Good in practice, awful in meets.

Sounds like you might have a race anxiety problem. Here's something youngcoach and I both do that is really helpful:

1. Write down all of your anxieties going into a race and any negative thoughts you might have during the race in one column on a sheet of paper

2. Write down positive responses to all of them in another column

3. Whenever you have a negative thought, counter it with a positive thought

In addition (I saw a sports psychologist last season) you can look into visualization, imagery, and maybe even having a little motto you repeat to yourself, as silly as it seems.

make sure you're coming into meets fresh, but not too fresh. Are you not running the day before and having your legs get tight? Are you doing intervals the day or two before? Are you getting a good warm up? Eating early enough beforehand or eating too early beforehand?

perhaps you are racing your workouts and are not at the level that you think.

Change your mentality; They're not meets, just practice.

I think it's a safe bet that people who have loved me my whole life are right about the facts. Not the imaginary guy who only communicates with me on a message board and just happens to never show up over an entire year, but he calls me his wife and says he loves me. Hummm....which scenario sounds factual?

if the meet is saturday, ill usually workout such as 4 separate miles on thursday. ill also stretch for 30 minutes on friday. i eat around 7:30 and then if my race isn't till 11 ill have a banana or some crackers throughout the day, thank you for your help

thank you very much. this is very helpful, i will definitely try this. ive been to a sports psychologist once or twice, but i think ill make plans to go more often. thanks again.

I'm in the same situation. I do really well in practices and am the number one girl (I'm an incoming freshman too:)), but during the meets this other girl on my team beats me. It annoys me to no end, and mainly because I feel like she just pushes harder than me. If we are doing the 1500m and the 3000m in the same day than I'll beat her in the second race because she gave it her all in the first one and beat me there. But, if we're only doing one race in a day, she'll just beat me because it seems like she's putting more on the track during that one race. Of course, my parents would never let me see a sports psychiatrist to talk it over with.