Starting soon. Standing up at the line. The last race of your high school career. The metal spikes lightly dig in and out of the rough dirt in a tap dance as you, with lightweight shoes, pace in place in anticipation. You’re probably not ready for this race because of the injury, but you want to try anyway.  There won’t be an opportunity to run a high school 5k race again. Each team is lined up with their solid-color jerseys making the starting line appear to be a gloomy rainbow. Ready. On your mark. The gun fires as all the runners take off, sprinting from the line fast to get a good position early in the race. Everyone consolidates into a thin line when they enter the thick silent woods, hushed with only the echo of spikes piercing through the dry, cracked leaves. You round a corner in the deep woods, now far from the starting line, and gradually slow with the rest of the runners, now out of adrenaline. “Keep up the pace, keep up the pace,” is your mantra, “Don’t give up.” You progresses up a slight hill, huffing and puffing at the top. Slowing down is tempting, but you don’t. It’s the last race of high school, after all. It’s also senior year— another finish line you must cross. “Graduating high school will probably be one of the hardest things I’ve done” is something you have realized.  Flying around two more corners and exiting the woods, you cross a wide, horizontal, white line that signifies the first mile. Still out of the woods, the pack skirts two large fields with dozens of cars parked on the dry, beige grass. You turn around a sharp one-hundred-eighty degree turn and boost downhill, running past a dock which is surrounded by tiny, white rocks of all shapes and sizes. Shoes scraping against the rocks, you know the spikes will be damaged, but you don’t care, success is the only thing on your mind. “These spikes are history, anyway.” Sprinting, picking it up, you re-enter another part of the forest. Here the woods are more widely spaced than before, and the pack is thinner. Coming across a second wide white line shows the two mile mark. For a few brief seconds cheering can be heard but it fades almost as quickly as it came. Sidestepping a small puddle makes your foot suddenly burn like a flare with shooting pain. Didn’t you know there was no way to make it through the race without your injury coming back? The pain is distracting, something that cannot be avoided that must be overcome. Just like in every aspect of life— school, work, friends, family. Noticing you are getting close to the finish, everything starts moving by faster like a youtube video on double speed as you increase the pace, the tempo, the stride. “I can fight through the pain for another mile. Giving up now is not an option.” You round yet another corner in the woods and realize you’re on a slim ridge and through the forest can see the finish of the race to the immediate left. You can sense its presence. Only one more turn and then the final straightaway. Picking up the pace even more your foot still stings, but it won’t be allowed to hinder the race. At this point you can only keep this up for a few more minutes. You turn around the second-and-final one-hundred-eighty degree curve and go forward, exiting the forest for the last time. Hearing hundreds of loud voices crying out to push harder, to sprint the finish, you push to the fastest ever run— putting in one last surge of energy until you cross the final thick, white line. The best time you have ever had. Successful. Improved. Finished.