Stressed Over Track a Week In

[Eldora]

(This fits in a few different categories, I guess, and I couldn't decide which to put it in, so I put it in here. Mainly I didn't want to post a thousand posts.)

I started running track last week. Honestly, I loved it the first week. We ran about two miles every evening, and it gave me the physical exertion I'd been missing since I turned nine. (Backstory: When I was little, I was quite a tomboy, and liked playing with my male cousins better than sitting around with girls and talking about makeup and jewelry and all that, but then I turned nine and my mom abruptly decided it was time for me to start acting like a girl and I was torn from that. I'm still not allowed to play football with them, even when they ask. Which made me mad).

Anywho, when I started running track, that feeling of being able to take on the world took over again. But since Monday, it's pretty much deteriorated. A lot of my friends are quitting (some had to quit because of grades), and I have only two people left on the team that I'll run with, and only one that I can keep up with for any length of time, and she's slower than I am, so I have to pace myself... Which leave me finishing at the end.

Let me tell you this:

I'm the kind of girl that doesn't like to be beaten. In anything, especially when it's something like running or fighting. I'm not a sore loser on the outside, as I always bow my head and smile and wish whoever won a good job; but on the inside, it makes me angry and frustrated, more with myself than whoever beat me.

So the main problem with track now is that I'm not as good at running distances as I once thought I was. I could run a quarter-mile week before last, and that was pretty easy, but now we're running two miles an evening, and I honestly can't do it. Mostly because I can't find someone who runs my pace to run with. When I run by myself (meaning without a friend running with me), I usually can keep to the middle of the pack quite well. When I run with one of my friends, I fall to the back no matter what; one because she won't push herself hard enough and ran the other day while texting for goodness' sake, one because she's one of the people who runs at the front of the pack and expects me to keep up with her, which I can only do for about a quarter of a mile.

Let's get this straight: I can run sprints really well. But it's starting to annoy me that I can't pace myself well enough to keep from falling behind when we're running distances. I'm not a quitter, but I'm really starting to miss the lazing about in the evenings with my computer or a notepad or a guitar or a keyboard writing songs, I'm starting to miss just listening to Three Days Grace or Evanescence or AFI and singing my heart out along with them in my bedroom. And I miss my friends on the regular-time bus, because I have to ride the activity bus and the people on there are all annoying as hell.

Hey, you try standing up and walking to the front of the bus to be called after by a bunch of idiots: "Ana, Ana, Ana, Ana," (just imagine it going in rounds like crickets or frogs) so much that the bus driver has to tell them to stop. I think that one's just mad because I never gave him the time of day -- honestly, he's just a hick with a big mouth whom I highly dislike -- and the rest of them pretty much listen to him whether they're upperclassmen or not. And the girl I like also rode my regular-time bus, so it's not like I can talk to her very often anymore, either.

I'm thinking about getting a Facebook to keep in contact with my friends, but I don't find the idea very appealing, because I just don't want to be on the same site as my mom. For one thing, I know nothing about the site. If it came to me having to fill in my sexuality, I'd be caught between being myself and lying to protect myself from my mother/aunts, the same with my religion.

So I have a few questions:

• Do you think I could leave my sexuality unspecified (if it's asked for at all) without my mom getting suspicious?
• Is there a way my mom can get into my account and see what I'm saying to my friends? Because honestly, I'm not going to get one if my mom can see what I say to them, because they know more about me than my mom ever did...

Well, actually that was only a couple, but still.

But anywho.

[Katrina]

Aw, are you really from WV? I met a few people from there this past weekend at the beach! Awesome.

I'm a pretty fierce competitor myself, Ana, and in sports like track (which you do) and swimming (which I did), you eventually have to get to the point where you're LITERALLY trying out outrun or outswim or out-whatever yourself. Of course you're not as good at distance! You just started! However, if you're already running this much and managing it, just imagine where you'll be in a few months! With this amount of effort, you'll certainly rise to the top! I think you should stick with it a few more weeks and see how things go. The first week anyone tries something new (or goes back to something), I imagine it'll always be a bit rough.

As far as Facebook goes in terms of sexuality, it will ask "Interested In" whatever... most people don't fill those out. If I'd filled mine in, it would read "interested in: men," but I really see no reason why I would fill that in. So, I think you're safe on that one. And then, in terms of your mom being able to see your information, there are a LOT of very specific privacy settings you can set to make sure she doesn't see that. In fact, you can even block her from seeing your Facebook at all or even being able to search you, if worse comes to worse.

Hope this helps! Good luck as you make these decisions!