Quitting Division 1 Track

There's more to life than running. Don't feel like you failed if you quit. If you could concentrate your efforts on something like you have concentrated on running, you can succeed in most anything.

Been in your shoes, I didn't quit, and I was able to have a few good races in between the injuries. I had an incredible team that was always supportive of me. I don't know how close you are with your teammates.

Honestly, if you know that there is really no way that you will be able to stay healthy for more than a couple months at a time in the next 3-4 years of college, I would quit. Had I known what I would have gone through/am going through, I probably would have never run in college. But it is an incredible experience and I would go for it if you think you have a chance to get health and back in shape.

Play this to your advantage. Cut the cardio and put on some weight. A lot of runners seem to have breakthroughs after building up muscle then leaning out.

I was sort of in the same boat, I fractured my femur pretty early into summer training then took 21 credits at a technical school along with the depressingly cold winter of the northeast. It's crazy how my mind set changed once I got a few weeks of training and the weather got better. Fingers crossed I can stay healthy now and beat my HS PRs.

Read this. Guy redshirted freshman year, ran okay as a sophomore before getting hit with injuries.

He came back, was all-American, AND is dating Emma Cobrun.

http://www.cubuffs.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=600&ATCLID=209508263

I ran D1 track and have continued racing all my life. My kids run competitively, and I'd say the same thing to you as to them: There is absolutely nothing wrong with moving on to other things if/when they motivate you more than running. Going fast in circles is not inherently noble... the important thing is to be working hard at something to reach your potential, and to be taking joy from the process. It might be running, it might be something else.

Whatever you decide, good luck!

I'm no doctor but it sounds like you've been injured a lot. My advice is that if you feel better, you should run. But if you're still not feeling well enough to run, you probably shouldn't or else BOOM! You injure yourself even further. Simple as that.

Gator0000 wrote:

appreciate the feedback but don't exactly appreciate the "guys like you". since my junior year of highschool I've suffered from compartment syndrome, a torn hamstring, a stress reaction in my hip and shin, the stress fracture... I've run 1:53 in the 8 through all of that I don't appreciate the statement that I'm merely "giving up" it's hard to keep the fire burning. I haven't done a workout since april of my senior year of highschool.

Mistera Gatar, has you consider it the performing agents? Such is the hormanels and blood enhancerments? erm?

(...jk, plz don't ban me)

Plenty of guys have gone through experiences just like this and almost no runner who makes it to the top of the college level doesn't deal with adversity at some point. It comes down to how bad you want and are you willing to persevere through the setbacks. You need the have that fire burning to compete at a high level for a long period of time, especially once you get out of that high school comfort zone. There's no shame is saying you don't really want to pursue running but no sob stories about be dealt a tough hand.

I'm in a similar situation except i'm not injured and I'm not D1. I feel like I can only go a few months of consistent training at a time before I start hating it and I get all depressive. And then when I go through that phase I lose my racing confidence. I'm a freshman at a community college and it's really tough right now. When one thing goes wrong in a week, everything unravels one by one. If i procrastinate on an essay, I stay up late to finish and then i get 3 hours of sleep and run shitty. Or I sleep through my alarm and my first class. It just seems like too much stress in general. And with running I feel like i'm only training for those one or 2 races a year where you feel great and race out of your mind. But it's tough to just grind through the monotony. Not sure if I'm coming back out next year.

steeplesheeple wrote:

Read this. Guy redshirted freshman year, ran okay as a sophomore before getting hit with injuries.

He came back, was all-American, AND is dating Emma Cobrun.

He was dating Coburn first, and she helped nurse boss hard back to health.

OP, you need to get an Emma.

I understand where you're at. I suffered from from numerous injuries for my first 3 years of college and many other outisde circumstsnaces that held me back. These aren;t excuses because I certainly didn't do myself any favors for much of that time but I decided to stick with the sport I love even if it was miserable for a while. I was pretty slow and irrelevant on my team for those 3 years (we're not even that good of a D1 team) but now in my senior year I've rekindled the fire i sued to have for this sport and have been getting better and setting PRs in almost every race I've run this year. My coach and I have even discussed training with a focus on qualifying for D1 nationls this season, as it is my final year of eligibility and we want to just go for it even if it is a long shot. I know that i am just really glad I stuck it out for those years even though there were many times I thought about quitting because all the work is finally paying off.

I was on D1 scholarship and ran my first 3 years of college. Then a break up occurred and I learned why it is a bad idea to date someone on your team. There was a lot to the story that I just won't get into but I quit my senior year. At the time I thought that I had been running competitively since I was 14 and it was no big deal. So I walked away from the sport I loved and had 6 years of my life to. At the time, I had been all conference in XC all 3 years. Knowing that I was one of the favorites for the XC title my senior year was not enough. I put on weight and swore I would never run again. And this decision did not affect me for about a decade. By then I was overweight, out of shape and yearning to get back to the love that I once had for running. I did drop the weight and got back into decent shape (although by LRC standards, I was still slow as hell) but I was no where near what i used to be. I regret not running now, I never did find out how fast I could have gone, and all I learned was when I ran into a problem I gave up. At the very least I could have become and would still be the only runner in my schools history to be All conference 4 years in a row. It bugs me now that I let that go. Point is, don't quit, you may not think it is a big deal 5 years from now but as more time goes by you will realize what you had and regret giving it up.

Isn't Andres Arroyo a Gator? You guys should be rehabbing together.

Right now you're dealing with end of term stress, existential crisis over what you want to do with your life, significant physical ailments -- that's a lot to chew on. So CUT YOURSELF SOME SLACK. Seriously, a stress fracture of your femur is a real blow to any runner, and that truly sucks. However, I expect that at UF, you would have access to first class rehab, so the first priority is just to get healthy. Don't worry about "falling behind." Take things a day at a time, and in the longer process of getting healthy, perhaps you can figure out what went wrong in your training and decide how you can move forward in a steady, conservative manner. In other words, now isn't the time to decide whether you should throw in the towel on your future running career. Your decision today is just to get healthy. And have faith that talent doesn't disappear forever just because you've fallen into a year-long down cycle. The wheel turns.

Gator0000 wrote:

appreciate the feedback but don't exactly appreciate the "guys like you". since my junior year of highschool I've suffered from compartment syndrome, a torn hamstring, a stress reaction in my hip and shin, the stress fracture... I've run 1:53 in the 8 through all of that I don't appreciate the statement that I'm merely "giving up" it's hard to keep the fire burning. I haven't done a workout since april of my senior year of highschool.

I'm an 800/1500 guy who dealt with the same string of injuries you did, only they started my sophomore year of college. Stress reaction in my femur, then in my shin. Compartment syndrome the year after that, then blew out a tendon in my shin. Unfortunately those injuries prevented me from ever coming close to reaching my potential in college, or even racing more than 2x a season. I got over them though, and fixed the underlying problems that caused me to be so injury prone. I started training again after graduating and was finally able to stay healthy for an extended period of time. My first year out of college I PR'd in the 800, 1500, mile and 5k. Now in my 2nd year post-college and eyeing a sub-1:50 in the 800 this spring.

In my experience, the most important thing when you're injured is to not beat yourself up mentally. Find other interests that you can pursue until you can start training again. Don't shut yourself away from the world like I did at the end of college.

Regarding your compartment syndrome, is that an ongoing issue that you're dealing with? Have you had the release surgery? I got the surgery and it worked wonders for me. My tight calves were really screwing with my bio-mechanics and caused tons of problems for me in my lower legs. Another thing that really helped me was shortening my stride, especially on distance runs. I developed a bad habit of over-striding, which put a lot of strain on my lower legs, where I was developing stress reactions and tendon problems.

Best of luck