Personal Narrative: How Track Changed My Life

I’ve have been through hardships and hard times, especially with sports. One of many injuries was when I was playing basketball during open gym. As I went up for a contested lay-up, I twisted my leg. Not knowing it was still planted, I chipped the tibia in my knee. Though it hurt, I was still was able to walk it off. My father and I went to the

By this time I would be on the track getting my workout in to run the 300 hurdles. I was solid in that event, but the events I took the most pride in was the 400 and the 4 by 4. It had been a rough ending to basketball season but this would be the major turning point for me. I could make it all up by going to state. My track coach knew my coach from middle school so she has heard quite a bit about me. I never really had training or anything I just ran at first. I started to do summer training and ran with a local track team. Coach George wanted me to run the 200. It was new to me so we trained in the mornings before school. She bought in the assistant coach and he had me and few more girls lined up on the track. He wanted us to stand side by side and sprint out and merge into lane one. It was kind of crazy because we were all kind of jumbled up together. The first time as I merged into lane one my legs tripped another girl and she fell so I felt bad. So the third time I tried to make sure I didn't trip anyone up because my legs were so long. I dodge tripping the same girl but I almost hit another. By the fourth time I was really just over it, I jerked my body one way and my hip went the other. I ended up limping to the finish line. I thought it was just a little kink and I could just pop it out. I was completely wrong. It was way worse than the ankle injury. I guess it was a sign from good telling me to

For the past four years of my life I have been majorly involved with my school’s color guard. I went from learning the basics freshman year to leading a large group of girls who were mostly beginners. When senior year rolled around I felt ready to lead my team to victory. Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out the way I had hoped. While sprinting during a practice I land hard on my left side and felt my knee pop out of place. The following week was spent away from guard icing my now grapefruit sized knee. When I went to the doctor I was pretty nervous, but he assured me that it didn’t appear to be serious. When I came in for my second visit my heart sank to see what was waiting for me in his office. It was a pamphlet that said the ins and

Hearing the pop of my knee was the last sound I wanted to hear while kicking a soccer ball during tryouts junior year. I fell straight to the ground, and knew instantly something was terribly wrong. To this day, I recall how heartbroken I was when I heard the news that I tore my ACL, and I never thought it could happen to me. Just the thought of not playing sports that year was emotionally difficult because sports have always been a part of my life. I could not imagine a year without participating in athletics, however at the time I did not know it could have a positive impact on me.

I ran indoor track and I ran decently. Then outdoor track came and I was practicing for the 4x1 relay. I was running and I guess I had been putting too much stress on my hip flexors. I sprained my right hip flexor and i was not able to train or run at any of the first 3-4 meets. After i had been cleared I started getting back to the routine and working back up to get back in shape. After I missed the first few meets they already had people running in the races I was supposed to run in. As a comeback race to just get out there I run an 800m

I was required to do a lot of physical therapy sessions to try and loosen my ligaments enough to qualify for the team because of the tightness caused from my spine. I was able to do cross country for a while before I ran into more issues. My pelvis began to dislocate off and on during practices and meets followed up by bulging one of the disks in my back but still kept running for the following two years along with a year of track.

It was the beginning of the track season a few days before our first track meet. My friends and I were running around the track and my leg gets tense. Not terribly unusual I've had charley horses before, but then there's a pop and my leg gives. I stop running and my friends help me up and to the athletic trainers. They tell me I have sprained my hamstring. This was heartbreaking for me as this was the year I was going to run with my friends in the sprints and high jump as I was unable to last year due to a similar thing happening but with my feet. I was not going to accept this defeat and choose to show up every day to practice and to the trainers for rehabilitation. At meets, I would work around the track at either the high jump pit or the long jump pit. I would give my teammates words of encouragement as often as I could. I held the

When I was in seventh grade I fell in love. Not with a person, but a sport. I fell in love with track. I enjoyed the workouts, the races, the team, the events, the meets, but most of all I had found a passion for sprinting. I worked everyday during practice to prepare for the meets. I pushed myself as hard as I could and never gave up. I couldn’t get enough of it. I was mad for the feeling of your lungs bursting for air and your legs burning with pain. The long, exhausting workouts, the freezing practices, and the crazy memories you can make. There was nothing about it that I found unlikeable. Track was consuming my thoughts, I couldn’t stop. I was in love with it in every single way.

As I sat there and let the doctor examine my knee and diagnosis me with a “left knee sprain”. I started to cry. I already knew the outcome that I had a torn ACL (anterior cruciate ligament). I tried to continue to play on it until one time I was playing in a tournament, and I went up to block a girls shot and landed on my

The unrelenting struggle to climb the summit of my darkened soul yields a somnambulatory existence. Reality’s crushing gravity renders me a lifeless zombie trapped in the circuitous game of functioning. How do I go on when my body reeks of failure and pain?

As a young athlete, running had always been a least favorite past-time for me. Unfortunately, every sport I played was dependent on that very physical act. Millions of suicide runs and lay-ups in basketball, and even more base runs in softball at least distracted me because I was running for a purpose. My short stint on the cross-country team demonstrated to me that I may have excelled at fast-twitch running, but long-distance running was not my forte, made clear by my omnipresent side stitches. My senior year of high school came and to my surprise, running would be the one thing I missed so dearly. My short time as a starting varsity player in basketball came to an end when I completely tore my left ACL. A host of changes came from just one incident.

When track season started my Junior year my right knee started having severe issues.. After one practice my right knee was swollen, and was turning a red and purple color. I rested for the rest of practice and that night, and the next morning just walking around made it swell. I ended up going to the doctor the next day and got x-rays of both knees. I found out that because I had injured my left knee, my right one had overcompensated and was giving out. I was out the rest of the indoor track season, before outdoor track even started. I ended up having to do physical therapy to hopefully help gain strength to be able to run again my Senior year for Cross Country. I did physical therapy for 5-6 months, 2 times a week, I slowly started progressing

I love track. I love everything about it, from the feelings of the wind blowing on my face to the feeling of pretty much being the best runner on my team. Until my dreams got crushed. I got in a car accident. I still remember everything that happened in the car crash. My leg was stuck, twisted. My worst fear came true, my leg had to be cut off.The feeling of me knowing I won’t be able to run again has crushed me. I can’t help but think that because of this car crash my whole life is going to change. I was so depressed. I wouldn’t eat, I wouldn’t talk to anyone who visited. It hurt to know that everything my mom, the doctor, my best friend told me I know and they know wasn’t true. Why couldn’t my arm get cut off or something, just not my leg!

Looking back, the first sign of trouble was the contest quota that I missed by nearly fifteen percent. After my initial hot streak, I took the news hard.

It all started one day with my first high school tryouts. I had thought something was wrong with my knee for a while however never took any interest in it. We were playing a scrimmage against each other so that the coach could see our skill level. Not trying to brag or anything , but I was rocking it out there. After a few minutes my knee started to feel strange