One day Chris was running, as he was training for a meet, and felt a sharp, excruciating pain in the lower part of his leg. As a result, he suddenly stops running and takes a break from his strenuous and unnecessary workout. He had just finished his team workout, but decided to keep on running. Chris is on the varsity Cross Country (XC) team, and he is already worrying about this being an inconvenience and a very bad time to be injured because the district meet is coming up in one week. In addition, he is one of the team’s best runners and has been preparing himself for this meet. He is secretly fearful because it might be a stress fracture from over training and not recovering right. As a result, he decides to go see the trainer as soon as practice   is over, but on his way his lower leg is throbbing in pain. At this point, he begins to limp.

           As he arrives at the trainers, he signs in, and they have him lay down. They have him ice his injured leg for 10 minutes and then put a heat pack on it for 10 minutes. While this is happening, Chris is beginning to get worried, but at the same time hoping that the injury is something he can just ice regularly and be on his way. The trainers have him stretch and evaluate him. Out of nowhere, they tell him he won’t be able to run for a month because of the severity of the injury and confirmed that he over worked himself. Chris was devastated to hear this as he won’t be able to run in the XC district meet because of this. Distraught, he heads home and starts the recovery process without hesitation. Chris tells himself that he will do what he can to recover as he simply has to compete come race day. He proceeds to keep icing his leg, put a heating pad on his leg, as well as keeping his leg elevated with a pillow. While doing so, Chris decides to start eating better as a way to help the healing process. Heck, he even started looking up foods that are good for runners and the healing process such as the benefits of eating grapes. He even starts to stretch more and decides to wear compression socks. As a result, he does this until the day before the district meet in the hope of finding resolution to his problem. Chris is feeling confident and assures himself and others that he is feeling great.

The morning of the meet is now here. When Chris wakes up and starts to get ready, he feels a slight pain in his lower leg area. Chris takes longer than usual to get ready and was dreading putting on his XC uniform. Deep inside he knows that there is no point of putting on the uniform as it won’t get sweaty from his run, but still feels hopeful that his leg will magically feel better by the time his race starts. He grabs some ice packs and is icing and massaging his leg for the next 3 hours. Unfortunately for Chris, the leg still feels about the same when he arrives at the XC meet as it did when his training came to a sudden stop days prior. As a result, the coach and Chris decide that there is no choice but to substitute another runner for him. This was the XC meet Chris had been preparing for since the summer. In addition, he was anticipating this day so he could make his mark and set a new personal record. He couldn’t help but feel numb and confused about what had just happened.

All he could do was watch from the sidelines as his team ran district without him and wondering what could have been. As a result, Chris was discouraged by all this and was questioning why this happened. He was even more bothered at the end of the meet as his team didn’t make regionals. Unfortunately, he began to feel guilty as he realized that he let his team down as if he participated his team would have won and gone to regionals. At this, he realized that he not only ruined it for himself, but for his team. Chris learned a valuable lesson and realized that he shouldn’t overwork himself without being aware of the consequences of doing so. Chris decides that it is not always good to pass his limits and decides to take care of himself more as he is no good to anyone or himself if he is not well. Sometimes less is more.