So yesterday we had a cross country invitational at Roxbury. This place probably has the flattest course of all time, the weather was absolutely perfect, and I was in a fantastic mood because I was fully expecting to PR. As luck would have it, about half a mile into the race, the muscles around my shin began to feel really tight and weird. By the end of the first mile, I couldn't focus on anything but the pain in my shins and my strides were probably all of about two feet long. I was barely jogging. Pissed, humiliated, disappointed, the only thing I could think of doing was continue running until I see my coach, then drop out. But as I kept on running, and my shins kept on killing me, I couldn't find my effing coach so I finally just told a random official I was dropping out and stepped out of the race. And there it was: for the very first time ever since I began cross country in 8th grade, I dropped out of a race. I hated that official for a second; he looked so pitying.
I was pissed and stuff but I sure wasn't expecting that when my teammates came over to ask what was wrong I'd start bawling my eyes out like crazy...but now I come to the point of this entry. Sometimes, people can be so nice. Like a freshman who I've never even spoken to before ran off and came back carrying a bag of ice for me...and another girl went to get the coach, who I thought would yell the shit out of me and instead told me, "Don't sweat it, Brooke." And another girl kept reassuring me that it was better to drop out of a race than to make the injury worse, and another girl told me she'd yell at Mr. Talbot if he got mad at me.
So I don't know, I was an idiot and went to play Frisbee later in the day and now my shins and are just dying. Lesson learned: stop overworking your body.
More important lesson learned: you should always be nice to people because you may not realize it but you could really make someone's day so much better.
