With my times, can I eventually be successful?

Anybody out there?

Cjsilverman24 wrote:

Anybody out there?

I am California state champ in the 400. Do I have a chance?

You don't need permission to ask if you can be successful.

I would say that you should aim for setting goals next year for Track and Field.

A person who has a fear of failure will tend to set a very high-achieving goal, procrastinate, and then blame lack of time in order to complete their goal.

Aim for the 400 or 800, or even 200 or 100! Doesn't matter, you and I both know that we're middle-distance guys.

What you must do is choose your event, and then do a time trial every month, or x-amount of weeks.

See what you have to do to improve speed.

For me? I am finally going to work on my arms and abs. I hate it but it is a necessary evil.

I went from a 7:09 mile to a 4:58 mile in ONE YEAR. Anything is possible my friend.

Highschool wrote:

I went from a 7:09 mile to a 4:58 mile in ONE YEAR. Anything is possible my friend.

This. Before you start running isnt that important. You'll probably improve quickly. The question is how much.

Highschool wrote:

I went from a 7:09 mile to a 4:58 mile in ONE YEAR. Anything is possible my friend.

You are a doper

Your times suck. You don't have any endurance, and you do not have any speed. Especially the speed is not trainable so much. With a 15.3 100 m at age 16 it is hard to imagine you would ever break 13 seconds. So the 400, 800 and 1600 is not for you, also. Would you be happy to come dead last in track a meet with a 65 s 400 or a 2:30 800?

Partridge wrote:

Your times suck. You don't have any endurance, and you do not have any speed. Especially the speed is not trainable so much. With a 15.3 100 m at age 16 it is hard to imagine you would ever break 13 seconds. So the 400, 800 and 1600 is not for you, also. Would you be happy to come dead last in track a meet with a 65 s 400 or a 2:30 800?

Wow bro, thanks for telling me my times suck when I clearly acknowledged that in the post. I really don’t think that you actually read the post; I think you are just a negative person who enjoys spreading negativity. I said that I’m just starting to get back in shape, and of course those times are going to go way down once I start making more gains and building more endurance. Now, I don’t know how low they’ll drop, and how quickly they’ll drop, that was the whole point of this post.

Partridge wrote:

Your times suck. You don't have any endurance, and you do not have any speed. Especially the speed is not trainable so much. With a 15.3 100 m at age 16 it is hard to imagine you would ever break 13 seconds. So the 400, 800 and 1600 is not for you, also. Would you be happy to come dead last in track a meet with a 65 s 400 or a 2:30 800?

2:30 800 is being generous considering his 400 PR is 1:17. Start training for a marathon instead

The other posters are ridiculous. Without taking all things into consideration it's hard to say. You have given us some context but not a lot.

Important considerations are where are you at relative to puberty. You are a little heavy (not fat) for your height for a runner. Is that bc you are muscular,bone structure or carrying a couple extra pounds (no big deal). Also you mentioned football but to what degree have you been active growing up? How active where you in recent months b4 running? How much time playing football and other sports has been spent developing both slow and fast twitch muscles as well as both aerobic and anearobic systems. What does your current training look like? What's the context of your times? Official races or just random times you ran during internal sessions? Spikes or trainers? Etc...

Those are just some of the many factors. The guys that posted negative stuff before are fools. They made an analysis with very little information and context. My point in all this is it's really hard to say. My recommendation is if you enjoy it keep at it and see how fast you can get. If not move on. Don't worry too much. You already know relatively speaking your times aren't great but at same time that doesn't tell the entire story and doesn't mean you can't go far in the sport over time. Good news is you are improving quickly. That's a great sign. Stay positive. Learn as much as you can and use wisdom but stay free, have fun and don't become a slave to ocd mindsets that many runners are enslaved to. Don't become overly analytical it will only cause your times to suffer and hinder the process. Enjoy the process at all costs.

Just go run a season of track and do the prescribed workouts, see how you do,and enjoy it.

LetsEatDoughnutsInstead wrote:

Just go run a season of track and do the prescribed workouts, see how you do,and enjoy it.

That's good advice. Maybe Asbel should have followed your advice.

Tom Von Ruden, an Olympic finalist in '68, ran only 4:35 in high school.

Me, I ran my first mile at 15 in 5:23 on a week of training. Ran 4:20 at age 18 then lost interest for a long time.

I think Jim Ryun's first mile was around 5:23-24. He did pretty good.

I think you have a lot of work to do if you want to succeed in track.

If you have a passion for it, give it a shot! And have fun with it. Since you haven't done much training, there's no telling what you're capable of. Call or email the coach, tell him what you want to do, and ask for a plan. If he's worth anything he'll be willing to help out somebody who wants to challenge himself. Only one way to find out! (And people on these message boards can't answer it for you.)

If you don't try, you'll be as slow as you were before. If you try, worst case you'll be in better shape than ever and set yourself up to be healthier.

My guess, is that if you train _consistently_ you will surprise yourself, in a good way.

Let us know how it goes!

You should be talking to the coach about joining the cross country team this fall. With proper coaching, adequate base building, and cross country racing, you'll be in a MUCH better place come track season this spring. Furthermore, being on the team will force you to develop accountability and discipline toward training. If you try to do it yourself, you probably will drop off within a few weeks. Not that it can't be done, but that far more often than not, it won't be done.

Seriously, join the cross county team. It doesn't matter that your times aren't good yet. When had kids who couldn't run a mile time trial join our team. No they wouldn't be on the varsity top seven for the state meet, but they would be training. And training is what is important. Between the coach's workouts and the team's camaraderie, they improved.

By the end of spring you'll be a 5:40 miler. Its not that hard to drop a lot of time off your mile. It takes consistency, and a lot of work, but the time will drop.

Depending on how hard you work, maybe next year you can break 5.

Now, as to your question about success...how do you define success? No, you aren't going to run 4:10 and be recruited by a D1 track team, get a free ride, join the Bowerman group and set an American Record. Its too late. If you started running in 7th grade, stayed motivated, stayed healthy, and had the talent, maybe you'd get there. That's not to be harsh or crush dreams, just pointing out reality. Don't set yourself up for failure by ignoring reality.

But if you define success by getting a lot faster, a lot fitter, joining a team, developing camaraderie, developing healthy habits, a lifetime hobby, meeting the fittest girls in school etc etc etc you can still be quite successful. And hell, maybe you train with a DIII team in college, you keep improving into your 20s, you transition to marathons and by 2028 you qualify for the Olympic Trials. That's pretty good. That's what most of here aspire to, and there's still plenty of time for that for you.

So a few of you have mentioned that I should do XC this fall. My concern is that I have little endurance, and I’m not sure if I can run more than a mile and a half without taking a walking break. Even if I could power through 2 miles or so, it would not be fast. I guess I just don’t want to embarrass myself lol, but if It would really help me then I guess I could deal with it and make the most of it.

When I ran in high school last place in the mile was around 5:30 so you would be lapped by every one in the race which would be humiliating. Recently, though, I saw a mile at the local high school where someone ran around 8:00 and was only 50 yards behind the next guy. I don't know if that was an outlier or if more people are running now just to improve fitness.

Anyway, it's impossible to pedrict times for you so just run and see what happens.