When Jaclyn Carroll Yackly, 31, of Jersey City, got injured in 2013, she wasn’t even aware of it for a while.
She had injured her knee at New York Road Runners’ Five Borough Challenge but didn’t feel the pain. Then, just when she was on track to reach her best finishing time yet during the Brooklyn Half Marathon last year, her knee began to give out around mile nine.
“It didn’t show up at first,” she said. “There wasn’t any pain. But I must have hurt myself. It was January and ten degrees. I was okay. It wasn’t until the Brooklyn Half Marathon that I felt the pain. I had felt something a month before, pain in my knee, when I ran, but it was not unmanageable. I thought it was the cold. I was nine miles into the race and I was flying. This was going to be my best time, and suddenly I felt the stabbing pain. I didn’t think I would finish. But I had nowhere to go. We were on the parkway. So short of being taken away in an ambulance, I had to keep going. I hobbled.”
Although she tried to race again after that, she continued to have problems and so she sought medical help.
She had damaged her quadriceps muscle, and though she planned to participate in another race, she was warned by her therapist not to.
“I needed to rest,” she said. “I couldn’t even support a two pound weight.”
Her injury greatly discouraged her. She wanted to give up completely, and she may have if it wasn’t for her husband Aric encouraging her to keep powering towards her dream.
“I couldn’t run a half mile even on a treadmill,” she said. Pride made her want to come back, and so she began a regimen of exercise that would help her build up strength in her quad again.
“I’m in good shape,” she said. “I started swimming and doing other exercises.”
The slow road back
She started running locally, and participated in last Halloween’s run in Hoboken. Then, perhaps the most significant moment in her recovery, she took part in the Valentine’s Day run in Liberty State Park with her husband.
“It was brutally cold,” she said.
Jaclyn has since competed in the Bronx 10-Mile Race and Staten Island Half Marathon, and plans to complete in the 2015 United Airlines NYC Half Marathon on March 15. She will be running with a talent-packed roster of American and international elites. More than 20,000 runners from around the globe will tour New York City on a 13.1-mile course from Central Park to lower Manhattan, including a trip straight through Times Square.
Originally from Westchester, Yackly moved to Jersey City in 2011. Yackly wasn’t a sports person growing up.
“I failed gym in high school. I was a terrible runner,” she said. “But I was very into yoga.”
“I learned that you have to listen to your body,” Carroll Yackly
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“I started in 2011, and once I got out there I found that I loved it,” she said.
She has been accepted to the upcoming New York Marathon, and will compete in the Newport 10k in Jersey City on May 3.
“I’ve wanted to run in the Newport event since I moved to Jersey City,” she said. “Every year I told myself I would run. It finishes in front of my apartment. This year I’m going to do it.”
But she’s a wiser runner now.
“I learned that you have to listen to your body,” she said. “There is a fine line between pushing through and feeling you need to stop. If you’re body tells you something is wrong. But stay in tune with it. Don’t ignore it.”
She also learned it is easy to believe you won’t get injured, and to be angry when it happened.
“It’s okay to be angry and frustrated,” she said. “Allow yourself to feel it, but you also have to know you can come back. It takes hard work. It takes time. But don’t give up, and don’t let yourself be discouraged.”
Al Sullivan may be reached at asullivan@hudsonreporter.com.