They'd be like she's really fast or she runs track.
That was always the adjective or the description that came after the introduction of me.
I liked being that person and then all of a sudden it was
completely stripped away from me and I didn't know who I was anymore. I didn't know who am I.
Every training cycle is about figuring out how can I break my body.
Texas sun, 100 degrees. If you put your hands or knees on the track you'll probably get burned.
You're crossing the finish line and your teammates are pulling you off the ground. And then the next
rep you're pulling them off the ground and then we strength train a whole bunch of olympic lifts,
power cleans, box jumps, front squats, back squats, leg pulls. We push ourselves to the
limit breaking your body apart and coming back the next day and doing it over and over again.
in 2016 when we were at the olympic games and we were running the prelim of the women's 4x100
relay, our second to third leg dropped the baton. I was standing there at the anchor leg
waiting to receive a baton that was not coming to me.
And in that moment I had that thought of like, "wow, I've trained what feels like your whole
life for a moment that now seemed to be gone and stripped from me within the blink of an eye."
So it takes you to a place of realizing that you have to make what you do worth it. As the story
goes we got to rerun and run by ourselves and we made the final and we came away with a gold
medal in the 4x100 relay. I was ecstatic. I was on top of the world but I was coming
back to Austin, Texas knowing that I wanted my life to look different. I didn't want to be the
same college girl. I didn't want to keep being around those same group of people. I didn't want
to keep partying. I didn't want to continue being that person but I was also scared. I was scared of
feeling alone and lonely and not having anyone and not knowing what I was going to do next.
I got invited by my friend Emmanuel Acho, He'd actually be mad at me for saying friend,
by my best friend Emmanuel Acho to come to a game night and I was hesitant at first and I was like,
"Okay, I'll come to this game night" And I walked into a room full of people who were
complete strangers to me but that was going to become my new spiritual community.
A community of people who have very little in common besides our love for game nights and
our love for Jesus who were going to become exactly what I needed. On January 27, 2018
at the end of a race I ran into a wall. Stopping and completely ruptured my achilles tendon.
The achilles is the strongest tendon in the human body and you need it to do
literally everything. Walk, jump, crawl, climb stairs, stand up, sit down. I had it
surgically repaired but like I was being told, "Hey, you might never be the same
runner that you were ever again. This may be a career ending injury for you."
I was like angry at God at the sense of I thought this is what I was supposed to be doing
and if this is what I'm supposed to be doing then like, why did you take it away from me?
My identity was built in track and field. All of a sudden it was
completely stripped away from me and I didn't know who am I? I'm so independent and used to
doing everything completely on my own and I was at a point where I had to learn to ask for help.
And that was... it was tough but I was right where I needed to be. For the first time I realized that
I was surrounded by people who believed in me and not only did they believe in me, they
believed that God had a plan for my life and that he was still going to be faithful through it all.
I'd never been in a place where every single one of my people that I hung out with and talked to
were someone that I could also be like, "Hey, I need you to pray for this." And they actually
would. Not just say that they would. And it also made me realize that this is why we're supposed to
live our lives together like this so that when one person in your community is hurting or has fallen
or can't fight their battle on their own, that you have 10 or 15 or 5 or 3 or 25 people there
who will step up and fight the battle for them that they can't fight for themselves.
And that was the beginning of me really picking myself up and putting myself back together.
Just because something happened that steered me away from what I thought was
the path of least resistance doesn't mean that God changed. Doesn't mean his plans
for my life had changed. It just means that I had to go through a little bit of something
first. I've realized that I've been in a tough situation, that I didn't think that I could
make it out of or I was so unsure of how I was going to make it out of and I looked back at
it and I was like, "Wow, that was really easy and it was God's hand in all of it."
Prior to my injury I was always focused on breaking my body down
and now I had to focus on putting my body back together.
When I get on the track it's like, "You did not wake up today to be mediocre."
That's the talk that I'm giving to myself.
"You can do this. You only have one more rep. Take it every 50 meters."
I wore my I Am Second bracelet. It would always just be there as like a, "You're not
doing this for you. This is not your thing that you're doing and like you have to keep going."
I think the sweetest part of community is the ability to be vulnerable with people
and let them see your true self and who you really are. And without Jesus Christ I would not be
who I am. I would not be where I am and I would not be doing what I'm doing. Everything
in my life has become solely because of who Jesus is and who he continues to be.
My name is Morolake Akinosun, and I Am Second.