I have been doing cross country since I was in the sixth grade. Now I am in the eleventh. As you get older, things get harder. I have experienced this through cross country. It’s not the physical pain that makes it hard; it’s the mental pain that comes with it. In seventh grade, I made the varsity team for cross country. I had previously run in the sixth grade as an unofficial runner. Seventh grade is when I started racing officially. That year I had three different injuries. I had a hip, knee, and ankle injury. But like a good runner, I toughened up and ran through it. It was terrible having an injury, but it didn’t mentally affect me. I kept my head high, and at the league championships, I got seventh place overall, and won a shirt. That year, I was only a couple places off from states. States is where the best team and the five best runners from each class go to compete against other sections in New York State. I didn’t have high expectations for that year since I was only in the seventh grade.
The next year, in eighth grade, I came back even faster than the last. That year I had a few injuries here and there but nothing major. That year I didn’t really have a clue to what I was doing. I ran because it was fun and easy. I was just a naïve eighth grader that blindly followed my coach and team captain. I ran throughout the whole summer. When school practices started, I ran twice a day: six miles in the morning, and six miles at night, for about two weeks. That year was my greatest year. At almost every invitational, I placed in the top twenty, sometimes top ten. I received medals at just about every race. That year I made it to states. That may have been one of the happiest moments of my entire life. Without even knowing it, I had worked so hard, and I got what I deserved. It felt like one thing in my life that actually worked out. All I could think about was how I had so many more years to get faster and stronger. I wasn’t even in high school. I had my whole career ahead of me. In that moment, I had promised myself that I would never burn out, get slower, or quit. I felt that it was my destiny to take running as far as I possibly could, to be the best.

In ninth grade I was determined. I put every minute I possibly could into running. Like eighth grade, I trained all summer and ran twice a day. Unlike in eighth grade, in ninth grade I felt like I was in control of what I was doing. I wasn’t blindly following anyone this year. I took control of my future. However, even though I don’t like to admit it, I may have overdone it a little. That year I ran so much I hurt my hip. I tried to run through the pain, but it felt impossible. I went to a sports doctor and a physical therapist. They tried to give me stretching techniques so that I could run through it. Ultimately, if I wanted the pain to stop and prevent permanent damage, I would have to stop running for a while. To me, this felt like the end of the world. I know it sounds dramatic, but it did. It was like when I lost my Aunt Alinda to cancer. So I had to weigh my options. Do I run to be supportive of my team, and risk further injury? Do I give up and give in to the pain? Stopping just seemed like defeat. I also wanted to run for my team and for myself, to prove that nothing could stop me. I ran at sectionals that year. I had a tiny bit of hope that I could run through the pain and make it to states. I was wrong. On the downhill during the race, I went too fast down the hill, and extreme pain shot up into my hip. This caused little tears along my hip muscle. That was my slowest time I had ever had in my whole cross country career. I failed to make it to states too. When I didn’t, it crushed me. It felt like someone had just broken my heart. I felt like there was a huge hole in my chest. I had just “broken up” with cross country. I never wanted to run again. The thing that helped me through that rough time was swimming. Swimming, unlike cross country, showed me improvement and success.

I had found a new love. The summer before tenth grade, I was crazy about swimming, like I had been with cross country. I never wanted to return to cross country because I had found something else to obsess over. Cross country felt useless to me. I found something that gave me what I wanted and more. Unfortunately for me, I had parents—parents who forced me to do cross country the next year in tenth grade. I then remembered the promise I made to myself: that I would never get burnt out or slow down and most of all, never give up. If I was going to do this, I was going to go all the way. I worked as hard as I possibly could, and I was sure if I did that I would be faster than I was in the eighth grade. Sadly, I was wrong. I was the slowest I had ever been; I didn’t know what had happened to me. It was the hardest I had ever trained. The races I had run were the hardest ones I’ve ever raced. I wasn’t going to let that get me down. I just trained harder and harder. That didn’t get me anywhere though. That caused me to get another injury, a stress fracture in my tibia. It hurt to walk, move, and especially run. After that I had pretty much given up. I ran sectionals and got a horrible time. After awhile though, you don’t cry about it anymore; you just go completely numb. I had accepted the fact that I was slower and I wasn’t the old Hannah. Every year, the cure for being miserable from cross country was swimming.

Even though this year in eleventh grade I didn’t want to run, I knew it wasn’t even worth putting up a fight. I tried going into this year with my head high. I did the same exact things I had done the previous years. This year I luckily don’t have an injury yet. But I am slow, at least to my standards. I remember in seventh grade being told girls are usually faster when they are younger, and as they get older, they get slower. I never thought it would happen to me. When I didn’t care, all the best things happened to me. As soon as I really started to care, it felt like everything good was purposely taken away from me. I race now trying to keep in mind that it’s just my mind stopping me from succeeding. I need to find a way to get rid of that mental block. I am hopeful that I can do it by the end of this year. If not this year, then I hope to before my senior year. I can’t believe that it’ll be my last year of cross country. It will be bitter sweet. I will be happy that the pain will finally be over after all those years. But then again, I did love cross country. I want to find that happiness it gave me and reconnect to it. My hopes are high that one day I will be the runner I used to be.