Seeing my teammates finish through their races the way they do is a bitter-sweet feeling to me. Yes, I love to see my teammates improve every week and continue to work on their road to success. But at the same time for me it sucks for lack of a better word (sorry if anyone took offense). Not because they are doing better than I am but because I cannot improve with them and make this team better. This season has not turned out as I had hoped so far, just a whole lot of letdown. Through summer practices and even the first 1.5 miles of the Shelby Co. invitational I believe everyone was impressed at what I was capable of, even I was impressed. Since the shin injury I received in the race I have been in a terrible running funk that I CANNOT escape. At first I believed the slump was due to a lack of conditioning, as 3 weeks of physical therapy at Max Performance took place of practice. However what I have seen from an outside prospective of me at practice is disappointing. The runners I once never ran with at practice because I was faster than, now are faster than I and leave me in the dust, this is true even in races. So far this season 2 races have been completed in times that I am embarrassed of, times I ran as an 8th grader. No matter what I try, the slump will not fade. Talking to coaches, parents, friends, Google and questioning myself are things that have become common practice. I began to question my talent and my ability as well as my focus and honestly I don’t know what to blame. Maybe there is nothing to blame but myself. As a matter of fact I am the only one to blame, sure expectations put on by people close to me do not help but they are not to blame. What is the reason for my slump? Often times when people bring up cross-country I have found myself immediately switching the conversation to track. FOCUS. That’s it! I am not focused on the task at hand right? Wrong. Despite how much track is a part of my normal conversation I know that right now, its cross-country time. I am focused on cross-country as it was my second sports love (behind basketball). MOTIVATION. Wrong. Motivation is not a question either. As a runner I am strongly motivated by team rankings and when people do not show Collins any love as a higher ranked team, I take it personally. This has been true since Martha Layne Collins was established in 2010. In past seasons I have shown up and shown out at times that I’ve felt people being disrespectful towards Collins. Before I took it as motivation to work harder and to improve to get to scholarship times but this season I take it as people saying whoa! What happened to Justin Downs? But now I work my butt off just to get in the 17’s!(hasn’t happened this year) How can one go from being a sub 17 runner to a mid/low 18 runner in this quick of a time frame?
Injury, that’s how. Now I’m not blaming my times on my injury because I should be good by now but injury can play a role. What I have learned from this season is that as a runner it is important to take care of your body, and I mean take care of it. I have researched and here is a list of what I am going to start doing and I encourage every runner reading this to do in order to be successful and have a healthy running body (both as a runner body and correctly working body):
-Ice bath/ massages after practice and races (help recover muscles)
-Stretch whenever I have free time
-Use foam roller before stretching/after run
-EAT HEALTHY (carbs before race/ chocolate milk after WATER)