Are you considered talented if you can run a half-marathon at sub 9 minute pace?

I a person running a 5 hours marathon talentedd? Is a person running a 55 minutes 10k talented, is a person running a 25 minutes 5k talented?

Where the talent question kicks in? Is everyone talented?

bartholomew_maxwell wrote:

midpackgirl wrote:

In high school I was a 6 minute miler. Among other high school girls who were training seriously I was probably around 50th percentile. I ran varsity in XC for only about half the races.

I went to high school in south Georgia. A girl breaking 6 minutes in the mile in my region usually placed in the top 3 in region meets. You would have been competitive in the southern part of the state.

But go up to north and central Georgia where all the hills and mountains are and you started to see guys who could break 16 in the 5k in cross country and girls who could run rub 19, sub 18 consistently.

The northern runners being good probably has less to do with hills and mountains (though perhaps Henry Rono would disagree) and more to do with there being a lot more kids in the northern half of the state.

For anyone who's curious enough to go down the rabbit hole, I did some investigating (disclaimer: I've never been to Georgia). Here is milesplit's listing of meets in Georgia last May.

At the 2A Sectional meet (second-smallest division; I couldn't find a single A meet) for what appears to be the southern half of the state, the girls' 1600 was won in 5:28, and 6:04 was indeed 4th place (On the boys side, 4:29 won and 4:40 was 2nd).

The northern section had similar results, maybe even slightly slower.

I checked the 7A (largest schools) sectional meets, and found that both took place in the northern half of the state. Interestingly, there are only four schools of that size in the southern half of the state. Here's a map which can be filtered by class/division, region, etc:

These results are more reasonable: 8 girls under 5:20, with one girl running 5:01. All qualifiers to advance to the next meet (States?) 5:26 or better, which is pretty solid. At the state meet, four girls broke 5 minutes, and there were lots of good runners in the slightly smaller divisions.

This actually goes to show exactly what many other posters have said: Your friend isn't particularly talented, but for many people talent is measured by comparing to what you can see. So in the context of people just trying to complete a half, yes, that's pretty good. In the context of actual genetic gifts--which is what we mean when we're talking about talent--no, 8:XX pace (or 6:30 for one mile) is fairly average.

I can run that pace, and if I can run it, then that is not talented.

Yeah distance running is not very big in the southern half of the state. Hills and mountains do factor into the difference in a sense because the state cross country meet, at least when I was a student, was held in Carollton Georgia which is a hilly part of the state. Students from the northern half definitely had an advantage in that regard. The ground is basically flat coastal plain at a line extending across the state starting at Savannah and points south. And as a result to a lower popularity (most kids in my area only ran cross country during the Fall because their soccer coaches also acted as the cross country coach and used it as conditioning), we had virtually no structured distance running programs. As in teams that trained over the summer as well and teams that would run in excess of 20 or 30 miles per week.

stateroftheoblivious wrote:

bartholomew_maxwell wrote:

She is 5'10, fairly well trained. Has run NYC and Philly marathons. She did Philly in 3:52, NYC in 4:06. She broke 6:30 in the 5th avenue mile and has run 10K in 48:XX.

If she ran Philly in 3:52 then she averaged 8:51 for two half marathons in a row.

She should be able to run 1:45 for the half.

So 1:59 is above average for the average runner, but for her it is sub par.

I think your Math is off a bit.

old guy 74 wrote:

A few years ago I ran a rolling half marathon course with a 64 year old training partner. We ran an 8:30 pace and she didn't consider herself talented. Thirty years ago she had trained with a group that included 5-6 female Olympic marathon qualifiers (trials) and one Olympian. She was one of the slowest women in the club so she just considered herself an average runner.

It is funny how fast runners think they are average even though they are in the 90th percentile, whereas some in the 50th percentile think they are fast because they won the local Turkey Trot on the same day as a huge race in a nearby town where all the real talented runners went.

For the record, I always considered myself average, because I never broke 10 in the 3200. Today, I see very few where I live who even run the time that I ran and think I must have been better than I thought. It is all relative. In my time, I was an average HS varsity runner, but being on varsity is usually an above average HS runner. Talented? I would never claim that I was talented because I got beat badly at times by guys who were actually talented.

I don’t know how I feel about the 6 minute milers placing at region. I have 4 girls on my HS team that went sub 6 and only 1 (5:38) went to the state meet (top four in region)

Steve Martin wrote:

old guy 74 wrote:

A few years ago I ran a rolling half marathon course with a 64 year old training partner. We ran an 8:30 pace and she didn't consider herself talented. Thirty years ago she had trained with a group that included 5-6 female Olympic marathon qualifiers (trials) and one Olympian. She was one of the slowest women in the club so she just considered herself an average runner.

It is funny how fast runners think they are average even though they are in the 90th percentile, whereas some in the 50th percentile think they are fast because they won the local Turkey Trot on the same day as a huge race in a nearby town where all the real talented runners went.

Talent is relative...

To a fast Kenyan or Ethiopian teen, American boys who run 16:XX for 5K, 2 minutes slower than the African youth, might be considered untalented....though the 16:XX guys think they're talented.....That's the difference between African and American character. The humble African considers themselves talented if they can place in meets internationally....the arrogant American thinks they're talented if they win a dual, county, or state regional meet...

What's it to you? If you're a friend just support her, don't judge her.