The talent trap

It takes more than ability to reach your potential

Growing up, I never considered myself a talented runner, probably because most of my peers were extremely talented. Of the 20 other runners on my high school cross country team, I was maybe the 17th fastest. Since the first seven made up the varsity and the next seven accounted for the junior varsity, I was a non-entity in almost every dual meet I ran. 

On training days, the lead pack would shoot off in one direction and the second pack would head off in another. Me and a couple of the other guys were part of a third group. We’d get in our run at a slower pace that would get us back long after everyone else was already well into their cooldowns and lining up rides home. 

Compared to my teammates who honed their speed chops on the track, I was merely a part-time runner. Once cross country season was over, I’d head inside to the gym for basketball where I needed to trade aerobic fitness for quickness. In the spring, I’d be holding down second base on the baseball team, which didn’t do a lot for either my fitness or my quickness. 

After banging my knee playing pickup basketball -- an activity that was strictly forbidden during cross country season -- I used the ‘injury’ as an opportunity to quit the team during my sophomore season. Who was I kidding, anyway? I didn’t belong with runners of that caliber. 

Just reading that back some 30 years later makes me cringe. What my teenage lizard brain didn’t comprehend at the time was that my team was not only one of the best in the state of New Jersey, it was one of the best in the country. Many of the kids I grew up running with went on to earn scholarships at Division I schools. One of them even won the national championship in San Diego. (Shoutout to Brendan Heffernan.) 

Because I didn’t possess their level of elite talent, I had a hard time realizing that I actually had potential by normal standards. I could break 6-minutes in the mile easily, and I distinctly remember running sub 19-minute 5K’s as a freshman in our races. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for that kind of speed today.   

Rather than see that as an indicator of future success if I applied myself, 16-year-old me thought that was a failure because I couldn’t get under 5 minutes for a mile, or finish races in the 17’s like my faster teammates. So, I quit. Of all the not-smart things I did as in high school that may have been the dumbest. (It’s a long list.)  

Without the structure of the cross country team and the impetus to continue training, my speed and endurance gradually diminished right at the point when I would have been entering my physical prime. Whatever talent I may have possessed in my 20s is lost to the sands of time. 

Years later, when a bunch of friends from home got together for a relay race across New Jersey, I was the sixth fastest out of seven and some years I was clearly the slowest member of the team. The first year we ran together was somewhere between demoralizing and inspiring. 

My friends were all still fast and in great shape. I was neither, and they rightly assigned me the least demanding legs of the day. Once again, I felt like I didn’t belong. Only this time I didn’t quit. Instead, watching the guys I grew up with run with such power and grace motivated me to get back in shape. 

The great thing about being part of a team like that is we were all driven to do our best because none of us wanted to let our brothers down. We were accountable to each other without having to say the words aloud. That spurred me into taking my running seriously for the first time in years. 

The next summer, something had changed. Rather than feel like the token old friend member of the team, I felt like I had earned my spot. My friends noticed my (modest) improvement and encouraged me to actually train with a plan in mind. 

In the runup to the relay, I began training specifically for the 4.8 mile opener, a tricky distance halfway between an all-out 5K and a more sustained 10K effort. I practiced running with a consistent effort, rather than my patented take off and hang on until you burn out method. 

Every few weeks I went to a local track to work on speed for the second leg, a relay within the relay where I and another member of the team traded off mile repeats for 12-miles in the blazing summer heat of late July in New Jersey. While other members of the team had little interest in this particular form of torture, the relay within the relay became my specialty. 

My times started dropping rapidly and we became the dominant team in the 35-and-up Masters Division. The last time we competed, I ran that opening leg in less than 30 minutes -- about a 6:15 pace -- and knocked out a half dozen 6-minute splits in the second. We wound up winning the race, not just the Masters Division, but the whole freaking thing by less than a minute. 

Everyone had a major part in our triumph, but If I hadn’t dedicated myself to running those legs to the best of my ability we never would have won. It finally dawned on me that when you put in not just work, but the right kind of work, you get rewarded. You might think this sort of revelation would be self-explanatory, but at the time it felt like I had cracked a secret code. 

That’s the message in the book, “Peak” by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool. Their idea is it’s not just practice that makes perfect, but what they call deliberate practice. That is, practice with a purpose. Published in 2016, “Peak” is in many ways a refutation of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours rule, which as the authors point out, is not a rule at all, but a catchphrase that sold a ton of books. 

The reality is there is no magic formula. You don’t improve by simply doing the same things day after day, and you certainly don’t get better doing nothing. Rather, you make progress by identifying your weaknesses, owning them, and coming up with a plan you can execute. That’s one of the things I like best about running, it’s within my power to maximize my abilities.   

The other big idea in “Peak” is that talent is elastic. Sure, there are natural gifts that some people possess based on genetics and good fortune. But talent needs to be nurtured and challenged so that it can improve. I wish someone had told me that back in 1990. Would have saved me a lot of trouble.  

When I think about the idea of talent now, I think about it in terms of potential. We all have potential, even though some may have more than others and it changes over time. My goals at age 46 may not be the same as they would have been at 26, but in many ways they’re clearer and more honest. Now, I’m simply striving to be the best I can be as often as possible. No regrets, no excuses. 

How about you guys: What’s your relationship with your own talent, any demons from the past you feel like exorcising?