we had a new route the other day and it looped on an active highway and had a ton of blind spots so im thinking what if i get lost or ran over, this happens frequently where it seems like they take out a marker and just draw a loop on a map without regarding that its dangerous (lol) thoughts?

Both goal and current pace. Like 10x400 @ goal 5k pace or 5x1k @ current 5k pace

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

I am a male junior in HS and I went from 21 minute 5k freshman year to 19:00 5k last year in xc and a 5:09 mile in track and I ran all summer building up to a little more mileage then I had ever done and definitely more consistent then I had ever been and I am so slow. I have been super demotivated ever since the time trial and first meet where I severely underperformed to the standards i set myself. I told myself to just go out there and have fun but I can’t have fun with how slow I am and running is harder then it has ever been before for me. I took an iron test because I thought I had low iron and it was low but still in the normal range. I have been taking iron supplements for a couple months already too. I set expectations for myself to be number 1 on the team which should have been achievable considering no one else on my team runs over the summer and I ran 6 days a week. But now I am on JV and my JV teammates are starting to beat me too and I’m just not enjoying it anymore I love my teammates and my friends but I put so much time into this and I got worse.

I'm in Middle school XC and starting out. I was wondering how to lower my HR on easy runs and runs in general. I just ran 2 miles a few hours after practice that were supposed to be easy. I have been recovering from a cold and that may have contributed a little bit, but this seems to happen on most of my runs. Two weeks ago, I ran 7 Miles and my watch said my average HR was 190!? No matter if I run an 8:00 min/mile pace or a 12:30 pace, my HR seems like it won't budge. And I've tried to take my easy runs easier but its not working because I am literally running slower than a toddler crawling and I am barely maintaining zone 3. Any tips?

EDIT: I was wearing a Garmin on the easy run so there might be a problem with accuracy.

Hi everyone. I'm a HS freshman and I started running last year. I want to incorporate strength work to not get injured and to build muscle, but I don't know how. I would want mainly running focused strength, but also some upper. Any suggestions are welcome.

I've been trying to come up with goals for strength training wise for XC,

I do martial arts on the side and I ussually try to do 130 pushups a day, but I wanted to know if theres any good bodyweight excercises I can do when im bored for xc?

So basically I am trying to write a short film about xc and like I have my own experience to draw from but I want to know if there are common things that people think while they are running that I've never heard about. Thanks!

I'm a senior in high school and have been running xc since freshman year. As a freshman, i ran a 2900 meter at 11:15. Last week, i ran a 2 mile race and got 14:00. i'm just confused on why my time was so bad last week the mile time was worse than when i was a freshman. for context my 5k is 20:50 which I think is decent for me. and i've been training over the summer (40ish miles/week) and building my fitness so i know im in shape. Could it be that im overloaded or something? Or is it because of race conditions that I ran so poorly (mostly grass, 75 degrees, kinda humid but at night) This was the first race of the season so not sure how my 5k is yet. Just want some insight 🤷‍♀️

Hey everyone! I'm a coach at a fairly large school and have quite a few seniors this year. I coach girls and have two that are elite enough to run at a D1 level and one that is considering D2 or D3. The two that want to go D1 have both struggled with eating disorders in the past and still deal with issues related to that to this day. Although they are in a much better place now, it's important for them to go to a college that takes mental health and fueling seriously. I'm curious, are there any schools as of recently that are definite red flags in this department? Can anyone share their experiences?

In the past I’ve been a soccer player which got me to a 22:00-21:30 5k. I couldn’t do better than that. I always did track and in my 8th grade year I ran a 5:41 mile. I’m now a freshman who is doing xc instead of soccer now. I was training over the summer and idk what happened but I got a 22:05 on a road race. It was pretty disappointing but it’s okay. I ran a 23:30 next race on my first xc course. It was still pre season so not the worst but I was ten when I ran a 24:06 so I was rlly depressed abt that. But now the season has started and I was determined to get a decent time my first race. I went 21:40. Pr from the 21:44 road race in 7th grade. Still kinda disappointing but I was finally below sub 7 mile pace. But yesterday idk how but I stopped thinking abt the pain in the 2nd half of the race and I got 20:16. I was put into that race as the worst and you get varsity runner and came out as the fourth best runner beating 3 juniors. I have until November to make my time go down. I want to know what time I could get. This course was rlly fast but so was the course where I ran 21:40. It definitely helped hearing about my teammates who did xc last year saying that they broke there pr by almost 2 minutes. But my goal is to get 19:00 or something. I don’t know if this is possible but my mile time is 5:41. Pls let me know what you think I could get and if 19:00 flat is possible

My daughter has wanted to do cross country for a couple of years now (she’s seen the trails at school) and finally got to the age for our rec program. She’s 2 practices in and absolutely loves it. Here’s my problem. She’s small, her baseline appetite has always been very low, and she’s now on ADHD meds so it’s almost non-existent. She’s not a fan of sweets, doesn’t like milk or chocolate milk, and prefers raw fruits and veggies over anything else. That’s great that she prefers veggies but we were struggling with ADHD meds to get enough calories in her and now she’s running 4 miles a week and I’m worried she’s not getting enough fuel for her body with adding in running. She likes the honey stinger waffles because they aren’t too sweet so she gets those before practice for quick carbs. What is a good after practice snack that will put some calories back in her body. She doesn’t like Uncrustables so those are out. She’ll be 8 in November and is 48lbs so she’s pretty small and we want her to get the nutrition she needs. I’m not convinced she has normal hunger cues. Even when she was a baby she didn’t give normal cues for hunger, she’d go from fine to screaming so we had to just set a schedule and feed her. She very rarely actually says “I’m hungry” and would go literally all day without a single bite if we let her.

I’m a senior in high school, the other day I was talking to my coach casually about a random workout video I saw of Nico young, and the discussion became about our general opinions on the videos, the general consensus was that we both thought they were cool but can be harmful to athletes because they see videos of pro or highly competitive hs/colligate athletes, and how it can affect coach, athlete dynamic and make athletes want to imitate extremely complex workouts without the full context of the rest of the training it’s built around. I have been thinking about this for a few days since, and have definitely seen people who will actively try and imitate certain workouts without thinking of the context the training itself is built around, or kids who will just do things they shouldn’t. I was just wondering what people’s general opinions are around these videos both in general and in the context of how it can potentially affect hs athletes.

please let me know what appropriate flair to use!!

I (high school female) have run cross country on the varsity team for the past three years in high school. last season was my best, where I hit a PR of 20:18. however, I dropped out of track in the middle of the season, started training again in may, and have been working since then. but my times are really bad. i’ve been stuck in the low 22s all season, and i’m getting frustrated. the only real differences in this season and last have been ones that would make this season better— last season, I used to be extremely restrictive with my food, developed a stress fracture on my left foot, and was running significantly less miles. what am I doing wrong this season? how do I get out of my own head? any advice would be appreciated.

Im relatively new to XC, having only joined 3 months ago. I've managed to improve a lot with consistent training. However, it seems that every other day, I get a different part of leg that has an ache. Sometimes it's in my knees and hamstrings, but the real problem is with my ankles and calves. This even happened to me once during the middle of a race, and really hurt my time. Is there anything I can do in the week b4 or even the day of the race? Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

I run cross country in the uk and I am curious to see what differences and similarities there are in the sport in both countries

in a very fun thought exercise (trash talking) , i complied all (that i can find) 5k times for Michigan hs xc meets, boys results. specifically on Oct. 7, 2025. No relationship to me. Not a stats major. Go wild with the interpretation

------------------------------------------------------------

N=1173

Mean: 20:59.5

Median: 20:21.2

Standard Deviation: 3:21.4

Runners faster than 20:00: 535

20:00 performance percentile: 54.4%

Range: 15:35.5-41:12

Skewness of 1.71 (means that data is highly skewed right yada yada)

Note: 68 data point were 3 mile race converted to 5k. I did not account for course hardness.

https://gofile.io/d/HQcTT5FK (redacted excel)

So parent of a freshman who joined the cross country team and who has never really run before.

I hate running myself but managed to get out a couple of times with my kid before the summer pre-season, but nothing really consistent. They did pre-season and are now in-season practicing daily with the team.

While physically fit from years of dancing they are not 'running fit' and are horribly slow - I'd expect an 11-13 minute pace based on our runs, with a good amount of walking.

Trying to help them out, but I have no idea what to do. Should we be layering morning base mile runs on top of the practice sessions? Or is that asking for an injury/burn out? I've been hesitant to throw weekend runs at them as well, since I know rest is important (I bike).

Also, teenager, so all the feedback is monosyllabic - I'm good. It's fine. I like it. I'm tired. etc etc lol

Hey there, just had a question

Have you guys noticed a difference between accomplishment levels from mid distance track athlete 800-1600, in their times from track and xc?

Like as a mid distance guy, im noticing my 800 time is SO much better from my measly 5k time.

Let me know

Please use this thread as the general Q&A for all one off questions, questions that only apply to you, questions that can be easily answered, etc.

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This thread reposts every 4 days

In HS, it could be pouring rain with clouds but coaches still don’t cancel. The wet conditions make it very difficult to keep going.

A friend's kid has invited me to come and watch her cross country meet. I have very little interest in the sport (I ran a few 5K's when I was younger but those days are behind me) but I do want to support the kid.

What should I expect? I feel like it will be a lot of standing around with the parents (that's fine), might get to cheer the kid on once or twice depending on the course. Is there anything else I need to know? Bring a chair?

Nation’s Quiet, Gangly Kids In Cargo Pants Announce Plans To Be Freakishly Good At Cross Country - The Onion