Untreated mental health problems which led to physical health problems, which led back to mental health problems that caused more physical health problems. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Was in pr shape as a junior when covid hit. After spending 6 months in the work force, school just felt so artificial and pointless once we went back fall of my senior year. The fire was out and never got close to my pr that last year. Oh what could have been.
I needed to party and drink more than I did. Even though I did my fair share. This is because I would have been more relaxed and performed better as my best self is my natural and relaxed self. Over thinking, over training with not the best coaching lead to mediocre results. Over thinking probably the main culprit, unfortunately.
-too hard on easy days (my coach gave paces to hit
-4 days of workouts in a row every 3 weeks (my coach thought because he coached cam levins, but that he could throw away the whole idea of individualization out of the window)
-lack of believe in coach, he was always asking what other teams were going for their training
My coach was an absolute moron too. He mostly just had us do workouts from Dellinger’s book without adjusting to our much more modest ability level. We usually ran hard 3-4 times per week plus a weekend race and it wasn’t uncommon for us to do a hard workout on a Thursday afternoon and then racing on Saturday morning. There’s training through and then there’s stupidity.
Plateaued my freshman year, which started a corrosive feeling of burnout. Thought I would try to bust through said plateau by hitting the miles pretty hard that summer, which I did. Lots of doubles, peaked at 85 mpw. Unfortunately proceeded to run 2+ minutes slower in XC and sat out conference and regionals in favor of having a pity party for myself. Sat out most of indoor as well then picked up a small injury trying to come back for outdoor.
Somewhat managed to get my "old self" back junior year, setting modest PRs in XC, indoor 3000, and outdoor 5000, but got a really bad case of possibly swine flu-turned-bronchitis and was never really the same after that. I absolutely sucked my senior year.
TL;DR a combination of bad attitude, lack of patience, lack of aerobic development, and bad luck with illness.
With age I have improved my attitude but I now seem to be too injury prone to take a good crack at my weak-ass college PRs. C'est la vie.
Been there on the burnout. Trained hard to peak at 70MPW in summer for my first ever targeted mileage buildup coming into freshman year and had a great season. Next summer coach gave me a training plan starting at 85mpw up to 110mpw by August. I figured he knew best, I was hungry & I saw the results from my first mileage buildup last summer so I went for it
Twice-weekly 15 mile long run at prescribed sub-6 pace doubled back with 6 mile PMs absolutely tanked me. I was a 26:30 8k XC guy & this was heroic effort going into training runs just to hit a pace or daily mileage number. Coach kept saying I’ll “get fit” from it. I completely fell apart in August and had a so-so season since my training cycle was out of whack, trying to build back mileage in-season, etc. Turns out freshman year was my plateau.
I still feel shortchanged by the coaching staff’s ridiculous overestimations and my naivety to chase plans well beyond my ability. As a post collegiate I’m getting close to my college PRs on my own training plans and it feels validating
my coach thought because he coached cam levins, but that he could throw away the whole idea of individualization out of the window
Former Arizona runner
If I hear Lawi Lalang’s name one more time. James Li used to harp on how Lawi would kill the workout we were about to do. I still remember him telling me to my face I am falling behind Lawi’s progression curve.
1. lack of serious, careful training in high school, led to only moderate success and little mental confidence going into college.
2. collegiate coaches (first one retired) were either unknowledgeable in training or later disinterested in actual coaching (2nd coach spent most time recruiting next cohort).
3. upperclassmen a bunch of douches who didn't train seriously and chastised us for "trying"
4. overcompensated by training too hard, too often (essentially coached ourselves by the end.)
5. in the 90s there was little knowledge available on supplemental training (core, nutrition, rest etc.)
6. We ran about 60 miles in season and I ran 80 out of season. But in season we ran race pace (or Vo2 max sessions) as the only hard workout. Never ran threshold workouts unless by accident (overrunning a random medium distance).
7. perhaps most importantly, we never, ever had discussions about goals, mental fitness, positive reinforcement or anything on this side of coaching/training. Any feedback I ever received was negative. It was never as bad as others here have reported, but it just wasn't ever encouraging, warm etc.
in all, I am still glad I ran, my teammates who shared in being committed to running well are lifelong friends and that core group had fun. And looking back I can say, at least we tried. But I know I could have run significantly faster with better coaching/situation.
I had never been on a team. Had never done a single track race. I was just a very fit loner hobby jogger just like I like it. I started talking with a guy who was on the team and he encouraged me to go to practice. Hill sprints. Only one guy handled the workout better than I did. I could not handle racing and should have been content to be a hobby jogger, or gone down to the 400 where insecurity and stinking thinking have less chance to play a part. It was too awful to want to go back, and as I was supporting myself 100% it wasn't really a good fit.
Not sure why God wanted me to have that experience.
My experience was bad to good. First 2 years were actually really hard & focused training. Toxic ‘trying is for suckers’ culture from seniors. I showed up after a summer in Europe and won the XC TT untrained and chubby - it was cool but red flag! Training was optimized for maximum suffering with minimal results. Low volume high intensity 90’s ‘hack’ crap. Impressive 400 sessions that destroyed us, followed by 4 miles at tempo pace the next day because we thought miles were bad. Mileage in the 30’s for milers and 5k guys.
The ‘sad’ thing is we we’re close to having it right and committed but were so poorly coached it after a couple of years it just became like this pointless and (mostly) drinking + (very few) girls won. Just doing what we did with more and slow miles on the fill in days and better progression in workouts would have got us there.
Then Sr. Year I met a guy doing a track workout and he agreed to coach me. In 8 months I went from finishing deal last & running slower than the women’s winner at my conference meet to a school record holder and NCAA qualification. The program turned around and is now one of the best (D2) in the county.
Lack of patience - I'd pore on the miles and squeeze in extra workouts and extra reps. Led to not enough recovery before important races.
Staying up too late - Largely due to women. I regret some, but not all of this.
Coach changes - had one great coach in college and one that turned a mediocre d3 program into a bottom of the barrel program
Choosing a dumb school - campus was pretty, and like I said the first coach knew what he was doing, just didn't realize he had bigger aspirations
Summer jobs - all through college I had menial summer jobs which required being on my feet all day. One required me being out in the sun all day as well and ended in the heat of the day. I'd often be tired or not properly recovered when I tried to train.
Nutrition - Wasn't always the greatest. I was poor and at one point I ate canned tuna 30 days in a row because that's what I could afford.
Stress - over money, classes, relationships. Its hard to let that stuff go or just accept some of it you can't change.
Summer jobs - all through college I had menial summer jobs which required being on my feet all day. One required me being out in the sun all day as well and ended in the heat of the day. I'd often be tired or not properly recovered when I tried to train.
That's how I trained for World Cupo. Also how Bill Dellinger trained for the Olympics. You didn't know how lucky you were.
Summer jobs - all through college I had menial summer jobs which required being on my feet all day. One required me being out in the sun all day as well and ended in the heat of the day. I'd often be tired or not properly recovered when I tried to train.
That's how I trained for World Cupo. Also how Bill Dellinger trained for the Olympics. You didn't know how lucky you were.
I don't know man. I've heard anecdotes of guys working construction at night, getting off and crushing runs. I know a guy who worked nights at a hotel who made all american in xc. For me, it wasn't working out though.
I spent 2 summers - may to aug pushing cart for a grocery store and then a target. There were always carts to push from mid morning to night, there was only a 15 min break and a 30 min break. Eventually some douche claimed my string of carts scraped their car, so they "demoted" me to cashier. That wasn't any better as I had to stand in place for 8 hours a day.
Had another retail job where I was cashier, appliance loader/offloader, stocker, etc. all at once. That sucked too and required me to be on my feet all 8 hours. I almost got fired because I accidently took 31-35 minutes at lunch a couple times (one more time I'd be fired), as well as was late one day by my fault, got lost running, and was late a second time (this put me at one tardy from being fired in this category too).
Anyways, all 3 of these jobs made my feet hurt. After 2-3 days my feet would hurt all the time until I had 2 days off, after which the cycle would repeat. By late summer 2 days off wasn't enough for my feet to fully recover.
I was running doubles through all this. 70 mpw for the first summer, and then 100 mpw the next two. Never felt like I was getting anywhere in summer training though and it would take until late sept until I was at the fitness level I was at at the start of track.
The fourth summer job during undergrad was state park maintenance. This entailed cleaning 11 bathrooms 2x a day and cleaning 5-6 (sometimes more like on sundays or mondays) cabins a day, as well as outdoor maintenance and maintaining the park's grounds. There were about 4 hours of outdoor work in late morning and afternoon and I'd be constantly dehydrated. This one wasn't too bad as I had a set schedule, unlike the other 3 jobs and could take breaks when I needed to, but got injured and lost most the summer's training.
Most of it was dealing with the stress from these jobs. People treated me like I was too dumb to count change or line up carts, when I was a freaking honors student at a at least regionally respectable college.
I had pretty good success later on with summer base training, after grad school when I could work a state park tour guide job, but until I had a degree, with no connections, I was treated like the lowest life loser. All those jobs except the park maintenance one, I applied for a hundred or so other jobs before finding and kept applying for jobs for the first half of summer to no avail.
Sometimes I envy a friend of mine who's parents are pretty rich. She never had to work before completing her phd and spent her summers running and at the pool and beach, as well as going on nice vacations I still couldn't afford today as a salaried employee.
If you've got advice on dealing with training while working a crap job, its too late for me, but maybe some of the guys here could benefit and come into xc a little better.