Senior Matt Woolverton this winter as he talks about his struggles with injuries, and his battle to overcome them for one healthy season
Last friday was surprisingly difficult for me.
Due to my hamstring problems coach and I decided holding off
a week would be the right choice for the success of my season. I suited up and did what I could for the team on the bench. It was difficult not because I rode the bench (I've done that before I'm used to it at this point) however, it was difficult due to my lack of being able to compete. Not running is always difficult for me, I have trouble relaxing when I'm not able to run or at least be active so I've been stressing for weeks now. I keep getting the feeling that I'm fighting a losing battle, this hamstring may finally be the nail on the coffin of my track career. Who would've thought that running through injuries would have caused the downfall of my most important season. (It's a real shocker).
I ran with the sprinters at our Bowdoin practice the other day. That was a great practice for me. Though I'm running wicked slow and I'm not really able to get going it is something. I will take something over nothing any day. This whole process has been tiring me out. I used to think it was funny how I kept getting injured and how I kept having to make comebacks and run through pain. Now it's just difficult. It's hard to put a word to it. I'm thinking my track career has run it's course and I don't know what I want anymore. I've been talking with Coach Oke at Wheelock College and Coach Furey from Emerson in Boston and I was thinking about running track and cross country for them. Running D3 would be a dream come tru for me. I never thought I would have the opportunity to be recruited but after emailing coaches from many different schools a couple have finally responded.
The issue with the potential for me to actually run in college is that now I have to decide whether going to run is important to me or if I need to finish my career at Greely. After running four years at Greely with the mentality I had I'm not entirely sure that my legs can take four more years of it. If I want to run competitively there will be no big early comeback for me. However those have always been important to me.
More importantly I want to be important to this Greely team. We have a fairly large amount of underclassmen and I want to be able to set a good example like the captains that came before me. I had a bunch of great leaders during my early years at Greely and I want to be able to do what they did for me for this new class of Greely talent.
My goal was to get them excited about running. My group way back in 2011 had no interest in running at all and many did not stay with the team the entire way through high school. If possible I'd love to get them motivated to be better and to stick with it. I've learned a lot by sticking with this sport for eleven soon to be twelve seasons (after outdoor) and I think it's important for people to stick with it and see it through fully to take as much as I have from running.
The injuries also played a large part in the overall experience I've taken from all of this but I'm sure I would've learned a lot with or without the injuries.
A close friend and I were talking and he said something I really liked. We were talking about how track has such a great community and how it is not hard to become friends with anyone you meet. He said something along the lines of "track is the sport where they took all the great people and threw them into the same building" I think it's important for us as track runners not only to see the sport as a competitive atmosphere but also as a social community in which we all are surrounded. I think after all the injuries and struggle that I have had that's the reason I'm still here. Without this community of truly great people I doubt I would've been able to get through all of the injuries all these years.
My hamstring is showing no signs of success but I'm still fighting. I'll probably be on the sidelines again on Friday so feel free to track me down and talk with me. As always I love knowing people who actually read my posts and getting to know more of you would be a lot of fun.
Good luck to each of you competing.
No Regrets, -Matt Woolverton