Running is my life, but I'm not even good at it.

Saraswimrun wrote:

Thanks for all the advice. Hmm I'm new to Letsrun.. I'm guessing OP means original poster?

As for my summer training, I started in July and focused on building mileage with the team. We are now at the stage where we are focusing more on race pace workouts.

I hate to share my last race time because it really is atrocious

I'm guessing the OP [legit or troll] has left the thread. But on the off chance that the OP is legit [and yes, that stands for "original poster"] and is still following the thread -

What kind of pace do you need to hit to be in the ballpark of #7 on your team?

I have only gone down the posts this far, but this post is very good. I'd like to lend support to the original poster. At your age, it's hard to take a long range view. I am about to turn 60, and my high school team was one of the best in America. I was a weak kid and never came close to the top seven. And yet, I had a really great high school experience. I took up the sport again after college. I was a marathon runner for 21 years with a PR of 2:44. That's not great, but it's respectable, and believe me, pursuing the sport might have been the smartest thing I ever did. I loved everything about it: the friendships, the training, the excitement of the race, the feeling of fitness, the way it fit into my work life as an avocation.

When you are a teenager and feel passaion about it,it's tough to look into the future. Keep after it. Keep serious about it. Don't turn into a jogger/walker. I am certain you will get better.I am even more certain that if you continue to take the sport seriously over the years ahead of you, you will benefit tremendously. I wish you all the best.

Right so I'm not a troll. For my team, we have to be in the 21 to 22:30 range for 5k.

Look, as a HS freshman I ran mid-21s. As a sophomore, mid-19s. Then I started running a lot more volume in the summer and was mid-17s (Most Improved) and 17:01 (Most Valuable) my last two years.

I walked on D-II in college, only ran as high as #5 on a mediocre XC team and never scored a point in track with 16:13/34:18 times.

So I was never that good, but I LOVED it. Once I got out from under a coach, I just ran more and more. By age 28 I had run 30:XX for 10K (still 30sec under my former university's record), finished top 40 in the Boston Marathon, and got to run many other high level events.

You never know what potential you have until you do all you can do to tap it. Writing yourself off in your teens is silly if you love the sport. But if you really love it you will apply yourself. When I peaked I was running 100-120 miles per week for long stretches, >4000 miles/year.

I've been running a long time, and have come to realize that the runners I respect aren't just the fast ones but also the ones who just keep grinding it out, day after day, no matter what. Elegant form, fast speed, increased endurance are all things to work towards, but have a lot to do with how you fared in the genetic lottery. All you can control is how hard you train.

You say you love running, but getting better does come down to training harder -- running faster and doing more miles. Add morning runs if you aren't already doing them. Do long runs on the weekend. Do longer warm-ups and cool-downs around your team workouts. If you want to get faster than the people who are beating you, you need to work harder/smarter.

At your age. you can still expect huge improvements, if you put in the work.

Are you drunk?

Saraswimrun wrote:

Right so I'm not a troll. For my team, we have to be in the 21 to 22:30 range for 5k.

cool - so now we have a target: 7 minute / mile pace [give or take] for a 5k. Since you don't want to share where you are now, I can't offer a real opinion about how long it might take you to get to that goal, but it's the kind of goal that's very achievable. For context, here's a quote from [in my opinion] the most amazing person ever to post on this board:

"I started running in 8th grade. Ran slow (like almost 20 minutes for 2 miles slow). I kept at it, got into the 16's at the end of high school and ran around 15 flat for 5k/32 for 10k in my mid-20's. Nothing amazing, but, going from nearly 20 minutes for 2 miles to running sub 10 was pretty good in my book. I was literally twice as fast."

The author of that quote was an unusually determined individual, so I'm not going to go saying that his story means you can obviously get to be twice as fast you are now, but I think it helps illustrate how getting to a goal like 7' pace for 5k - wherever you are now - is probably achievable if it's something you truly want.

p.s. If you want to know why I think that poster was so amazing, check out

.

I started running at the age of 15 when I joined my high school cross country team in 9th grade. The first day of practice during preseason in august the coach had us run a time trial of our home course. It was a mixed race with both the boys & girls on our team starting at the same time. I finished dead last in something like 29'40 or so. My time was just under 30 minutes. I was well behind the 2nd to last place finisher. By the end of the season I was the slowest on the team but improved my PR to 22'39.

I loved running but knew absolutely nothing about training and I didn't have anyone around me that did either. We had no track team so the only time I could compete was in the fall. Additionally my school had a rule where students had to participate in multiple sports each year, and with no running option during the winter or spring, I didn't run year round.

By the end of my sophomore year I improved my PR to 20'22. Keep in mind the training we were doing was laughable looking back on it now. Maybe 30-35 miles per week. Not difficult at all. My main improvements came from getting older. I did run occasionally during the other 3 seasons but it was very inconsistent and was never a "workout", only something like 30 - 60 minutes easy, which for me at the time was slower than 8 minute mile pace.

By the end of my junior year my PR was 19'42. I had broken the 20 minute barrier! I was happy but still very much a mid-back place finisher in most races. I wasn't happy about that and wanted to improve. By the end of my junior year my high school sweetheart had broken up with me and I was pretty bummed out. I decided to deal with it by running more so I would have less time to think about it. I started doing 3 laps of our very hilly 5k XC course every afternoon at a hard (for me) pace. I ended up coming down with an injury that would knock me out for 8 weeks.

Since I couldn't run for 2 months I decided to look for ways to improve without running so that I would have a head start upon my return. I started doing core work every day. Push ups, crunches, pull ups, planks, etc. I also made an effort to get my weight down. I'm 5'10.5 and was in the 150-155 range. I got my weight down to 140 all during the time I couldn't run.

Upon returning to training it was very difficult! I remember my first run was 5 minutes out & back and it damn near killed me. But over the next month I kept doing easy runs of this nature. Additionally I lost a few more pounds so I was now about 136-137. After about 5 weeks of easy runs I was able to start "real" training.

I began a 6 week period of training that was harder than I had ever trained before. Much of it was stupidly hard but I didn't know any better at the time. One week I remember went like this:

Monday: AM) 5 miles PM) 4 x 1600 at 5k pace

Tuesday: AM) 4 miles PM) 13 x 250m hill sprint at maximum effort, jog back & immediately start the next one

Wednesday: AM) 5 miles PM) 12 x 400 at mile pace

Thursday: AM) 4 miles PM) 20 minutes of 100m sprint / 100m easy

Friday: AM) 5 miles PM) 8 miles

Saturday) PM) 5 mile tempo run

Sunday) I skipped this day because I was fried

I also did a 10k "tempo" run on the track where I ran the first 5k in 18:29 with the first 2 miles under 5'50 and finished with a time of 37'47. This at a time when my "official" PR was still the 19'42 from the previous fall. The average mileage during this time was my highest ever at around 55 - 65.

I ran a 5k road race (certified course) one week before my senior season of cross country started and ran 18'05 with the first mile in the race run in 5'28 (17'05 pace) which at the time was the fastest mile I had run in my life. To say I went out a bit hard was an understatement! I obviously faded quite a bit and was disappointed with myself and "gave up" the last 300m of the race or so, which led me to miss out on a sub 18 clocking.

If I had paced myself sensibly I know I could have run 17'30 - 17'40. I only ran 3 races during my senior season due to me coming down with IT-Band syndrome (an injury that would plague me for several years). Of those 3 races before I was injured I finished 8th in the first, 1st in the second (my first ever win!), and 20th or so in the third (a much, much larger field).

I didn't run at all for 2 months. The next month I spent running 1-3 miles every other day. The next month I started doing easy runs of 20-40 minutes. Needing to do something athletic as per my school rules, I decided to do an indoor track race unattached. I ran an indoor 1500m race. Keep in mind this is after the injury and not doing anything but short easy runs for a month.

The race was on a 160m track and I had no idea what my fitness was let alone splits on a 160m track. I just went out with the group and "followed the train". I was the caboose and slowly became detached from the group (everyone else) in front of me. I ended up finishing dead last, much like my first cross country race. Except this time, it being a track race, I was also lapped by 3 people. I finished in 4'55.2 which is the equivalent to a 5'18 mile. All things considered it wasn't bad but I was unhappy about being lapped and wrote in my training log "never running a 1500 again".

I then started running up to 117 miles per week (7am, 10pm, 15 on sunday) ALL on a treadmill. I lived in New England and the roads weren't too great during the winter. All of my mileage at this time was at 6'45 pace. On the long run I ran it progression style finishing at 6'15 pace. I injured my hamstring from all the hard running (no surprise) and never got to do anything with the fitness. Was out for 4 weeks.

I never ran another race but I did do one workout later that spring that indicated I could have probably at least managed 18'15 - 18'30 in a 5k race (5 x 1600 in 5'47, 3 min rest). After that I came down with IT band Syndrome again and was out for the summer before college. I then had many small niggles during the fall. I then came down with IT Band Syndrome again in the winter. For the next year I had niggling injuries that kept me from running.

Today (junior in college) I am running regularly with no problems. The training is much more sensible as I actually know how to train properly now. Several months of training with regular workouts & no problems!

TL;DR - Even if you are the slowest person on your team when you start out, with hard work you can achieve things you and others may never have thought possible. Also, be patient and look to the long term. Good luck!