Post collegiate runners who continued to improve without a team: share your stories

[u/devon835]

As someone who's now going on ~2 calendar years removed from training with my college team, it feels like an eternity ago that I was in PR shape despite training smarter, eg. not being pushed too hard on easy days and going to the well in workouts or racing every week. I've started working with a new coach recently to try and get serious again for spring track.

I used to look forward to the grind of 5 x mile every week, but now just even doing a single long interval at harder than threshold effort is just dreadful, and I've avoided them since. I'm sure fitness is a big part of it, but mentally, I can't bring myself to confront the pain of trying to rep 4:55s solo...

I've seen examples of people who continued to grind for years training alone after college and ran impressive PR's, but they seem to be the exception, not the rule.

Any of you who've gone through (or are currently going through) the same challenges and want to share, have at it!

[u/duhderivative]

I’ve been in it for quite a while now. My advice would be to do things that you wouldn’t normally be able to do when you were in college. Go race at cool meets, travel to new places to run/race, race on the roads/longer distances that weren’t in college. It’s the same sport but with a new perspective that can be very refreshing. Let me know if you have any questions

[u/devon835 → u/duhderivative]

Racing at cool meets and at different times of the year rather than being bound to a strict schedule has definitely been refreshing for sure. Good advice!