With only a thousand meters left, my eyelids grew heavy and my blinks became prolonged; I was beginning to lose consciousness. I was nearing the end of the PacWest cross country conference championship race. The day began just like any other race day except I now had six months of training behind me. Earlier that morning, I looked out onto the hilly green Hawaiian course situated next to the ocean. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath which seemed to last forever. The smell of the salty sea struck my nose while the warm humid air filled my lungs. It was only moments before being called to the start line that fear and doubt began to weigh on me. As that weight continued growing exponentially, I suddenly felt nauseous and my legs became heavy. However, before I could decide whether I wanted time to slow down or speed up for me, I was being called to the start line. A single shot fired from the official’s gun signaled the descent into 8,000 meters of hell where only those of strong mind and strong body would survive. Five thousand meters into the race, my face began to become numb and I was completely drenched from the moisture in the air.
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Humidity significantly reduces the body’s ability to use sweat for evaporative cooling. It was at the 5,000 meter mark at which many competitors either quit or passed out from overheating. With limited cognitive ability, I looked down at my hand on which I wrote the word “choose”. It was a word I would repeat over and over throughout those last 3,000 meters. While there was nothing to be done about the physical pain, that word “choose” alleviated the mental stress. It stopped me from thinking about how painful the next 10 minutes were going to be and put focus on just that moment. If I could simply seize that moment and say no to the excuses and the doubts, then I could fight through to the next moment and do it again. With a thousand meters to go, my body started to shut down and I began to lose consciousness. Falling across the finish line, I had made my choice. That day my decisions put me in twenty-first place as the fourth freshman to finish and resulted in me receiving All-PacWest Honors. Feats such as pushing your body past its perceived limits cannot be accomplished with complacency. It requires true passion for what you do as well as the integrity to give one hundred percent no matter what. Having integrity in a race means you do not quit because you are compelled to honor the very real blood, sweat, and tears you and your competitors have invested into training. Throughout my 8 years of competitive running, I developed a strong sense of integrity which has guided not only my training but many other aspects of my life as well. My desire is to take that same integrity from running and combine it with my passion for health. Specifically, I want to help alleviate the acute symptoms of primary care physician shortage throughout the Central Valley. Working as a volunteer and as scribe in the emergency room, not a day went by that I did not see a patient come in for complaints that should have been addressed by a primary care physician. These patients typically either had no health insurance or could not find a primary
Humidity significantly reduces the body’s ability to use sweat for evaporative cooling. It was at the 5,000 meter mark at which many competitors either quit or passed out from overheating. With limited cognitive ability, I looked down at my hand on which I wrote the word “choose”. It was a word I would repeat over and over throughout those last 3,000 meters. While there was nothing to be done about the physical pain, that word “choose” alleviated the mental stress. It stopped me from thinking about how painful the next 10 minutes were going to be and put focus on just that moment. If I could simply seize that moment and say no to the excuses and the doubts, then I could fight through to the next moment and do it again. With a thousand meters to go, my body started to shut down and I began to lose consciousness. Falling across the finish line, I had made my choice. That day my decisions put me in twenty-first place as the fourth freshman to finish and resulted in me receiving All-PacWest Honors. Feats such as pushing your body past its perceived limits cannot be accomplished with complacency. It requires true passion for what you do as well as the integrity to give one hundred percent no matter what. Having integrity in a race means you do not quit because you are compelled to honor the very real blood, sweat, and tears you and your competitors have invested into training. Throughout my 8 years of competitive running, I developed a strong sense of integrity which has guided not only my training but many other aspects of my life as well. My desire is to take that same integrity from running and combine it with my passion for health. Specifically, I want to help alleviate the acute symptoms of primary care physician shortage throughout the Central Valley. Working as a volunteer and as scribe in the emergency room, not a day went by that I did not see a patient come in for complaints that should have been addressed by a primary care physician. These patients typically either had no health insurance or could not find a primary