I know I haven’t trained properly, or really at all, in a year and a half.

I know that it could, quite possibly, be impossible to get back into the shape I used to be in while I’m in the CreComm program.

I know that despite those things, I’m still an athlete.

When my dad died a year and a half ago, track suddenly became really, really hard to do. He had always been there at competitions, and he’d been an official for other events, like the long jump. A constant presence. He was so proud of me and supported me so much. And then he was just gone.

Two weeks before he’d passed we had been talking on the phone. I was telling him about how I had pulled my groin and crashed into a hurdle at North Dakota State University in my first 60m hurdle race of the season. I didn’t know if I would be able to race again that year. I had missed the previous indoor season because I had mono. I was so frustrated and angry. I felt so unlucky. He said to me that he wished there was something he could do so that I could race that season. He would do anything. Then, two days before my birthday, I got a phone call at two in the morning. I didn’t get home to Selkirk in time to see him.

I won the 60m hurdles at CanWest, four weeks after my injury, three weeks after he died. I came fourth at the CIS Championships, two weeks after that, just barely missing out on a medal. The entire Bisons team and my friends supported me so much. My mom had come to watch me race in Sherbrooke at CIS. It was amazing having her there, and I love her so much for that.

I said I was taking a break. I said that I would be back after just a little while. During the summer, I did light workouts, but I couldn’t bring myself to go to the track. When I finally did, I didn’t have the drive. I wanted to be just as good as I had been, but there was always something, someone, missing.

So I would start up and then stop. To my training group, it must have been like I was the Brett Favre of hurdling. Except I was announcing retirement and then coming out of it, over and over, BEFORE I had even really accomplished anything as prestigious to be deserving of the Brett Favre name. “I’ll be back in two weeks,” I said, then, “just a month”. After that it was, “when I have myself together.”

Finally, I stopped telling them when I would be back at all.

I couldn’t go to the track, but that didn’t mean I had lost my itch to be competitive at SOMETHING. I started playing League of Legends in a very hardcore way. I didn’t get as good as I wanted to get, but over a year and a half I think I acquired some respectable skills. I just needed something I could win at, that I knew I was decent at.

But even competing at or casting League of Legends didn’t quite fill the void that I felt when I was competing in track and field.

I still visualize races before I go to sleep.

I go through my warm up, I can feel my muscles loosening as I do my first drills and dynamic stretches after my jog. Then I can feel my body heating up under my layers of clothes, my muscles getting taught again, ready to snap my legs as I start to speed up during my acceleration runs. The feel of my track spikes digging into the track. I set up hurdles, taking five steps in between and making sure my lead up to the hurdle is quick and light, snapping down hard as I go over the hurdle and touching down lightly on the other side, keeping my momentum.

After my warmup, I walk to the starting area, waiting with the other competitors. A lot of people would be quiet, lost in their own thoughts before the big race. But I had been visualizing my race every night, so I would smile and joke before going to the line. The only time the other athletes stop being my friends is from the time they say “on your marks” until the moment I cross the line.

I roll my left and then my right ankle, then tap my toes on the ground, almost dancing a little, after they tell us to take our warm ups off. Final handshakes with people in the lanes next to mine. Quiet jokes. I hum whatever song pumps me up at the moment. They call “on your marks”. I step forward. I crack all my fingers. Shrug my shoulders, roll my neck around.

Relax.

One breath. Crouch down on the line.

Another breath. I hop back, both feet behind the blocks. Then step in. Right then left.

Sniff. Fingers on the line. Head down. Breathe.

“Set.”

Inhale. Rise.

The gun goes off, and I can feel every step of the race. Every motion. And I fall asleep.

I’m still an athlete.