Three weeks ago, I went on a cooldown run to find that I couldn't run without limping, each step as painful as my hip has ever been. But this is not an article to complain about the grievances of being injured. There are runners across the country and on my team that are more talented than I am that often have it worse than I do. This is about what I've learned in the process.
The first is that I've learned just how important running is to me. While not being able to run, I'm a psychological mess. I lose the part of my day that I look forward to the most, the part that can flip any bad day around. I temporarily lose my identity as a runner, and no words can describe how miserable that is to me. As much as I might write about and complain about how miserable 15 mile long runs can be, not being on them is much worse.
I've written in the past about how disengaging from running has helped me discover my identity in other ways, but that was a process that took more than a year. In addition, the ironic part of being an injured athlete in college is that you need to spend twice as much time cross training or rehabbing your injury to sustain fitness and accelerate your recovery. In high school, I got away with just taking a week off the few times I got injured and focusing on doing other things. Spending so much time cross training and rehabbing has only made me think of running more in the process. To get the same workout on the bike, pool, or elliptical in as I do on a run, I need to spend more time cross training than I do when I run.
Even more ironically, being injured has made me so impatient that sometimes, I set myself back and get less healthy. Sometimes, I try to be a badass and go so hard on the elliptical that it almost breaks, which only leads to nearby gym-goers thinking I'm a psychopath and having their workouts disrupted. A week ago, I tried coming back to running and did too much mileage too soon. Both of these actions have most likely delayed my recovery, and prove that I'm just not as mature at dealing with adversity as I should be.
The worst part of it is a sense of detachment from the rest of my team. Although I live with some of my teammates and still spend an absurd amount of time with them, some of the best moments are always grinding on long runs, tempo runs, workouts, and races together. I've been proud watching my teammates run and excel in races, but have been discouraged that I'm not out there and working with them.
But even so, there are ways even an injured athlete can be valuable to his/her team. Yes, there's encouraging things I can say during races, but there is always menial bitch work that nobody really wants to do, but needs to be done. In cross country, this usually involves taking splits or setting up the tent. Unfortunately, sometimes I mess this up too.
Fortunately, my rehab is going well and I should be back to running with my team relatively soon. Maybe my excessive hard work on the elliptical has helped me maintain my aerobic fitness from before I was injured. Being injured has taught me that I need to become a more patient person. I've realized how much cross training sucks and how I never want to go through this again.
And as much as I might complain about running, the only thing worse is to not be running.
