“I missed it by a blink of an eye. In less than half a second, I lost what I had fought so hard to gain for nearly five months,” explains Rachel Strons as she opens up about her arduous journey to becoming a varsity cross country and track star. In the fall of 2010, Rachel began her journey as a long-distance runner. Walking into her first practice, she didn’t even know what cross country had in store for her, or even how good she would be. Encouraged by her friends to join the team, Rachel was about to meet the true runner that she was. “My grade school coach had us all line up in a straight line across the 10-yard-line and told us that we were to run as fast as our legs could take us to the other side of the field. Let me told you, I was incredibly nervous.” The very first run of Rachel Strons’s career was a race to see who was the fastest on the team, and she believed that she was not going to be that person. Runners ranging from fifth to eighth grade took their positions as the coach began to shout, “Ready. Set.” Before he could shout “go”, Rachel’s heart began to pound in her chest and her legs froze where she stood. She lost all hope of leaving the 10-yard-line. …show more content…
Nothing was going to stand in our way this time.” Right before the race began, Rachel felt a sharp pain in her left leg as she stretched. She knew right away that her injury was acting up. She denied to tell her coach in fear of being pulled from the race and instead worked to stretch and ice it for as long as she could before she had to run. When it came time to run, she hid her ice pack and walked as normally as she could down to the starting line. She smiled to her teammates while internally wondering if this was a good idea. “I looked at these girls that I have trained with for so long and saw how excited and nervous they were and knew that I had to race for