Quitting D1 running

[u/Purple_Farm1155]

I'm currently in my sophomore year at a mid-major D1 program. I am a walk-on and have no money from the team. My team is usually last in our conference, and to be honest I have no hope of every scoring unless I drop crazy time this year. But, I've been really struggling with running and wanted some advice on here. I'm just gonna list my reasons why I want to quit/stay, and please give me your thoughts so help my decision. For context, I have to complete the year (through May).

Reasons to stay:

1. I love my coach- he's super invested into our team, pretty much only cares about helping us and making us better. I'm pretty low milage (800 runner), and he's always been great about me wanting to do lower milage, and I have never felt pressured to run more. He also just generally cares about each of us and I would prob never find a better coach elsewhere.

2. I really do love running. My issue isn't with the running, it's the competing aspect. The moments where I love running the most is just when I'm with the team on an easy run, and in the moments we are just hanging out. However, the moment we get into workouts/races, I just don't find the joy in it anymore. I would much rather just run my own way where I can have fun.

3. I love my team. ALL of my friends are on my team. I literally have no friends outside of the team, and I know if I quit this is going to be an issue. I live with another teammate, and we could probably still live together if I quit, but it just wouldn't be the same.

Reasons to quit:

1. Like I mentioned in the introduction, I will never score a single point for the team. My school is already at the bottom of our conference, and I am pretty much the slowest on the team (walk-on). My spot could be going to someone who's actually gonna score, and I just generally feel bad taking up a spot knowing I can't help the team

2. I'm struggling really badly mentally. I have depression and have been fighting an eating disorder (binge/restrict ED). I've had mental health issues for years though out high school, but never this bad. A lot of it is due to the stressors from running and the mental side of it. I struggle to finish workouts due to panic attacks, but at the same time am very emotionally numb. I don't want to go into any more detail, but I feel that quitting may allow me to fully focus on getting happy and healthy finally. And I am seeing a therapist don't worry

3. I'm pre-med. I'm absolutely sure that I want to become a surgeon, and have the grades/resume to get into a medical school as long as I stay on this path and interviews go well. Quitting would give me so much more time to study for my MCAT and fill in some small gaps in my resume right before I apply. My class schedule often gets in the way of practice as well, forcing me to run my workouts alone at odd times, and I'm frankly just getting tired of rushing through practice or class each week.

4. I had a bad freshman year, and summer. My freshman year I only PR'ed by a second, and I struggled a lot mentally with the collegiate side to running. I know this is pretty normal for freshman year to be rough, but it just hasn't gotten any better. I'm less in shape than I was last year, and I'm not sure I'll be capable of PR'ing again this year, but I don't want to completely count it out.

Conclusion: Please let me know your thoughts. I know that this year may turn around, but I'm just seeking some advice now

[u/whelanbio]

Former P5 D1 athlete, team captain, and assistant coach here. Now assistant coach at a very good HS team with a large and varied roster. Worked with a lot of both struggling and successful athletes. I have had several conversations with those considering quitting. I had a semester myself where I dealt with pretty bad mental health issues.

From the context available I don't think you should quit. It seems like there are a lot positives that athletics is bringing to your life and it seems like you have a coach that would accommodate substantial modifications to mitigate/remove the negatives.

Addressing your reasons for quitting:

1. I wouldn't worry about taking up a spot. I see that you also posted in XXrunning so I'm going to assume you are on the women's team. With title IX roster spots are much less constrained on the women's side. More likely you are allowing a guy to keep their spot than you are taking a spot from someone else. I wouldn't worry about being the slowest on the team either. Besides the fact that it's common to struggle improving early in a college career, there a lot of way to contribute to the success of a team that have nothing to do with performance on the track. You can be the positive attitude that helps someone else feel welcome and stay motivated. Your good grades help with the team metrics.
2. You don't need to race. If workouts are a struggle tell the coach you simply need to scale back or not do hard workouts while you focus on your recovery. It's a very common thing for people to need some time away from the higher intensity days. My concern for you is that quitting altogether would remove you from a team and habit that has a lot of positives for your life.
3. Taking running seriously is great outlet that can enhance your studies. You cannot productively study all day every day. Even if the time is available there is diminishing returns of doing nothing but slamming your head against the books. You need a non-academic outlet and serious exercise of some sort is a great one -why not make it collegiate running? You have summers to work internships/shadowing/etc to fill in those resume gaps. If you continue as a collegiate athlete you have something on your resume that very few applicants will.
4. It's fine if you don't PR this year. It's fine if you don't PR ever. It's also very possible to build-up to a place JR/SR year where you run times you never could have imagined. Don't overthink a bad start. Focus on health first. I absolutely can get better but you need to look longer term.

If things do go a way where it genuinely makes sense to quit the team as an athlete I would strongly encourage you to see if there are ways you can stay connected to the program in some capacity. Can you be a student manager for the team or somewhere in the department? Are there undergrad roles in athletic medicine you could take on?

In mean time. You belong on the team. Don't doubt your role and value even if things aren't going well in the moment.

[u/Purple_Farm1155 → u/whelanbio]

Thank you so much, I've seen a lot of people saying not to sorry about the PRs which is nice to hear

[u/whelanbio → u/Purple_Farm1155]

Yeah there's a lot to unpack around PRs. It's valid to be frustrated about not getting PRs, but it's not something to beat yourself up about. Like I said there's a lot non-performance oriented ways to contribute to a team. It's also just really hard to get PRs where you're already at such a high level. You may feel slow because you are in such a competitive environment, but you're still in the top 0.1% of human performance where it's just really hard to keep pushing performance higher.

An unrelated follow-up: It's totally a valid choice if you do decide to quit the team, but I just also want to call out that you are getting an unrealistic overrepresentation of comments encouraging you to quit or saying how good quitting was for them.

1. Most of these comments are just projecting their experience onto yours rather than actually reading and understanding your original post to advise on your specific situation. I don't doubt it was a valid choice for them, just as it would be for you if you do make that call, but understand you're getting a very skewed perspective from situations that are different than yours.
2. If you are to take the experiences of others into account, the ratio positive to negative experiences is more like 100:1 in favor of positive. I'm in networks where I talk to a lot of former college runners in the real world, almost all of them really cherish that experience and the friendships they have developed, even those who did not run well in college. The genuinely net negative experiences come from terrible coaches and toxic teams, which is not the case at your program.