I'm currently a female freshmen in college. I started running in 9th grade and slowly fell in love with it. It's my life now, my entire life. I love it so much, it's extremely important to me and everything I do I do to better my running. I hope to one day be a college coach.
The problem is..I'm extremely injury prone. I was injured with 4 different things in high school, totaling 2 years of sitting out/not racing. Keep in mind, I started running in 9th grade. So I really haven't had the opportunity to do anything of any importance in high school. Never made it to a state meet, never won a meet, broke a school record, etc...I kept training, getting hurt, doing rehab, and having to slowly get back into it again. It keeps happening over and over.
I got injured my third week of college training. I almost expected it to be honest...it's almost routine. Well, I told my coach all about my injury past and we agreed I need to red shirt my freshmen XC season so that we can figure out what is going on and how to fix my current injury/maintain my health in the future. It's almost November, I can still run no longer than 15 mins. I attend a D2 school and, I mean, we aren't AMAZING...maybe 2nd in our conference and we hope to make nationals.
I should also probably give you background on my own running as well...I've only raced a few seasons (all high school) and my PR's are as follows:
800: 2:28
1600: 5:40 (Haven't raced that since 10th grade)
4k: 16:45 (Raced 1.5 XC seasons)
5k: 23ish? in a road race
So that's me...my times are barely mediocre...well anyway, I love running so much. I honestly don't know what I'm going to do with my life once I get out of college because I have such a passion for running and I won't be on a team or racing competitively anymore. My dream is to be a professional, but that's clearly not happening with my times...but sometimes I think it could. Maybe that's just me being overly hopeful. My coach told me about a girl who had a 6 minute mile PR in high school and went on to become a professional marathoner. Well I know that's a HUGE rarity. But I still dream. I've been working hard and trying to overcome this injury so that I can begin serious training and see just what it is I am capable of doing. I have never really had a decent season because of all my injuries so I don't know what I'm capable of. Is it silly for me to dream? Should I give up on it? I'm in college, so I'll be getting a degree to be a coach once I graduate. But I feel as though I'll never be fully fulfilled with my life unless I do something remarkable with running. I don't know what exactly that means yet..I just need to accomplish something big. Make the Olympic Trials....go to nationals...I don't know. But does anyone else feel this way? How did any running nerds out there cope with graduating and not being a competitive runner anymore? Is it dumb to think I can do something so outlandish? I'm willing to work as hard as I can and do whatever it takes...it's just that my body won't let me :( I sometimes think my body just isn't made for running, but that can't be possible..? It's not like I am the one person in the world that has two working legs that simply cannot run. Any thoughts/ideas/comments?