What is happening to me?!?!

I think you are taking easy days significantly too hard and arent taking as many rest days as you need.

For example, our mile PR's are the same and our 3200 pr's are fairly close but I take my easy days nearly a minute slower than you do, and at this point in the season I feel perfectly fine.

Know your body, take easy days EASY, and save your race legs for racing.

Good Luck!

Your problem is that you are running too hard on your easy days. Start jogging your easy runs.

First of all, you're going to have bad days. Plus, the weather is a beast right now. Make sure you're staying hydrated and sleeping well at night (so important for you in HS).

Don't worry about inter-team performance until races start. Just focus on yourself. Be happy a 5:30 guy is getting better. Maybe he can help the team move up a few spots at State.

Looks like you put in a good summer, it'll help. Stay positive, drink water, sleep well and you'll be fine. If you continue to feel bad for weeks, get a checkup at the Dr.

Good luck and good job training this summer.

As an anecdote: I ran D1 and was fairly decent. I remember having TERRIBLE weeks at the beginning of High School XC. Like, falling asleep on the bus on the way to trails before time trials and just feeling like I couldn't walk, let alone run a 5k. Somehow I made it through. You will too. It comes with the age and training.

How much mileage are you roughly running at the moment?

It definitely could be an iron deficiency. You mentioned that you eat iron-fortified cereal every morning. That's great, but the calcium in milk inhibits almost all iron absorption.

Or, you might just be having a bad week. Make sure you a couple easy days each week, and focus on mobility and stretching.

IF you're a 10:59 3200 runner training with 16 flat 5k guys, you are overtraining. Put your ego away and lower your expectations a bit for now. It would be a great season even if you ran 17:00 based on your PRs.

I ran 4:50 and 10:25 for my mile and 2 mile times in high school. My hard efforts were the only times I would average sub 7 on a training run. Those easy runs are way too fast brother. tone it down. leave the watch at him, go at conversation pace with a friend and just get the miles in.

We run 3 miles not 5k

I peaked at 40 mpw for track and ran a 5:02 mile and a 10:59 2 Mile.

+

I was able to consistently keep up with 16:00 5k guys during long runs and Hill workouts.

+

I also ran my easy runs around 6:50-7:20 pace that week and pretty much all throughout the summer.

=

strained my hip flexor. &. I feel absolutely humiliated and wondering why I keep running when I feel so bad.

You are running your easy runs WAY to fast. I am faster than you in both the mile and 2 mile and I run my easy runs a solid minute slower.

ForefootRunner177 wrote:

How much mileage are you roughly running at the moment?

not very high, trying to hit 40 MPW currently with one down week for every 4 weeks

I decided to take some time off before the season starts. Taking 3-5 days off running to heal this hip flexor strain but staying in shape with cycling. How much fitness will I lose with these 3-5 days off running?

ForefootRunner177 wrote:

I decided to take some time off before the season starts. Taking 3-5 days off running to heal this hip flexor strain but staying in shape with cycling. How much fitness will I lose with these 3-5 days off running?

If you're cycling you'll lose very little if any fitness.

When I return is it safe to jump back up to 45 mile weeks or should I start at 40 first

start back at 30 and go from there

ForefootRunner177 wrote:

When I return is it safe to jump back up to 45 mile weeks or should I start at 40 first

Me personally my body does just find jumping back to mileage immediately. But this is probably because I do my easy runs at a 8 minute pace.

It's been said, but 6:50-7:20 pace is wayyy too fast for your easy days. Your body is exhausted and you keep burying it further into the metaphorical ground. So now you're burned out. You've got to start keeping your easy days easy and reserve the fast running for your hard days. Your body can't recover if you're running every run hard.

Will I recover from this burnout by taking these 3-5 days off due to my hip flexor though? Because my racing season hasn’t even started yet. And we also have a 2 mile time trial coming up next week.

If you have to take days off then now is the time to do it. A time trial is just that, a time trial, as long as you don't need to worry about racing your way onto the team, then I wouldn't even think about the time trial.

It seems to me like you're running hard on your easy days for sure. Also, trying to work out with guys that race 2 minutes faster than you is good on some days, but you shouldn't expect to be able to do that everyday. As someone else mentioned, you'll also have days where you just feel tired for no good reason.

For comparison, when I was running half marathons at your 3200 pace, I was doing my easy runs at 7:20-6:50 pace. Steady runs were 6:00 pace and workouts were 5k pace. When you're young you can push the pace more, but you need to work in easy days where you run, but you almost wanna consider it active rest. this should be at 8:00 pace. EASY running, to the point it feels stupid. The easy runs are about keeping the rythym/pattern in training and about increasing the blood flow to the legs to flush out the trash from your workouts. If you get any sort of "effort" in on the easy day it's a waste. If you're doing three workouts a week you need at least 2 easy days. The other days you can run steady, but when you get one of those days where you feel like crap, then you should try and add one more easy day.

Also your tempo pace should be about 90-100 seconds slower than your 5k pace, and with a 11:00 2 mile, i'm guessing your 5k pace is probably 5:40-5:45 making your 6:50-7:20 easy runs, a perfect tempo pace, but not easy by any stretch.