{"id":7921,"date":"2020-08-07T15:22:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-07T19:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/?p=7921"},"modified":"2020-08-07T15:17:47","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T19:17:47","slug":"the-body-keeps-the-score","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/2020\/08\/07\/the-body-keeps-the-score\/","title":{"rendered":"The Body Keeps the Score"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Merabu Nagwandala Overcomes Illness, Rewrites Record Books in Cross Country<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Merabu Nagwandala is an unlikely legend in Georgia Southern athletics history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She holds six University records in track and field, but it was only a few short years ago that anyone could have imagined her running at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a child in Kampala, Uganda, Nagwandala was a talented aspiring runner, but before she even reached adolescence, she contracted typhoid four times and was plagued by health problems for several years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was running, but I had a lot of health complications and my mom thought sports would never be my thing,\u201d she said. \u201cMy health really deteriorated. I was very sick. My legs would swell. So my mom was just like, \u2018You may have the talent, but I don\u2019t think your body can handle the stress of training every day and pushing.\u2019 So I put that aside and focused on school.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nagwandala spent more than eight years in and out of school and bed rest, watching her friends and family excel in the sport she loved \u2014 a cousin who ran marathons, and a brother, Makweta Allen, who ran the steeplechase for Uganda in the 2013 World University Games in Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t until her senior year of high school that Nagwandala\u2019s health began to stabilize, but even with her improved condition, she wasn\u2019t thinking of taking up running again. Her brother, however, had other plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI just woke up one morning, and my brother said, \u2018You don\u2019t feel sick anymore. And you know, down here they\u2019re recruiting. You know you can go back. I know. I know you. We have grown up together. You just need a year, you know? You just need a few months.\u2019 And then I said, \u2018OK,\u2019\u201d Nagwandala recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allen sent her money for shoes and gear, and gave her the name of several coaches who could help her get in shape. She said she was looking for a coach who could bring her talent from zero to anything, really. It didn\u2019t take long. After six months of training and testing the limits of her endurance, she clocked a personal best 18:15 in the 5,000-meter run and entered her first race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Against some of the best college runners in her country, Nagwandala pushed herself harder than she ever had before and remarkably placed sixth. The exertion, however, proved too much for her. She passed out and was taken to the hospital. Despite her exhaustion, she decided she was hooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never looked back,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve run personal bests ever since. But it comes with a lot of sacrifice and error of forecasts and staying on your goals every day, looking at them thinking, \u2018I\u2019m going to get that.\u2019 You can\u2019t lose focus. So the only thing I face is that my body has not built for so long, so my fitness evaporates very fast.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When she arrived at Georgia Southern, Wes Penberthy, assistant track coach for distance and cross country, said he spent his first three months as her coach showing her what she could actually do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was just like, here\u2019s what we\u2019re doing today for a workout, and she was like, \u2018Oh, coach, I can\u2019t do that! There\u2019s no way.\u2019 And then she would run 30 seconds faster than I\u2019d give her for the time. And it was like, \u2018See, you can do that, so let\u2019s just keep building.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Nagwandala holds University records for the mile, 1,500 meters, 3,000 meters (indoor), 5,000 meters (indoor and outdoor) and 10,000 meters. Penberthy says she\u2019s one of the best he\u2019s ever coached, and has \u201creset the record books\u201d for Georgia Southern. And with two more years of eligibility, there\u2019s a chance she\u2019ll reset them again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s certain, however, is that with every race she runs and every record she breaks, Nagawandala gains more confidence in her abilities and in her own body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy body takes a long time to warm up, so I have to wait for my body where it\u2019s just moving by itself,\u201d she said. \u201cBut when my body says, Merabu, go!\u2019 We go!\u201d \u2014 Doy Cave<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Merabu Nagwandala Overcomes Illness, Rewrites Record Books in Cross Country Merabu Nagwandala is an unlikely legend in Georgia Southern athletics history. She holds six University records in track and field, but it was only a few short years ago that anyone could have imagined her running at all. As a child in Kampala, Uganda, Nagwandala was a talented […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":7987,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[64],"class_list":["post-7921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics","tag-summer-2020"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}