A New Perspective: Aidan Tooker
A passion for running started early for Aidan Tooker. In early 2019, the Syracuse distance runner was hitting his stride. After breaking the 4-minute mile and finishing 4th at the NCAA Championships, Aidan had high hopes entering his senior season. Unfortunately, an easy path was never part of the plan for Aidan.
I was 12 years old when I ran my first community 5k, I learned that I had pretty natural ability for endurance sport and quickly found myself attending the local summer rec program for runs. After 10 years of running 7 days a week, practically 365 days a year, the most challenging part has often been just showing up.
Training requires getting in a daily run, often two during heavy training spells. In hindsight it sounds pretty ridiculous to account for all the miles I’ve logged over the years and the different headspaces I’ve been getting out the door at times. For instance, I can recall getting in an early run in the morning of my grandfather’s funeral, or the workout I ran following the news of my college acceptance. Through the peaks and valleys of my young life, running has always provided this space and time that is entirely my own. The discipline of showing up and getting in runs regardless of where my mind or emotions are at on a particular day has given me a sense of self-esteem that I don’t think I’d have without running.
I’ve learned overtime to appreciate the days of running euphoria and come to grips with the alternative, the days that bluntly, it just sucks. The daily intention that derives from this larger idea that I’ve always wanted to be the best runner that I can be has taken me further than my adolescent self could’ve ever imagined. As I’ve learned what it takes to be a great athlete in this sport, running has provided me an honest look at the flow of life and its tendency to be difficult at times, yet incredibly rewarding at its pinnacle. Before any of the nitty gritty, it’s first requirement is that I show up and sometimes that's all that we can ask of ourselves on a given day. Running has been an obligation, a getaway, a craft, and gateway to the majority of my most valued relationships.
The spring of 2019 I was coming off of some of the best running of my career thus far. I was in my junior year, I had just broken the four minute mile that indoor season, the previous spring I had finished fourth at the NCAA Championships and made the finals as the top collegiate at US Championships in the steeplechase. I was on the track for one my first outdoor runs of the season when I first felt the pain in my leg. A week later I learned of my first femoral stress-fracture in my leg. The experience was blindsiding as I had never experienced a major injury in my numbered years of running.
After a summer of recovering and building my running back up for the fall season I experienced the same thing following my first race but in the opposing leg. Since then I’ve been working my ass off to get back to the same level of consistency and training that I had prior to injury. Last spring the reality of COVID-19 and its limitations on competition extended my hiatus from the track.
The most challenging part of the last two plus years has been the realization that regardless of the success of my return to the track, eventually I will have to part ways with it. I had acquired this new perspective through the experiences of injury that made me realize how much I had taken the majority of it for granted in retrospect. I acknowledged that regardless of the inevitable end of my competitive years, whenever that be, I was going to appreciate every moment of running that I had ahead of me.
Looking back I’ve found that there was quite a bit of advantage to the innocence of being a young athlete and the purity of how I viewed competition and I have often attempted to tap into my child mind when racing. I’ve found that with age my mind is often one the greatest obstacles and reverting to a simpler state of being can really give me an edge stepping up to the starting line. If I had to give that kid version of myself any advice, I’d probably remind him of the same thing I often remind myself of now, that this is all temporary so you might as well enjoy every second you can of it. Before anything else being an athlete of your sport is a choice and you should suck all the enjoyment out of that choice that you can.
When dealing with periods of sitting out for weeks, sometimes months, rehabbing and attending to the most mundane activities to get me back on my feet I definitely hit some heavy lows. I found it quite difficult in the moment to have a leveled perspective on the situation at times. I’m not going to counter the challenges of injury with a ‘look at the bright side’ because in all honesty that’s just not who I am as an athlete. However I will say that objectively, injury provides you with an opportunity that is entirely unique. At its best, you get a snapshot of life without your passion and that in turn sparks a new fire in you to get back to it at all costs or maybe you have a dawning realization that you need to take a step back from sport for a bit.
Either way it’s your choice what's next and it’s not worth dwelling on the past of what could’ve been. Sport is one big hyperbole for the realities of life and if we can take that in stride maybe we can understand the honesty in the struggles of injury.
