Elite runners make running look easy and effortless. There are many factors which play a role to becoming an elite athlete.

Lifestyle / living environment
Where you live and how you live, how you spent your days? Whether you are living the busy New York or calm Iten, Kenya you can become an amazing runner, but living in Iten will give you huge advantages. In western countries people wake up, eat processed food for the breakfast, such as sugarcoated cereals, use buses or cars to get school, sit still a few hours a day, come home, watch TV, go to movies, hang out with friends, maybe training couple times per week. While for example in Iten, people wake up early in the morning, eat healthy breakfast, walk or run to the school, help with house work, spend their days doing more physical work. This active lifestyle develop kids already in the early age. While western kids are surrounded by all the easy options they need to work harder later on to catch up the others.

Opportunity also plays role in the life, for example how much money you have to invest your training and competition or how much you have free time to invest your training. Sometimes you might not have time as much as needed as you need to work for the pay your living, or you don’t have much many to take a part running events and competitions, so you don’t gain as much experience, but again you might prepare yourself better.

Inherent ability
Elite runner are often light weighted as the all extra weight will show in speed. We can affect your body weight and amount of muscle quite a lot, but we can’t totally change some biomechanical or physiological factors such us efficiency of the cardiovascular system, size of heart, cardiac output or muscle tendons’ structures. Of course we can train and develop our oxygen uptake ability, gain more slow twitch muscle fibers and some other factors, but everyone has limits, and those limits vary between people.

Supporters/family/coach
Most of the elite runner have several brands which sponsors their career and that way gives the opportunity to train and live like an athlete. Also many of the runners bring up importance of the training group and coach. Even though it’s individual sports, most runners train with others as it drives everyone further and motivate. Coach, family and other supporter gives athlete stability, they guide and listen athletes.

Consistency
You have to be goals, and plan to how to achieve it. This needs consistency, consistency for training, consistency for right lifestyle.

Motivation
It really does not matter if you have the best biomechanical and physiological set up, the best training environment and amazing group standing behind you if you do not have intrinsic motivation. No one can do the work on behalf of you. You need to have intrinsic motivation, which driving you further. It’s not that you want to free clothes from sponsors, win money. You have to want to be a runner because you love running, not because someone else wants you to be. Nothing else can drive you through all the hard exercise, but motivation and high self-esteem and confidence.

Even though you might not have what it takes to be a world class runner, you can still run a just an amazing times as long as you have a plan, work hard and be determined.