Running is making me depressed, feel helpless??

A good coach wont give you that feeling.

You said it. You're obsessed. Running should be fun at your stage of life.

Get un-obsessed. The coach sounds like an anger management type but he's a fact of life in the high school coaching ranks. There's some good and bad coaches. That's the way it is.

If you can't take the heat drop from the program, train on your own or with a running club and run local road races.

If you want to stay in the program, you're going to need to be more laid back. Doesn't mean not training but run more easy runs and let the races take you there.

That^

Just quit and run on your own for the love of it. You're too young to be this disenchanted.

I do not think you peaked too soon. Going from a 16:45 5k to 18-19 5k is not an issue of peaking. Peaking too soon would be going from 16:45 to 17:15 over the course of a season. 18-19 min 5k is just a different class of runner than a 16:45 runner.

With a 16:45 pr, you should have a shot at being on a team in college assuming you can continue to improve. You are not going to be getting any scholarships or recruiting letters, but getting to run in college is definitely a reasonable goal.

If your coach is a total idiot, you need to very discretely find a coach who can give you some tips on your training. My guess would be that you may have severely overtrained this summer and crashed and burned during the season. You might benefit from a less aggressive training plan or just do a better job with rest and recovery. But there could be lots of reasons why your performance slid backwards so badly. You may even have anxiety issues with racing. Maybe you got mono or have a gluten allergy that just manifest itself. Who knows. Whatever it is, there is absolutely no reason you cannot get back to 16:45 shape and improve from there. You just need to find a good coach who can figure out what happened and get it fixed.

Running isn't making you depressed. Your low sense of self worth is making you depressed.

Short course for 16:45? If every other race is within a minute? Or, are you forgetting to factor in terrain? The performances may actually be equivalent.

You take running (and yourself) too seriously.

RUNNING IS NOT LIFE. RUNNING IS NOT LIFE.

There are far more important things.

You need to get your iron levels tested.

I'm literally dealing with the exact same problem right now. I started off the season on fire after working so hard over the summer and ended it getting 40-something place at sectionals (a race I got 10th in last year) in a time over two minutes worse than my pr and I didn't even qualify to states.

I don't want to run anymore and as of right now I am not. But I am on a small team so the track coaches are pressuring me to return.

iron, yes wrote:

You need to get your iron levels tested.

+1

Get your iron checked. Also do a full panel blood test and get checked for hypothyroidism (TSH, Free T4, and Antibodies).

You can run in college. 16:45 is plenty good for D3 schools, and most D1 schools have running clubs if you can't make the team. These clubs can be very competitive depending on where you go (check for that while looking at schools).

Take the long term view of developing as a runner, and stop worrying about all of the short term pressure everyone is putting on you. Listen to your body and don't let other people dictate to you how you should train.

Thank you,

I still have a few more years of high school left but you gave me hope to continue on.

Thanks,

Im only a sophomore in high school but running is literally my entire life. Thanks for giving me insight and advice. It really helped!

Get a girlfriend, take up golf, play an instrument. Do anything but run for a few months, maybe you won't be such a sad sack.

If you didn't like that advice, here is another plan:

So you like to run but you are slow. Boo hoo. Man up and run twice as much as you do now and kill it come track season.

Running should not be your entire life. Its one thing to be passionate about it, even obsessed with it, but if running is where you get your entire self worth, you are going to have a rough ride. You might want to ask yourself if there's something you're running from, some other thing going on or missing that you're trying to replace. All athletes have to learn how to handle defeat. It happens and the best athletes don't let it get them permanantly down. You need to develop that skill and I agree that you need to find one other thing in your life, or more, that you're into.

southshorespeed wrote:

Thanks,

Im only a sophomore in high school but running is literally my entire life. Thanks for giving me insight and advice. It really helped!

Are you hoping that being a successful runner will give you self worth?

It won't. You have to find that by making friends.