It was the National Cross-Country Championship. Excitement and nervousness flooded me as I looked around at all the competitors. I was new to running. I hadn’t sought running out because I suddenly felt this urge to run, nor did I come from a long ancestral lineage of runners which would naturally lead me into running. In fact, I cannot recall any family members ever going out for a jog. Rather, the impetus for me starting to run was a purely primitive competitive drive. I was the only girl on a boys’ traveling soccer team and one day the coach said everyone had to be able to run twenty minutes or they would not start. At that point in time, soccer was everything to me. It was where my shy, unsure self, transformed into a confident being. So, I began running. I never stopped.

It had snowed and rained in the days leading up to the championship. The trial was slippery with snow, ice, and mud. Because of the conditions, I borrowed running spikes from a teammate in a different age division for the race.

The gun fired and I started off with the other runners, glad to be moving to get warm against the bitter cold. About a half mile into the race, the unimaginable happened. My foot sank into thick mud and reemerged again without the running spike. In the middle of a pack of runners, I was faced with the inevitable: either finish the race with one foot covered only in a sock or not finish the race. Without much thought, I kept running.

When I passed my coach, who was cheering on the sidelines, I still had a mile and a half left to run. Looking right at my coach, I exclaimed “my foot is frozen.” And yet I ran on.