She was once a runner

I don't know how much your post was a setup for the final "punchline" but the writer's IP address is tracked to the hometown of the woman everyone agrees the writer is.

Can we just skip to the part where the coach is named NCAA coach of the year and the team is left in shambles with injuries? That last entry about the meeting with the AD was such a let down.

women are slow wrote:

I want every feminist to read this blog and then try to tell me men & women are equal. Wanna hear a funny joke? Womens sports! haha what a joke

Well we certainly know you are inferior to pretty much everyone - man or woman.

I didn't think that the meeting with the Athletic Director was a let down. I did think it was a typical response from an administrative power. I don't think she went in there looking to get the coach fired, just to let the Athletic director know that there are problems that are possible severely affecting the health and mental state of these young women. It looked like his reaction was to assume that she was just an unhappy athlete looking to get the get the coach in trouble. Even with all his assurances that things will change, this seamed like lip service and that this conversation will probably back fire on her. She did the right thing and a very couragous thing, most 19 year olds would not have the courage to go to the athletic director. I know some people think this blog is completely made up but having had a daughter go to a D1 school and run, I can see so many similarities in the way she describes being treated by the coaches, administration, and how she is feeling to what the writer describes in her blog. This may have not been your experience but be assured it is the experience for may young women at many schools.

I agree especially about the coach atmosphere at many DIs. Competing in the NCAA and having many friends who are running collegiately, it is amazing the number of stories about coaches that simply don't give a damn if you're not in the top 7. Such things as seperate practice times for runners not on varsity and pretty open mocking of slower guys on the team by the coach to the faster athletes. Joking disparagement. The list goes on.

new blog post. It seems like the AD did listen. doesn't surprise me, thinking of the liability side of things.

I thought the meeting went as well as could be expected...was not all that surprised by the outcome. But, it's good that prompt action is being taken and not just lip-service to the runner's concerns.

so, quite possibly this freshman runner will get the pressure (and support) she needs to turn things around via a much needed intervention.

Smoking??! It may have just jumped the shark.

Apu wrote:

Smoking??! It may have just jumped the shark.

YES! When I read that I went "What the f*** was that?" What female nuerotic runner decides to smoke a cig one day just to do it? Makes no god damn sense.

it is unlikely, but people do f***ed up things when they are depressed or to act out to either get attention, or to self destruct.

She has been a good girl all her life and it has ended up making her miserable. So she takes a stab at doing something totally opposite to her whole being.

And it fails badly in that she gives up immediately.

I find "Cigarette Break" believable. Shove enough negativity into a person and they'll do some unexpected, unlike-themselves stuff. A friend of mine suffered from depression a few years back and he would do random-ass stuff like that.

zamboomba wrote:

I find "Cigarette Break" believable. Shove enough negativity into a person and they'll do some unexpected, unlike-themselves stuff. A friend of mine suffered from depression a few years back and he would do random-ass stuff like that.

I agree. As a former member of a team frequently discussed on LetsRun for chronically injured, anorexic runners, one of teammates started smoking as well. She had been a very disciplined, elite high school runner that came to school with high expectations. At one meet, she ended up telling the coach he didn't know what he was doing. While many of us thought the same thing, we couldn't believe she had the guts to tell him. Like many of us, she should have just transferred.

Instead, as time went on and she realized the coach wasn't going to be fired, she gave up, started drinking and smoking, and ended up quitting the team. She came in a straight laced, preppy, elite runner and left an leather wearing, smoker, and alcoholic.

The latest entry about her dads drunken attack on her weight and running was just heartbreaking. You really feel for everything she is going through and how even going home isn't the answer for her.

As people have said the whole time, the real villain in this whole story is the dad. I'm lucky to have had better parents...

Heartbreaking wrote:

The latest entry about her dads drunken attack on her weight and running was just heartbreaking. You really feel for everything she is going through and how even going home isn't the answer for her.

Yes, it sounds like her dad was the problem, and the coach was just an extension of that.

agreed. The coach has his issues, clearly, but ultimately he is just a coach. Parents, on the other hand, are responsible for the well-being of their kids.

The twisted thing is that what her dad says is so far from the truth. As the medical experts have found, the runner's stress fracture is more than likely tied to low estrogen levels (19 years old & still no period!!!!).

Sure bigger runners get stress fractures, too, but in my experience it is often the overly frail runners that suffer multiple, repeated stress fractures due to a combination of low estrogen, over-training, poor diet, lack of muscle mass to protect the bones, etc.

For many this is the demise of their careers.

Very sad that she is getting unhealthy messages from both parents and coach and so little support from family when she is injured and struggling. Her dad sounds like a piece of work. She seems smart enough, however, to form her own opinions and not to buy in. That is what I like about her.

Latest post...Mom is just as bad as the dad.

"life is hard?!" did she basically just say: "tough shit if you can't ever have kids?"

This blog has become like a soap opera for me, absolutely addicting. There are so many parallels from this blog to my own college running experience, it is eerie. I ran for a high profile D1 school my freshman year and transferred to a lower profile D1 for my sophomore year, because the environment at the other school wasn't healthy for me. While there wasn't a whole team full of eating disorders at my former school, the coach would constantly give the larger runners a hard time about their weight. I was never pressured by the coach to lose weight, but hearing him give other girls grief about ther weight made me extremely self-conscious of my own weight. We did have weigh-ins about twice a month (complete with the famously inaccurate bioelectrical impedance body composition assessment). I dropped to 92 pounds on my 5'4 frame and became amenorrhoeic during that year. This is the only time in my running career that I ever had problems with my periods. If the weight doesn't naturally come off through healthy eating (with enough calories) and hard training, it doesn't need to come off. I also question why my former coach even recruited these larger girls (in his mind) to begin with, if he felt their current weight was a detriment to their performance.

Reading the entry with the Mom just makes you want to give her a big hug and take her away from them. I know it shouldn't but it really surprises me how some people can give birth to, love and raise such a good kid and turn around and treat them so badly. I'm sure they were very supportive when she was doing well but the minute things aren't going well they are just horrible. These are the times a child need the most love and support not blame and ignorance.

Heartbreaking wrote:

I know it shouldn't but it really surprises me how some people can give birth to, love and raise such a good kid and turn around and treat them so badly.

No one is perfect. He parents have problems of their own that could have come from their parents and so on. They probably don't even realize that what they say is hurtful. For example, my mom used to tell me I couldn't play sports because I was timid, uncoordinated and out of shape. Even said I was fat a few times. But that's how she saw herself. That's what she was brought up to believe about herself from her parents and therefore never succeeded in sports. So she saw herself in me and would say the same things, not really realizing she was doing it. I'd never call my mom a horrible person though. She is one of the nicest, most loving people I know and now realizes her mistakes and I've forgiven her for them. It's easy to find someone to blame, but it's not that simple.