With everything going around about UO track & field program I figured it was as good a time as any to write a post on my college running experience.
(https://www.oregonlive.com/trackandfield/2021/10/women-athletes-allege-body-shaming-within-oregon-ducks-track-and-field-program.html ; https://fnb-reporter.com/female-athletes-say-body-shaming-within-oregon-track-and-field-program-led-to-eating-disorders/)
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They say a picture’s worth a thousand words. Well here’s two.
2011:
Something I don’t like to talk about—my own eating struggles.
I had the absolute best female coach/role model in High
School. Having perfectionistic tendencies by nature and wanting to do
everything to be the best runner I could be I would come to her with questions
about nutrition, which under the surface were tied to body weight. I had and
have a pretty small frame and build muscle easy, and was concerned whether I
should change my diet to become smaller. She always encouraged me to eat
healthy but above all eat enough to support running and prevent injury.
Despite this, I decided to “clean up” my diet towards the
end of High School, cutting out all desserts and eating the plainest food imaginable
(think plain toast, steamed vegetables, baked chicken breast). At the time I
was taking a medicine called Accutane (to clear skin) and the combination of
the stress I was putting on myself and the known side effects of Accutane
(dehydration that is very hard to combat) I ended up having a poor senior track
season. I was still able to earn a small scholarship to a D1 program, the
University of Georgia.
The coach at UGA gave us a summer training plan, designed to
hit 60 miles per week. I averaged 20-40, in track and cross country
respectively, in HS. Still, I set my mind and body to the task. Unfortunately, my
tendons and bones could not adapt to the added stress, and I developed a stress
fracture in my foot. Thus, I was in a boot first semester of college.
I had wanted a large and competitive running program so I
would have other female athletes to run with, something I did not experience regularly
on HS, especially on workout days. Unfortunately, I had no idea what 30 females
with perfectionistic tendencies and a coach who did not reign in these
tendencies would be like. We all wanted to be the best we could be. We all
wanted a spot on the travel team. We all wanted coach’s approval, and coach
wanted the best female travel squad possible. Often surrounding myself with
highly achieving people, I see now that what they need is often encouragement that
they are doing everything right. They don’t need labels. They don’t need added
pressure. They need support. Without support and positive encouragement they may
develop extreme behavior of self-control. They are extra hard on themselves. In
college this is what I saw. From the girl who restricted food until noon, to
the one who cut herself off at 5pm, I saw so many different disordered eating
habits it made my head spin. I began to wonder if this is what it took to get
faster.
Mealtime was stressful to say the least. I felt guilty for
not cutting out certain food groups and for eating a snack after dinner and
before and right after practice. I began to make arbitrary rules of my own.
In tandem to the stress of food, every time one injury would
heal and I would begin to feel like I was getting back into shape another would
crop up. The string of injuries was so mentally exhausting. Overall, I felt
like I was doing everything wrong even though I spent hours in the training room
getting treatment for injuries as well as spending hours cross training and
controlling my eating with small healthy meals.
I was asked to give up my running scholarship and I felt
like my entire world fell apart. Everything I dreamed of since HS, running competitively
with a team of female athletes, all the improvements I hoped to make… all these
dreams were shattered.
At the time I thought I was the problem. I thought I was too
weak, too injury prone, not disciplined or smart enough to stay healthy and get
faster. My disordered eating escalated. I became vegetarian. I lost 15 pounds. Largely,
I isolated myself. I went to class, I worked out a ton, because on top of
disordered eating, I was compulsively exercising. Basically, if I didn’t
exercise “enough”, I had to cut my food intake even more.
I never lost my love for running. I cycled, swam, lifted
weights, did yoga, on top of a little bit of running. However, I began to hear
rumors that the new track/cross country coach was more involved and had a
better training program and less female athletes were getting injured (when I
was formally on the team as many as half of the females were injured at one
time). I decided to see if I could walk on. The coach was about as different as
the old coach as one could get. While the other coach was gregarious and
workouts seemed like whims then towards the end he became largely absent, the
new coach asked me many questions about my prior and current mileage and training
and what I would bring to the team. Apparently, what I said was enough for him
to let me walk on, and he observed me on workouts and made sure I ran with the
freshman females on lower mileage programs as well as assigning me a senior mentor
for an afternoon shake-out, since we both had class conflicts during practice. I
got really fit fast, despite the other top females obliterating me in shorter
all-out reps. Coach even told me it didn’t matter how fast I was, he could see
I had good endurance and that’s what cross country was all about.
My form was choppy. I hadn’t been doing faster workouts or
drills in so long. I didn’t have the muscle I used to have. Despite this I was
good enough to make the travel team. I was ecstatic, a second chance to make it
at the college level! I had weird tightness in the high left hamstring that I
guess would feel like it was pulling when I sped up and sometimes my hip would
ache after running or getting up from sitting in class. I didn’t think much of
it, and had the trainer stretch my hip flexors and hamstrings every day after
practice.
Fast forward to the end of the season at Regionals. I was so
happy and so nervous. The gun went off and only half a mile in my back began
spasming and hurt so bad I couldn’t continue running. I tried and only managed
to limp. I started bawling. A med golf cart picked me up. Coach was furious, why
hadn’t I told him it was bothering me?! He could have put someone else in. I managed
to reply between sobs that it wasn’t hurting until the race started. The bus
ride home was the worst. I had to hurdle over I think a cooler or the tent and
coach said we needed to work on hip mobility.
I got an x-ray, then MRI. My hip had fractured in one place
that had largely healed, but then a new fracture occurred below (see diagram).
How was my hip fractured all the way through? How had I run
on 2 fractures? What did this say about me? What did this say about me running?
I’ve never thought of myself as a quitter, but I quit for a
second time. Running had broken my heart again and I was ready to move on with my life.
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