She was once a runner

I'm struggling to figure out why everyone is so wrapped up in who the author is. I think we're missing the bigger picture- that even if this memoir is completely fabricated, or heavily exaggerated, it speaks to so many of us on multiple levels! It's serving as a reminder that despite all the wonderful things running provides us with, it has it's downside too- it's never a bad thing to be aware of that.

My freshman year of college, I came in about 5 pounds heavier than senior year and throughout the cross season I put on probably another 10 even though I was doing the most mileage I'd ever done (darn those awesome fresh-baked cookies and soft serve in the cafe!). Needless to say, I had a horrible cross season and was shaping up for just as bad of an indoor track season. My high school coach, who had turned me from a 2:26 800 girl to a state-leading 2:16 in one year had gotten an assistant job at my college and noticed the weight gain. After an 800m time trial in Nov/Dec, that I completed in the uppers of 2:20s, he pulled me aside. He told me he could see that I had put on some weight and that that could be the source of my poor performances. I went home that night and put on my facebook "_______ is fat" and wallowed in my self pity for the night while people told me I wasn't fat. I took a good hard look at my body in the mirror and finally saw the excess weight I had been in denial about. I went to our nutritionist later that week and got set up on a plan (strength guys doubling as the nutritionist is not always the best as a female...). I really just cut back on how MUCH I would take in. Sure, I'd still have a cookie or ice cream here or there, but just a smaller portion and less frequent. I went from mid 140s to high 120s and ended up placing in the 800m at indoor conference. Comparing a picture from cross freshman year to sophomore year you could see the weight I'd put on simply in my face. Now I'm not saying that I only got better because I lost the weight, but because I lost a bit of weight, I was able to practice much better. I also took weight lifting a lot more seriously and saw the strength gains.So my advice to you coach is that if you have a good enough relationship with your athlete, you CAN approach her about it. Don't ignore it like the problem doesn't exist, but like a previous poster said, don't be checking in on her either. Maybe set her down and just see what she thinks, but again, don't act like it's a non-issue, because from what you said, it is....sorry for the lengthy post. Kind of got on a roll there.

new post is up-- shorter than ever! boo :(

On the blog comments section is a post from "Jennifer" the roomate. I can't help but wonder if the writer is reading LetsRun as well.

The latest post may be short, and no matter what others may think of author, she has guts. Her parents have put pressure on her about weight and keeping the scholarship, her coach has done so too while engaging in a rant about scholarship money (as if these women are on the Auburn football team) - all things that would intimidate most 19-20 year olds. And she sets up an appointment with the AD? I like it.

If actions like this were done more often, a recently deposed coach at an expensive private school in the Northeast might have behaved differently. I am curious as to why the eating disorder issue and the unprofessional and indeed unscientific reactions have continued in the coaching ranks. Certainly this is a blight on the sport. Given privacy concerns, I can see why the women involved want to keep things private, but there is a greater good to be gained in shining sunlight on this. I live down the block from a top 100 high school basketball recruit (yes, she could clobber me in one on one). There's no shying away from the epidemic of ACL injuries among college women basketball players - it is talked about openly and a constant, even a bit paranoid concern in their training regimen. The player acknowledges it too. The eating disorder gig seems every bit as much of a problem - it needs to be discussed.

Well, thanks. But she does make snide remarks about it, I think in jest, as she has a strange sense of humor.

She's told other girls, but clearly when I'm near so I'll overhear, "well, coach says I'm a fatso, so I better not" eat this or that.

I know it upset her when I told her that weight seemed to be ONE of the factors. I think the other factors went over her head, although she has been diligent in the weight room.

She texted me yesterday and told me she was at the doctor's and had lost 6 pounds since last time she was in there, which was March.

We've already done goal-setting for fall, and her's are very ambitious. Close to All American level. So, we'll see what happens.

you mean craig lake from brown don't you!

(in response to the mention about the northeast coach who was deposed for pressuring their girls to be anorexic

Just a quick response from someone who is in the trenches. As a male coach I was torn apart by eating disorders on my team. I took them seriously, and tried my best to address them. Almost 100% of the time I was rebuffed by the athlete, and parent when I tried to bring up the issue. I think that if we could get college coaches to tell their side most would say they care deeply and try to do their best with little support from school when dealing with these serious life issues. Case in point, I tried very hard to moderate a female distance runners mileage and health. She wanted to be good and listened to crazy dad. She fell apart and now has graduated and thinks I am scum. All I ever really wanted to do was provide a good experience. There are always multiple sides to an issue or story. Would be good for college coach-type to have a similar blog.

I've coached a number of former D-I/II scholarship females as well as women who took up the sport after college. We compete against collegiates so I see a lot from that vantage point as well.

The former scholarshippers tend to be (not always) spoiled little girls who have all kinds of issues as a result of the weird mix of pressure/adulation/internecine competition/coddling they have received from High School on. Sometimes the damage can be dealt with, sometimes not. This girl's blog brings into focus how this plays out and resonates with my experiences with college coaches and athletes. I certainly have a LOT of respect for the few college coaches that are able to handle these issues well and get the optimal performance out of their runners in a well-balanced way.

eating issues are the third rail of women's running---you can't win; if you don't address, you are evil, if you do, in many cases, you are viewed the same----so people avoid........see similar all the time in corporate world, where certain people will never get fired because of their gender/race because the people in charge say 'why risk the Sh**storm"------it is like taking on Sharpton, you know you are right, but you are going to come out the loser--

It is nice to know that there ARE coaches who care and I never imagined that it was anything but hard on you guys' end too. We had huge eating disorder issues on my collegiate team. My coach was new to the college ranks and at first would make comments to us about gaining the freshman 15, but I think he actually cared more for our health and running performance but it just came out totally wrong. Once he began to see how serious of an issue it was he changed his approach a lot and stopped any weight related comments and started bringing desserts to team dinners. However, I think he never fully did understand the psyche of eating disorders. He would try to talk to and counsel girls on his own and thought that would be enough when in reality they probably needed to stop running and get professional help. Or he thought if a girl ate in front of him she didn't have a problem. Or when girls were running fast they were just being healthy and were very fit. So, he cared, but was still ineffective at managing the problem. Our athletic department at the same time had become increasingly aware of and supportive of the issue so we did have school support and resources for it. However, unless a girl (or guy) is ready to get help you will almost always be met with denial and hositility upon confronting the issue. And I think its important for coaches to realize its not an issue that they should (nor are the qualified) to tackle alone. It requires doctors, nutritionists, psychologists.

I would never, ever, ever want to coach a college women's cross country program. Ever.

I definitely consider academics to be very important. What I really consider as the most important thing to make sure my children get from their youth, is the desire to do well. I have friends with masters and friends with an GED. I doesn't seem to be the determining factor for success. Success I define as being able to do what you are passionate about. If my daughter never runs in college or never wins anything again it won't matter. I am really proud of her work effort and her effort in developing her complete person, academics and athletics. We have been discussing div 1 compared to div 2 and 3 since she was 10. We talk about pressure to perform and just being happy. If she decides to go to the local div 3 and live at home it would be fine with me. I only care that my kids get to be happy and are contributing humans. This whole sports thing to us is just fun and if she wins something or gets offers that’s great if not she can always rely on her work ethic to get her where she needs to be.

asdasd wrote:

I would never, ever, ever want to coach a college women's cross country program. Ever.

I need my head examined to be sure. Every problem that comes up with the women's team makes me wonder if it's my fault.

We have a top 10 team (in one of the divisions, don't want to reveal too much for fear of outing my women) and we lost one-third of our women's team last fall to various issues.

At the same time, the guys actually gained runners, with walk-ons and transfers in at the semester.

Guys all love each other and have fun. And they dream and work hard to get better. They love running and the sport and thrive on competition.

Women form cliques of 2s and 3s and fear getting worse. They talk about the past a lot. Women also get twice as much attention and its not nearly enough. They seem to find no joy in their success.

I could go on, but it would embarrass my ladies.

Actually, now that I think back, I remember a case that sheds light on this as a problem of the athlete rather than the program (not that some programs don't create a poor environment).

We had a girl who ran little in high school and was attending a small college with no track program. In a year with our club she dropped her times dramatically, to the point where she was offered, and accepted, a full-ride to a major D-1 program. At his point she looked lean, but healthy and athletic appropriate to her event (I was not coaching her directly). All seemed bright. However, she stopped me in my tracks when she disclosed that she had lost 50 lbs in the last 18 months. All I could do at that time was to say that she looked great at this weight and was running well, and losing more would be inadvisable. Her reply was essentially mute.

It was too little too late. By the time she got to her new school, she was already getting wraith-like, and the free-fall ended with major stress fractures and she never competed after her first cross-country season.

As far as I could tell, this girl had NO feedback from her running environment, other than race results, that would trigger an ED. There might have been family issues (she was living at home at the time), but certainly by the time she got into a team situation in college the damage was done.

A memoir about college cross that reads like Less than Zero. With the passivity of someone who realizes things are not well, but doesn't have the strength to stop it. Totally awesome read.

I think it's great that so much discussion has come out of this blog. I am a product of a competitive high school program that didn't have an eating disorder problem... and a fairly mediocre DIII women's program where EDs ran rampant. These are some of my random thoughts on the subject.

Where I went to high school, weight was brought up from time to time - usually indirectly, but directly once. I once heard my HS coach say to his assistant that a teammate of mine would run well this year as long as she kept her weight down. When I was talking about an injury I was struggling with during my sophomore year of college, my HS coach commented, positively, that I didn't look like I had gained any weight. The best runner on my team was 5'4 and 135 lbs, and she publicly lost 10 lbs (after our coach told her dad that she'd be a better runner if she lost the weight; she had a large frame and carried a lot of muscle) the summer before her senior year in the hopes that she would break out and be rid of her plantar fasciitis. She lowered our school record from 18:55 to 18:35, earned all-state accolades, and successfully kept her PF at bay. To this day, she does not have an ED or lingering food issues.

I went from being the 8th best girl on the 8th best team in the state to being the 5th scorer on a team that only finished in the top half of our NCAA regional my freshman year. Academically, my school was very prestigious, and my teammates were all very high achievers in the classroom. We were definitely a group of perfectionists. Eating disorders were very prevalent my freshman and senior years. It went ignored by my coach (he just wanted the problem to go away). I watched healthy freshmen look up to an emaciated senior and begin to adopt her eating habits.

One of the things I think that drives EDs on women's team is the perception that thinner=faster. During preseason, it's not always certain who will be the fastest runners on the team. So the women look at the thinnest girl on the team and start to adopt her eating habits. When the thinnest girl on your team only eats raw fruits and vegetables and tea, it's pretty obvious when people begin to copy her.... But my emaciated teammate never ran well, and then we just had a rampant ED epidemic making everyone go a little crazy. It didn't matter how many times we had sessions with the athletic trainer or the school nutritionist, once things take hold, they're really hard to eliminate.

I think it is usually inappropriate for a coach to make a comment about an athlete's weight, ESPECIALLY when it is a male coach and a female athlete. I think it can be handled delicately and successfully, but it takes special care to do that. You have to remember that young women are generally very eager to please and will assume that if losing 10 lbs is good, 15 might be better. When a woman loses weight and PRs, it seems logical to lose more weight in order to set more PRs. And it works... until she starts getting stress fractures and anemia.