I've been having foot pain for the past few days.
I've been trying to figure out what to write about.
I could write about how I would like crutches so people could call me Crutchy and I could talk about what I did to Mr. Snyder's sauerkraut.
I was thinking of how to describe my pain. I can really only compare it to shin splints. In my foot.
Foot splints.
And that lead me to write about track.
I ran track and cross country all throughout high school.
I didn't do it because I was amazing, but because I wanted to. Kathleen and I did it together, and we had a lot of fun.
(I'm the super white one with no eyes. Kathleen is the one in yellow who looks like she's in pain. Please remember that, while I am freakishly tall, I was a freshman. That's why my hair looks like that)
However, it wasn't all fun and games. We did have to run. We also had to deal with the coaches. Let's call them Male Coach and Female Coach, to protect their identities.
Like I said, I wasn't amazing at track or cross country. In fact, you might say that I was the worst on the team. This caused much distress to Male Coach. He didn't like imperfection. Because I was the definition of imperfection in running, he didn't like me too much. One of the things about me that caused Male Coach to be the most distressed was the fact that I walked occasionally.
Before you judge me and think that I was one of those slacker kids who only ran during meets when their coaches were nearby, I'd like to squelch that thought right there. One of the things I'm most proud of is that I never walked during a meet.
However, when you run in Oklahoma at 3:00 in the afternoon in August, (it's approximately 105 degrees with 90% humidity at that time) it get's difficult to run 5 miles and not take a break.
My walking angered Male Coach. He couldn't kick me off the team because it was public school, and I had really good grades, meaning I helped with the team's collective GPA. But, I didn't follow his requests to the letter, causing him anger.
Let me illustrate a picture of Angry Male Coach with my words.
It starts with the chin. Anger causes Male Coach's head to recede back to his neck until he has virtually no chin. It's basically just neck and face. Then his right eye begins to twitch, causing his head to tilt towards the right. While he's yelling at you, his neck/chin combination jiggles, making what used to be a completely normal looking person look like an angry jiggling purple turtle. The problem is that laughing at Male Coach only caused him to be more angry. It was an ongoing vicious cycle of laughing and jiggling.
Female Coach was more passive aggressive with her disappointment with me. Female Coach would hint at how frustrated she was that I'd been on the team for four years and they had yet to see a HUGE improvement. She would say things like "we're just glad Carrie comes" and "Carrie is talented in other ways." Like they'd given up on me, not expecting improvement, just felt obligated to acknowledge the fact that I tried. She would tell me that it was okay if I didn't do well at practice, because I wasn't built to be a runner. I was built to be a shot putter, but just didn't have the upper body strength. That might not sound bad to you guys, but it basically means she thought I wasn't thin enough to be a runner, and I was weak.
I did try though. That's the thing. there were several times that I tried very hard and did well. There were other times that I tried very hard and failed. I look back on it now and am astonished at my ability to wipe off embarrassment. Like in this occassion:
When I was a freshmen, I was running the 400 meter dash in meets (because they had nothing else for me to do), but didn't qualify for regionals. This was not shocking. As I said, i was slow.
However, I also had really good grades. At that point, my GPA was a 4.0. In order for the team to win the "smart kids" award (I'm not sure if that's what it's really called, but that's what we're going to call it) they needed me to compete.
They couldn't have me run the 400, I was too slow. They couldn't have me run anything.
I couldn't throw a shot put ball to save my life, and hurdles and high jump still scare the willies out of me. I couldn't pole vault, that takes a lot of training. But, there was one thing they hadn't tried before: long jump.
To their surprise, when they took me over and told me to jump, I didn't fail miserably. I made the minimum requirement to compete (making it into the sandpit). So, two days before the regional meet, they took me over and gave me a crash course in long jump.
The problem: two days wasn't long enough. I knew this as soon as we showed up for the meet. I took one look at the sand pit and went to talk to Female Coach.
"Female Coach," (I'm pretty sure I actually used her real name) "their sandpit is a few feet farther from the spring board than ours is. I don't think I can make the sandpit," I told her in my most worried and shaky voice.
"Carrie, don't be silly," she said. "It's no farther away than ours."
We both knew she was lying to me. She didn't want me to freak out, but it was much farther away. I spent the next few hours of the meet alternating between praying to not embarrass myself and having entire-body convulsions.
By the time it was my turn to compete, the prayers worked. I was no longer scared of being embarrassed. I had accepted my fate, I was going to die. I watched the other long jumpers on the team compete, and probably place (they actually had skill and had been doing it for longer than two days).
When it was my turn, I stepped up to the starting line, ran down the strip of track, jumped off the spring board, and went as far as I could. Sadly, as far as I could was (as I'd predicted to Female Coach) not as far as the sandpit.
I repeated this action 3 times. After I finished, I left the few feet of track in front of the sandpit, walked over to Kathleen, and said "I'm hungry, want a granola bar?"
Kathleen was shocked. I'd pretty much just made a fool of myself in front of the entire region's track and field athletes, but it didn't bother me. Yes, I could hear their disdainful comments and snorts of disapproval, but I was used to it. I ran track for fun, not for glory.
Plus, I was hungry, and there were granola bars in my track bag.
I've been trying to figure out what to write about.
I could write about how I would like crutches so people could call me Crutchy and I could talk about what I did to Mr. Snyder's sauerkraut.
I was thinking of how to describe my pain. I can really only compare it to shin splints. In my foot.
Foot splints.
And that lead me to write about track.
I ran track and cross country all throughout high school.
I didn't do it because I was amazing, but because I wanted to. Kathleen and I did it together, and we had a lot of fun.
(I'm the super white one with no eyes. Kathleen is the one in yellow who looks like she's in pain. Please remember that, while I am freakishly tall, I was a freshman. That's why my hair looks like that)However, it wasn't all fun and games. We did have to run. We also had to deal with the coaches. Let's call them Male Coach and Female Coach, to protect their identities.
Like I said, I wasn't amazing at track or cross country. In fact, you might say that I was the worst on the team. This caused much distress to Male Coach. He didn't like imperfection. Because I was the definition of imperfection in running, he didn't like me too much. One of the things about me that caused Male Coach to be the most distressed was the fact that I walked occasionally.
Before you judge me and think that I was one of those slacker kids who only ran during meets when their coaches were nearby, I'd like to squelch that thought right there. One of the things I'm most proud of is that I never walked during a meet.
However, when you run in Oklahoma at 3:00 in the afternoon in August, (it's approximately 105 degrees with 90% humidity at that time) it get's difficult to run 5 miles and not take a break.
My walking angered Male Coach. He couldn't kick me off the team because it was public school, and I had really good grades, meaning I helped with the team's collective GPA. But, I didn't follow his requests to the letter, causing him anger.
Let me illustrate a picture of Angry Male Coach with my words.
It starts with the chin. Anger causes Male Coach's head to recede back to his neck until he has virtually no chin. It's basically just neck and face. Then his right eye begins to twitch, causing his head to tilt towards the right. While he's yelling at you, his neck/chin combination jiggles, making what used to be a completely normal looking person look like an angry jiggling purple turtle. The problem is that laughing at Male Coach only caused him to be more angry. It was an ongoing vicious cycle of laughing and jiggling.
Female Coach was more passive aggressive with her disappointment with me. Female Coach would hint at how frustrated she was that I'd been on the team for four years and they had yet to see a HUGE improvement. She would say things like "we're just glad Carrie comes" and "Carrie is talented in other ways." Like they'd given up on me, not expecting improvement, just felt obligated to acknowledge the fact that I tried. She would tell me that it was okay if I didn't do well at practice, because I wasn't built to be a runner. I was built to be a shot putter, but just didn't have the upper body strength. That might not sound bad to you guys, but it basically means she thought I wasn't thin enough to be a runner, and I was weak.
I did try though. That's the thing. there were several times that I tried very hard and did well. There were other times that I tried very hard and failed. I look back on it now and am astonished at my ability to wipe off embarrassment. Like in this occassion:
When I was a freshmen, I was running the 400 meter dash in meets (because they had nothing else for me to do), but didn't qualify for regionals. This was not shocking. As I said, i was slow.
However, I also had really good grades. At that point, my GPA was a 4.0. In order for the team to win the "smart kids" award (I'm not sure if that's what it's really called, but that's what we're going to call it) they needed me to compete.
They couldn't have me run the 400, I was too slow. They couldn't have me run anything.
I couldn't throw a shot put ball to save my life, and hurdles and high jump still scare the willies out of me. I couldn't pole vault, that takes a lot of training. But, there was one thing they hadn't tried before: long jump.
To their surprise, when they took me over and told me to jump, I didn't fail miserably. I made the minimum requirement to compete (making it into the sandpit). So, two days before the regional meet, they took me over and gave me a crash course in long jump.
The problem: two days wasn't long enough. I knew this as soon as we showed up for the meet. I took one look at the sand pit and went to talk to Female Coach.
"Female Coach," (I'm pretty sure I actually used her real name) "their sandpit is a few feet farther from the spring board than ours is. I don't think I can make the sandpit," I told her in my most worried and shaky voice.
"Carrie, don't be silly," she said. "It's no farther away than ours."
We both knew she was lying to me. She didn't want me to freak out, but it was much farther away. I spent the next few hours of the meet alternating between praying to not embarrass myself and having entire-body convulsions.
By the time it was my turn to compete, the prayers worked. I was no longer scared of being embarrassed. I had accepted my fate, I was going to die. I watched the other long jumpers on the team compete, and probably place (they actually had skill and had been doing it for longer than two days).
When it was my turn, I stepped up to the starting line, ran down the strip of track, jumped off the spring board, and went as far as I could. Sadly, as far as I could was (as I'd predicted to Female Coach) not as far as the sandpit.
I repeated this action 3 times. After I finished, I left the few feet of track in front of the sandpit, walked over to Kathleen, and said "I'm hungry, want a granola bar?"
Kathleen was shocked. I'd pretty much just made a fool of myself in front of the entire region's track and field athletes, but it didn't bother me. Yes, I could hear their disdainful comments and snorts of disapproval, but I was used to it. I ran track for fun, not for glory.
Plus, I was hungry, and there were granola bars in my track bag.
im sure you made some kind of record that day. aaaah, hilarity.
ReplyDeletePs i WAS in pain that day, that was Bartlesville man! That hill is killer!
ReplyDeleteToo bad there wasn't any fried rice in there.
ReplyDeleteMmmmm fried rice at track meets! If you eat too much, you barf, but it's soooo tasty!
ReplyDeleteyeah. the bartlesville meet was aweful.
ReplyDelete