My Greatest Mile Was Only Half Of One

We are blessed with the ability to heal for a reason.

Thanks Mom for taking this picture. I didn’t know how important this was run was going to be… but you did.

It wasn’t my longest run. It wasn’t my fastest run. There wasn’t any cheering. No great epiphanies either. I remember being scared before I started. But I remember being excited too. I was scared my foot was going to still hurt. I was excited it might not. February 4th. I can remember the date too. I was a junior in HS. I only ran a half mile. 400 meters out. Turn around. 400 meters back to home. That’s it. My most important run. It was only 800 meters long. 

Five months earlier, in September, I opened my XC season with the fastest time by a NJ runner at an invitational in northern New Jersey. Based off that performance I was invited to run the prestigious 5th Avenue Mile in New York City. It’s a really cool event. They close down one of the most famous stretches of road in the world for a series of mile races. Police cars lead you down a road lined with roaring spectators. It was and is an amazing experience. I left NYC and headed back to NJ fired up and excited about the cross country season ahead of me. I was ready.

Then my foot started to hurt. Then it hurt worse. Don’t get me wrong… I was a distance runner… I knew what it felt like to be hurting on a run. But hurting and being hurt are not the same thing. I didn’t know that though. I was 16. I’d never been hurt before. So I believed the pain would stop if I could just get through another run. And if I didn’t tell anyone then maybe it wasn’t real. Taping it alone, icing it alone, screaming at it alone, throwing things around my room alone - it only hurt more and the pain was real. 

September ran into October. Told to take a few days off. Told to run on it again. Told it would get better. It didn’t. It was something to do with ligaments. No, it was something to do with muscles. No, it was something to do with tendons. Misdiagnosed again and again. Something was wrong. I was told to stop. I was told I couldn’t run. 

October became November. And I got mono. Then I got strep throat. I had to miss school. I had to miss practice. And being away from it all I realized how much I actually missed going to school and how much I missed running. I got over the mono. I got over the strep throat. But my foot still hurt. The cross country season ended with me on the sideline instead of on the starting line. 

In December the bone scan would tell me that I had 4 separate cracks in my foot. Explains the pain. Explains why I couldn’t run through it too. And it would explain the knee high plaster cast I was put in and the crutches I relied on to get me from class to class but never to practice. I kept that right foot off the ground for weeks and weeks. I went straight home after school. I thought about how every time I put my right foot on the ground for the months prior it would hurt.

It had gotten to the point that I’d flinch even before I even put my foot down. Every. Other. Step. I braced for the pain.  I anticipated it. I waited for it. There’s a feeling you have when you’re always in pain… it’s sour. It’s like being a little sick all the time. It’s exhausting. I was exhausted. Tired. Tired of the pain. Tired of being tired. 

The cast came off in late January. A few days later I put my running shoes on again. Even wore the team jacket. I sat on my bed. Were those butterflies? Was I nervous? Am I scared to run? Maybe. Maybe I am. But I was more scared of not running.

I wanted to feel like I had a purpose again. I wanted the burning in my lungs and the battery acid filling my legs again. I wanted to struggle out there on the trails and the roads. I wanted to run. I needed to run again. I was not afraid of hurting. Remember, I’m a distance runner.

I was just afraid of still being hurt. Please… please don’t hurt. 

I knew I was going to start and finish this run at the same place. I knew I wouldn't be gone for long… a few minutes at most. And I knew one way or another I wouldn’t be the same when I got back. 

Please. Give me this. 

I started down my front lawn. Another starting line crossed. I made it to the end of the street. I was already fatigued. But it was the right kind of fatigue. I turned around and headed home. My legs were getting heavy. My breathing was labored. I was hurting.

But I wasn’t hurt anymore.

It was the only time my Mom took a picture of one my runs. I didn’t even know it existed until she showed it to me after my high school graduation sixteen months later. Thousands of miles run later. But none of those that followed this run were as special to me as this one. None of those miles meant as much to me as this one here. 

And this mile was only half of one.