Please before calling me a baby or a quitter or something, hear me out. I'm just in a rough spot and could use some advice (no trolls pls, thanks).
I've already talked to my dad about how I feel and he thinks I'm giving up to easy and need to just take it one day at a time. Fine. Basically I had a stress rxn that I'm still recovering from. I know part of it was from under-fueling which is my main coping strategy when something bad happens in life or in running, and recently something tough did happen so I started restricting my food intake and falling back into old habits. As someone who's fairly injury prone, this was stupid. I'll add that this is how I cope whenever I have a sucky race or workout, so this needs to change too.
I've been coming back to running but I completely SUCK. I dropped out of 2 workouts this week, and my normal running group was practically doing circles around me. I'm a 4:21 miler and I was doing 800 reps under my mile pace and feeling like absolute shoot. I really care about running and the best feeling is when I crush a completely hard workout with my teammates and feel really strong and confident. I miss that feeling. It feels like I'm just stuck in such of a hole. I'm struggling even on easy runs (and believe me, it's ideal weather in CA right now) and at this point all I think about is running and how depressed I feel about running. I'm already thinking of restricting again but I can't do that because I'll be injured (I'm aware I have issues with food, and trying to beat it). I just want to disappear for a while and come back with a clearer headspace. I'm nearly a 19 year old guy. I should be acting like one.
I love my team so much and I love feeling in shape and racing, but I nearly burst into tears out of frustration at a workout recently. I was in so much pain running around the track and I was like, why do you do this to yourself/you're never gonna run below 4:35. Idk if anyone can relate, but if someone can and had been there before, please tell me how you got past this rut. I could try talking to my coach but idk if he has time to hear from a mediocre-becoming-worse runner.
I'm trying so hard to put things in perspective and feel "grateful that I can run". but it seems like my worth and enjoyment in life is tied too much to running imho. What if I just quit and ran on my own?
I'm frustrated b/c I didn't even express what I wanted to in this post, but I just need someone to talk to who gets it.