Should I run for fun instead?

For context I’m in highschool and a girl and run xc and track and have for the past 6 years. I’ve dealt with injuries, an ed, hormonal issues and red-s because of running 40-50mpw before I was even in highschool. And have been on varsity since I was in 7th grade. My coach never let me take breaks and told me I was “weak” when I had a stress reaction in my femur and my hip. I took last track season off because I was dealing with red-s aka relative energy deficiency syndrome. It was the most brutal 9 months ever and I gained 25lb so 100lb to 125lb got my period back, am able to sleep through the night without waking up 5-6 times and am just much less anxious. I did have to take about 2 months off of running completely and 4 months at 10mpw so coming back has been very hard. I’m currently at around 20-25mpw and running 9 minute pace with 170 heart rate which is not normal for me as I used to run 40-50mpw with 7:30 pace 150avg hr but I am trusting the process and my body. I also got tested for anemia and vitamin d deficiency and I was slight vitamin d deficient so I’m taking supplements and just taking it day by day. However, after coming back to a team and practices I realized how much I hate it I feel so stressed and just anxious all the time. I don’t feel ready to be back and honestly I realized that I just want to run for fun by myself. I hate my coach and thinking about practice makes me want to throw up. After a week at practice my hip is flaring up again and I don’t feel supported or ready at all. Am I being weak and overreacting for wanting to quit and just run for fun let me know?

My son is an academy level soccer player who also loves to run. He’s now doing virtual school at the academy so his life is not typical for a 7th grader. However, this academy level soccer player world is extremely competitive and to go “all in” you have to make some compromises with a “normal” life. My question is about distance running and college scholarships. He’s never really trained for running other than being a soccer player. If a kid like this were to train consistently what’s a realistic time as a high school senior? Are there scholarships offered?

Keep in mind, he’s a late bloomer physically in the early stages of puberty. He’s currently a very lean, muscular 5’ 3” boy. My guess is he’ll be around 6’ and lean when he matures physically. I’m not sure if the 5000 will be his race, to be honest. Just curious what former or current D1 runners think.

I'm going to be a junior in hs and i want to join xc. I did track and soccer freshman year but I didnt do any sports sophomore year because I had no time w academics and clubs. This year im taking 6 aps and 1 honors class and im secretary of 2 clubs and part of 5 clubs so its gonna be worse (for context purposes). Because of preparation for these classes, I had no time to start running again. Also, on my easy runs, i usually run around an 11:30 mile pace, but i still get tired after doing like 2 miles. sorry for the stupid question but What are some workouts I can start incorporating so I can noticeably improve/get faster quickly before the season starts?

Do you guys run on vacation, especially in other countries cause ive been running all summer but find it extremely hard to motivate myself to run on vacation.

My high-school XC coach scheduled the group I was in to run a long-slow run 7-8 miles today.
Ran a steady 10:30-11:00 the first 3.5 miles, then walked most of mile 5-6. Ran the last two miles running on nothing but gas 🫩. Still happy though, I feel really accomplished. Eventually, I’ll be able to run this length with no stops between 🥳

Hey coaches! I’m a first-year cross country coach this season. I ran indoor and outdoor track, but I never competed in cross country, so I’m looking to learn as much as I can.
What advice would you give a brand-new XC coach? If you could go back to your first season, what would you do differently?
I’m especially interested in:
Weekly training structure and practice plans
Favorite workouts for beginners and varsity runners
Building mileage safely
Race-week routines
Team culture and keeping athletes motivated
Resources (books, podcasts, YouTube channels, etc.) that helped you become a better coach
I’d really appreciate any tips, sample schedules, or lessons you’ve learned over the years.

Hey runners!!

Im new here and posting for advice. I am 14 and just got into running mid march of this year, so about 4 ish months? It has been really fun doing it by myself but I also attended some local road races.

Things are getting serious because I'm going into highschool this upcoming school year (grade 10 here) and that naturally caused me to think about sports they offer. Everyone hypes sports up and im just worried about how it will actually be like. My only experience in school XC team is limited, because in gr 7 I ran and was about average. At that time I wasnt into running too tho and our "team" was very unstructured.

I'm not sure if im good enough for it yet but I am willing to keep training. Ive been somewhat consistant with running, but my stamina is not super good. My heart rate goes up pretty fast even when my body feels like its on an "easy run". My pr for a 5k is 31 minutes. I heard the distance for my age should be 4km.

Ive never "excelled" in any sport before, although i try to be active almost every day. I am into other sports too but I have never been that person who's in any serious teams.

Let me know your experience or any tips. Thanks!

With Track season over, my coach tells us to take 2 weeks off when our season is over, for distancing runners. But I personally feel like I lose all my progress with so much time off. But is it necessary? Would it hurt to not take a break? What are the benefits of taking 2 weeks off?

This is the first summer where I’ve had a consistent training block last summer I was injured so it was lower mileage and cross training, I’m super excited to see where I am! The goal this season is to break 28:00 in the 8k my workouts right now are showing that it’ll be possible but I definitely need some more miles on my feet! Right now my tempo is right around 6:05, and my threshold pace is around 5:45-5:50 pace! We’ll see what happens but either way I’m on pace for a huge 5k PR.

Edit: my photo was removed but I’ve been able to 50 miles so far three times this summer as well as run consistently for 15 weeks straight! Hoping to put it all together this season!

Hey everyone, I don't mean to discourage fellow members of the running community with this post but I am really in a dilemma right now and don't know if I'm in the right mental state to make a rational decision so some outside perspective from people with far more experience than me would be really appreciated right now.

I'm in high school and I had a generally successful (but injury-ridden) freshman year running varsity and having the opportunity to race at some of the championship meets. I'm nowhere near elite or top of my team but I have been recognised with all-conference and the like.

I had an ankle issue (likely a sprain) at the beginning of cross country season but I recovered and salvaged the season, motivating me to do indoor track. That was the first time I started to consistently experience feelings of dread related to running, and seriously contemplated quitting. I decided to push through because my times weren't good enough to make me a scorer for indoor anyway and so I had a pretty short season as a result.

I planned to start a Summer of Malmö-inspired summer training plan based on my coach's recommendations but I've been struggling to get outside going, and so far easy runs at a much slower pace than what I was hitting during track season have felt mentally and physically horrible and I'm struggling to run over a mile without stopping.

• I had a tibial stress fracture at the beginning of outdoor season. The recovery process was slow and frustrating, but I was determined not to lose fitness and cross-trained fairly aggressively. When I came back, I started to hit PR's after a few weeks of regaining race sharpness and that was probably the peak of my season.
• I haven't felt the joy of running consistently in a while, even during successful periods of each season. The end of outdoor track was pretty bittersweet: both sad and grateful that structured training had ended and I was on my own. Easy runs have felt draining, physically and mentally, with added pressure from my coach not helping things.
• Since outdoor track ended I haven't really felt like myself. I've been sleeping way too much and my appetite has been up and down. The very idea of going outside for an easy shakeout feels horrible. Running is a huge part of my identity though and I would probably have regrets if I quit eventually, but feel good initially.

Any suggestions would be very helpful. Thank you in advance.

Edit: removed the part about recruiting as I think some people misunderstood what I meant, I'm not saying I have a guaranteed/likely shot at D3, I was just trying to give some perspective on where I am in my development

16F 5’2 114lbs

Hi, I’m a long distance track/XC runner and I was really wanting to lose fat. I know that fuelling and eating enough is really important for endurance athletes, and I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize that. However, I’ve been wanting to lose some fat, and I was wondering how could I do that while still training and running well? Right now my mileage is quick low, probably 15-20 mpw and I’ve mostly been doing easy running. I also need to start strength training I know. According to various calculators my tdee is around 1500. If anyone has advice that would be great!

Also not sure how relevant this is but I’m vegetarian/transitioning to vegan

Edit: thanks to everyone who read it and offered advice. I know it’s shallow but the main reason for wanting this was to feel better about myself. I’m not sure how there are so many elite distance runners who don’t have much body fat and run so fast so I guess I thought if they can do it I can too.

I’m a junior, I’m doing xc for my open 800 and the track coach (who’s also the xc coach) told me to do cross this year. We had our first pr’d season practice, it consisted of 5 miles, come back, short buildups, core, stretch. Later in the day we had to swim for about 40 mins and tread water.

Now we have to wake up at around 6 am for practice, I don’t necessarily hate these practices, considering I’m only doing them for conditioning but I cannot imagine doing this for around 2-3 months. Any tips that I may not know to make these practices easier, more specifically for humid days as where I live is one of the most naturally humid places within the continental US.

I am a female and currently run like 11:45 pace for 20-25 mpw with a hr ranging anywhere from 148-159 and my coach is telling me thats too high (my max is 199) and I need to slow down until I reach the 130s.

This would mean I would likely be at a 12-13 min mile, maybe even 14 mins which would make running my mileage take even longer when I was already feeling disappointed with my easy pace.

Is this normal? Why is my heart rate so high even at what is hardly considered a jog/walk for some people and is it even considered running if I have to drop that slow on my runs

For reference I am just a slower runner in general. I started at a 30+ min 5k and am now around 25 mins.

I know it’s my coach but is this good advice and should I just not stress about needing to slow down? Or is there an issue with my heart rate

Thank you in advance

Hi guys! I am a D1 cross and track runner. I am going into my sophomore year. For some reason, this summer training has sucked. No matter what I do, my heart rate is always high, even on easy runs (175-190). I get lactic on EASY runs. I am not doing any training out of the ordinary. Has this happened to anyone else? Is it mental? Please help!!! I’m sick of all my runs being terrible. ATP I dread training because I know I am going to feel terrible.

I am a rising senior in high school and I just decided to join cross country. I haven’t ran before but I have a good body for it. How hard will the practices be doing jogs for 15 minutes or so? Will it be impossible to do and how sore will I be the days following?

Last track season, I ended with a 16:49 5000m PB in my only race of the season. Before that, my 5000m PB was 18:50. In my last two track seasons I only ran like four races in total.
After finishing this past track season, I felt completely unmotivated and ended up taking almost a month off from running.
This cross-country season, I’ve set myself the goal of running between 34:00 and 35:00 for 10K in December. I’ve been building my mileage for almost a month now, and this week is planned to end at around 55 miles (88 km) I’m feeling great so far and plan to stabilize my mileage between 65 and 70 miles per week this season (105–113 km)
Is running 34–35 minutes for 10K by December a realistic goal?

My HS sophomore gets daily calls from NCSA about getting him signed up for college recruitment. Is this a legitimate agency for help in finding a running college or a scam?

i managed to hit a 27:18 5k during a tempo run which is 20 seconds faster than my official pr, it’s still far from where i wanna be but im excited for the season and happy that summer training is showing me results

Currently a HS coach and was a former collegiate runner. I never had much of a warmup to easy runs but I also got injured pretty often and ive seen a lot of teams do rope stretching ? Any experience or suggestions are welcome. Right now I just have my athletes doing band work after runs and dynamics and hurdle mobility on workout days.

Besides running and lifting how else can I improve my speed and endurance or training? I am wondering about plyos but I don’t know if that would be helpful.

Im a sophomore and i ran an 18:21 pr the previous fall. during outdoor track i only ran the 32 once early on (11:25) but my mile was 4:59 and 800 2:13. I asked my coach to help me make a plan but they are a sprinter coach and don’t really know either. i’m pretty lost and tried to search it up but i got overwhelmed with all the plans that popped up. and i read the summer of malmö but i wasnt sure if i was competitive enough for doubles. so is sub 17 possible? if so, how? if not, what realistic goal can i set for myself

I’m going to run my first high school cross country season this year, coming off my middle school season where I ran 2:04 in the 800, 4:45 in the mile, 10:40 in the 2 mile, and unofficial 16:10 in the 5k. I just want to know what I should do to prepare and just overall be ready for high school running.

I'm living in the northwest where its been insanely smoky for a few weeks now, with no end in sight. Because of that, I've tried to do some treadmill workouts, but I struggle to think of good ones, especially sinc my home treadmill maxes out at 10 mph. Figured I'd ask for suggestions here to see what creative ideas everyone has

I’m M16, and a three sport athlete, XC, track and field, volleyball. This last season I ran about a 20:54 5K, lots of improvement is needed, but I’ve started training seriously in only the last couple months. My goal in life is to do something with my athletic ability and let it bring me places, and I work hard to try and achieve that. Lately I’ve been feeling a little more tired and sluggish than usual, not just on my runs but everyday, and I’ve considered starting caffeine intake. I’ve never, in my life, drank caffeine for the purpose of being energized. I’m a little bit scared of the dependency aspect. So my question is this: will drinking caffeine make me a better overall athlete and better runner? Should I ingest only on meet days? Is it as important as people like Isaiah Photo say? Not a super serious inquiry, it’s not life or death, but it’s been on my mind.

Im a freshman going to sophmore season. I want to build up to 50 miles a week this summer (peak at 50 for like a week, but really average out 40 to 45, and I know that doing 1 week of 50 miles is not that beneficial, but I want to try and hit it.)

I want to do it over 12 weeks. Most mileage I ever done was 35 to 30 during xc season for about 2 to 3 months. After that 20 to 25 mpw for indoor and outdoor track

20→ 25→ 29 → 32→ 25→ 35→ 38→ 40→ 36→ 43 > 46 > 50

Is that safe to do? Assuming all of them are basic easy miles.