Athlete Interview: Noel Wesen
The importance of knees for athletes cannot be overstated, as they play a crucial role in mobility, stability, and overall athletic performance. Noel Wesen, a varsity cross country and track athlete at Arcadia High School suffered from patellar tendonitis in his final high school season of cross country, which he developed due to overtraining on hills. In this article, we will discuss his experience.
How did you develop the injury?
“I developed my injury from running hills on 2 consecutive days. The first day had just been a moderate and easy run that hadn’t really been hard effort, but the second day had been intense hill repeats that the coach assigned to us, and that combined with the first day is probably what had got me injured since running both up and down hills puts way more stress on knees in particular than compared to running somewhere flat.”
What were your initial thoughts when you had the injury?
“My initial thoughts were disbelief that I was reinjured so badly and also some anger since the 2nd-day hill run was not as the coach described it to be, which was supposed to be easy, but the whole plan changed once we got there and we ended up having to run a very hard workout. And lastly probably just overall disappointment since this was pre-season and we only had a few more weeks till the season would begin”
What was your rehab like? What did you do during rehab to help heal your injury?
“My rehab consisted of one to one and a half months of biking, during which I iced bathed a lot, and went to our wonderful PTs in the athletics office, Jack and Matt, then listening to their advice on what to do next, such as rehab exercises and on the few days where I would run a little, I would use a patellar tendon strap that wrapped around my knee to support it better when I ran which really helped reduce the pain.”
How was your mental health when you sustained this injury so close to your season?
“Honestly, my mental health was just gone, I began to think negatively and had negative thoughts such as “it's actually over” in my head. I had expectations of what I was going to do for this season and knowing that I likely couldn’t fulfill those expectations had been really tough on me mentally especially since it was my last season in high school. Mainly though, just seeing others run and you having to sit out because you're unable to do the same thing was just really tough.”
Noel has since fully recovered from this injury and is back to regular training. He is looking forward to redeeming himself this winter's upcoming track season.