Please Help

Question
Okay, so for field hockey we do a run of varying length in the beginning of practice, and I have a friend who beats me during a lot of them, and when we run together I have to try a lot harder to run at the same pace. The thing that REALLY pisses me off is that I practice a lot more than her. I run on all of my days off (its preseason so we only have practice 3 times a week) and am always changing it up (tempo runs, interval type runs, ect.) and I push myself insanely hard during all of them. It's not fair and I seriously don't know what else to do. Please help me do something or explain why this is happening?

Answer
Hello Riley,
You may be working out too much over the course of time. Yes, practice is important, but just general running on your days off with tempo/interval runs is harder to recover from.  Then, if you constantly push yourself maximally, over & over, the body doesn't respond well with that type of constant, really hard training.  
Another thing you must realize is that in any sport, other than track or XC, is that if you have a teammate faster than you, there is no literal competition between you and your teammate or teammates on pure speed alone that determines team success.  What I mean is that even if you're quicker, what will you do with the quickness once you get there?  There's much more to sports than just being faster than someone, its an intricate mix of many qualities of skill, strength, and speed that you and your teammates bring to the team for success in the end.
As an athlete, I was caught up in this game of cat & mouse, always trying to best a teammate of mine in conditioning sprints and the like. I always guarded him for many years, and it became quite the battle some days.  Then, my senior year, we were starting 5 teammates and had to work together instead of against each other like we were used to doing for so long. We then started pushing each other for the betterment of the team and ourselves, and didn't worry so much about beating each other all the time.

I hope this gives you some insight.  I would suggest pushing hard in your practices but working out slightly lighter on your days in-between, so your body has a chance to recover better and therefore, improve. Your body improves when it has quality rest, not just constant, hard training applied to it.

Coach Rick
http://asapworkouts.com