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All of us on XC teams in the past all knew at least one or 2 dudes who didn't improve much/perform well on race day no matter how much they worked. Likewise, there are multiple time state cross country champions out there who were some of the laziest mf'ers you've ever met.

I agree with the statement but I would argue that both cases are on the extreme end and do not apply to 90% of high school runners. Any state champion running say low 15 minute 3 miles absolutely worked hard to get there. The determining factor in their success is the training they did. Not “natural talent” You can take 20 people with talent equal to the state champion. They would only reach that level if they did equivalent training to the state champion.

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Distance running has a huge mental component that's largely ignored/overlooked by those who don't do it themsleves.

Agreed, but a different concept than physical natural talent.

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Also, physical talent absolutely does matter when you start getting to the more elite levels.

Of course it matters at elite levels. I do not consider Louisiana high school distance running to be an elite level. Maybe I was unclear what I meant by good. I would say sub 17 minute 3 miles is above average for Louisiana high school XC. I am confident that I could take any reasonably healthy(no major health conditions and not obese) 7th grade boy and coach them for 6 years and have them run under 17 minutes which I would consider to be “good” for Louisiana high school XC. (Assuming the runner has a constant desire to work to get better)

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Ask any seasoned distance runner how hard it is to win races if you're a little short on speed.

I am a well seasoned distance runner.
Phyiscal talent in distance running is more than pure speed. Underlying physiological factors (oxygen levels in blood, hemoglobin levels) are also important. Of course being and ideal height and weight makes a difference also. You can take someone with ideal talent. If they run 5 miles a week and don’t do any speed workouts. They are not winning state.

Pure sprint speed can be trained through weightlifting, short sprint repeats, hill repeats, pulling sleds, parachutes and probably other ways.
At the high school level, if you are losing a 3 mile race in a sprint at the end, it wasn’t your natural speed that lost you the race. The other runner just had more left in the tank because they were in better shape.

I did not say natural talent is not important. I said it isn’t as important and good training. Training is the determining factor in success, not talent. If you had 2 line graphs with one showing physical talent vs. 3 mile times then it would be all over the place because of varying levels of training. The plot showing training vs 3 mile time would look nearly linear with better training showing better 3 mile times. Of course there would be outliers but the trend line would be clear.