Run!

I'm sitting on the couch with my leg elevated and my ankle wrapped. Who gets hurt jogging? I used to be a track champion...now look at me. At least back then my injuries were glorious.

The year was 1997. I was in the ninth grade and was at a track meet over at Dunbar High School. Somehow I got put in the fastest heat for the 100 meter dash. All the dudes looked like they were in their second or third senior year of high school and I had no idea how I was supposed to beat them. I psyched myself out though.

"You're a cheetah. You're a black cheetah. You're so fast that you can play quarterback and wide receiver in the same play. Scratch that, you're not a cheetah. You're light! You're so fast that at night you can turn off the light and be in the bed asleep before the room gets dark."

It didn't work. "You see all these girls in the bleachers...don't embarrass yourself." Women...works every time. I got in the blocks. "Runners on your mark. Set. Boom!" I came up out of the bleachers like a lion chasing a gazelle. I looked left. I looked right. There was nobody beside me. Nobody was ahead of me so through the process of elimination I arrived at this conclusion: "Oh shit, I'm winning! Run Run Run!"

One quarter of the way down I looked out the corner of my eyes again. "I'm still winning!" I'd hyped myself up before, but it never actually worked. I started thinking about all the numbers I was gonna get and I started running even faster.

Halfway down the track...still in front. I got three quarters of the way down when I finally had that moment that athletes talk about when they say they "embraced greatness." I wasn't just about to win a DCIAA track meet. I was building a highlight reel. I was going to college on a track scholarship. I was going to the Olympics in Sydney Australia. More importantly, I was about to get that girl's number, that girl's number, and that one's number. Yeah, I embraced greatness alright. "I'm gonna win, I'm gonna win! Oh my God I'm gonna *POP* AAAAAAAH!"

My left leg stopped working.

I don't mean I got a cramp or that it tightened up. It stopped working. When you're running full speed and one of your legs just randomly stops moving you nosedive into the ground...Then the momentum makes you tumble along the ground a few times. Then you come to rest. Then you realize there's a sharp pain in the spot that connects your thigh to your hip. Then you realize it hurts too bad to scream. As a matter of fact, your heartbeat hurts.

I heard my coach yell out, "Finish the race!" I responded with, "Come get me!" He couldn't hear me because the track meet had turned into some Disney sports movie moment where everyone starts shouting out encouraging catch phrases and doing motivational clapping as if you're some kind of Tinkerbell on its deathbed that needs claps to survive. Everyone thought I had tripped and fallen. I guess they thought my pride was hurt and I was laying there defeated. In reality the tendon in my thigh had torn off the bone and I was laying there asking God to rain down morphine from the sky.

When I realized no one was coming until they got a "Cool Runnings" finish where I picked up a sled and limped down the track, I tried to stand up. The best I could do was crawl a few feet before they realized I was in pain. Eventually a stretcher came and Doctor Obvious told me that I hurt my leg. He also quoted some DCIAA rule that says you can't give minors painkillers without a parent's consent. No one took me to the emergency room, no one called my family to come get me. My coaches even tried to convince me to hobble home on the metro so that they wouldn't have to "go all the way across town" to take me home.

A day later I went to Kaiser where they diagnosed the whole "tendon ripped off the bone" thing. I was on crutches for a while and eventually regained the ability to move my leg up and down about two or three months later.