Hello Letsrun!
I am a recent highschool graduate(graduated like 4 days ago!). I will be attend college next year at Boston Univeristy. I am writing this post because at the moment I trying to figure out what I would like to do running fitness/wise. I am recently finished a awful highschool career, unspeakable by the standards of this forum and am wondering what would be best to pursue in future. My prs in highschool were 17:47 for 5k in tennis shoes on a fairly hilly course(for me anyway) I never ran actual xc. I also never ran in the fall until my senior year as I am a soccer player(nor a particularly good one). In track I ran a 9:54 3200, and a 4:42 1600. The 1600 is probably slow as I ran it three times senior year pacing myself as the race was not very good. The three time were 4:43 4:43 and 4:42. The 3200 was mid season and probably could have gone faster. Throughout highschool I have had big drops. My freshman year prs were 12:16/5:43 sophomore year 11:13(not really trying) and 5:01 junior year was 10:24(only raced once( and 4:47 and senior year as listed above. I did not run a co,petarive 1600 senior year. Also throughout highschool the training was bad, especially for me. I did not run in the fall until my senior year, when I ran 40 mpw with no workouts and a few xc races. I also did not run in the summer until my junior year when I ran random sporadic runs. I also ran 45 mpw over the summer before senior year with very few tempo days and no workouts.
Track season was also poor, I ran around 35 mpw freshman year indoor but outdoor I missed 3 weeks and when I cam back the team was cutting down. Sophomore year I did not run at all indoor as I played indoor soccer and then outdoor we had a new coach so we did less than 20 mpw and 1 workout. Junior year indoors/ outdoors I went back up 35 mpw but we had two conflicting coaches one who wanted low mileage no garbage and another who wanted more mileage. So our workouts were conflicted. Senior year at the start of indoors was like 30 miles under the coach from sophomore year but for the sake of saving my season and training the way I though best for my self in febuary(track ends in may with districts and big races) so in febuary I built from 35 up to 60 at the end up April. There were a lot of garbage miles and the training plan wasn't too good. I cut down to quick and did not run very well at the end of the season. I currently am taking a two week break.
I am wording what advice the running comminuty has for me, I feel like I ha e nowhere near peaked. But I am unsure what I should do from here on. Whther that's to start training for marathons or trying to see if maybe later in college I could walk on to xc or track teams. I also have an interest in maybe becoming a triathlete. So I'm just wondering what the advice is for me and how likely it would be for me to drop enough to run in bus track or xc team. Or whether I should just quick competitive sports and go to the gym like the rest of the in athletic population(seems like the likely response judging by these forums) though I doubt I could bring myself to stop running, I love it.
Also I could use help finding a summer training plan. Any responses old be helpful. I can answer additional questions