Bombed my last state championship XC please read I need help

TLDR.

I bombed state too. Sometimes athletes just get unlucky bro. After a couple days I did a pretty nice tempo with my friend. Some days you have it and other days you don't bro. Go train for track and forget about state. You have more races to come.

Should i take some time off like some people suggest?

Yeh just take time off, don’t be mad at your coach or anyone, maybe you should have had better communication with him earlier in the season. If people on your team doubt you that’s a bigger reason to improve. Just continue putting in the work after taking a minimum 1 week break, it’s probably better to wait the full 2 weeks to avoid injury. Your scholarship opportunities really aren’t gone because most scholarships are given for track anyway. Just take off, don’t overthink running, and when you start running again, don’t have regrets, just be passionate in the work and move on. Your parents clearly aren’t helpful so just don’t talk to them anymore about it, and things will get better the fitness from your previous season will translate quickly. Good luck

That sucks that it happened to end that way, but dropping 90 seconds off of your 5k time is very good.

Onto the main question. I don't think the lowering of mileage is solely what killed you. Doing hard vo2 max workouts year round is not sustainable in my opinion. It sounds like you may have been what they deem "Mr. September". It happens to a lot of highschoolers, I can say that lowering mileage too early can be a bad thing. But keeping the mileage the same while hammering workouts weekly and racing can be detrimental as well.

I doubt your college plans are soiled, realistically coaches will know if they want you by your overall season. They will not stop talking to you over one bad race. Take some time off, and chillax for awhile.

You learned a life lesson.

There will be times, many times, things just don't go your way in your life. You'll have bad races. You'll go thru relationships. You'll lose job(s).

The true test of a person is not what kind of person they are in the good times, it's the kind of person you are in bad times.

Choose to focus on the positive things in your life. You have a family, a solid roof over your head, your health, etc.

This is hard and I'm sorry it happened to you, but as the poster above said, it's a good life lesson. Either you overcome this and grow or it's the end of your running story. Up to you. We're all only as successful as the mistakes we've made and learned from. I haven't run a meaningful race in 20 years and none of that even matters to me anymore. But I apply these same lessons that I learned from running every day.

For me this was more mental than physical. I never figured it out until college. Running at your peak takes a toll and you need to manage that physically and mentally. I would purposely race tired until the races really meant something. You can't let yourself care too much about the early season races. For me I could only handle 2 to 3 peak races a season. So pick them carefully. Don't get too high or low for the others.

When it is time to be at your best, you need to get to the right place both mentally and physically. For me the physical part was straightforward. Timing my mental peak was a bigger challenge.

3 months ago i went monk mode and completely eradicated all the mental weakness in my body such as bad habits and stuff, since I'm on a 2 week break now, i was like hell with it im going to relapse and now i have myself under control now and i will never make this stupid mistake again of complaining on letsrun, relapsing and feeling sorry for myself. It's funny how you mentioned the mental part of it because that is what i am training myself to become.

I am an idiot sometimes but we all are at a point i guess We act it through different ways i guess.

Sincerely thanks for advice