He needed to try harder. Every time he failed to get even a few seconds faster in his reaction times, he could see the disappointment on his instructors’ faces—on his friends’ faces. It was those faces he had in mind while he ran his 30th lap around the track—30th that session at the very least, as he had already come out to run a couple of times that day.
There was a pain in his head that almost went unnoticed because of the more intense burning in his legs. These were good feelings, he thought. They were signs that he was trying, that he was working hard to get better, that he was not the lazy, chubby kid that he knew everyone saw him as, even if they were too kind to say it to his face.
Most troubling was the uneven pounding of his heart in his chest. He knew it was because of his erratic breathing, something his instructors kept getting onto him about, but he just never seemed to get the hang of it.
He had been sneaking out to the track for a while so he could practice running at night, when he was least likely to get caught by a teacher or even a custodian. No one seemed to notice him limping a little while he walked around the school, and he tried so, so hard to hide it so no one could laugh at him—or worse: worry about him.
There was no worse feeling than knowing that you were a creature worthy of pity.
His feet threatened to slip to the side as he ran, but he paused just long enough to regain his balance. It would not due to have a sprained ankle after all of this hard work. He would have to spend at least a month recovering from it, and then he would basically have to start over again. Working out had been so hard at first that he was not looking forward to feeling as badly as he had in those days.
He focused on his breathing just keep his head clear. His heart seemed to continue to be just a little off, but as long as it working he supposed he doing fine. He was almost finished with the 30th lap, and once he finished that, he could stop and go back to hs dorm room to get some proper rest.
Before he reached the line on the track that he was using to help him keep track of his laps, he saw spots form in his vision, and what he could see of the world turned upside down. He swayed on his feet, and he collapsed, falling hard on his side. He was unable to think of protecting himself, and there was a sharp pain in his arm.
It occurred to him that he needed help, but in the middle of the night, he was alone. He would stay alone until someone found him.
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