Running towards the goal

By Joshua Thomas

As I stepped out of my house, I felt the gnashing of cold wind. Icicles were growing on the garage, and the driveway was covered in snow. I realized that I was just sick of staying at home. I was going to drive to my appointment at the doctor. But I was feeling weary and tired so I decided to go inside and call them that I couldn’t make it today. I decide to climb back into bed.

On my bed I felt a buzzing noise inside my ears. I was anxious and felt I couldn’t take care of myself today. All I could think about was what I should be doing. I was not living in the present moment as I could not think clearly with everything going on.

I decided to get up and look around the town and get to school. The town seemed dead. I had been learning about slaves in my history class and it felt similar to what I have learned. How teaching slaves to read and write, caused them to be disobedient as they were bored and dissatisfied. This is exactly how I feel as I am always fearful of what my history teacher may say about the quality of my work. I had not done enough research.

When lunchtime rolled around, my closest friends were talking about going for a run next to the river after school. I was glad they did not invite me, but at the same time it was like they had forgotten me. I am really hesitant when it comes to running, as I have not been successful and wasn’t that good at it. I wasn’t very confident to run miles and miles.

I was also really hesitant, as I thought I could grow more as a person by studying, and there were a lot of risks going for a run. My family were big on running, and I had kind of been left out from Saturday sport because of it. I stay home while my sister runs races around the local 400-metre track. I tried these races with mixed results. The last time I was out in front, but became distracted when boys from my school yelled out having a shot at me about my shirt, and I fell behind.

I never really thought I was very productive with my schoolwork. When exams came around my scores were below average compared to the students who did sport. Maybe they knew something that I didn’t.

I decided I needed a study buddy; so I went to the library and went out of my comfort zone to talk to a new person in my grade who I never talked to before. He said he would love to help me study and we scheduled a time after school to work on our upcoming exams.

When it was time to study, he actually knew a lot about history and spoke quite fast. He went through the questions from the textbook in half the time that I would take. After our study session, he asked, “Would you like to go for a run with me on Saturday, for a fun run?”

I froze. I just made a friend but I didn’t know what to do. Eventually I came to a conclusion that I might lose a friend if I said no. So I said “yes, that would be fun.”

Saturday rolled by and I was actually really excited. I told my parents and they were proud of me. We started the race. I didn’t believe it. Running is better than I thought. I felt I could conquer my fears and setbacks.

Later that month, I was able to bounce back into my group of friends having similar interests to them. We talked about it and I felt better at my studies. I ended up achieving a high distinction in my history test. Running became my escape at times when I was overwhelmed and worried.

Illustration by Brendan Gatt