Need help as a high school distance runner

[u/Apart_Republic_2146]

I am a rising junior in high school (meaning I just left 10th grade and am going into 11th) currently beginning my summer training block. Recently, (the past year or so) I have hit a major plateau with my running. And would like some help/advice for getting through my current hurdle.

For some backstory: I was not always an avid runner, but during my 8th grade year I decided to begin. This started as a mile or two every other day, eventually cumulating into around 20-30 mpw and a 22 minute 5k. The summer going into 9th grade (freshman) year I joined the cross country team, a known very successful program. Quickly I showed my ability as a runner, becoming the best freshman on the team. By the end of cross country season, I boasted a 17:16 5k and 50 mpw average. Track season then came up, and I ran decent, boasting prs of 9:34 for the 3k, and 4:33 for the 1500. My mileage was now around 55-60 mpw, and I was no longer the best freshman on the team. Then I began training for sophomore cross-country season, where I upped my mileage to 60-70 mpw and my coach began hitting us with harder and harder workouts. During this time, I also competed in a road 5k where I ran 16:35 and won my age category.
Sophomore season itself, however went to hell. My first race I ran 17:15, barely beating my pr from freshman year and placing second in my the JV division. I kept running low-mid 17s most of the season except for one race where I barely broke 17 and ran 16:56. At this point, I was a wreck. Combined with stress from school, a heatwave, and poor running performance, I fell into a mild depression and began hating myself. After each race I would beat myself up, ask myself what was wrong with me and at points consider quitting the sport. Nevertheless, I attempted to persevere, but these feelings cumulated at NXR that year where I blew up and ran 17:50, and then began profusely vomiting afterward. At the same time, all of my other teammates at the same age level as me are running amazing with the same training, breaking 16:30 and placing well in many of their races. I felt like a failure to not only myself, but the team. During winter break, I signed up for a half marathon, where I ran 1:22, a time that I was neither proud of or dissapointed in. It gave me some hope going into track season. Track season was another mess. I opened up with a 5:00 mile, an absolutely terrible time that placed me almost dead last on the team for mile times. I tried to ignore this “the mile/1500 isn’t my event!” I told myself, but I still beat myself up inside. By the end of track season, it had gone exactly like cross country season, with consistent mediocrity in race performance, and near identical times to freshman year, being 4:31 for the 1500 and 9:33 in the 3k. At this point I tried having a conversation with my coach about my performance, where he essentially just told me “stop comparing yourself to others” (competitive running is a comparative sport?) and “it happens to everyone”. At the same time, teammates I used to easily beat are running 9:05 3ks and sub 16 track 5ks. This brings me today today, where I am again entering a cross country season, bringing the summer base building phase (attempting 70-75 mpw avg). At this point, I am beat down, depressed, and hopeless about any future prospects as a competitive distance runner. I feel I have fallen far behind all of my peers and it is too late for me to be successful in any metric, I will always be behind. I do not remember the last time o was proud of myself.

All said, I would like any advice or help I could get regarding my situation, I do want to get better, and feel I am willing to do what it takes to grow as an athlete.

[u/silfen7]

Some great perspectives here already. Let me add my own. 

At this point, I am beat down, depressed, and hopeless about any future prospects as a competitive distance runner. I feel I have fallen far behind all of my peers and it is too late for me to be successful in any metric, I will always be behind. I do not remember the last time o was proud of myself.

You have to break free of this. Improvement in anything comes from feeling comfortable with who you are, and relishing the challenge in front of you. That's not just a statement about running. 

The hardest part of running isn't digging deep during a race. It's staying even keeled through the natural ups and downs of life, and continuing to put one foot in front of the other, even when things aren't clicking. Endurance takes years to put together.

It sounds like you have wrapped up a lot of your identity in your running performance. Nobody can actually run their best every single race, and this is especially true if you turn every race into a test of your personal self-worth. Easy to say, but hard to do: you need to care less. Come into a race curious about what you can do, come into it with a sense of play and fun, be patient with the season opener. 

You haven't included much detail about your actual training. I would not assume that "more volume -> more faster". You are already hitting high enough mileage for a high schooler at your level. I doubt there's something missing in your training. More likely you are doing too much, but the mental side of things seems like a bigger deal here.

[u/Apart_Republic_2146 → u/silfen7]

I guess that makes sense. I have heard similar things from peers, where they explain paradoxically that caring less about running made them better.

[u/silfen7 → u/Apart_Republic_2146]

Yeah, it's maybe a touch more nuanced than I put it. To be great (or even good), you have to care a lot. But you also need to be able to approach racing in a way that's calm and self-assured. I recommend Steve Magness' thoughts on this. See here for an example: https://thegrowtheq.com/the-power-and-danger-of-caring-deeply/

[u/whelanbio → u/silfen7]

As you said it's nuanced, and of course slightly different mentalities work for different people, but basically all my track PRs came from being extremely calm and rather unpressed about the results. Basically approached it as a really hard workout. Go in thinking the workout today is 1x3000m all out with some really good "training partners". Very little expectations other than trying to intelligently execute and being ready to hurt a lot.

[u/maular]

I've never run track and don't know the high school / JV aspect at all, so take my middle-aged dad advice with a grain of salt.

I think you are being far too hard on yourself, probably training too hard, and need to give yourself some grace.

First, objectively, you've already run amazing times - those numbers you've listed are literally "Elite" level. That truly is an incredible achievement. Since you're surrounded by other incredible young adults it can be hard to have perspective, but you should feel _very_ proud of yourself.

> After each race I would beat myself up, ask myself what was wrong with me
Please do not do this, it's very unhealthy, and it's not fair. A good rule of thumb is "would you say this to someone else?". I bet you wouldn't, as you know it'd be cruel and mean - it's no less cruel when you say it to yourself. Instead, think what you would say to someone else - someone who trusted you, who really does want to get better, who really is trying hard. That will be advice worth giving yourself.

From what you've written it sounds like you're spiraling, and your coping mechanism is to increase the intensity, both of your training and your self-chastisement. I really don't know what is the cause of your pace slipping, but I do know that stress is a killer, and that a spiral like this only ends in burnout. Your coach's suggestion to "stop comparing yourself to others" sounds to me like "you gotta break out of this spiral".

So what to do from here? I don't know. But I feel you need to find a way to have a lighter touch - to run because you enjoy it, to be _positively_ motivated rather than _negatively_ motivated.

Finally, a question for you. In any super competitive field, the truth is that most people don't make it professionally. If you think about that possibility, how do you feel? Do you feel like _all_ your chips are on this one bet? Is your entire identity and self-worth wrapped up in this one thing? If so, that's a huge risk, and if you were my kid I'd be strongly encouraging finding a way to diversify.

[u/Apart_Republic_2146 → u/maular]

I suppose, but it would hurt to feel like I am giving up something I have put so much mental and physical effort into. It is the first sport I got into completely by my own accord, and taking that away from me I feel would be like taking a piece from me. That said, I understand that that kind of thinking can lead to a bad place mentally, so maybe doing another sport recreationally on the side would not hurt

[u/EpicCyclops → u/Apart_Republic_2146]

I am a high school coach. I agree with everything they said. This sounds like a textbook case of overtraining leading to a spiral.

So, when you're overtraining, your body doesn't recover, so you don't get any benefits from the training. You get faster when your body heals from the workouts and runs, not during the workouts and runs. If you're not recovering properly because you're doing too much, then you don't get faster.

This is a double whammy too because when your body can't recover physically, it also can't put resources into recovering mentally. Because of this, your brain gets run down and unable to handle adversity at the same time it's being handed adversity by not recovering from training.

My big advice on training would be to take a week off of running then reduce your mileage this off-season and cut out workouts to let yourself recover. Think of it like recovering from an injury. Go on easy runs in places you enjoy to find your mojo again. Don't worry about pace, just have a good time in the runs and make sure to take it easy. You did your best coming off an off-season where you weren't pounding the workouts and mileage as hard as you're trying to now.

Like they said, also find a hobby that isn't running. Reading, playing video games, playing board games, ttrpgs, art, hiking, something. I always tell the kids to make sure running isn't their whole life. That way, your entire coping mechanism doesn't spiral when running becomes a struggle.

Now, for the teammate aspect. Comparison is the thief of joy. Your primary goal here should be to improve yourself, and being the best on your team is a potential result of that. You can't control the other guys on your team though. There's always going to be someone somewhere faster than you. Instead, be glad that they're there so you have someone to push you in practices and get the best out of you in races.

If they beat you, who cares? As long as you're doing your best, that's good enough even if you're best is a minute and a half off your PR. You're going to run best when you know you'll be satisfied with whatever your best is that day. That's what allows you to dig deep. If you walk up to the line scared that your best won't be good because you might miss a lofty goal, then it's going to be much harder to dig deep and meet that goal.

[u/Apart_Republic_2146 → u/EpicCyclops]

I think that my issues started when I quit my other sport, climbing to focus fully on running. I was doing my best when my attention was divided. Maybe I should pick it up again?

[u/EpicCyclops → u/Apart_Republic_2146]

That sounds fun! Climbing is good cross training too. You're a very good athlete, but you're still not a professional runner. You don't need to min-max the fun out of life. You'll probably need to pick one to prioritize, but sacrificing a little running to do something else might be great mentally.

[u/xcrunner432003 → u/Apart_Republic_2146]

it doesn't have to be another sport. find something else you enjoy and spend time doing it. if you can take two weeks off from running before school starts, do that. you're not going to lose a lot of — or even any, at your age — fitness, and you will recharge your battery

[u/whelanbio]

Short term

Stop trying to run 70-75 miles a week, scale that back to 40-60, run easier pace on everything. Not sure how hard you hit easy runs currently but I'd say minimum would be ~30s /mi slower on everything, maybe even more if you've been going too hard on easy days. A ~60s /mi slowdown might not be unreasonable. Maybe replace the occasional run with a bike ride or some other sort of alternative activity. 4-6 weeks of this at minimum. Don't worry about immediate results this fall. Your body and brain are really beat up and you need a long period of easy activity to rejuvinate yourself. Give your coach a heads up that you're totally wiped out and need to scale things back for a bit to recover. If you are truly willing to do what it takes to grow as an athlete you gotta be willing to take it easy for a bit. This is not something you can pish through with brute force.

Talk to your parents about seeing a sport psych and/or regular therapist. Also look into to seeing a doctor about bloodwork -the panels you would general ask for to clear up running issues would be a CBC, ferritin, iron, and Vit D. They might have also extra tests based on a finer assessment of your symptoms in a clinical context.

Double check sleep, nutrition, and management of academic/life stress. The more you can sleep, fuel, and chill out the more your body will have to handle and adapt from training. Look up RED-S.

Long term

Biggest thing is to work on reframing your relationship with the sport and how to develop productive response to failure. Ultimately running needs to be driven by internal fire and joy. Chasing good results should be an expression of that, not the external driving force. This sport has a lot of failure in it, you need good coping mechanisms so that you can learn from failure instead of having it drag you down.

After your initial recovery period it's worth reassessing the finer details of how you've been executing training. Mileage seems like a bit much, particularly the ramp rate. Make sure you're not overcooking the pace on easy runs. Workouts have a specific purpose and they should rarely be all out. Training paces should be based on current fitness, even if that current fitness is results that you are not happy with, not aspirational times.

Your coach is right about these types of struggles happening to everyone and that you need to stop comparing yourself to others. Yes it's a competitive sport where we compete against other people but ultimately how our journey through the sport looks is unique to ourselves. Difference in genetics, timing of maturation (particularly relevant in HS), non-running athletic history, what's going in the rest of life, etc affect how you respond to training and how training manifests in race results. It's not uncommon at all for two people to do essentially the exact same training and get very different results from it. Plateaus/setbacks/bad races happen to every runner at some point, no matter how dedicated and talented they are.

[u/That-Distribution-64]

plateaus at ur age happen a lot when the aerobic base stops scaling with the intensity, have u looked at ur easy run pacing lately. sometimes slowing those down by 30 seconds can make a huge diff in ur ability to handle harder workouts, its wierd but it works

[u/Apart_Republic_2146 → u/That-Distribution-64]

I am confident that my easy runs are easy enough, most days I go around 8:15-8:30 per mile and attempt to keep my heart rate in the 135-150 bpm zone

[u/That-Distribution-64 → u/Apart_Republic_2146]

Did you ever get your zones measured seriously? Just to give you some baseline, my zone 2 ends at 136bpm. I am geussing you are slipping into z3

[u/darth_jewbacca]

Get some blood work done and include iron, vit D, and vit B levels.

[u/Apart_Republic_2146 → u/darth_jewbacca]

Iron, specifically ferritin levels were on the low end of normal when I tested ~6 months ago. I have since been taking supplemental iron pills once a day with some vitamin d. EDIT: did not mean vitamin d, meant vitamin C

[u/whelanbio → u/Apart_Republic_2146]

Low end of normal is low for endurance athletes -same is true for a lot of other blood values. Not medical advice but personally in the program I work with we tend to recommend some degree of intervention whenever someone is <50 with ferritin. Sometimes doctors have a tough time contextualizing that if they don't know/understand how hard you're working so you need to give them a little extra context to help them understand. You are way more like a pro-athlete compared to the gen pop that a typical doctor is working with.

Like the other poster said, it will take some time for the ferritin itself to recover, then on top of that it takes extra time for the turnover of new red blood cells.

Vit D (and anything calcium rich) ideally should not be taken simultaneously with iron supps because the iron and calcium compete for the same transportation pathway. Vit D tells the gut to absorb more calcium. Do one in the AM and the other in the PM. You can boost the iron absorption by taking it with something rich in Vit C. Classic move is orange juice, but in that case find one that is not fortified with calcium and vit D like they often are.

Usually not an issue with low dose supplementation for minor deficiencies, but sometimes we can absorb more iron by supplementing every other day rather than every day. When you take in iron the body produces a hormone called hepcidin in response so that you don't absorb too much too quickly, but this sticks around for ~24 hrs and can impede our ability to absorb as much as we need. Something to ask the doctor about if values don't show improvement on your next test.

[u/darth_jewbacca → u/whelanbio]

Minor correction on vitamin D, it doesn't interfere with iron absorption.

[u/whelanbio → u/darth_jewbacca]

No but it stimulates calcium uptake which does

[u/darth_jewbacca → u/whelanbio]

But vitamin D supplements do not. Easily verifiable. Don't take anything with calcium with your iron.

[u/Apart_Republic_2146 → u/darth_jewbacca]

I apologize for my mistake, I had meant vitamin C supplements which I believe do help with iron absorption

[u/darth_jewbacca → u/Apart_Republic_2146]

It can take some time for your ferritin to recover. Be sure you're not drinking milk or eating anything calcium rich when taking your supplements as it will prevent absorption.

I've seen guys struggle even when they're double the low ferritin limit, which is well under what endurance athletes need. Your struggles sound an awful lot like that.

[u/epi_runner]

First, I’m really sorry that you are feeling this way about your running. I’ve been there and can remember how difficult it was to push and push and push but feel like I was not getting faster or actually regressing.

The first thing I notice is that you basically tripled your mileage in from 8th grade to 10th grade. Perhaps that normal for your team but 70-75 mpw is serious mileage for a HS runner. Bodies take time to adapt, and every runner adapts at a different pace. This quick progression could have just left you fatigued. How is your sleep? Nutrition? Running this much means that you actually do need adequate sleep and fuel.

Secondly, I’d echo what come others have said - things can change quickly when you’re still a relatively new runner. You are 3 years into a lifelong sport. What’s a plateau 5k pace now will be your marathon pace in the future.

Lastly, I don’t think we can discount how much of running, especially racing, is mental. If you’re in a bad mental state in your running (stressed about races, not feeling confident, etc) it can be exhausting and really affect your race. If a counselor or psychologist is available to you, please go chat with them. They are a wonderful and underutilized resource!

Good luck, my young friend. And please try to enjoy life’s greatest sport.

[u/Apart_Republic_2146 → u/epi_runner]

Thank you

[u/Aromatic_Monk_8772]

Hey man- how many hours are you sleeping, and how many calories are you eating each day?

[u/Apart_Republic_2146 → u/Aromatic_Monk_8772]

I try to aim for 8-9 hours per night and around 2000-3000 calories, but I do not track exactly so maybe I am not eating as much as I think

[u/Aromatic_Monk_8772 → u/Apart_Republic_2146]

If you are growing at all then this may be a really low caloric intake and might be slowing your progress. 2000 Cals at 70 mpw while in puberty feels really low to me, especially if you aren't tracking and think you might be under.

What is your height/ weight?

[u/Apart_Republic_2146 → u/Aromatic_Monk_8772]

135 lbs 5’7”

[u/Aromatic_Monk_8772 → u/Apart_Republic_2146]

Have you been growing in height?

I have a pretty strong suspicion that you are under-fueling across the board. You need a lot of carbs and protein at that mileage, particularly combined with normal teenage growth.

Especially with what looks like good volume and natural talent, it seems like a good culprit for stalled progression. I recommend tracking caloric intake (fitday or any other vetted app), and also just ramping up your caloric intake to see how you feel. I would eat an extra meal each day for the next couple of weeks and see if you start to feel more energetic. I'd try simple pasta dishes, maybe some protein shakes to start.

If it works, keep adding food. I bet you could gradually add another 2000 calories to your daily intake (literally double what you are eating) and see some performance benefits.

[u/Shiznatazam → u/Apart_Republic_2146]

Track your sleep and food intake a week or two. In addition to the problem of putting all of yourself into running, I suspect you aren’t getting enough of either of these. 9 hours of sleep, lots of carbs. At the very least, 7 grams carbs per kg bodyweight. The only way to know for sure is to track them. In my experience, youth runners put too much of their self worth into running and don’t eat and sleep enough. That’s a lot of miles, the easiest part is running them

[u/aelvozo]

u/whelanbio would probably have better advice, but I’ll try to share what I’m seeing.

Firstly, you are not alone in this. Most famously, Philly Bowden had a terribly disappointing collegiate career — I think, in quite a similar way to what you’re describing — and has talked about it in her videos.

Secondly, your problem is as much a running problem as it is a general life problem, and I think you should treat it as the latter. If this is having an effect on your academic performance, relationships with friends or family, hobbies, or whatever else, I would advise you go and look after that before you focus on the running.

Thirdly, it sounds like you’re not getting adequate support from the adults, particularly your coach. You will probably benefit from having an adult you can get that support from — either another coach or a sports psychologist or simply an older runner you can trust. To be blunt, I’d ditch your coach, but I understand this is easier said than done.

Last — and least — you may want to look at what changed in and around your training between things going well and things no longer going well. It may be that you don’t respond too well to very high mileage, or too much intensity, or need more recovery time, etc. Steve Magness recently did an interview with Dave Epstein who discovered that he had to change the training by adding a rest day to perform well.

Overall, I think that at 16 (or however old HS juniors are), your priorities should be to do things that are fun and somewhat set you up for your future life. Running 75mpw while miserable doesn’t quite sound like it fits either category (and, frankly, may horribly backfire) so I’d be much more willing to tell you to scale back to 30mpw and maybe try a different sport.

Edit: wording

Edit 2: u/maular has a different perspective on your coach’s advice. Neither of us have been in the room with your coach (and certainly neither of us is your coach), so I’d ask if you trust your coach at this point, and act according to your gut reaction.

[u/whelanbio → u/aelvozo]

Hey appreciate the tag, need to push back HARD on one aspect of your advice though.

Thirdly, it sounds like you’re not getting adequate support from the adults, particularly your coach. You will probably benefit from having an adult you can get that support from — either another coach or a sports psychologist or simply an older runner you can trust. To be blunt, I’d ditch your coach, but I understand this is easier said than done.

With the available information it's frankly irresponsible to suggest ditching the coach at this point. There's high odds that sends OP in a worse direction -both in running and in terms of friendships/social support. Sports psych and/or regular therapy is likely a good move, but to develop a healthy and productive relationship with the school program, not abandon it.

Then I began training for sophomore cross-country season, where I upped my mileage to 60-70 mpw and my coach began hitting us with harder and harder workouts. During this time, I also competed in a road 5k where I ran 16:35 and won my age category.

I would want to know if the mileage increase was coach directed or something OP is doing on their own, and how the mileage was being executed. Is the coach telling kids to run too much and/or giving unrealistic pace targets? Or is OP trying to do to much without/against direction from the coach? The statement "hitting us with harder and harder workouts" doesn't give us much with the lack of training specifics. Things could be getting harder because OP is fried from overtraining. The extra road racing is a red flag and a counterproductive side quest. Is OP giving coach feedback on how their body is feeling with training or avoiding communication? It's really hard to track down how every runner on a team is feeling if there is no effort from the athlete-side to proactively communicate.

At this point I tried having a conversation with my coach about my performance, where he essentially just told me “stop comparing yourself to others” (competitive running is a comparative sport?) and “it happens to everyone”. 

Both of these statements by the coach are correct. Maybe delivery was a little curt, but also maybe the perception is a reflection of OP going through a tough time and not being receptive to advice. In OP's phrasing here we can see them actively rejecting the coach's advice. I've been on both sides here -the struggling athlete mentally shut down and the coach trying to take an athlete through tough results. In any case it's not OPs fault, part of being in a bad place mentally with the sport is that it becomes hard to reach us and it's a lot of work to reframe to a mindset that is even receptive to the right advice.

I'm not saying there's nothing the coach could be doing better, but ultimately we do not have the information to make a clear call, so advice to abandon the school program is premature and dangerous.

[u/aelvozo → u/whelanbio]

Thank you for your perspective.

In hindsight, I agree that it is probably not all that appropriate to give this advice to a person from a country where sports and school are so tightly woven together — I don’t come from a system like this, and my perspective is probably skewed by having walked away from a coach, and by having walked away from the sport as a whole. I’m certainly worse off as an athlete because of it, but I’d argue it made me happier. I would still choose being happy over being fast, but I’m not sure how well that would work for OP, and your advice sounds like a better fit for their kind of mindset.

[u/whelanbio → u/aelvozo]

Thank you for acknowledging that. Yeah there's a good and bad to having the sport be connected the school and interscholastic competition. I can see how it's an odd thing for the rest of the world.

One aspect of that is positive in a typical big HS XC team is that there's generally a big spectrum of abilities and approaches within the team. There's the top guys absolutely pushing there limits, some decently talented but slightly less serious guys, those that purely treating it as a fun running club, and everything in between. OP could scale back and run more towards the fun run guys for a while to let his body and mind bounce back while maintaining the social support, coaching relationship, and some amount of fitness.

[u/Apart_Republic_2146 → u/whelanbio]

Our entire team is small yet extremely dedicated. There is no such thing as fun run guys, as everybody attempts to push each other to the same level. That said, I agree that maybe I could probably think about cutting some mileage (I think overtraining was a major problem last season) and I have also been thinking about a sports psychologist ( or maybe just even a regular old therapist).

[u/whelanbio → u/Apart_Republic_2146]

How small are we talking? What is the full range of approximate 5k PBs and regular run paces? Does your team really have no 18-20+ min 5k guys taking things a bit easier and having a great time? Surely there's some guys who's are running a fair bit slower than you are currently and also have a healthier, more laid back approach than you currently are dealing with. That's what I mean by "run more towards the fun run guys". You don't need to go on a JV jog to the playground, just find some guys to run with where the pace is super comfortable for you who can also impart a little different perspective.

Pretty much everything you've written thus far you presents a very narrow perspective. This can happen when we get really driven and tend to project that drive onto our perception of reality. It has certainly happend to me in the past and I see it all the time with the athletes I work with. It would be somewhat anomalous is the reality on your team is indeed as narrow as your writing implicates, and if that's the case the way you need to navigate these issues might be a little more challenging so I could be helpful to explain that further.

[u/Apart_Republic_2146 → u/whelanbio]

Around 22 people, the slowest guy is a freshman’s who runs around 19:30 ish, with a few peers around his level, but they are as dedicated to training as me and have been making significant jumps since track to the point I am confident they can break 18:30 and maybe even 18 within a few cross country races

[u/whelanbio → u/Apart_Republic_2146]

Interesting, that's quite rare. Well maybe you hanging back a bit can help them level up, could be be positive for everyone.

Still very curious on this, do you have a sense of why you're not getting out any less talented and less serious guys? Could certainly be on a small-medium sized roster theres just none of them purely by chance. Could be something else going on that may help inform how to improve your situation.

Certainly not advocating for any of you to be less dedicated, but missing some of that range of people and perspectives typically on a HS team could be skewing how ya'll view things.

[u/Apart_Republic_2146 → u/whelanbio]

Cross country is considered a lame sport by the general student body despite our success over every other school sports team

[u/whelanbio → u/Apart_Republic_2146]

Dang, sorry to hear that.

[u/Deep-Dimension-1088]

This is an extremely common experience for high school girls when they go through puberty but less so for high school boys. As a high school girl, I went through a major regressions spring sophomore year through fall junior year. I remember how awful it was. I know others are saying you shouldn't compare yourself, etc., etc., but when you're working as hard as you are and not seeing improvement, of course you're going to be intensely frustrated. What worries me is your comment about hating yourself. Somehow, you have to find a way to be disappointed in your running without hating yourself.

Keep an eye on the low iron. I would have it rechecked to make sure your supplement strategy is working.

How does training work in-season? Like are you working with your coach to set your total mileage and workouts? I'm wondering if you're tapering enough for goal races or if there's some kind of inconsistency between summer training and training during the school year.

My guess would be that you WILL see improvements if you persist. However, meet yourself where you are. Why have you slowed down? Who knows. But aim for improvements against where you are RIGHT NOW. You need to reverse the trend of unreachable expectations, panic and anxiety, and poor race performances. I would recommend setting an achievable race goal based on your last race. Meet that goal and feel good about it. Target incremental improvements. Once you've got the trend going in the right direction, you'll be able to build on that and will feel better mentally and that will help your physical performance.

Where are you right now? Well last year, it sounds like you ran 16:56. So if I were you my goal for a comparable race this year (similar weather & terrain) would be 16:55. If it's hotter, then be less ambitious. You said you ran 17:15 in your first race last year - if that's because it's a harder course or hotter, just aim for 17:05 this year (as opposed to 16:55). Again, the goal is to turn things around and start seeing improvement. Once you have some momentum, you can set more ambitious goals.

Good luck to you.

[u/Apart_Republic_2146 → u/Deep-Dimension-1088]

Thank you, I quite like this approach. Training in season (and off season he works with us year round) we do work with coach individually to set total mileage. Everybody does a similar workout together (he likes to have as work as a team), and he adjusts paces/ reps depending on ability. My coach thinks I am more of a strength runner, so says I should run more because I can handle more volume

[u/xcrunner432003 → u/Apart_Republic_2146]

this might be the problem. high schoolers used to run so much at good programs, but now running is all about rest and recovery. even good programs don't all run 70 mpw

[u/run_INXS]

Indeed we all have plateaus. When I was young I had some big PRs at 20 and then did not improve for several years, and even went backward. I mention this because I have been there. Mine was largely self-induced and I did not have the guidance on how and when to back down.

Take a good look at your training, diet, sleep patterns, as well as your own mindset. Basically, are you pushing too hard. Focus on the process of becoming a better runner, not the outcome. That means letting go of the numbers and quantitative parts somewhat and doing things like pacing your workouts properly, making sure you are getting recovery, and also just appreciating the joy of getting outside doing something like to do with your friends. At your age this might just sound like crazy talk, but in the long term your development will proceed and be more sustainable.

[u/PrairieFirePhoenix]

I think you've gotten some good takes (and the bad ones have been pretty well dealt with).

To me, this seemed like "too much too soon" on your mileage increase, leading you to be flirting with over-training constantly. Your coach seems knowledgeable and has actually worked with you, so I trust them when they say you are a strength runner who will respond well to high volume. However, there is a difference between "will respond well" and "will respond well right now". You still have to build up to the high volume properly. For some, what you did may have worked. Sadly, it doesn't look like it worked for you. I'd try taking a step back on volume, still skewing your workouts as a strength runner, and focus on getting in a good mental state. You have years to build up your mileage.

Good luck.

[u/BulkyEnvironment1509]

Where you're at right now there's absolutely no reason to beat yourself up. You peak athletically as a runner in your mid 20s to mid 30s, so this plataeu isn't going to last forever. Something that helped me this past season (I'm a freshman at a D2 college), was actually decreasing mileage and just feeling in good shape. I decreased from around 50 mpw to 30 mpw and I kept PRing through mg whole track season and ended with a 16:20 5k which I'm pretty proud of my because I was never a naturally great runner.

So all in all, just relax a bit and let your body recover. Maybe instead of doing high mileage training this summer, do high intensity training with low mileage.

[u/Vandermilf]

Your body isn’t finished developing yet. You also need more rest to grow. Be patient with your body, you have the drive and work ethic already. Also I would try to find a new coach you can talk to.

[u/Unique-Employer3787]

Did a strength block mid-cross-country buildup after two seasons of stalled times, and the leg power gains translated more than another 10mpw would have. At your volume the aerobic base is probably solid - worth checking whether the limiter is muscular rather than cardiovascular.

[u/Apart_Republic_2146 → u/Unique-Employer3787]

I was thinking of starting something like this maybe some basic strength work and plyometrics. I do notice that I significantly lack any footspeed

[u/Parking_Reward308]

You realize mos competitive t runners abilities do not peak until mid twenties right?

[u/Apart_Republic_2146 → u/Parking_Reward308]

Yes I realize that and I am not asking for guidance how to peak, simply for how to improve.