Run, Write, Repeat: One Day At A Time


I can remember two races in my high school career that made me temporarily lose my love to run. The first of these was last October when I ran a race while my girlfriend was having surgery. The second was last Saturday at Milaca. I lost my first high school cross country race to Class A competition in over a year, and ran the slowest time I have run since my sophomore year. But, of course, there is more to the story than just that.

I really do love to run. Cross country practice is the thing I look forward to most every day. I love being with all of my close friends, I love running in cool autumn weather when the trees are changing and shedding their leaves. Oddly enough, I love the feeling of absolutely spent legs after a challenging workout. I believe that much of the success I have had can be attributed to the fact that I simply enjoy what I do.

To tell this story, I suppose we have to go back to last spring at the State Track Meet. Coming out of sections I had been beaten (pretty handedly) by Lucas Mueller. I was low on confidence, and thought that my chances of winning the distance running 'triple crown' were next to none. At State, I ran two well put together and smart races, closing my two-mile in 59 seconds to narrowly finish second, and the next day I was able to win the mile.

Going into the summer I had regained my confidence and was eager to start training to prepare for the fall season. Putting together a training plan with my coaches, I trained twice daily (except on Sundays, which were long runs), and I was averaging about 65-70 miles per week. Despite not being a typical teenager's version of a great summer, I loved waking up early, running, going to work, and ending the day with another run.

Mid-July I ran my 'hardest' workout, a 5xmile at 5:10 pace with a 200 meter walk in between. I ran a 5K race shortly after. The course was actually 5.5K, but my split for the 5K was unofficially 15:24. I felt that my goals to defend my State title and qualify for Nike nationals were well within reach after this.

(Celebrating my unofficial 5k PR after the Torchlight 5K with my sister and cousin's baby)

The first week of August my sister, some friends, and I went up to Detroit Lakes for a music festival. I was planning on continuing my training, but thought that I would take the week to recover and only do short easy runs. I had been having sporadic headaches, some upper abdomen pains, and fevers for a few weeks before, but dismissed them as a minor cold or virus. I woke up the first morning on our trip and while my sister and friends went for their run I thought I would go out and try an easy 3-mile jog.

I got dressed, began my run, and made it about 800 meters before I had to take a break. My heart rate was 180 BPM and the area above my stomach felt inexplicably awful. I forced myself to go another 800 meters before turning around. My watch showed a grand total of 2-miles, run in 19 minutes with an average heart rate of 183 BPM.

I struggled to understand how I could have gone from being in the best physical shape that I had ever been in two weeks prior, to running almost ten-minute pace for two miles. When we got back home I told my parents that I thought I should see a doctor, and a few days later I was diagnosed with mono. My ultrasound showed that my spleen and liver were severely enlarged and I had to rest (no running) for three weeks and then I would be tested again.

I was rather devastated to hear this news, especially since by the time I would be able to run again the season would already have started. It was mind-numbing to sit around, not exercising and wondering if I would maintain all of my summer training once I was healthy again. I was cleared to slowly start running again at the end of August, and it was absolutely liberating.

Apart from a slightly higher heart rate than usual, I felt pretty good in my first few weeks back. I wasn't doing any challenging workouts, but I began to regain some coordination in my legs and I had a reason to stop binge-watching Netflix at last.

I won my first race, a two-mile, despite feeling absolutely spent at the end. Two weeks later was my first 5K and on a fairly flat course I set my bar pretty high, hoping to run close to our school record, 15:36. Running mostly alone for that race with scorching temperatures and high humidity I fell apart about one and a half miles in, struggling across the line to win in about 16:24.

(First mile at Milaca)

Fast-forwarding another week to last Saturday at Milaca I ran against some very good competition, including freshman phenom, Geno Uhrbom, Ethan Olson, Owen Keiser, and Keiser Freetly. Heading into the race Geno had the fastest time by a fairly large margin, however I was confident that I was more or less where I was over the summer. I had been ranked first in Class A for the past year, and I was relying on Milaca to make a statement that I was still at the 'top of my game'. With my sights set on at least a sub-16-minute time, I thought that with somewhat favorable conditions and a deep and talented field I would have the perfect opportunity to run well.

Less than a mile into the race I knew pretty well that I would not be able to win. My legs were tired, not used to the cadence that I was running, but worst of all was my breathing. We were not even halfway, and we were running at a pace that I would have been comfortable with a year ago, but I could feel my heart racing as if I was sprinting for the finish. I lost contact with Geno around two miles and was alone for the rest of the race. There is a very specific feeling of discouragement you feel when you slowly watch yourself fall further and further behind the leader, and that, combined with how angry I was for being sick at such an inconvenient time saw me slip into third place in a time slower than I had run in two years. The day after I lost my number one ranking and felt utterly discouraged and defeated.

Now, a week after that race I've had some time to think about my running and my goals. In retrospect, I feel most upset that there was nothing I could have done when I got sick. It was nobody's fault, I couldn't have prevented it, and I have nothing tangible to blame. I have been fortunate to have a running career unaffected by any significant adversity or challenges. I have dealt with minor injuries, but I have avoided any long-term injuries and I have had few races where I feel that I have significantly underperformed. Milaca was the first race that I felt that no matter how I would have run the race, I could not have won it.

I don't share any of this to make excuses for my early season form, or gain pity, but rather to share how I have had to change the way that I am approaching the rest of my season. I still hope to defend my State title and qualify for Nike Nationals, but I've forced myself to be more realistic in how I will get there. I am not going to be blazing 15:30s mid-season. Should I win another State championship come November, I'm sure it won't be by as significant of a margin as I had hoped it would be in my summer training.

I've learned that I can't control what happened to me in August, but I can control what I do every day from now until the important races. So, I will, and have been training hard every day, and I slowly am regaining my fitness. Rather than remaining upset at how unfair it was that my hours of summer training had been seemingly washed away in a month, I can only focus now on how I can use the time between now and November to put myself in the best position to compete at the top, and the best thing I can do in order to achieve that goal is to take things one day at a time.

So, what is the point in me sharing this? Every runner will face challenges at some moment in their careers. I am one of numerous people I know who has had to deal with mono. From stress fractures to bad races, adversity is a part of this sport. For people, such as myself who have been fortunate enough to face little adversity throughout our careers it can be challenging to deal with it once it comes. A bad race can hamper confidence, and dishearten us, pushing us further and further from our goals. However, if I had to give a moral to the story I have just written, I think I could best summarize it with a quote from one of my favorite movies, A League of Their Own:

It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard everybody would do it. The hard is what makes it great.

This sport is not easy by any stretch of the imagination, and when challenges arise the best thing that we can do is embrace them and persevere. Injuries and illness, and adversity in general can be detrimental, however, to the best of our abilities, in the inspiring words of Gopher football coach, P.J Fleck, we must pick ourselves up and "row the boat."

Happy Running!

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