Felt off during the middle of the XC season and now wondering if I'll fall behind my teammates.
So to start this off and to give clear context about where I am at right now regarding Long distance running- I transfered from a pretty small 3A to 2A school to a pretty decently big 6A school. I decided to transfer Freshman year of high school and officially switched schools (signed off on the transfer) during the summer. My old school was highly atheletic and academic (They like there trophies) and had a ton of hometown pride and stuff like that, when I first got to summer practice at my new school it was so clear the workouts and runs where just not on the same level as my old school. When I was still at my old school I didnt really do much summer practice outside of the schools cross country summer camp just because I always knew my old schools practice and workouts were pretty top notch if you catch my drift (I should have taken running more seriously back then) and adjusting to my new school was already hard itself. At my new school there are these two guys that ran similar times as me (Lets call them Steve and Chris), however chris was mostly behind me and Steve when it came to time and placement comparison. A couple of practices go by and I wasn't really thinking to much of it and when time trials came I beat both Steve and Chris without much thought and course me and Steve didn't have much distance between each other as he was practically behind me, but again Chris was definitely further away. Another set of practice goes by and I notice Chris is basically always next to Steve and always pacing with him, this is normal and is perfectly reasonable from someone who would want to get better. Couple of meets go by and I'm usually right behind Steve just barley (were on varsity) and Chris (He had been on JV) of course got his PR on JV and moved up to Varisty. Long story short- He started beaten me and Steve.
Towards the end of the season with the last couple of games I felt this horrible lower back pain and it really affected my running like BAD, I've always had pretty decent running form and I remember I think I pushed a little to hard during practice and my lower back suffered for it. The thing that got to me was when Chris (That one guy that Improved crazy fast) asked the coach "So am I better than____?" And all I could think about was 'Whats happening to me during meets?' Ever since that lower back pain started I either started getting bad times or I had to seriously fight my lower back for the entire 5k/race.
My PR during the season was a 20:10 (I know, nowhere near competitive for the state level) but I've been trying to improve since the season ended and I feel like im getting back in a rhythm again which has felt great so far.
I'm not really a jealous person as I've never really been jealous of anything or really anybody but I do recognize that most people can get jealous and theres no point in denying that I wasn't jealous. It's great that Chris is genuinely seeing improvement but I can't help but think is it genuinely over? Do I have to practice 24/7 outside of the team because they don't do track workouts or quality mileage like my old school? How much do I need to push it next season? Where is this all going to go?