As you can imagine since the my last blog post a lot has happened. Last years season was nothing short of a roller coaster for me and by far was the toughest of my career. Before I explain that I want to bring you back to not last season but the the season before. In the summer of 2011 I was opening up my outdoor season in Indianapolis, Indiana. I was coming of a great showing at CIS and knew that if I stayed healthy I could not only PB that year but hopefully PB by a few seconds. In Indianapolis I opened up with 1:48 and 1:47 in the first two races. For all those runners out there, there is not greater feeling than running a PB. The feeling of knowing that you have never ran that fast before and knowing that all the hard work you put in in has paid off. But that feeling only last a short moment as the next feeling you get is that of wanting more, the thought of going faster. Moving on from that week I was thinking that if I could open up with a 1:47, how fast can I run in the peak of my season? But the peak did not come. Unfortunately I got hurt right after nationals a few weeks later. Litte did I know that injury would affect my next year. The injury was a partial torn calf muscle in my right leg. Instead of taking off the rest of the season and getting healthy, I decided to run through it as best as I could because I made the world university games (FISU) in China. Even though the experience I had was priceless the result of running on an injury was not.
The partial tear was now worse than before. This made my training going into the next season very inconsistant. In the fall my training consisted of time off, rehab and pool running. I did not touch the track until after Christmas. When I did come back on the track, I came back a bit too hard and ended up pulling my right hamstring coming around the last corner on an indoor track while doing 200m workout. That injury again set me back. Now i was dealing with two injuries, my calf was better but not 100% but now I also had to deal with a hamstring pull. By the time I put together four somewhat consistent weeks of training it was already closing in on April and I was scheduled to open up in the middle of April at Mt Sac. Right before I was about to leave for LA I ended up having some problem with my sinuses. Little did I know at the time but what I came down with was a sinus infection due to bad allergies that would hinder me for the next month. Over the next month I did not race well. I struggled to break 1:50. I would run well one race and be close to breaking 1:49 and think I was ready to break something big but then the next race I would be back to struggling to break 1:50. Due to the stresses of being injured, getting sick and then not performing well early in the season it really played a toll on me mentally for the rest of the season. This was right about the time where I stopped blogging. In June, I had a disappointing result at Canadian Nationals and decided that after Alberta Provincials I was shutting it down. I looked at myself as a person that was mentally strong, had a ton of confidence but honestly last season proved how vulnerable I was. When people say sport is 80% mental they are right. The interesting thing was even through all the injuries and the sinus infection I had I was still able to put up the fastest training times I have ever ran. I remember running 1:16.17 in a 600m rep and feeling good, constant 16's in repeat 150m's. Fitness was there but to me this just shows how when the mental/confidence is not there how it can inhibit performance. (I find this amusing how I am pretty much calling myself a head case.) I thought that the hard times where over when I pulled the string on the season but they were not.
What followed in the end of the summer was by far the toughest thing I have ever gone through. Throughout the whole season I could tell I needed change and this led me to make a coaching change at the end of the summer. I am not going to go in too much detail but to make a long story short it was nothing my last coach did. I have tremendous respect for him and would have not accomplished nearly the accolades I accomplished without his expertise, knowledge and commitment. Sometimes you just gotta move on, I just needed a change. Only a few days later I got news that my training parter but most of all good friend tragically passed away. Things are put into perspective real quick when a loved one is gone. Again I am not going to go to much into this but all I will say is Isaak was by far one of the best human beings you could ever meet and he is and will forever be dearly missed. Love ya man.
So what about now? Well through the end of the summer I was still feeling some effects of my previous injuries and my coach and I thought it would be best to ease into things slowly. We did just that. In January I had the opportunity to go to Phoenix and get some quality training/rehab in. It was there that I realized, through the help of my coach, that I just need to take time and get healthy. I have been dealing with this calf issue for way to long and just adding more miles on something not fixed is not the recipe for running fast and just leads to more injuries. So currently I am just doing the things that you need to do to get healthy and regardless of how long that takes I am willing to do that. Whether thats a year or 6 months, I know that when I come back on a healthy body I will be able to run way faster than I previously imagined! (The bright side is I will have more time to work on my favorite golf shot, the snap hook. See ya in the rough.)
Through all of these circumstances over the past year it got me thinking. If someone were to say to me, Jaden do you wish last season never happened? How would I respond? Well at first I would relish in the thought of everything going well, running fast, hitting my goals and that would be incredible (and one day I do hope that happens). But then I think of all the things I learned through being tried and tested and honestly I would not want it changed. Why? Well, because I learnt a ton about what it takes to be a top level athlete, I learned how easily I associated myself with being a runner and it was not until I did not have running have I realized I am so much more than a "good" runner, I learned that true character is not shown when things are good but shown in how you respond to trials and tribulations, and mostly I learned that the outcome is never as rewarding as the journey. I would be willing to bet that Olympians would say what they remember most about making the Olympics is not necessary the Olympics itself but the journey they had to embark on to make the Olympics.
All in all, even when tough times come one thing remains the same and that is God is still good. I have never been more excited to work hard or motivated to keep on pressing on in this journey!
-jaden
ps. ill try not to take 6-8 months between blog posts.
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