ya'll are ignoring the possibility of selection effects. i ran cross country too and didn't hit anywhere near 18:30 (and also ran and swam all 4 years). think of all the people that didn't even try because they were worse at the mile, or whatever sort of endurance exercise they were first exposed to.RyanH wrote: ↑Sat May 09, 2020 2:56 pmI agree with this. In high school I ran cross country for three years and would pretty much finish near the back for every meet. My personal best for a 5k was 18:30 after 3 years of hard work.TobinHatesYou wrote:
The main hurdle is mentality. Most able-bodied people with no prior conditions can achieve, say, a 4w/kg FT on a time crunched plan.
Jump forward to 10 years later I started riding. Within 1.5 years of riding, I hit 4.8w/kg for 20 minutes. I didn't do anything special, just rode a lot and rode very hard pretty much every ride (raced twice a week for the race season too). After that though, it took 4 years to finally set a new PR on a 20 min effort, which in 2018 I got to 5.2w/kg for 20 minutes.
The point being, I don't think I am gifted from a cardio standpoint. I was a very bad runner and other sports in high school. I'd say that my ability to push myself harder than most people are willing to is what sets me apart. That and I'm not carrying much excess fat at 5'9 and around 70-72kg.
point is it is totally conjecture to say that the average person can do 4 w/kg after training. you may not have MVDP natural talent but you undoubtedly have a lot more than many people. a more accurate picture of this might be had if we all took a few years off riding, were sedentary, and then all did the same training for a period of time. i imagine you'd find the numbers all over the place for a myriad of reasons. but i find it extremely hard to believe that the mean would be 4 w/kg. like i said this is relatively rare amongst people training much more than 6-8 hours a week. i mean i'm on track to do 600+ hours this year and i think i'll baaaarely be there.
it is very appealing to say we all achieved level x because of hard work and while there is obviously truth to that in that everyone is an exercise responder (all though there is some debate about this) in general it is just not true.