Another short post is up on SWWAR.
THIS IS IT! wrote:
Even coaches that don't want to promote eating disorders have trouble properly dealing with them.
Then there are the coaches that conveniently avoid the issue of having to somehow confront eating disorders among their athletes by doing their best to instill them and nurture them into full bloom.
http://trainingonempty.blogspot.com/2011/06/excerpt.htmlBy the time track season started I had already run under 11 minutes for the two mile indoors. There was no real indoor season for high-school athletes, so my coach had me run some open races at the university indoor track meets. As our own high school track season wore on, my general fatigue grew. I was undefeated going into the state meet, and my coach was determined to have a new state record in the two-mile for us. What should have been a walk in the park turned into a long, clumsy jog around the track. It started the day before states. I was too fat. I knew it. I tipped the scale at a whopping 102.
Fearful of the added weight, I asked my coach if the one or two extra pounds would affect my race the next day. “It will probably slow you down,” he said. I had no idea how to take that statement. I felt so guilty I threw up what I ate that night. I was so distressed by the time the race actually rolled around the following day that I had lost sight of my goal -- setting a state record. From the gun, I got out in front and just settled. I ran comfortably. The battle in my head raged on; come on, pick it up vs. just finish the race and be done with it.
About three-fourths of the way through, in mid-stride, just as I was heading into the turn, I caught sight of my coach and I knew I would have to face him; would have to face myself -- my fatness, my apathy and my failure. I thought about the woman from NC State who had run off the track midway through nationals in the 10,000 meters. She just ran off the track, jumped off a bridge and tried to kill herself. She ended up surviving. She lost the use of her legs though and is confined to a wheelchair. In an example of bitter irony, she claims she is happier now than when she was under all that pressure and stuck in her obsessive training.
By the time my foot hit the ground I felt only detachment. “F*** it, I’m tired,” I thought. I tried everything possible to pick up the pace, but had nothing to give. My body would not respond and my mind wavered. I finished in over 11 minutes and when I faced the man who had led me to greatness while slowly assisting my suicide, I saw the disappointment in his face. I felt like an absolute failure. I had still won, but my perception was that I totally lost in his eyes and as a result in my own eyes as well. I still had one last race to get through in the summer, a two-mile national cross-country race. I finished fourth in another apathetic effort. I had reached full burn-out at age 18.