Personal Narrative: My Learning Experience

Throughout my life, countless problems have plagued me, some more serious than others. Many of these issues were conquered with the help of my friends, leading to a closer bond with them. Other times, the issues have resolved themselves, providing me with more of a learning experience. There are those obnoxious problems I have not been able to solve, the issues that pester me months after they first occur. These are the problems that have truly tested my abilities and beliefs and made me think carefully.
Recently, a new challenge literally grabbed my legs and slowed my life down. For the past three years, I had endured countless hours of taxing running. I ran during all three sports seasons. I trained during the offseason, running over 400 miles the summer between my freshman
The next day, the same excruciating pain shot up my leg when I went down my stairs in the morning. The same thing happened the next day, and soon a week had gone by. At that point, I knew something was not right, and that I had encountered yet another problem that would irritate me until I solved it. I took the precaution of running with a brace the first day of cross country practice, but my competitiveness, or more likely my stubbornness, would not let me stop running entirely. It took both of my coaches telling me to before I saw a doctor, who concluded that I had a tight IT band in my left leg. I had developed remarkably strong leg muscles from all the running I had done, but they were stiff from a sever lack of stretching. I was given stretches to loosen my leg, and I took a long week off from running. I ended up running in our first meet of the long, painful season, mostly because my competitiveness was stronger than my common sense. I was able to run relatively pain free, or at least lie to myself enough so that I felt much less pain than what was actually going on inside my leg. It was devastatingly painful after finishing the race though, and at that