Is 10,000 Hours All I Need to Run a Faster Marathon? — well.blogs.nytimes.com

I’m a runner. Not a professional runner, but one whose dedication to the sport means that I am training for a marathon, putting in 10 hours a week toward what has become an unpaid part-time job. I should be good at this by now. Popular research tells me that if I put in 10,000 hours or 10 years of training, I can become a master at anything. I have been running since 2006 and, for the last 14 weeks, have pushed myself through hill work, 800-meter repeats, core workouts and double-digit long runs in preparation for the upcoming New York City Marathon. Still, I’m not anywhere close to becoming a master. I’m not even close to qualifying for the Boston Marathon and will, most likely, be beat by at least 25,000 of the more than 50,000 runners competing on Sunday.

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