Falling down and standing up again

By: Mar Ramírez

I started one more season like all the previous ones, with the batteries charged 100% and with desire to start working to achieve the goals that I set with my coach. Some objectives are more than ambitious, but totally achievable if we work as we should for it. Among these, the most important was to get the minimum time to participate in the U18 World Championship that were going to be held in the month of June in Cali, Colombia.

The first few months were hard as they are in any preseason of any athlete who trains and strives to achieve their goals, and there we were, my coach and me, complementing and sweating together the shirt every day, improving more and more my fitness, both physical and mental. The month of January arrived, and with it the first training of that new year in which we would achieve some of our dreams. Following our routine, we started with the warm-up, we did some hurdle technique exercises and that day we had session of repeats with hurdles, so I put on the spikes shoes and made a couple or three of progressive lines. I felt good. The workout was going as it should, going on with the progressions without my body complaining about the overloads or deficiencies anywhere.

In the last fence of that first repeats of the year, I tripped. With the clumsiness of leaving my foot between the hurdle and the ground, twisting my right ankle so that I could not even get up from the tartan. I looked at my coach, who gave me back that look in which I could feel all his anger and helplessness for what had just happened, and I screamed. But not of pain, but because of the same impotence that he felt, knowing all the dedication that we were giving, the daily sacrifice, all the accumulated work, the consciousness of everything that we were going to achieve, the security with which we trained and approached each of our goals, but above all the one we had determined most important; to see how the fate, to call it somehow, had taken us the whole way we had.

The shock of my coach disappeared in a few seconds and he ran to pick me up from the floor, immobilized my joint, took me to the car and we went straight to the hospital. "-You are strong Mar, and together we are more". It was the only thing he told me during the trip. Once in the hospital, they treated me quickly and finally diagnosed me with a rupture of the lateral ligament of the ankle.

The next day, I surprised my coach by appearing in a cast on the athletic track, telling him that as he told me, we were strong and this situation was not going to stop our preparation. So that's what we did, we started training harder than ever from the first day after the accident. I must say that my coach is a professional physiotherapist, and he, along with the doctor who treated my injury, did the entire rehabilitation process. Together they did an impressive job, but the full dedication that my coach gave me was the determining factor so that my state of mind did not fall for a second during the recovery and in turn, this was decisive to accelerate the process.

I did not get up for a single day without wanting to run again without pain, accompanied by positivity and optimism. In my head, my goal was no other than to achieve that minimum for the world championship with which we dreamed so much. We were both aware of how difficult it was being, but also of how much we were struggling and we always knew that there is nothing impossible if you let your skin on it. As I said, the recovery was very effective and when my coach saw the moment, he told me that I was ready to compete, to run, being able to show what we were worth. I was scared, but I was brave, I trusted my coach and I stood in front of the starting. I ran that race, I did not do the minimum, I ran with the odd doubt, but I ended up happy because I felt competent again and I recovered absolutely all the confidence.

I had another chance, the last before the championship. I put on the spikes shoes and went out on the dance floor. Stepping on the tartan, stronger than ever, feeling great, knowing everything I had inside, all the training, all the suffering, all the sacrifice and tenacity. He knew what he wanted and knew he was capable of it. I ran. I ran 5 hundredths seconds below the mark that the federation requested to participate in the World Cup.

I cried and screamed, I screamed a lot. But this time with happiness, I ran to hug my coach and together we celebrated. He told me that he did not doubt me at any time, that he knew he was going to get it and that he could achieve everything that he proposed. Nothing is impossible if you want it with all your heart and fight as if there was not a tomorrow for it.