The finish line is 300 meters away. 200 meters. 100 meters. My heart is racing, my feet pounding into the ground as I break into a sprint. The finish line is within sight. Everything hurts. The words from my coach’s pre-race speech echo in my head: “It all comes down to who’s willing to hurt more, who’s willing to push harder.” 

As I cross the finish line, I’m handed my medal and time slows. I’ve placed fourth out of the almost 300 girls running in my race. This is what I had worked so hard for; all of the blood, sweat and tears finally paid off. Just like that, I’m hooked.

All I want are those intoxicating feelings: adrenaline, exhaustion and then accomplishment. 

I’ve always been competitive: from racing my dad down the driveway to swinging the highest at recess, I had to be the fastest, strongest and most skilled. If I couldn’t accomplish my athletic goals, whether in soccer, track, softball or cross country, I felt I had failed. 

I would feel like I should have worked harder, ran faster and paid more attention. I should have pushed through the pain and exhaustion. In a race, everyone is hurting; it’s about who’s willing to push through that pain: the winner is the one willing to hurt more. 

This mindset creates great athletes, and it especially helped me in high school when I made the decision to join the cross country team. Other sports came easily to me; cross country did not.

For the first time in my life, I found a sport that truly challenged me, and my sole focus became improvement. The months of hard work spent in preparation eventually paid off when the season finally began. As I crossed the finish line of my first 5K, I was overwhelmed with pride. All I wanted was to improve my times, improve my form and become the best runner I possibly could. After two more races and two more medals, a varsity spot was so close I could practically taste it. 

That was until I dislocated my knee hours after a meet. In a matter of seconds, my season was over. I had two knee surgeries and nine months of physical therapy ahead of me.

Some people don’t recognize they have an addiction until they no longer have access to a substance. I didn’t realize how much I relied on my sport for validation until I could no longer run. The months that followed my surgeries were the darkest time of my life.

When my surgeon finally cleared me to run, I was ecstatic. That was, of course, until I began to train and realized how out of shape I had become. After nine months on the bench, I was far behind the rest of my team. My mental health began to plummet again as I struggled to regain my strength. 

During my recovery, I struggled with constant comparison to my teammates. It wasn’t until the beginning of track season – a year after my second surgery – that I realized how detrimental my need for athletic validation was. 

As I crossed the finish line of my first 1600 meter race of the season, I felt pride for the first time in over a year, not only because of my time or place in the race, but because I recognized I had been competing against myself. I had been fighting to push through my recovery, I had fought all of the thoughts in my mind telling me to quit and I had pushed through two major reconstructive knee surgeries to be able to once again do what I loved most — run.