Running is far more dependent on talent than it is on coaching

Uh, Barry Bonds? Baseball is like any other sport and it takes tremendous natural ability to play in MLB. There aren’t any The Little Engine That Could stories.

"Running is far more dependent on talent than it is on coaching"

In other surprising news, the sun rose in the east today.

Took me 80mi a week summers and winters just to dip under 16:00 in HS. Running is all about talent, but this is true with ANY sport. You know how many HOURS I spent playing basketball from childhood through HS? More than any person normally should. Still sucked.

Anyway, hard work WILL beat talent...up to a point. When that talent also works hard or the talent is astronomical then no amount of hard work will...work!

Alan

PS- Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work very hard.

And if coaching doesn't matter why are high schoolers and collegiates so much faster now than back during the low mileage 90s?

2005 or 2006, Marathoner and former store owner Steve Hoag told me he was a 55.xx 440 yard man. A time faster than I thought. Physiologists measure track sprinting or running potential by 200m dash or previously by 220 yard dash. It's a myth that a male can be worse than a 27.5 200m sprinter and be elite in any event 100m to Marathon. Swimmers and S&D coaches know all swimmers must show minimal ability, 50 yard or 50m splash & dash, too many runners believe fundamentals don't matter. Learning to sprint 200m is fundamental. Human energy system for 50m swimming is nearly identical to human energy system for track, 200m dash.

Coaching is not a job. You guys get paid or is it volunteer “work”? Your wives must be elated at your “career”. Hahaha. I’d love to see you paupers at a party explaining how you take in $30,000 per yr and work weekends. Hahaha

I assume by the tone of your post you have never sprinted sub-27.5 200m.

You’re kinda right but a coach can screw up talent pretty quickly. And they won’t be good on that kind of training you posted.

1.) More motivation and less complacency (sp?). A kid in the 90s only cares about the runners in his local area and doesn't know much about them. A kid in 2022 can compare his times against people from all over the country and can look up his rivals' times as well. So that kid who may have been satisfied with a 10:00 2 mile (which would make him the best in the local area) now sees that there are kids across the country running sub 9.

2.) More tracks are rubberized in 2022 than in 1992. The local D3 school and many nearby high schools had cinder tracks until the mid 2000s.

3.) Superspikes.

4.) 2022 has a larger and more diverse population. The talent pool is bigger.

Who ran low mileage in the 90s? I am very interested? Not Bob Kennedy....not Todd Williams....not anyone who actually made an Olympica team back then. In HS? I think you will find people succeeding on TALENT as they always have.

Alan

I can't agree with 1). U.S. high school 3200m runners knew 30 years ago 10:00 3200m wasn't going to get D1 universities interested unless a young man also had sub-1:55 800m race or races. Most likely 10:00 3200m wouldn't have gotten a U.S. teenager all-conference 30 years ago.

Yep. My HS track was all hard asphalt until my senior year. Then it was crushed rubber.

Alan

So in conclusion:

Running is far more dependent on talent than it is on coaching - correct.

Coaches are important, their main job is develop their athlete in a healthy way - correct.

It's not just talent. The athletes need it between the ears. They need to be motivated to put in the work to get the most out of their talent.

With the internet they have access to training plans so even if their coaches aren't good they can learn about what the top runners at all levels are doing. They can also watch races, championships, time trials, records 24/7.

Genetics/talent/doping is a cop out. Most people don't come anywhere near their ability levels.

I wish this were true but it isn't. Talent destroys hard work if the latter is unaccompanied by talent. I see it all the time running and in physics (my profession).

Between two equally talented person's the harder worker will win, but that's not what is being talked about here.

I agree that talent is most important. And I also believe a coach is important. The coach should be holding the stopwatch or Garmin during training not the athlete. Teach them to go by "feel". And a coach should be learning how you respond to the workouts to train you to peak at your race goal. There's more to it than just putting on pre-determined miles per week.

Correct. This is true for all sports. If we are talking about becoming a better exerciser, than that's a different topic. As far as sports go, you are correct.

Both talent and coaching matter. Part of coaching is getting talent out for the team. As a former coaching colleague used to say, "there is a championship team walk g the halls of almost every school ". Building a team culture is also very important.

My first year as an XC coach (after coaching track at the school for several years), I took over a girls team that had finished ninth out of fifteen at their regional the year before, even though the PR's on the team said they should have been in the top three or four. The coach realized he was in over his head and asked me to take over the team. Even though we had less talent the next year, we finished third at regionals and qualified for state. I'm not saying that I was the best coach ever, but coaching definitely mattered.

Conversely, about a decade later, I was coaching track (boys and girls) at another school with only 900 kids and five girls sports and four boys sports in the spring. Add in AAU volleyball, spring football, and "mandatory" spring conditioning programs for swimming and cheerleading, we were lucky to get 40 kids out for track. Even though I was a much more knowledgeable coach than a decade before, we couldn't win a dual meet and were lucky to qualify one kid a year for the state meet.

The reality is that both coaching (workouts, culture, recruiting, etc) and talent are vital components to building a strong team.

This is always my favorite topic to read about. Talent and coaching are both important.

That said, not one of you can accurately tell anyone exactly what 'talent' is needed. It's a nebulous term. The combination of talents needed to be great or good at running is very wide ranging and varied. People will try to define it but exceptions to their definitions can be found everywhere.

"Talent" and coaching are both needed to be successful.