Any other walk-ons here struggling to stay on the team?

Yup--it's a quick road downhill if every day is hard.

Running provides stimulus. You adapt to that stimulus (i.e. get faster) when you are recovering. If you aren't recovering, you aren't getting all the benefits of the stimulus you worked so hard for. Training is pointless if you aren't getting the recovery. Not only that, by running too hard, you put yourself further in the hole for the next day. Do that for a few weeks in a row and you are basically done for the season.

If you work 5% too hard, you will progress much less quickly than if you work 5% too little. Every time, guaranteed. Stray on the side of under doing it.

You help the team by running fast and scoring points, not by keeping up during easy runs workouts. Do what you need to do to help the team in the long run.

OP, you just described EXACTLY how I felt in the fall of 1996. Just like you, the only day I had to rest was when I had a class scheduled during practice. Thank God for that required class.

A year later, and many injuries and sicknesses later, I was much more accustomed to running with faster people. Eventually I became the top 3000m/5000m runner on the team, running under 8:20/14:20.

Agreed with all here. Suck it up if you can and on solo days, just go as easy as your body will let you. Being a walk on was hard, but after training with the big boys just a few weeks, I dropped my 8k PR by 65 seconds from the year before in my first race. Good luck!

I was in your situation earlier this year, tired constantly and hating college more then anyone should. The way I decided to handle it was to just start running slower on easy days. There is no reason for you to be with the top people on your team on easy days, easy days are easy its that simple. So relax you will be fine, maybe ask to be red shirted so you can get more days to yourself a week to build up that mileage.

This was written by wejo (Weldon Johnson), one of the founders of this site:

http://www.letsrun.com/2006/collegesuck.php

First of all, the OP deserves a lot of credit for her determination and perseverance.

I don't know anything about how a college team functions these days. But I do have a question: this young lady is dedicating a large part of her college experience to be a part of this team -- to the point where it is affecting her health and ability to perform academically, and the coach is either too busy or can't care enough to spend 30 minutes talking to her about her situation? I can understand her reluctance to talk to the coach due to her relative status on the team... seems to me, though, if at some point your training is negatively affecting your academics and outside life to a great extent, you gotta be willing to engage the responsible adults in the situation to help you through it... if he/she is too busy to help, it might be time to find another way to continue with your running career.

good luck

shoe guy wrote:

The workouts you do should serve the purpose they are supposed to serve. For example, if the run is easy you should run easy. Since it seems like you are always running hard, it is no surprise you are always tired.

If I were you I would talk to the coach about running your own paces in workouts. If you're running workouts, make sure you are running them with the slowest group. In addition, let your other teammates go on the easy days. Don't be self conscious and just run relatively easy, but not too slow either (you should be breathing a good amount but still feel comfortable).

As someone who was in the exact same situation that the OP finds themselves in, this advice is right on.

You probably won't get kicked off the team if you're a girl because of title 9. If you keep working hard you will eventually earn and deserve your spot.

heyheyhey wrote:

don't quit. You'll regret it the rest of your life. How great would it be to look back, knowing you made it because you worked as hard as you could for it? You'll either break, or you'll be leading the walk-ons next year. Only way to find out is keep on trying.

damn, he'll regret not running competitively for the rest of his life? talk about placing too much emphasis on fairly arbitrary things.

when you're doing a workout, keep outworking everyone

when you're doing a recovery run, start outresting everyone

i don't know what kind of training constraints your coach has you under, but if she is actually pressuring you to race workouts and overexert on rest days, you need to find a new school if you're dead set on running, because this coach will ruin every athlete she coaches, get lucky with a few extremely talented runners who are so good that even their off-peak performances are significant, and take credit/responsibility only for the ones who perform well. if you want to give a genuine effort at RACING faster, you need to adjust your strategy. what you're doing now is setting yourself up for burnout or injury. what you should be doing is optimizing your performance when it counts.

If you are drinking alcohol stop right now. When I was a walk on I abused alcohol on the weekends and at the time had more talent than I realized. Eventually I started showing progress again once I adapted to the new training system. I won a race at the end of my season got drunk and broke my leg, I had to quit the team.

Basically what I'm saying is don't get down and do what it takes to recover from the workouts and you'll make progress. If you just stay healthy you'll start making progress again.

[quote]txRUNNERgirl wrote:

Welome back.

...and good advice.

you should prolly quite and stop wasting the air you breathe and save it for the good people.

this happened to me a lot. im a guy and i never broke 11:00 for 3200m in high school, and i attempted next fall after i finished high school to walk on at a division 2 cross country team. i had gotten up to about 60mpw or so during the summer. i wasnt invited to summer pre-season camp so i showed up first week in September for workouts. i made the team i guess you could say...there were no cuts really, one kid did get cut but he was insanely out of shape. i made the roster, basically ran 28:50something 8k by ending of season.there are a lot of decent high school kids at the d2 and d3 (9:50-10:20 2miler types) who were obviously much better than me in HS but they come into college for XC in the fall not in the best shape, so i was able to keep up with them and kind of fake it at the beginnning of the season. a lot of these young guys are still adjusting to the 8K/10K distance too so that helped. i guess i sort of had to fake it by running with them nearly everyday even if i was dead.

i usually had a problem with being too dead to race well late in the season though. often the easyday pace was sub7 or close to it which was also a problem because i couldnt get mileage up without feeling dead.

I forgot who said this, but its really good advice:

"I beat you on race days because you beat me on easy days."

In the 80s, I tried to walk on to a good program, but I was two years out of HS. I was not in the same shape as I was in HS and the team had guys running that were superior to me in HS on the team. I just wanted to try to continue my competitive running with good training partners. It did not end well. I struggled to keep up in warm-ups and in the intervals. After a short time, I realized that I was trying to do the impossible.

If I had to do it again, I would have chosen a school with a lesser program to run with, or I would have stuck to running road races and trained alone.

That said, I wish you luck with your running.

Senior El Gordo wrote:

I forgot who said this, but its really good advice:

"I beat you on race days because you beat me on easy days."

I remember in college I was getting hammered everyday, even easy days. I always ran with the slower (in terms of PR) guys. They raced every day. Later, I started training with the faster guys on easy days. They took it easy, talked about their day and what not, and I actually ended up getting a good recovery day.

Senior El Gordo wrote:

I forgot who said this, but its really good advice:

"I beat you on race days because you beat me on easy days."

I had someone ask me why they always beat me in practice, but I always beat them on race day. I simply said it was because they do not give awards on practice days.

[quote]txRUNNERgirl wrote:

Been there, done that. First, I'd say try to not be so insecure. You may not see it, but calling yourself "a barely-made-the-team struggling walk-on" isn't doing you any good. Do not put too much pressure on yourself. I used to do that and focus way too much on running, but in the long run (no pun intended), you need to define your priorities. As much as you enjoy running, it's not like you are being paid to be there.

The problem with running in college is that everything is squished into 4 years, all or nothing. Well there's a lot more time after college, so if you would like to continue to *enjoy* running and stay healthy, listen to yourself. You say you are tired all the time and do not perform well in races. A large part of that is because you are running too hard on easy days. I did this in high school and college, and did not realize it until it was too late.

/quote]

This is really dead on. At least this is how I felt my first fall as a walk on- like I was just "a barely-made-the-team struggling walk on" and didn't deserve to speak up or make my issues known. What's weird is there were a couple other girls there who were as slow as me, but they seemed to be way more confident socially. They spoke up, they acted like they deserved to be there, and weirdly, commanded and received more help. But I digress.

I heartily second whoever said to get your iron levels tested. I actually can't add too, too much to the topic of this thread because what ultimately advanced me to the upper mid-pack was fixing my previously unknown iron issue.

In the mean time, I would STRONGLY advise you to just let your teammates go and run your easy days by yourself. I mean, would your coach even know!? Don't tell him or her, just do your own thing. Pounding every day is just setting yourself up for injuries.

Ultimately your ticket out of being the slowest girl on the team is months and months of uninterrupted training. Slow and steady improvement. Don't worry so much about today. Take it easy, avoid injury, and who knows? you may find yourself at the top of the heap by your junior year. I certainly observed this phenomenon back in college

good luck