A Broken Season
By Kevin O’Neill
My knee was just fine.
I could walk immediately after the incident, so I knew that I would be okay. In fact, I continued to play basketball for another twenty minutes or so. If I could only walk, and not keep playing, then I might have at least considered the possibility of injury. But I could do so much more. Sure, I was careful to avoid hitting my left knee against the pole for a second time whenever I took the ball to the basket, but I survived competing in a contact sport. There was no way this could ever prevent me from running track.
And there wasn’t. My weekly pick-up game of basketball would have no effect on my track season. As I returned from Cragmont to my house, I had only a minor limp. A man was trimming trees from a ladder on the sidewalk, leaving my path covered with branches. He paused to let me by, and I quickened my pace, feeling no additional strain. I thought of icing my knee- the left one- but by the time I got back and realized we were temporarily out of ice, I had already decided I wouldn’t really need it. I had a similar feeling after a casual game of Saturday afternoon basketball many times, almost every time, and had never been hurt for long. I was always able to recover completely by the next track practice.
The next day, I woke up with a slight soreness in my knee, much like the kind I would typically receive after a tough workout. Not wanting to take the weekend off from running, and feeling a little excessively energetic, I decided to run the Fire Trail. This was one of my favorite workouts, however intimidating it may be for non-hill-enthusiasts. By choosing this route, not only could I run the two miles of incline I was forced into by living in the hills, but an additional such mile followed with a dessert-like fifty meters of the steepest slope known to humankind: the Connector. It was a fairly uneventful run, minus the typical runner’s high and the most minuscule of all tingles in my knee. Tomorrow, I would be back to normal.
That
Monday, the track team ran down from Berkeley High, along
My knee had to be just fine.
The previous cross country season had been my worst yet. After breaking the five-minute barrier for the mile during sophomore year, I was ready to inherit a spot on varsity. Our two fastest runners had graduated, and my two main competitors had either been fifteen seconds slower than me in the mile, or failed to run a track race altogether. I began the season a top five runner, but the stress of junior year and my reckless decision to play ultimate Frisbee soon pushed me down to seventh, then eighth or ninth. It took a last-minute injury by a teammate for me to move up on the depth chart and run the last race of the season.
As embarrassed as I was to have almost been dropped entirely from varsity, I knew I would have a chance to redeem myself in track. I expected a clear course from there on, but more obstacles arose. Just three weeks into the track season, I was injured for two more. For the longest time, I wore an old pair of shoes that didn’t offer the necessary support, even for casual walking. Over time, my right knee wore down to the point I could no longer run. This was meant to be my only injury for the rest of the year.
After
a brief, yet complete, recovery, I was due to compete in my very first race of
the season. I ran the 800-meter event at
the Skyline Distance Fiesta, where the top two runners in each heat would be
guaranteed a t-shirt. As a
formerly-injured athlete, I was placed in a relatively slow heat. Despite a huge lack of preparation, I managed
to run a time of
“Is there a Kevin O’Neill here?” I was ready to hide behind my abnormally skinny teammates, hoping I wouldn’t be found. “We have a t-shirt for him.”
“Really?” I could barely talk after racing so hard.
“Yes, we do. One of the runners who beat you was from Skyline, and we have a policy preventing anyone from the host school from winning a prize in such a fashion.”
“Thank…you…” I had nothing left. I couldn’t even demonstrate excitement, although I felt it as I never had before after a track race. She handed me the shirt, a red one with WINNER on it. To continue in the spirit of the “Fiesta,” they even put an upside-down exclamation mark before it. This was just my first race of the year, but more were to come, maybe no more with free t-shirts, but there were sure to be many in which I could at least make a claim for the title of winner.
Just days later, I tried to continue down Channing Way, to Aquatic Park, but any attempt at more than a block forced me to switch from jogging and limping to walking and limping. Technically, when you get injured, you’re supposed to turn around and get back to the track as soon as you can. There is no reason to complete the workout; even any additional walking will likely hurt you even more, so it’s best to limit that as much as you can. As I ran down to the water, my friend and teammate Andrew saw me during his return.
“Kevin, you should turn around if you’re hurt.” I guess he saw me wincing.
“No, I’m cool. I just have to run it off.”
Andrew
shrugged and moved on as I alternated between attempting to run and attempting
to walk. I already had an injury that
season, when my antiquated shoes wore down themselves and my other knee, so I
knew I was due for no more. I forced
myself to arrive at
When I finally arrived at the track, I decided that I should at least mention this to the distance coach.
“Brian, I think I might need some ice.” We always called Brian by his first name, often without the formal “Coach” prefix. He was only about nine or ten years older than most of the runners, a grad student and philosophy major fresh out of college, so we connected with him not just as our coach, but as our friend.
“What for? Do you need me to help bring you to the trainer?”
“It’s my knee- not the one from before, the other one. I’m fine. I’m just guessing it would help to show a little caution and make sure it doesn’t get any worse from the swelling.”
“Good. You know where the trainer’s room is, right?”
I had actually never been there before, but Brain gave me good directions and I found it almost immediately. I grabbed a bag of ice from the trainer, and made it back to the rest of the team, although my walking speed was slower on my return.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Kevin?” Andrew just had to keep addressing my not-injury. It did show that he cared, though as I had already explained to Brian, I was temporarily unable to run, but it was nothing at all serious.
“Yeah, of course. This is just to make sure I don’t get any worse. If I keep my ice on long enough, I’ll be able to run tomorrow. How was your run?”
“It was fine. Have you talked with Brian about this? You don’t want a repeat of last month when your shoes-”
“Yes, and he basically agreed with me. Don’t worry about it.”
My knee is just fine.
For three weeks, I stuck to a rigid practice routine. First, I would show up at the track with just a little soreness in my left knee, but nothing unusual. I would talk to Brian for two minutes, and after I convinced him I was feeling alright, I would begin jogging on the artificial turf inside the track. This surface was softer than that of the track, and felt like a mattress next to pavement, so it was perfect for someone like me with an insignificant injury that would be gone by week’s end. Nevertheless, it was too painful, so I would stop, do sit-ups, and try to explain that I would be ready again the following day. I would have considered rest, but in the words of our great coach Brian, “A runner can lose a lot of their base with just two days off in a row.”
I maintained this philosophy for the entirety of this period, but eventually found an excuse to take a break: Spring Break. No, I would not be getting too drunk to run, but I would be visiting the East Coast to look at colleges and didn’t need the extra burden of finding somewhere to run. Brian agreed, knowing that I probably should have rested even earlier, much like I should have iced earlier. For five days, and two missed track meets, I rested, only subjecting my knee to miles of walking on countless campus tours. Hopefully, I would be able to run another race that season.
After my short recovery, I was finally able to run again, although I was still limited to turf-jogging and warm-up laps around the track. Even rounding the curves was difficult, but I soon was able to rejoin the rest of the team in their workouts. Jazz Band forced me to start an hour later than everyone else, but this still counted for something, right?
One day in mid-April, I managed to feel healthy enough to finish a sprint workout with my teammates. I had been running some distance for a while, but an increase in speed usually resulted in an increase in stress on my knee, so I had put off any speed work until then. The other runners had just 600-meter and 300-meter intervals to go, either because they were completing a pyramid workout (in which the length of intervals increase, then decrease), or chose random multiples of 100 to run. Either way, this was about all I could do considering the shape I was in, so I planned to put all my energy into each one.
I struggled through the 600, aware of the upcoming 300, and not used to maintaining a high speed for that long. But I knew I could do better on the next one. As the 300 contained a curve, on which I still could not run my fastest, I sped ahead of everyone else, knowing I would slow for the middle hundred meters. We all reached the final straight, with me in third, yet ready to accelerate. In this moment, I reached into myself and realized a speed I had not felt since the months before my injury, perhaps ever. Two seconds after I finished, my teammates crossed the line, done with the workout. It was not a race, nor a particularly tough workout, as I had joined with about a quarter of it remaining, but I was back.
Some days, my knee would still hurt, and I would have to stop early. I despised those times, when I would have so much energy, yet so little means of using it. The only reason I could stand it was the fact that everyone else was already leaving an hour before me and I was able to end my workouts with them. Every so often, we would have a meet, but I would not be able to race, just watch, or not attend at all if it were during school.
Eventually, I was ready to race. After discussing my options with Brian, we decided that I would just run the 800-meter event. I would have preferred the 1600 or even the 3200, but I didn’t have the endurance to run greater distances yet. Unfortunately, the only meet left was the League Finals at the beginning of May, and I had just a week to prepare.
I was scared. I was frightened that by pushing my body to its limits, I would place just enough stress to pull something in my knee, re-injure myself, and have to go through a more extensive rehab. Yes, I had survived the 300 at top speed, but the 800 was different. The 800 is biologically and psychologically the most difficult track event of all. In most races, the human body uses either mostly aerobic or mostly anaerobic respiration. A 200 runner, for example, can just condition himself by sprinting because he runs for 25 seconds and his muscles only need anaerobic respiration. A marathon runner, on the other hand, only needs aerobic respiration for similar reasons. But an 800 runner needs both. Running an 800 at race pace requires nearly equal amounts of both. This often pushes runners to their limits. In 1928, when several runners fainted after the 800 Olympic Final, the event was discontinued on the women’s side for 32 years because it was too difficult. And I would be running this race with days of preparation, against runners with an entire season’s worth.
Before I knew it, I was at the starting line. I had worried all week about the race, not just due to the risk of injury, but because the top four would advance to the Bayshore meet, and I wanted to run another race. If I received fifth or worse, I would be done racing until cross country in the fall.
“Runners ready…” BAM! The gun went off signaling the start of the race. I tried to jockey for position, but wasn’t used to the intensity of meets and started significantly behind everyone else. One, two, three …ten people, I counted, trying to determine how many I would need to catch in order to finish fourth. Seven. The first two were easy, inexperienced runners who started too fast and deserved me passing them on the first turn. Another followed in seconds. But I was still trailing the seven fastest runners in that race, and the ones I needed to catch were already far ahead. If I were in better shape, I would have tried to catch them sooner, but I had to save for that last sprint, the one where I would need to pass all but three runners.
After just two hundred meters, I was already out of breath. My workouts had not prepared me for anything as competitive as this. Temporarily distracted from the intensity of the race, my thoughts turned to my knee: would it last for the entire two laps around the track? Sure, I had been participating in workouts for a few weeks, but a race is the ultimate indicator of a runner’s health.
I was reminded of my mission as I managed to pass another opponent at the halfway point. Just one more lap to go. There was no holding back now. Regardless of how tired I got during a race, I could always go all out on the last four hundred meters. I began to accelerate, faster and faster, the adrenaline and endorphins counteracting any pain in my knee. I felt a new surge of energy, every single ounce I had saved during my time off came to life in me. Yet my body could not put it to use. My legs could not harness it, my lungs could not grab enough oxygen to process it, my heart could not pump fast enough. I was somehow able to pass two more runners in the final hundred meters, but by the time I finished, five others had already crossed the line. I was sixth.
I had fallen short of my goal again. I knew exactly what place I had to finish ahead of, but failed. Only this time, there was no chance for another race, or even a t-shirt. I hoped that just two runners would scratch the 800, instead choosing to qualify for another, more important, race. None did.
“I couldn’t do it, Brian. My legs just weren’t there.”
I expected Brian to just briefly attempt to console me, to explain that next season would not be long from now, but instead, he reached into his philosophical playbook and pulled out an alternative approach.
“That was amazing, Kevin!” What? My losing to four runners by up to ten seconds, or the fact that one of them just happened to be a freshman?
“You spent just weeks preparing for the hardest event in track and ran it in two minutes and fifteen seconds.”
“But that was two seconds slower than my time earlier this year.” I was skeptical of any optimistic take on my failure to advance.
“Still, you had only a couple of weeks to get ready, and your knee held up pretty well, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” I was still unconvinced, but I pretended to be satisfied with our conversation and left to stretch out by myself.
Three weeks later, I returned to the track to talk with Brian about my knee one last time.
I had been running
down to
Again, this run
led me down
However, I was still weakened by the strain, afraid I might have permanently damaged my knee beyond repair. I debated over whether to tell my team. Only five of us continued to train after the last meet, one of whom had qualified for another race that weekend, leaving us just four for the relay. If any of us couldn’t make it, the other three would be left out too. Fortunately, I didn’t have to decide. One of the remaining four also qualified for a second race, disbanding our relay team.
While my season was over, and I knew I would have no more opportunities to race- or re-injure my knee- I did need to speak with Brian.
“Hey Kevin, what’s up?”
“I’ve been thinking, about my knee and everything, and I think I need to take some time off. I probably tried to return to running too quickly and I didn’t let it heal all the way.”
“Uh–huh.”
“I’m going to do absolutely no running for a month, so my knee can recover completely.”
“Well, I think that’s a great idea. Make sure you get plenty of rest. And hopefully, you’ll be in good shape for cross country in the fall.”
“Okay. Thanks, Brian.”
“Alright, Kevin. See you in the fall.”
It would be a long time until then, and I would have to suffer for an entire month of rest, wishing everyday that I did not have to abstain from exercise. But I needed this recovery; I needed this time to heal so I could return to running without the constant worry of injury. Soon, I would be able to run again.
And my knee would be just fine.