Hello Letsrun. I am in desperate need of your help/advice/anything you can offer. I would ask that you leave serious comments because this problem is serious to me. I have already posted a couple of times on this problem a while back, but my ordeal has currently spiraled out of control.
I believe it is important to give you as much context as possible so that you can make the most informed assessment of my situation.
I am a junior in high school, soon-to-be senior. My problem started my Junior year of cross country. I was a relatively fast runner. I had run 10:13 for the two mile before Covid and wanted to build a very strong mileage base for cross country to help my team win a state championship.
I built to around 70 miles a week, all off long and slow (8:15 pace) singles. I was in excellent shape at the beginning of the season and did well in our early races and workouts. Around the middle of the season, I was beginning to feel tired in our workouts, barely being able to run 6:15 for our tempo miles, but I still ran my fastest time of the season, 16:11 for the 5k.
Then, the collapse came. Two weeks after my best race, I ran 18:00 for the 5k. I went from second fastest on the team to thirteenth fastest. People kept on passing me and passing me and my legs were absolutely dead. I had no energy, and I believe one of my miles was six minutes.
I was no longer on our conference team and had one last stand in a small, non-varsity race to make it. I came in clutch, and barely clinched a spot on the conference team roster.
Conference, regionals, and sectionals rolled around, and I did okay. I was running around 25 seconds slower than I should have been running, however. And I still felt like I had absolutely no energy in races, like I was just moving my legs. State came, and I collapsed again. The best way to describe how I felt was like I was racing right after a tough workout. Notably, two guys on our team ran well, but the rest of us ran poorly. We were predicted to win, but we placed in seventh. Needless to say, we were down in the dumps.
Logically, the next question was what happened? For me, that was a question of whether I was overtrained or iron-deficient. I slept fairly well, ate fairly well, and seemed to do everything right. I ended up taking a ferritin test, and it was completely normal, even for runners. Therefore, the only conclusion was that I was overtrained.
We were doing two workouts and a race per week for almost two months. I did not listen to the signs my body was telling me, and continued to drive myself into the ground. After the season, I was a little concerned about whether I would have long-term damage, given l kept the engine running for a month and a half after my body collapsed for the team.
I ended up taking a long break of around two months after the season ended because I did not want to take any chances. Getting started running again was not the easiest, but running eventually became normal again. I built up to a little less than 60 miles a week.
I wanted this season to be different; I did not want to go through the pain I went through in cross country. That last month of cross country was one of the worst times of my life, and those races were some of the worst moments of my life. I needed to talk to my Coach, which would prove to be difficult.
Basically, after articulating my thoughts to my Coach and telling him how I wanted to take things easier this season, as you cannot come back from overtraining but you can come back from undertraining, my Coach virtually ignored what I said and told me to once again follow his plan; his reasoning was that if I could not handle it, then so be it, but if I could, then I could make state. At any rate, what would I have to lose? It turns out that I had my love of running to lose.
My Coach’s enticements initially worked. For a moment, I forgot about what had happened during cross country and continued with the same exact workout and race plan, except our Wednesday cross country workouts were replaced with either workout-races or short races. My first races were pretty good, running 10:08 for the two mile, 4:46 for the mile, and 2:08 for the 800, but I quickly began to feel tired.
This time, I listened to my body and pleaded with my Coach to run at least one less workout a week. After some long emails, he reluctantly agreed, but he somehow believed that I was undertraining! Even though I could not even fathom how he thought I was undertraining, I managed to convince him that either way, I needed to recover.
This new plan seemed to work decently until my Coach made me race on Wednesday and Saturday. That just killed me. As opposed to a sudden collapse in cross country, my collapse in track was gradual: 2:12 800, 4:52 mile, 10:53 2 mile, and 2:17 800, all the while many of my teammates were succeeding.
I was trying to tell my Coach what was happening to me, but he came up with an excuse for my poor performance every time—claiming I would run a PR next race. Some of my teammates were supportive whereas others thought that I was simply not trying hard enough or that I was not positive enough. Well, I could write an entire essay on that alone, but what I will say now is screw them.
So our conference championships rolled around. Everyone was telling me that I would be running sub 10 for the two mile and that I would do great, but no one was listening to how I actually felt. The dreaded day came. I was seeded fourth with a 10:08 and ended up running a miserable 11:20, coming in eleventh and not even making varsity; I was actually lapped by a guy I beat earlier in the season. To add insult to injury, even though our team got second in the conference, our Coach spent a large part of his post-meet speech getting mad at the distance guys (and by getting mad at the distance guys, I mean getting mad mainly at me) for not putting in enough effort.
That is where I am now. I used to love running, but now it is just painful to even think about it. I am not giving up, mostly because I have good friends on the team, but drastic times call for drastic measures. To reiterate, my problem is not being able to handle much intensity anymore, from what I believe to be long-term damage from cross country. I am writing this not so much for you to diagnose my problem but to help me find solutions.
I am going to take at least three weeks off, and then see how I feel. I am then going to build up my mileage, hoping that I am not suffering any drastic long-term effects from my previous seasons.
I want to propose to my Coach to only race or do one day of intensity a week. My reasoning is the following. I tend to perform really well in the early season meets without doing much intensity (only off mileage), and perform poorly once we start adding in workouts. Moreover, if it turns out that I am undertrained, we can always add more workouts later in the season, but you cannot come back from overtraining without taking some time off to recover. I can simply replace workouts with distance runs.
I am committed to this plan whether my Coach agrees to it or not. I will dog the workouts if necessary; I am prepared to push my Coach right until his tipping point, but not past it. This is important to repeat: I do not want to go through this pain again. The problem is that my Coach compares me to other runners when I am not like most runners; I can run as fast as them but I cannot train like them.
Thank you for reading this if you made it to this point. I would like to first ask what you think of my plan. What would be the best method of convincing my Coach of my plan? What if he says no? Any words of encouragement would help since I am in a pretty low place right now.