Patience.

My story begins on a beautiful day at the Illinois state meet in the fall of 2015. The leaves on all the trees in have begun to fall and the ones that haven't yet had all changed to the red, yellow, and green that remind everyone what cross country is. My high school team had just won the first state trophy for my school in 23 years, it was a third-place trophy, but still a trophy. The build-up to this day was what drove me to better myself. I was not very fast but after working hard for 6 months I was a #5 runner on arguably the best team in my high school's history. Over the next two years, I became one of the best runners in the Illinois class 1a and became a two time all-stater.

During my high school career at many times I had many problems with anxiety and would have panic attacks. Running could either lessen the frequency of them or increase them depending on what was happening in my life. These panic attacks greatly increased during my fall cross country season. I was in a rough relationship, I was injured and not running, all while trying to decide what college I was going to go run for the next year. Multiple days I just woke up and did not know what to do my head was spinning the stress was over the top. While I still ended up being all-state I didn't run the times I wanted to. I was overly disappointed because through most of the season the anxiety took my focus away from my teams' goals. I have not been able to forgive myself. Had I been patient and not panicked when things went awry I could have saved my season. 

Track season started the same way as cross did I felt really good going into it and the beginning of the season I was dealing with the same injuries that plagued my cross campaign. I did not run a race until early March, I ran two races during the indoor season; I did not run the times I was wanting to. Leading to the same stress as before, but my anxiety was less because I was working on being more patient with my results. The times would eventually start to appear. Finally, the state meet arrived I was ready to go get an all-state medal on the track. The temperature on the track was around 115, very unideal conditions for a 2 mile. The last lap started I was in 6th place sitting in a position for a pr and all state. Neither ended up happening, my legs gave out with 100 to go and I ended up missing my pr by less than a second. While I did not pr my senior track season. I know that I would have, had it not been so hot. Being patient worked in reducing my anxiety and stress, which allowed me to be in the position I was in. 

Currently, I am injured in my freshman year of college, haven't been able to race once. Some of the injuries have been bad luck, such as breaking my toe. My normal IT band issues are still plaguing me but a weird hamstring strain finally ended my season as I am not supposed to run for 6 weeks now. I will admit being patient when everything seems to be going against you is not all ways easy. Being hurt sucks, watching your teammates kill workouts while you are stuck in a pool can be devasting to a person's confidence. All in one-day things can change just like that, you just can't let yourself get frustrated because that leads to anxiety and stress. Those things do not help you get healthy or break out of a slump. The only thing that can is time. Just accept time and obstacles with that patience will come. 

So remember if you are injured, be patient time will heal you. If you are just in a slump, the results will come you just have to relax and be patient.

- Wyatt Wolfersberger (@w__squared)