This is it. She would finish her meet, but at what cost? Her eyes were full of tears and soon her mind would be full of regret.
“I came around the turn and I saw many coaches staring at me because I was starting to cry due to the pain in my ankle,” junior Alicia Martinez said. “I told myself “No, don’t cry, you got this.”
Martinez’s season was put on pause whenever she suffered an injury at the Texas A&M HS Invitational meet on Sep. 15. The injury caused swelling and pain to Martinez’s ankle, restricting her from any intense movement for now.
“At that moment in my head, I was like “I want to get off the course right now,” Martinez said. “But I was like I can’t do that because then I’ll feel like I could have kept going. I knew it hurt but like every time I stopped, it didn’t hurt that bad. So, I thought might as well keep going.”
Martinez began the season ranked No. 1 in the District and tops in the state, but now has dropped into the middle of the rankings. With her competitiveness, she said it makes it hard for her to be out for an extended period of time.
“Being injured makes me want to get better, faster,” Martinez said. “It makes me want to recover faster so I could build back everything I had.”
“Being injured makes me want to get better, faster. It makes me want to recover faster so I could build back everything I had.”
She believes that if she hadn’t put as much pressure on her injury as much as she did on that meet, the outcome of her injury wouldn’t have been as severe.
“I kind of wish I wasn’t injured,” Martinez said. “I mean that everyone’s thing, they don’t want to be injured. I wish it was different because I wanted to see where I would have been placed now in the season.”
As early as a week before the A&M meet, Martinez felt a slight strain in her ankle but didn’t put much thought into it.
“I knew it was there, but it wasn’t hurting bad,” Martinez said. “We did warmups, and it was hurting, but just a little bit. It wasn’t even swollen or anything, it felt like a regular ankle but just had a slight pain when I landed on it.”
Martinez said that the key to recovery is to just stay patient.
“What keeps me patient is setting mini goals that you must achieve later,” Martinez said. “Like for me, it is keep working on the bike and doing stretches for now, and once that gets better, you build another goal.”
Along with a series of stretches, rehab for her injury consists of cardio that won’t cause a strain in her ankle.
“They have me doing calf raises, on the bike for about 30 minutes to an hour, and like squats with the band around my ankle, foam roll,” Martinez said. “Just relaxing and not doing too much. I think mid next month I should be recovered enough to be able to run again if continue to do these exercises.”
With her role diminished for now, Martinez said she’s had no problem being a motivator for her team.
“Now I can not feel so anxious and help other people talk through it,” Martinez said. “You get anxious because you don’t know how the race is going to go – how you’re going to perform. I guess it helps them a little bit, and it helps me.”
Martinez hopes to recover from her injury just in time for UIL District Meet on Oct. 11.
