Upon My Return
One of the most significant life-defining events in my life occurred in my senior year of high school, when I was diagnosed with a rare blood disease, aplastic anemia. I’ve written about it many times before, but here I would like to talk about my return to track competition, four months after being discharged from the hospital. Nobody, not even my doctors, not even myself, thought I’d be healthy enough to compete, yet here I was. In this article I will talk about my first race – a race that taught me the importance of putting forth my best effort, of giving my all to the hurdles.
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My first race back from aplastic anemia came on a cold, windy day in March. That time of year in Southeastern Pennsylvania is always cold, but it was particularly frigid on this day. The temperature was in the high 30’s, and the wind chill factor made it feel even colder than that. Still, I managed to do okay in the 110 hurdles, winning the race and running a decent time.
But the race I was really worried about would come later in the meet: the 300 meter hurdles. Although I was in my senior year, my personal best in that event, 45.3, had come at the end of my sophomore year. The aplastic anemia kicked in my junior year. Around March of that year, the extreme chronic fatigue started to take over my life. I had run 46-something as my best that year before my coach and I agreed I should stop competing in that event in order to focus on the shorter race.
Because of the debilitating fatigue I had felt in the four or five times I had competed in the 300 hurdles my junior year, I still felt terrified of that race – despite the fact that my blood counts were all back to normal, and despite the fact that I had been performing very well in workouts. A part of me still believed that once I reached the fourth hurdle, or the fifth, or the sixth, that all-engulfing fatigue would swallow me whole and all the progress I had made would be dashed to bits.
I had about an hour between races. During that time, I bundled up in sweat clothes, a wool-knit hat, ski gloves, and even a scarf. I felt like a popsicle. I tried to keep moving around, to keep my muscles loose as I cheered on my teammates in their races and field events.
When it came time to warm up for my race, I did some easy sprints at half-speed on the infield, and I felt surprisingly good. Maybe this race will go okay, I thought.
I decided that the best strategy would be to not put too much pressure on myself. Just finish, I told myself. If I could just get through this race without dying of exhaustion, I could then work on dropping my time from there. On a cold day like this, why go all-out and risk the possibility of pulling a muscle? I would take off the hat and gloves and scarf, but I’d leave my sweats on.
Fortunately, nobody was putting any pressure on me. No one had any expectations for me. My coaches had told me on the first day of practice that they were proud of me for just being there at all, after all I had been through. We had another good 300 hurdler, Mike Stinson, who had taken over as the best on our team the previous year, so the team didn’t need for me to step up. I could hold it down in the 110’s, and Mike could hold it down in the 300’s. Meanwhile, my parents and teammates felt the same as my coaches. Everyone already looked upon me as an inspiring figure, having returned from a life-threatening blood disease to once again train and compete as a track athlete. Three months earlier, nobody, including myself, would’ve thought that to be possible.
Yet as I continued to warm up, something within me wasn’t satisfied with just going out there and “doing my best.” No, I really wanted to do my best. I wanted to find out what my best was. I didn’t come back from aplastic anemia just to give a lukewarm effort. Freezing cold or not, first race of the year or not, terrified of the 300 hurdles or not, I was going to run as fast as I could and let the results be what they will.
In the final minutes leading up to the race, I stripped down to just my uniform, double-knotted my spikes, set my blocks down in my lane, and silently waited for the starter to give the first command.
When the gun fired, I fired out of the blocks and attacked the first hurdle. I kept sprinting, maintained a fluid rhythm through the first half of the race. When I reached the curve I noted that I was still ahead; no one had passed me yet, not even Mike. And even more surprising, I didn’t hit the wall. Every time I took a breath, I was able to find the oxygen I needed to keep pushing ahead.
As I crossed the finish line in first place, I felt a sense of relief and joy wash over me. Relief that this race could no longer destroy me like it did the previous year, joy that I had actually won.
My time was 44.5, almost a full second faster than my personal best from sophomore year. When Mike congratulated me after the race, without a smile on his face, I realized that my victory meant that he had lost his place as our team’s best 300 hurdler. It occurred to me that he had been beaten by a better athlete, not a harder worker. Even amidst my joy, it didn’t seem fair to me that Mike, who had made himself into a good hurdler on pure hard work and limited athletic ability, should have to go back to playing second fiddle to me, like he had had to sophomore year. I thanked him for congratulating me and told him he had run a great race too.
A couple minutes later, as I walked back across the track to grab my sweat clothes, I had some time to contemplate my life. While I felt elated about winning, and ecstatic about the personal best, the most rewarding element of the whole experience was not the race itself, but my attitude heading into it. I could have backed down, I could have settled. But I didn’t.
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