Embracing the Journey Within a Journey
By David Endres
The thing I most admire about Track and Field is its ability to allow an athlete to continually fall into deeper levels of love with it. Like any journey, this path of love is not the linear relationship that is often sought out in any kind of progress. My relationship with running has continually included parts of both utter hatred and pure infatuation. The journey of running keeps an athlete chasing after the infatuation portion of their relationship with the sport. My journey of continually re-falling in love with this sport began in fourth grade at the young age of ten. From the start, I was blessed to discover a God-given talent. This talent was only discovered due to my admiration of my older sister and desire to be like her. I have the Catholic Youth Organization to thank for providing me an opportunity to find the rock of running in my life, as well as lifelong role models.
At this stage of my running journey, the success I was experiencing made me feel love for the sport. Although it sounds shallow, we as athletes would not be our greatest selves without this striving for success. This stage of my infatuation with running also caused a toxic mindset further along my journey. A lot of how I defined myself was based on the continued success I was experiencing. This sport was my first introduction into obtaining success reflective of the effort I put in, along with what were once very important championship medals. Through eighth grade, I was able to have continued success, but this success prohibited a deeper level of love from being discovered. Funnily enough, my greatest “race accomplishment” came when my love for the sport was still surface-level. In eighth grade, I won the Coaches Cross Country Youth National Championship, unaware that I was not, in fact, in love with the sport, but instead experiencing the blinding effects of early success.
In ninth grade, I began my journey of high school running. This came with my first exposure to setbacks. You guessed it; with those setbacks came utter hatred for the sport. Without any exposure to failure in my running life thus far, racing people much older than me was quite the adjustment. I no longer had the unbreakable confidence of my younger self. The joy that running brought me had been in the form of the shiny medals and glories of standing on top of the podium. These were no longer just an outcome of wanting it more than the person standing next to me. I acknowledge the shallowness present in those sentences; however, as uncomfortable as saying them makes me feel, I find comfort in possessing the clarity to now see how naïve I was in that situation. In my home state of Pennsylvania, ‘Districts’ is the high school cross-country race that allows individuals and teams to qualify for the state meet. This meet also marks the beginning of experiencing what people have referred to as me being a head case. The pressure was on. As much as I would like to say, “pressure made diamonds”...well, on that day, pressure made anxiety attacks. Starting a race hyperventilating is not ideal, nor do I recommend it, but on that day, those were the cards I was dealt. High school running presented me with a double-edged sword. Racing people much older than me made me experience a level of competition I was not used to and I was mentally struggling to come to terms with combating this competition.
Those that have been unfortunate enough to feel the numbness that depression brings with it are able to understand the feelings I felt as I hid my tears in the reflection of the school bus window on the way home from the meet. Dramatic, yes perhaps, the team still managed to advance to the state meet. Damaging? Yes, also that. To this day, I have never been able to be the same distance runner I was before that day. For years afterward, I experienced similar panic attacks and continued damage. I was repeatedly told what I was aware of: I was consistently letting the team down. More damaging perhaps, was that at this stage I was repeatedly told everything I was doing wrong, but with no guidance to help or change it.
The amazing thing about this all-time low that I was facing with the sport is that it allowed myself to broaden my objective. Mentally, I was struggling with the frustration of this reality: I will lose many races. This was something very new to me. For so long, I felt like I was playing defense, constantly trying to defend being known as “the winner.” The real beauty of track and field is the inner race against yourself to become faster. For so long, I was unable to appreciate this battle. Being a “Winner” was what the sport meant to me. Finally, regarding the inner race against myself to run faster meant that I no longer expected myself to be the best person to step on the track for every race. This flipped objective made me feel like I was on the attack again and no longer playing defense. In a convoluted way, it allowed me to focus on becoming a better me rather than a better athlete than the ones standing next to me on the starting line.
Christopher Pierangeli (Coach P) will admit that when he started as a high school track and field coach, he did not have extensive knowledge on the sport. At that time, I was in tenth grade. What he did have was exactly what I needed, however: a passion and genuine desire to connect with his athletes and make them better. This man saw me as an athlete in need of mental guidance. When he sat me down and required me to meet with him before practice every day, I was skeptical. Being a people pleaser, I was happy to do what he thought would help me. I am honored to have been coached by this man and have him to turn my thoughts on the sport around. I have Coach P to thank for the rest of my running journey. I truly think that the fire in me would have gone out if it were not for the man who saw an athlete that was unable to help himself out of a mental battle. Quickly, although not linearly, I was beginning to find appreciation for the sport of track and field again. I have always struggled with being defined by my performance when it comes to a race. Coach P helped me come up with a phrase that I continue to repeat to myself. When the nerves are like water that is about to boil over, I repeat this phrase: “All I can give, is all that I got.”
The strength in a single phrase holds more power than one would think, especially to that younger version of me that sat in the chair with a blank stare back at Coach P. In fact, over the next few years, I was able to run times that allowed me to continue running post-high school. Still not truly in love with the sport, I committed to run in college. I had finally freed myself of a mental battle, experiencing this new infatuation of trying to beat my personal records. Looking back, I should have seen that this peak infatuation was doomed to turn to utter hatred yet again.
March 27 2019, is not only a date that I will always remember, but one that will forever bring goose bumps from an overwhelming whirlwind of emotions. While nationwide high school seniors were anxiously waiting to hear about their college acceptances, my family and friends waited anxiously in the waiting room of a local hospital. Hours before, I had been struck as a pedestrian by a car. After suffering a traumatic brain injury and numerous facial and mandible fractures requiring facial reconstruction surgery, I came out of a medically-induced coma three days later. The first week of coming back to my senses felt like distant childhood memories that are held together by the retelling of stories by our parents. After ten days, I was transferred to a brain rehabilitation center. Quickly, I was met with the challenge of getting ready to study and run at the University of Cincinnati. It amazes me that at that time, I was unaware of the people that would soon hold my world together. Before I could get the legs running again, I needed to rewire my brain, relearn to walk, and find a way to eat with a wired-shut mouth.
August 2019. I moved out to Cincinnati, and I was able to begin making a new city my own. I admire the confidence that I had within myself to really believe I was ready to study biomedical engineering and begin training as a collegiate athlete months after a near-death experience. I have come to appreciate this ignorant confidence, as without it, my healing process from this traumatic event would have been extensively more difficult. Sometimes the best way to get through a situation is to completely disregard it and focus on what is ahead of you. By having ignorant confidence I was able to recover faster physically, but I was doing great damage to my mental health.
As one may imagine, adversity was a constant presence when I began my collegiate career. If someone would have told me that that same year, I would also endure a global pandemic, I would have thought I was back in high school history class. Selfishly, if there is a silver lining to COVID, it’s that the pandemic put an end to a track season that was ruining my love for the sport. I can recall near-weekly phone calls to my dad informing him that I thought it was time to hang up the spikes. I was so embarrassed of my performance and just wanted everyone to know of my story to excuse it. I felt the knowledge of my story would excuse my doubts that I projected onto my teammates of not belonging on the team. Confirming what I had been told, my body was not ready to compete. Every day at practice, I was reminded of the setback I had suffered as I stared at the large gap between myself and my teammates. Not only was I hating hours of my day spent practicing, I was also confused by how quickly everything that I had worked for seemed to have been taken away from me.
“Hatred” is not a strong enough word to explain my relationship with running during the beginning of my collegiate career. I was so focused on everything bad that was happening that I was unable to appreciate any part of being on a track and field team. But perhaps my love hadn’t entirely disappeared during that time, as there must have been something that kept me going during that period of utter failure. Perhaps this is all thanks to luck. Without a coaching change halfway through my sophomore year, I would not have the pleasure of training with my friends every day. Finally, I had found my people, and I lived with the fear of them being taken away from me. Now aware of this sine-wave-like graph that running had brought me on within my life, I knew that I was just a few more defeats away from a breakthrough.
One of the first questions I asked my new Coach, Lucas Rothenberger, was “Do you intend to give everyone on the team an opportunity to continue running for the University?”. Baffled by my question, I think I did a good job of introducing Coach Lucas to my personality. Knowing all his credentials, I worried about what he would think of me as a runner. What I should have been focusing on was the amount of improvement that I was about to face in such a short period while under his coaching. One of the many things that will stick with me from Coach Lucas is his emphasis that you must fall in love with the journey of running. It took another great comparison for this to all make sense to me. Coach said, “The meaning of running will continue to change within your life. For instance, you will not always have the same taste in music and continue to listen to the same songs all your life. As you grow, so will your taste in music.” I took this advice to heart. If racing performance is not providing me with fulfillment and love for the sport, perhaps I should look somewhere else for it.
While I was fortunate enough to have a knowledgeable new coach to allow for my growth, I also have Lenecia Nickell to thank. Lenecia is a Sports Psychologist at the University of Cincinnati. Subconsciously, my car accident had me mad at the world around me. This was impacting aspects of my life more than I was aware of. Since meeting with Lenecia, my frustration with the world in all areas came to intuition and slowly began to dissipate. I am forever grateful for the listening ear, advice, and reassurance that Lenecia has given me in a little over a year and a half. Prioritizing my mental health was perhaps THE thing that allowed me to enter my current infatuation phase with the sport of track and field.
There are not many times you finish a race smiling. However, last year, when I crossed the line with a new personal record of 1:52.63 in the 800 meters, my once-crooked smile met both sides of my face. I highlight the time, but that was the lesser source of my pride (as I found a nearby trash can). After being emotionally drained by my embarrassing performance the past two years, I finally found myself on the other side. Part of me believes that by sharing this story, the embarrassment will go away as people understand what I had gone through. So focused on what was in front of me and how far I was from achieving anything, my head stayed lowered as I worked. However, it was at this moment that I had found myself living in what was always just a glimpse of a mental fragment; to no longer be the teammate that peaked in high school.
I would like to thank my coaches, teammates, parents, friends, and sisters that have guided me through my running journey thus far. Eventually, I will come down from this euphoric episode that running is currently bringing to me. However, the deeper love and admiration that I will have for the sport following that crippling low is what keeps me going. I once chased after medals, podium finishes, beating my own times, and truly having a genuine love for the sport. I will continue to chase these things. When that new layer of love is unlocked, I will be fortunate enough to be chasing even more. That is the beauty that the sport of running brings to my life. I want to encourage others to embrace the journey within the journey of running. Enjoy the small victories, feel the pain in the defeats, and ride out the journey within the journey. You are only a few more defeats away from a pure infatuation breakthrough.