Failures; its ok.

So I started hurdling this year: loved EVERY BIT OF IT. had the best coach, best team, and my best friends to push me to become better than i ever could before. A few weeks ago we had a meet at Orem, and this was my opportunity to qualify for STATE in the 300 hurdles. I had a 100 hurdle race that morning. All of a sudden, unexpectedly, I FELL. that is the LAST thing i wanted to do, the LAST thing i planned, and consequently, took me out of the running for qualifying for state. My entire knee and leg was torn up, bloody, and bruised from the fall. I couldn't walk either. I was so devastated, so hurt, felt like I would never be able to recover from it. But, along with taking good care of my injury and some praying, I was able to compete in my upcoming meets: including REGION.

Here's the rundown of region for me:

I placed 1st in my heat in the 100 hurdles, and ended up QUALIFYING FOR FINALS.

that was more than i could ask for, especially since that's not what i focus on. and on top of that, i was seeded 6th place.

Second race, 300 hurdles:

Here was what I felt like not my best race at all. It wasn't my fastest race, but, to my amazement, it was enough to get me seeded 7th in FINALS FOR THE 300 HURDLES.

again, after feeling so bad about the race already, this was more than i could ask for. qualifying for BOTH my hurdle races for finals, it was such an incredible feeling:)

The next day of finals came: i was ready! if i could just place 4th in finals, then that was my chance to QUALIFY FOR STATE.

the races both came and went. it was not what i wanted. i placed 7th in finals for the 100's with my best time being in prelims with a 17.46, then i placed 7th out of 7 in my 300's; even though i got a PR of 50.06.. inching my way towards that qualifying time (48.25). which meant this:

NO STATE..

the beauty of this complete disappointment was this:

a hug and some reassuring words from my teammate, Alisa Baker. She and i both started hurdles together, and she was the one that i looked to to push myself, and we ended up racing together in finals for the first time. She doesn't know how much that meant to me, but her compassion for me is something that i'm going to remember for the rest of my life. I'm so grateful Jen was able to capture this in photo.

moral of the story: yeah, sometimes you're going to have failures in life; or at least not perform as well as you can/should/would/wanted to, etc. but, we always have to learn from these experiences, and grow from them. This was definitely a hard moment in my life, and although it was hard to find the good in it, there are so many things that I take from it.