without a warm-up that turned into a race. I lasted one mile (wearing jeans, t-shirt, and tenners). I thought I was going to die! I pushed it hard to beat the fastest girl and barely did that. I was really sick after coughing up black stuff and that was the last day I smoked cigarettes. I kept up with it and by end of cross country was #4 on the team. Probably didn't help that my friend and I split a 6-pack of beer and smoked a doobie every day after practice. I got wise and quite all that after the criss country season. By the end of track I ran a 4:48 mile, 2:04 880, and 54's in the 440 relay. That was good enough to tie our high school mile record. Next year in college, I didn't get any good race times because ended up catching pneumonia but did workouts that indicated I was in 4:2x mile shape (3x1.2-mile@ 5-min/mile pace at 4500ft alt w/5-min recovery in between).

I think I could have done better in high school in the shorter distances but I don't think we ever did anything under 70-sec 440yd pace.

I ended up in practices doing 4x400 in 51, 57, 56, 55 and ran 1:58 880 indoors 1st race of the season in latter years but injury, illness, and lack of racing opportunities kept me from getting any better race times. Also kept up with a 47.9 400m guy in a workout and did 4x200m in 23.0, 23.0, 22.3, 23.0 hand timed. I thought that was good since I hadn't done those type of workouts before.

I had a little sucess but felt like I could have done a lot better (48's for 400m, 1:52-1:54 for 800m maybe). At least I made a huge improvement from being a smoker and a doper. I have been clean since after that cross country season in high school and am now 54 yrs old.

I was a very mediocre high school runner, and was seventh man JV my senior year despite running all four years. This was many, many years ago. I ran sporadically in college, also riding some, especially for transportation.

Part way through grad school I started running in the late summer and ran a marathon on December 1, running 2:52. I improved almost 20 minutes more over the next several years until plantar fascia problems limited my running and I raced for a few years on the bike before finally finishing school and started teaching. If you need to, you can reach me on the Track and Field News board by posting something similar.

The example for which you search has already been written by Kenny Moore. In an early chapter of "Best Efforts. The Long Blue Line" Moore tells his own story. He relates the episode of overhearing his dad tell another man he wished his some would quit running and that he was not very good. I for one am glad he did not stop as not only did he become an Olympic marathoner in 1968 and 1972 (4th in Munich) he has written fabulous accounts of the training and lifestyles of runners from around the world. A review of that collection of articles can be found here:

http://www.letsrun.com/2009/bestefforts0217.php

And yes, he has posted here in the past.

started off as a 7:46 miler in 8th grade...did not run until senior year of high school, joined my xc team for fun--starting at a 28:00 3 mile, then got down to 23:07 3 mile.

Did not run freshman year of college (had no intentions of ever running again) but then transferred to a D3 school and joined track my freshman semester of college. Ran a 19:54 5k, 11:54 3k, 42:30 10k, and 5:17 1500 meter. Then, just put in some miles that summer (30-50 mpw) and ran a 23:52 6k getting down to 22:116k in my first collegiate cross country season. Ended up in that first year running a 17:25 5k, 5:00 in the mile, and 10:22 3k.

For many different reasons, had to sit out a whole year of competition because after finding my gift of running was going to transfer to a DI school but then ended back up at my D3 school, and to NCAA rules--I had to sit the year out.

Now, I run 80 miles a week and have a 21:24 6k so far. Hoping to break this still with 2 XC races to go and then run in the 4:50's for the mile, 9:40-50's 3k, and 16:30ish for 5k this track season.

I am a female, by the way.

I was a sprinter in high school. Always was good enough for the sprint relay team but if I was entered in the open 100m in a big meet, I would be lucky to make the finals. So I was pretty good but not quite good enough. Our sprint coach also coached hurdles. I am tall and he noticed that I had a very long stride. I was also extremely flexible in the groin and hamstring areas as well as an excellent jumper (I am female and had been a cheerleader in past years). We had plenty of good jumpers on our team but no hurdlers. He turned me into a hurdler and I had never hurdled before. I worked 1:1 with him after the team practice had finished--two weeks after we started training I won the city championship title. One month later I was league champion (set new league records in both hurdle events) and then I was 5th in state. The next year (my senior year) I again set new league records and was 2nd in state. I got scholarship money for a D2 college. I went from a pretty good sprinter to a dominant hurdler because a coach with a good eye and lots of patience decided to work with me. It was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

I started running at 15, running 6:24 in the mile and 13:02 in the 2 mile. I finished with a 17:30, a 5:03, and a 10:50 as a senior. In college I ran 27;30 for 8k xc and a 1:16 1/2 marathon. My progression isn't nearly as impressive as some others on here, but I'll take it.

Thanks everybody! Much appreciated