How to get over regret over HS running?

Just stop

I mean really?

If you are in college and being nostalgic about hs, you are doing college wrong. You need to make some friends and go to some parties.

That said if you are not on a team anymore the likelihood of getting a pr in the 1600 is zero. Focus on the 5k.

Start training and racing again. Make NEW goals and commit... doesn't necessarily need to be running to satisfy your needs.

You have a clean slate to start with, so get busy filling it in with performance goals.

That's the only way to fill in that hole left behind from HS.

Quit running, get big, get laid.

I had similar PRs. To be honest, I'm surprised you're still nursing emotional wounds about having been an average high school runner.

That said, it was actually pretty easy for me to chill out during my senior year of high school when it was clear I would always be an average runner. One knock I have on running coaches is they all sort of childishly fuel delusions of running grandeur in even the most marginal of runners. That's how the OP ends up in this position.

Honestly, you need to find new hobbies and friends outside of running. You can still run for cardio, but I'd suggest relaxing with any training. I chose weight lifting and hiking as my main activity outlets in addition to running solely for cardio. Halfway into my freshman year after taking on some new interests, I was glad to be through with competitive running.

The same solutions work for different tragedies.

Responsibility for fighting for social legitimacy and service, along the lines of something like a religious theory, solves tragedy. The details do not matter so much, as everyone can find tragedy of different types. A social purpose to make your effort worthwhile, feeling the dominance of your efforts towards legitimacy, against malevolence, will make you find efforts worthwhile.

You could also try a longer distance - half marathon and marathon and keep trying to PR in those

You were a very good high school runner. Ignore the trolls who call you average.

You can easily beat all those times. Get involved with a club team. Find a coach.

You're in college, and can't get over high school?

Get off this dumb board, get out there, and start living. Holy hell.

Start training again

There's nothing you can do about it now. You just need to move on with your life.

Being remorseful is too big of a part of your personality. That's not going to go away because of running. The people saying basically , get a little ego, are right.

This is what fuels 99% of runners in their 30s. You can put work in now and get decent. But Honestly, no on will care. You don't have to team around you. You can still get plenty of PRs. Some people never even touch their HS PRs so at least you have a chance to break them.

However, People usually long for the old day when things are currently not good. Fix your present and you can put the past in perspective.

It makes perfect sense to me. High school XC can be an awesome experience and nothing else quite matches it. I had nearly identical PRs and no plans to run in college, but I was still crushed when my team barely lost a league championship my senior year that I had been working toward for since I was a sophomore. Even with new friends and new hobbies in college and later, I had painful regrets for years.

Here's the best solution: get after it again and run some fast times. You're closer to your athletic prime now than you were in high school, so you should be able to crush whatever PR you set your sights on if you work at it. Without a coach, you'll have to learn how training actually works and take responsibility for your own fitness. You'll have to look for races out in the community. But these are all good things.

Step 1: Get back in the habit of running every day. Start with low miles and easy running. Do that for a month or two.

I'm the third guy to chime in with the same high school PRs. I never made it to the state xc meet, and not even sectional meet in track. Too little training, a couple injuries.

I had an academic scholarship to a local college, and the coach there recruited me (division 3 school). But I figured it was just a form letter sent to any high school runner who had been accepted at the school.

My schedule was packed, so I just blew it off. Then senior year I had more flexibility and joined the track team. The coach remembered that I had ignored his invitation three years before. Apparently, only a couple freshman were recruited for XC each year.

Midway through the track season, I was one of the leading scorers (still not very talented, but weak competition in the 10,000m). Coach asked if I regretted not running during my first three years.

Yeah, I did. It would have been fun to be part of the tight-knit XC team. And I'm sure I would have improved a lot. But that senior year college track experience jump-started a life-long enjoyment: Racing, marathons, track meets, running clubs. Even a happy marriage (met my wife at a track club after moving to a new city).

Don't look back. The present and the future are too much fun.

Sham 69 wrote:

Quit running, get big, get laid.

Send him to your mom or your sister, Sham, you pig.

You have plenty of time to smash your PRs, most pros don't peak until after they get to your age. I'm almost 40 and I'm close to my high school PRs. Just get back to work, become an elite hobbyjogger, win your local turkey trot, take the local strava crowns, beat Nick Symmonds on his youtube in a backwards pogo stick steeplechase, enter a major marathon and stick on Shalane Flanagan's shoulder, etc. Lots of cool stuff to do.

letsrunaccount#3 wrote:

I'm a current junior in college. I had modest PRs in HS (4:40 1600, 10:00 3200, 17:00 5k), and I know I had the potential to get to the State XC/Track meets, but just wasn't able to because of a couple things (mono, depression, injury). Now, whenever I see runners from my old HS run, I can't help but wish I was in their place again, so I could have the chance to make it. Not making it to the State meet was probably my biggest regret during HS. Anyone have any advice to get over this? Or to build up from not running much over the past couple years? I think if I were to PR in the 1600 or 5k, some of the regret would be gone.

Just get it in perspective. The past is in the past, it's gone, you can't change it and there's little point obsessing over it. It will make you miserable if you do. Loads of people had potential to do various things and didn't do them for whatever reason. Loads of runners get injured. You aren't alone with that. High school is a few years, you have many years ahead of you to get PBs.

If you're healthy and able bodied you're ahead of a lot of people so just be grateful for that.

Write off the past and focus on the present and future.