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Upper Lake with Chris Kelly/End of Season Assessment

May 1, 2012 (Afternoon)

Exercise Type: Run

Weather: 65 Sunny

Comments:
Veale up North Park around upper lake and back (with Chris Kelly)-

Last night, I moved everything left out of my apartment and home to Sandusky, slept there, and came back up to Cleveland today for some work in the lab, the track banquet, and the end-of-season party.

While sitting in the Veale Balcony, Chris Kelly came by ready to run and I joined him. It was a very enjoyable run as we discussed all our memories of running past, my role in things, and Chris's potential for next year. This run felt like one of our runs from years ago. I felt young again and older at the same time.

Last year, I finished up with running and prepared to leave the team feeling that my time running at Case had primarily taught me about failure. It was a lesson I needed to learn but nevertheless I felt as though I was broken after my knee injury. Running felt as a lesson in what I failed to accomplish, my own shortcomings, my own mistakes. I felt like it dimished me, like after my injury I was wounded in a way that would never heal, broken, somewhat cast aside. In that state, I struggled to fight through every day, hopelessly forward under the banner of taking things one step at a time or never giving up. But even with those rally cries, I had failed to run a PR, failed to live up to my old expectations and standards, irreparably broken.

But, sometimes in life after you learn about failure you get another chance, unexpected and unlooked for. This season was run on a whim; I spent most of the fall semester in a boot, never intending to come back and fight my uphill battle floundering to live up to the ghosts of my running past. But I decided to give it a shot anyway, without my prefered extended training and conditioning, etc. I need to truly make myself competitive on this level. I decided this year I would take my last shot and try something new: surrendering my pride and shutting out my mind and its frantic assessments. I decided this time I would approach things with a new level of maturity, try my best, and take whatever path came to me.

It turned out that while I struggled some at the beginning of indoor, I did manage to find my way to Indoor UAAs after Ethan was too busy with school, find my way down to Virginia and run a PR in the 10k. This was the first time I have run a PR in ANYTHING since Calvin my junior year of cross before my knee injury in 2009. Yes, that's right, 2009. I added PR's in the Mile/1500 and 800 just for good measure and had probably my best meet of the season at Marv Fry in the 1500 when I almost qualified for All-Ohio in an event I don't run. My time converts to a 9-second PR in the mile, the type of large PR I haven't run in years. I wanted to score a point for our track team, something I have never done, and failed to do so in Outdoor UAAs in the end. But, this time, I walked off the track not with bitterness for my failure to rise to a level I have never competed at that day, but with a nostalgic gratitude for all I have gotten the chance to do in my running career and deeply thankful for all the people who have touched my life over the past five years. I walked off the track with my head held high, not so much because I had a great race, but because I had a great career.

I know I have failed in many ways in my running career and while I still bear the scars of my injury, I no longer feel as though my running career is defined by that. I am no longer reduced by my injuries. I have not, nor can I, ever forget my fall and its consequences, but I am more as a runner and as a person than the guy who used to be a leader on the team but choked at Regionals, hurt his knee, and never mattered again. I now feel as though I can look back on my running career at Case with a certain degree of fondness and contentness for what I have accomplished and for the incredible journey that it was. This time as I leave the team, I feel as though I am no longer broken, but whole again.