I’m a sophomore girl in high school and I found out that I had a stress fracture right before the first race of the season. As a freshman my PR was 19:21 and I was the fastest girl on my team. I hope to run in college. My problem is that since so have a stress fracture I can’t run for 8 weeks so I will be out for the whole season ( my eight weeks is up the week of state). Will I be able to run at a decent school in college if I only have Cross Country Times from my freshman and Junior year?
Clumbsygirl wrote:
I’m a sophomore girl in high school and I found out that I had a stress fracture right before the first race of the season. As a freshman my PR was 19:21 and I was the fastest girl on my team. I hope to run in college. My problem is that since so have a stress fracture I can’t run for 8 weeks so I will be out for the whole season ( my eight weeks is up the week of state). Will I be able to run at a decent school in college if I only have Cross Country Times from my freshman and Junior year?
Probably. So focus on rehab now, and don't start running too soon. You'll be okay.
Most definitely, provided that you address this injury now and don't continue to get any more major injuries in the rest of your high school track/xc seasons. Even then, you may still pull through.
I lost both of my sophomore seasons of xc ( severe Achilles tendonitis) and track (tibial sfx at the beginning of the szn), and have pretty good, but not awesome times from frosh year. I still did improve a little in both seasons of sophomore year in the really brief periods I had before I got injured, but I'm banking on my junior year to hopefully give me some good recruiting times (I'm only looking at D3 and D2 anyways so it's not as big of an issue).
I recommend looking at ALL aspects of your training and figuring out what caused your stress fracture. Are you eating enough? Did you increase mileage or intensity too fast? Do you have a regular menstrual cycle (affects bone density)? Are you doing the proper strength training you need for your training load? Be honest with yourself about what went wrong and fix that problem now or when you get back to training depending on what it was. For this season, you can still cross train and do rehab like the other poster said, which can still give you a decent base for track where you can hopefully set some PRs. It might be hard, but be patient with your injury, you may set yourself back if you do too much too soon. Look at the long term goal and focus on small, steady improvements instead of big jumps. It will pay off in the long run.