A Track Tale of Triumph Over Setbacks

My favorite month of the year is somehow already starting to come to a close! April is the month that I most dread and look forward to all simultaneously, for me it is my busiest month of the year filled with several big, nerve-racking track meets, travel, standardized testing, and doctor appointments. It can feel overwhelming at times to manage all of the different things. But I know soon enough it will be summer and I will miss April's go-go.

As my school track season and school start to wrap up, I have begun to reflect on this past school year! This year came with many changes and challenges, several of my closest friends moved away for college, my friend group has changed, I started a new school this year, and I have begun to plan for my future after high school, along with some health issues. My life looks completely different than it did even a year ago and looks unrecognizable from what it was before high school

Change and challenges do not come without lessons, unlike in school in life you are faced with tests or challenges and taught a lesson. I have become so resilient this school year, especially this semester. One story in particular comes to mind when I think of this chapter of my life.

The first, a couple of weeks ago I had my first track meet of the season for my club team. It was the morning after I had a meet for my high school, I was tired and not feeling my best. I knew going into it that the hardest part of the day was not going to be the actual racing but the mental toughness I knew it would take, I knew I had to be okay with being uncomfortable. I had accepted that it was going to be a very long weekend but I had done it before and I knew I could do it.

I knew going into it that my first race was going to be the hardest, it was the one race I had never qualified in for nationals, and this meet was my best chance at qualifying in it because it was the first event of the day, at other meets it is at the end of the day.

I was in the final lap of four in this race when I crashed directly into someone who I had finished their race and was sitting in lane one, the same l was racing in. We both fell to the ground. The person I crashed into was left uninjured, I was left with minimal injuries but unable to finish the race. With less than 300m left in my race and with the time I was at the time of the crash I could have possibly qualified for nationals and it most definitely would have been a PR. I was heartbroken and embarrassed that the first time I had crashed was at a national qualifying meet after being in my third season in track.

After establishing that I had no injuries besides a scraped elbow, I was left with the decision to either call it quits and go home or put that race behind me and finish the day of the competition. I ultimately decided to continue the day of competition. I knew I couldn't let one small setback ruin what could be a day full of amazing competition. I also knew that it would be harder to go out and compete in the next race if I left ending in the crash.

Choosing to get back up after the fall is the perfect analogy to describe what these past several months have been like. I have chosen to get back up after every setback not because it was the easiest thing to do.

But in my mind, it has always been the obvious thing to do. I decided when going into this school year that I was not going to let anything get in the way of achieving what I wanted. I was tired of things always getting in the way of me accomplishing my dreams, and since I can't always control what happens I decided to not let what did happen affect what I did.