I'm Severely Jealous of my Teammate/Best Friend

I had a similar problem in H.S., Of course, my teammates weren't that talented though. But nonetheless, they stomped me despite not putting their effort towards running. The key is to focus on yourself. Focus on doing great things within your realm of possibility. Don't focus on others so much, and when you do, be supportive. There will always be someone to be jealous of. This very idea almost destroyed my running for good. Don't let it do it to you.

Brein B wrote:

Are you over eating?

I don't think so... I've started eating more since I've upped my mileage but I just thought that's because I was burning way more calories so naturally I'd be more hungry and I want to make sure I'm fueling myself enough. I also eat healthy and never eat too "junky" or whatever. I always make sure I get enough protein and electrolytes, too. I've started taking iron supplements because I used to get extremely tired racing and i think they've helped as well.

Brein B wrote:

Are you over eating?

what the heck man - this is probably the single most destructive thing you can say to a high school athlete.

Not helpful to the conversation.

I understand how you feel but you have to get over this. The pursuit of excellence for yourself is something to embrace and be proud of.

This is the kind of work ethic that will help you to stand out amongst your peers when you apply for college or a career after that. Be prepared to possibly stumble there also but you should feel empowered by your efforts and know that you'll be better prepared for life because you know that success rarely comes easy.

My favorite athletes to coach are not the fastest. They are the most motivated. I would take a kid like you all day long over the girl that might perform faster but does not value training.

Why is someone else taller than you? As Per-Olaf Astrand once said "If you want to be an elite athlete the first thing you need to do is pick your parents well".

There is always going to be someone better at you at something. If you live your life jealous like that you likely are going to have a miserable life.

Focus on getting yourself better since you cannot control what other people are doing. Focus your goals on what you can control.

Only compare yourself to yourself. Not to others.

CONTINUE THE GRIND!

it works!

once you drop down milage for the season, or taper for your goal race, your fitness will go through the roof!

You need to RECOVER to GAIN FITNESS! once you cut down to 30mpw towards your goal race, all of a sudden you will be a BEAST!

feelingsadandslow wrote:

How is it that she's so naturally talented whereas I have to work super hard and although I'm on varsity I'm nowhere near her or where i want to be???

Take heart. This is not unusual, especially among girls. Some people are just freakish athletes, but that only gets you so far. Eventually, you need to start putting in work, and it can be very difficult to develop a solid work ethic when you have a ton of natural talent to fall back on. Extremely talented runners who never really pan out after high school are a dime a dozen.

You've developed a great base over the winter and should only get faster as the season progresses. (You're not supposed to be running fast times at the first meet! You should be fatigued from all your training.) What's more, you've laid a nice foundation to build off of in the future. Your friend does not have any of this going for her. She is liable to wear down as track season goes on and she may struggle to adjust to training at the collegiate level. Or she might continue to dust you. Either way, as others have said, you should be focusing on yourself. Talent is hugely important in running, but so are dedication and patience. Just keep grinding and you'll get to where you want to go.

I have a solution:

Recommend some light tree climbing for fun and cross-training. Have her go out on limb first, and then, while you are on limb behind her and holding on to trunk, jounce limb gently to throw her off balance. Make sure it's a pretty high tree.

This should solve your jealousy problem.

You can always have your iron levels checked to see if they fell off with the harder training. People develop at different rates. As a boy when I was in high school, some kids had mustaches at 12, others did not shave till 17. So you never really know how things are developed physically until college. Keep at it and keep taking care of yourself. Also, being a year younger is huge.

It sucks when you first notice it, but this is a good lesson for you. Someone out there will virtually always be faster, smarter, more successful, better-looking, etc. The key is to do your best what the talents you were given, as at the end of the day that’s all you can do. If it makes you feel any better, there’s plenty of people out there who train even less than your friend and yet run even faster. Your hard work WILL pay off with faster times, but I think you’ll find that as with anything in life, running is often as much or more about the journey than it is the results.

First off, kudos to you for being so dedicated, driven, and focused. That says a lot about you. Second, don't get too discouraged just yet. If you have been running more than ever and training reasonably hard, especially doing mostly longer stuff (no hard speed work yet), it could very well be that you have a great foundational fitness but just aren't race sharp yet. You may or may not end up being faster than your friend/rival, but you will likely improve your times a lot over the next few months as you start doing more race specific training. This happened to me in college one year. I had been running more miles than I ever had before (100+ miles per week) and was running my easy runs and long runs faster than ever before, and I was feeling great. Then when the season started, I didn't have very good workouts the first few weeks and even had to quit one halfway through while my teammates continued. It wasn't that I was overtrained or slower or anything like that; it's just that I had built such a huge base that it took my body some time to get used to doing faster stuff again. By the end of the season I ended up having my best race of the season at regionals and being our number 1 runner. It just took 2 and half months of thresholds, intervals, and speed work to get my gear ratio more in sync with the race distance.

Finally, and this is an important lesson that you are learning earlier than most, life is not fair, and it's not your fault. Some people are beautiful. Some people are brilliant. Some people are tall. Some people are naturally athletic, and no matter what you do, you will never be as beautiful, smart, tall, athletic, whatever as them. That does not mean you shouldn't try to be the best that YOU can be though. Working hard, being dedicated, and developing yourself in whatever you do will serve you very well in athletics, school, jobs, life. Oftentimes the naturally gifted end up struggling and even failing out of life because they never learned the work ethic necessary to really get ahead in the world. And even if you do end up being faster than your friend, there will always be someone out there faster still. The best advice I can give to you is accept that, accept that life is not fair, and focus on developing yourself, taking yourself as far as you can go and not worrying about others too much. And don't get too down on yourself. You've worked hard, and there's still a lot of season left. These first few meets don't mean anything anyway. ;)

I understand. SO MUCH.

In HS, I was reasonably talented, had a good freshman year. The next year, a freshman comes on the scene who destroyed all my freshman course records and started beating me by the end of the season. His trajectory continued upwards, finishing with multiple state medals, one state title, etc. I stayed pretty stagnant at "good varsity" level for four years despite doing very similar training and mileage. It left me a bit jaded and disappointed.

He gets to a D1 programs and just EXPLODES. Begins destroying the upperclassmen, more highly coveted recruits, etc. Great college career.

Does well enough to go pro. He's a good biker so he gets into triathlons. But after a while, he bumps into his limit. Not a good enough swimmer to hang with the pack, and can't catch up on the bike or the run. Not quite a good enough runner to make it that way either. So after a middling triathlon career of a couple years, he has to hang up the shoes.

Here is the lesson: we all bump into this eventually. Unless you are Mo Farah, Haile G, Jenny Simpson, etc, we all find a spot where we just can't be "elite" anymore no matter how hard we work. You, like me, discovered this in high school.

Please, please read "The Sports Gene" by David Epstein. It will make you feel like much less of a failure to know the there are lots of things outside your control that affect your running ability.

I developed a mantra I would repeat to myself when I got down... "My best is enough." And it's true. Shoot to be the best version of you.

Sounds like you need a bit of balance in your life.

And athletic performance and success is not linear. High school is one of those places where you can progress quickly, but stall later if you haven't paid attention. I ran with a lot of talented people in high school and after who were never able to equal my performance later.

The key for you is whether you love the sport, or are just expecting results from the effort. It doesn't work that way. Its not math. Talent is important, but most great runners are those who persevere, stay healthy, and come to race. All the work in the world is worthless if you are not getting the results of your efforts. You need to focus on replicating training to racing.

Are your expectations reasonable? If so, work on meeting them, and forget about anyone else. Cursing the friend is a distraction, and not good for your performance. Pay attention to your work and your splits. Learn to race and deliver off your training.

Running is a short term activity. Learn from it. Your life "not running", is going to be longer than your life "running"

Congrats on your off season of hard work. It will pay off. It may not make you faster than somebody who is jusy naturally a lot more talented than you, but it will make you your best, which is the only thing you can control.

Accept that your teammate is doing well for herself. You describe her as your best friend, so presumably you think she is a nice/good person, so just be happy for her. I bet she is happy for you when you set PRs, she probably is pulling for you in races even as she tries to win herself as well.

As an aside, keep in perspective that if she is winning state titles with 5:18 mile ability, she is a big fish in a small pond. Keep in perspective what the best runners are capable of. In California, a dozen girls run under 5 minutes every year. I say that not to belittle either of you, but just because perspective is important: what really should matter to you is doing your best while being a supportive teammate to her as well as to your teammates who are slower than you. There are always going to be faster girls out there, the only thing new is one happens to be on your team.

It also sounds like your friend does work hard when she is at track and xc, she just isnt training for running between. She is probably still working hard during that time, just working hard on basketball. So it doesnt sound like a case of somebody just floating by on ability alone. She is still going through the pain of the workouts to get where she is.

Let me tell you a story that may or may not help you.

Several years ago, there was a college football player I knew very well who was USA Today All-American in high school and clearly the best player in his position in the country.

He was incredibly talented and strong. He was the epitome of a gifted athlete. He played his freshmen, sophomore, and junior years as a starter in college and he got better and better.

However....

Lurking behind him was a walk-on who worked his butt off and received absolutely zero playing time. One summer, the gifted athlete decided to skip team workouts and adopt a nonchalant attitude towards everything. And why should he work hard? He was gifted and he had the starting position locked up for previously 3 years and was a full scholarship athlete.

When summer practices arrived, he was completely out of shape and weak. He squandered his own gift. The walk-on arrived at summer practices and destroyed him...and was named the starter. The gifted athlete sat out his entire senior year and his career was OVER.

That walk-on never gave up. He learned to outwork everybody and knew what it was like to lose. Being defeated and discarded every year by the head coach made him just work harder. He wanted it more.

You may feel like this girl has the innate ability and can just win everything without trying. That's not true. Skipping training winter after winter will eventually catch up with her. It's a process for you to get better and you need to follow it. One day, after months and months of training, you'll blast a good race and beat her and forget about all the "talent" she has.

Natural talent comes in many different forms. Some people appear to be fast with hardly any work ethic, and some people put in a lot of work but are resistant to injury. I had 3 friends on my team who were a year older than me freshman year, and they all ran about 16:30-17:20 during cross (boys) and I was our 4th scoring guy at 17:45-18:00. I trained similarly hard as you during winter at about 55-60 mpw, and come into track season the same 3 guys were still faster with not even half the mileage. One of them ran a 4:28, breaking their previous season PR by 10 seconds. I was devastated, running 5:03 my first meet. However, my work ethic caught up and I had a major breakthrough. 2 of the 3 got injured, sick, or burnt out because they didn't lay a foundation of miles.

Moral of the story: continue to persevere in your own way and don't lose hope.

Sdfsdfsdfsdfsdfsdf wrote:

As an aside, keep in perspective that if she is winning state titles with 5:18 mile ability, she is a big fish in a small pond. Keep in perspective what the best runners are capable of. In California, a dozen girls run under 5 minutes every year. I say that not to belittle either of you, but just because perspective is important: what really should matter to you is doing your best while being a supportive teammate to her as well as to your teammates who are slower than you. There are always going to be faster girls out there, the only thing new is one happens to be on your team.

Just to update this with actual numbers: 54 girls broke 5 minutes in California last year. 5:18 would be right around 120th in California so far for 2018 season. This is based on athletic.net results, so there may be one or two results not on there, but it should be fairly complete. I only looked at the 1600, not the mile, since it is what is usually contested.

Tyrone ReXXXing wrote:

I have a solution:

Recommend some light tree climbing for fun and cross-training. Have her go out on limb first, and then, while you are on limb behind her and holding on to trunk, jounce limb gently to throw her off balance. Make sure it's a pretty high tree.

This should solve your jealousy problem.

Gene, you really need to move on!