This sucks! Encouragment! Advice! I'll take anything!!

If you can not accept that you can not get your weight below 165 pounds (sounds more like you are concerned about what society thinks of the way you look than what you actually want to do in your life) then it will be very difficult for you to achieve any thing. If you want to achieve anything for yourself then you need to plan ahead i.e. do your training (distance and speed) be patient and give yourself some time to lose the weight to become a good distance runner, if thats what you want to be, and forget about the way you will look. In the end the results will happen and you will be happy within yourself for achieving them. good luck.

I appreciate that, but I really don't think I'd be healthy weighing much less. I weighed 162 in high school. My body fat is quite low. I just have a stocky and muscular build. Maybe triathlons? How are those guys built? They are good runner, cyclists and swimmers, but not great at any one.

I'm 5'9 @135lbs. Muscular build or not,you could shed some pounds. I agree with the last post....do the work,eat right and the weight will eventually take care of itself.

If you really do want to get faster, you will need to lose weight, I'm 5'11'' 150lbs and yes that is skinny, but I still have plenty of muscle definition. If losing weight is the goal, then I have two words for you: Morning runs.

Do them before you eat anything for the day, but make sure you replenish your body within one hour of finishing the run. These will jump-start your metabolism for the whole day, and should help the pounds start to come off.

1.) Ignore all posts talking about your weight like it's the determining factor in your performance, when they don't know anything about you. For all we know, you're running 100 miles/week, eating right, etc.

2.) What do you like to do? Distance? Sprints? Middle Distance? It's all a game, do something you enjoy.

3.) Similar to (2), if you like doing the stuff in a triathlon, go ahead and do it. Or, if you find that you can do your long run (assuming you do a long run), and you feel like you could do it again, but couldn't ever do it faster, the more endurance oriented stuff like tris or trail races might be your bailiwick. It seems like a lot of the trail runners are also sturdily built.

4.) There's always baseball, football, and soccer. Not intended as sarcasm.

Yeah, I second not worrying too much about your weight. There are people with slight builds, big builds, and everywhere in between. It's pretty easy for somebody with a very slight build to say "yeah, just eat less and lose more weight." You can still be a good runner at 5'9" 165. Are you going to see many guys on the Olympic 5k medal podium looking like that? Probably not. But you can still improve, which is the important thing.

As for switching to triathlons, go for it if it is something that interests you. But if you aren't all that interested, don't do it just because you think your build is better suited for tris over running.

Regardless of your build, if you stay consistent in your running and gradually step up your workload, odds are that you are going to get better. That is what you should be focusing on. Not how you are going to be able to lose a few pounds.

Idealist.................................way to go. Good response. We often jump to conclusions without details which equals to prejudging. HELP! This is some sound advise Idealist gave you, take heed and way out your options. When you do drop the pounds don't worry about looking like ghandi

I know some guys who give anything to be over 140 they can't gain weight if you paid them. Hang in there.

The Roc

Dude, I am in the same boat and have been since I was a little kid. I've always been heavily muscular (legs especially), but I never used it as an excuse. I was always the top runner in my high school and on my college team, and that was enough for me. I wrestled a bit and was a gymnast, and my wrestling coach once called my thighs "freakisly muscular" so I use that to describe them to this day.

I was never fast at the mile or below but seemed to excel at the 5,000 but then had a dropoff as the distance went up from there. My marathon times are not indicative of my shorter distance times for example. This could be a result of my not having a thin build, could be that I didn't train properly for the marathon (I know I could do better and will do so in the future); I don't know for sure what the answer is.

Bottom line though is that people are built differently. Training and eating right doesn't necessarily turn you into a lean-looking runner.

I'd use your performance more as a guide if you are in the right thing or not. When I could not catch up to the 85 MPH fastballs they were throwing in 8th grade, I quit playing baseball. If you are running fast, then so what of your build. There are many rail-thin runners who can hardly average 8 minutes per mile in a 5 mile race, and then there are some bigger guys with about 20 pounds of FAT to lose who run a 5K in under 16 minutes.

The magic is in the runner and not the body type.

HELP, just please don't develop an eating disorder like the females.

Solinsky is a pretty big guy, compared to a lot of the other guys... thats probably why he's so slow.

LAuren Fleshman- not a little girl really. Thick. Doesn't stop her.

Don't get caght up in the whole thinner the better crap.

From my extensive research - it's thinner the better.

only too a point, trainer. I'm not talking about body FAT here... I'm talking muscle and people that just aren't built like sticks.

Sorry, I was just thinking world-class 10,000m runners.