Sorry

Injury has always been on every athlete’s mind and the fear that it brings can ruin dreams, as well as cause chaos. My story is similar to many as we struggle with the fear of injury and the struggle of giving up.

This story starts back in the summer of 2022, entering My sophomore year of high school, I was training to stay conditioned and ready for my upcoming cross-country season. I would train with some teammates during the summer but specifically the month of July where we would meet up about 3 days out of the week for speed day. One day after some tough tough training I had some pain in my leg that I had never felt before but I brushed it off as soreness and continued running. However because it was only the second day of the 3 that we would meet up we met up again and we were doing a mile repeat workout (4xmile) when during the 3rd mile my leg gave out and it was straight pain but I still finished the last mile, slower but not that slow which was probably not a good thing. That same day when I got home all I did was rest because it hurt to do any movement but when the next day came which was not a workout day I couldn’t put any pressure on it not even to stand up on it. In that moment I felt the fear of injury, asking myself if this was real and for the next couple of days I stayed in my room resting but overthinking a bunch. Again I ran to see how my leg was and boom it was still bad probably worse after it settled, That’s when I truly knew I was injured but I didn’t know what part of my leg was injured and on top of that I didn’t know how and what I was going to tell my teammates and my Coach. So now it was August and I had barely ran since the initial injury but school had started, which meant the season had started. I still wanting to run, I went to the practices they hosted, which was not a good idea because I had just re-injured myself during one of the practices. However, because school had started I found out the reason why I was injured and it was because I was overtraining during that summer without enough recovery and probably some other factors but it had affected my I.T Band. Due to this injury, I had to miss most of the season which was soul crushing because as the season went by my team was winning left and right even winning some medals and trophies while I was there just existing. To say that I wanted to give up is an understatement because I really wanted to but something inside me didn’t let me. Now it was October and after a while of just semi-running about a mile a day, stretching a whole lot, and resting a bunch, I was injury free how you may ask? To be honest I don’t know but just know that I was all good again, freed from the shackles of injury. The whole season had basically ended with just one more week and a half left which included one more race and that was probably the most important one for many including myself, which was districts. My coach seeing how much I really wanted to race and knowing i missed the whole season, he put me into the last race of the season which was districts but there was one slight problem that arose from this and it was that to compete at districts you must have ran at least in 5 other different races which I didn’t. This wasn’t the end for me though as it felt that the stars had aligned just for this moment. Due to having a hurricane that year, the rules changed a little bit and we were going to take a risk by entering and having me run under someone else’s name, which is technically not allowed but we had to take the risk. The risk had paid off since I ended up running a new personal record of 20:48. Once I was on the starting line I felt free, like I could run 100 miles, I lived in the moment without taking it for granted. This is where the story picks up 2 years later in 2024 where I got injured again but not as bad, Senior year of cross country, I am captain of the cross country team so I had to be the one to set the bar. This time I get injured mid way through the season with the injury being minor but still affecting me and my performance. Again it was soul-crushing but I just had to push through it cause I was the main unit with this season being one of the lowest in a while. I took the measures to make sure I could still train without further injuring myself. I just kept telling myself that the pain of regret will feel a lot worse than the pain of failure. During the season I was performing ok-ish but not where I wanted to be and once again there was a hurricane that took about 2 weeks of my season. In what felt like a blink of an eye my season was about to end with one more race to go which was on October 30th and that was districts but this time we ran districts in an unfamiliar course in Tampa which was already not the best start along with me still being injured. Long story short I ended up running 19:09 which was not bad for sure but not really what I was aiming for. After that race, I kinda disappeared from running for like a month until late November to recover fully which I couldn’t during the season and because I was disappointed in myself. I had to fall in love with running again and I did, now I’m trying to stay conditioned for track season which will begin in January. Tackling adult-hood, school, sports, and injury has a toll on you and so that’s why the takeaway from my story is that you shouldn’t take anything for granted, live in the moment before it becomes a memory, and that it’s ok to rest sometimes because you can feel burnt out very quickly. Also, don’t compare yourself to others because their best can be your worst and they don’t know what you’re going through.