Please keep your daughters away from the sport of running.

Who you are describing wrote:

(1) I often turn down social invites because I don't want people to judge me for not eating the food. I'm a perfectionist in almost every aspect in my life especially in running. The only time I eat more relaxed is the planned breaks I take from running.

(2) I have one person that I'm able to talk to this about. One friend that doesn't judge me for it.

(3) I don't tell my coach these things.

You don't have to be quite so alone in these pursuits.

I have my kid setting higher goals and the kid meets all of the ones the kid has an interest. The important thing is my kid shares them and we formulate a plan so the kid gets good support.

It's very, very important to share your goals that you set for yourself with someone with more athletic/life experience. It makes living with perfectionist tendencies much more manageable. You'll actually thrive in ways you probably can't imagine. I know this from experience with my kid.

Try to get some outside help.

Good luck.

BHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Reply of the year! 10/10!

It's not sexist. You don't have an understanding of the problem. It is not sexist to realize that high school boys and high school girls encounter a different set of problems

First and foremost, high school girls encounter some changes in their bodies during those four years that, for the most part, make it more difficult to run fast. They are also under constant media pressure to remain thin and beautiful.

High school boys encounter changes in their bodies that make it easier to run fast. This is the fundamental reason why female high school runners encounter eating disorders frequently and males rarely.

Girls also tend to mature emotionally at a younger age than boys, meaning that they will have an increased "perfectionist" pressure on themselves as compared to the boys their age.

djdjdndndndndndnend wrote:

OP is sexist.

Why can't guys feel like this.

Pageants for 3 year olds is weird. Running is not. It's healthy so long as the kid is balanced.

for clarity, i meant to quote this post in the post above.

old dad wrote:

Yeah, I let my daughter run and she ran 8/16 in high school and 8/15/3k/3SC in college. She never had a stress fracture or other serious health problem. She married a really nice guy from her team who now makes $250k+/yr in finance at age 34. She has two wonderful kids, a nice house and a happy life, and can still run a sub-18 5k, so running was a real mistake for her. Right.

Isn't $250k like the middle of the bell curve on LRC?

I thought this thread was about a former male coach in the ACC that may or may not be coaching men's distance runners in the northeast.

Abstaining from food is no way to become your best. It is true that less weight, other things being equal, would mean faster times, but the fact is that not eating adequately means losing muscle, getting rundown, depressed, lethargic, and hence, more injury prone, more prone to illness, and slower. Eat healthy foods and healthy quantities. You will get faster, stronger, and happier. No one gets overweight on hard running training.

jjjjj wrote:

No one gets overweight on hard running training.

Unless you have been a 16 year old female high school runner, you can go ahead and sit down. It's a struggle for nearly every girl that age.

mek wrote:

djdjdndndndndndnend wrote:

OP is sexist.

Why can't guys feel like this.

Pageants for 3 year olds is weird. Running is not. It's healthy so long as the kid is balanced.

for clarity, i meant to quote this post in the post above.

You are right.

Girls shouldn't play sports or be athletes anyways.

Now get me a sammy and a beer

I'm a few years past high school now but was another girl who was very good at running. By the end of high school, I hated it. I loved running itself, but could not handle the pressure of the competitions. I hated the way my relationship with food had changed in an effort to, as a saw it, better myself by becoming a faster athlete.

Once I graduated and was removed from my high school/home environment, running eventually became fun. I realized younger me had been trying to prove myself to parents, peers, and coaches. If I had had a support system, things might have not gotten so bad. Nonetheless, once I graduated, running for the sake of running and then eventually competing collegiately helped me transition from wanting to commit suicide to being happy and productive. Running isn't the cause, but it can create an environment that A) attracts intense, competitive, perfectionists like myself and B) worsens already unhealthy situations with intense, individual focused competition. It can also be therapeutic and help save a life.

What is so bad about perfectionism?

Consider the alternative.

I wish you were right. But the year I won my state championship I was the lowest weight I had ever been in a very long time. I lost weight throughout the season and got faster almost every race. I also cried myself to sleep every night as depression gets 10x worse when you're food deprived and sleep deprived (I got up at 4:45 most mornings for my first workout of the day). I never got sick and also had crazy muscle definition

You can tell I am a troll by the fact that I make a post and claim, yet never answer again. Meanwhile everyone throws a fit...

Cubism Cubed wrote:

What is so bad about perfectionism?

Consider the alternative.

Ummm...lack of perfectionism? Is that really your point?

Musta Ben wrote:

old dad wrote:

Yeah, I let my daughter run and she ran 8/16 in high school and 8/15/3k/3SC in college. She never had a stress fracture or other serious health problem. She married a really nice guy from her team who now makes $250k+/yr in finance at age 34. She has two wonderful kids, a nice house and a happy life, and can still run a sub-18 5k, so running was a real mistake for her. Right.

Must have married someone on these boards. Isn't this where everyone over $250,000 and under 14:00 hangs out?

This is where everyone who makes over $250,000, runs under 14:00 for 5K and has a >= 7.5-inch p*nis hangs out.

Please keep your biases away from our very capable daughters.

SuperDuperWeenie wrote:

Musta Ben wrote:

Must have married someone on these boards. Isn't this where everyone over $250,000 and under 14:00 hangs out?

This is where everyone who makes over $250,000, runs under 14:00 for 5K and has a >= 7.5-inch p*nis hangs out.

Made $4.5k last year

Run a 23 minute 5k

My p3nis is 5.5 inches.

What is my ceiling?

Who you are describing wrote:

It's to the point where I cannot do that. When you get to a certain level in running you're subject to scrutiny on milesplit, dyestat, and people you know in real life who think they know everything. I won't have my college paid for. People will judge me for it. And most of all I feel worthless unless I'm running well.

If you actually are a high school female runner with the mental distress as you describe, it is in your best interest to speak with a therapist. You can talk with your high school psychologist or counselor. It is their legal responsibility to keep your words and information confidential, and they will help you without any judgement. They have formal education and years of experience helping people become who they want to be (e.g. live a happy and healthy life).

Further, you should ask yourself if you want to run in college because it would be a fun and beneficial experience or if you want to use it to pay for your education. If your answer is the latter, is the scholarship out of necessity, or do you simply want the recognition of earning an athletic scholarship? If you are a good student, there are many opportunities for academic scholarships. If you truly want to run in college, you will not find success if you have disordered eating nor if you invest everything into running. As in any aspect of life, moderation is key, and you will never be happy if you put your entire worth into one facet of your life. No one is a stranger to adversity, but those who live balanced lives have a much easier time battling setbacks.

Regarding your anguish over the people commenting about your running via websites or in-person, I would take everything with a grain of salt. Many of the people posting on the internet (myself included) do not know who you are or likely anything about you. It is easy to pick on someone who didn't have a great race, and people, especially those who are either intimidated by others' talents or unconfident in their own skills, put others down to try to feel better about their own unfulfilled desires. However, they cannot cause you feel good or bad about your races. You are the only person who controls how you feel so don't give them so much power, and it wouldn't hurt to stop checking those websites. You cannot stop people from judging; you can only control how you respond to it. Don't let them ruin the joy of running.

Precious Roy wrote:

The idea that girls are fragile and cannot be trusted to handle the pressures of competitive distance running is incredibly chauvinistic and sexist. Girls who have problems with body image do not get it from looking at pictures of Tiruesh Dibaba or Paula Radcliffe. They get it from pop culture. Girls have no special reaction to the pressures of competitive sport. Guys have just as much stress and anxiety as girls do when competing on a high level. And the stress in scholastic sports does not come from the sport itself. It comes from the extreme pressures of being a scholarship athlete (or competing with the hopes of getting a scholarship.

_______________________________________________

Thank you for writing this. While it may be true that disordered eating is more common in distance running than in other sports, it's sexist to assume that most girls can't handle the pressure. People rarely talk this way about wrestling, even though it's common knowledge that wrestlers do unhealthy things to reach their goal body weight.

I do think that all coaches need to be on the lookout for eating disorders among their athletes, and maybe especially among girls and young women because the benefits of thinness in running are layered on top of cultural beauty standards probably making it more likely that girls will experience these problems.

On the other hand, I'm so sick of these blanket, sexist assumptions about women's bodies and psyches. Among my biggest pet peeves is the assertion that girls will suddenly become slow in high school because of puberty and hips and breasts. I can only imagine that ignorant men are writing these things because most girls in the United States complete puberty by the time they reach high school. If girls are slowing down at these ages, it probably has little to do with hip and breast development.

Second, I'm sick of the assertion that women can't handle high mileage--that they'll lose their menstrual cycles, etc, etc. Many women drastically cut down on PMS symptoms by running. I've been running 80-90 miles per week for over a year now (with a few breaks and cut back weeks thrown in there), and I have yet to skip a menstrual cycle. Admittedly, I'm a naturally thin and petite person, but surely there are other women out there like me. Running high mileage and competing has convinced me that my own body is designed for running. I'm sure there are plenty of other women that have the same experience.