woke up one day my sophomore year and couldn’t walk without pain, turns out that i had ruptured & herniated multiple discs in my spine from overtraining. it took me two years of rehab to be able to run normally again and i was not the same when i returned, nowhere near as fast as i used to be, no longer on an olympic trajectory, it wasn’t the physical pain that hurt the most but the psychological/emotional pain of realizing the dream i dedicated my entire life to was essentially over. i actually ended up making it to national quarterfinals my senior year but fell in the first heat, that was my last race, i fell in my last race. from that moment on i hated watching track/running because it just reminded me of what i COULD have been. but recently i reassembled my mindset towards running (and playing sports in general). maybe i don’t need to let the past pain speak for my experience now, maybe instead of doing it to be the BEST IN THE WORLD or not at all (a mindset ingrained so deeply int...