Time to race. Finally.

            I am up at 5 a.m. A quick shower in the dark as my wife sleeps, then I slip into my race day uniform: running shorts, black t-shirt, then over that, a cardinal polo with the cross-country logo embroidered on the left chest; running socks, and an aging yet extremely comfortable pair of ASICS Gel-Kayano running shoes with more than 600 miles on them. I've laid out everything the night before, like I did with my racing uniform back when I competed.  That was thirty years ago. I am just as excited now as I was back then.

            I tiptoe downstairs and grind coffee, then unlock the front door into the cool morning air. The predawn smells like summer, all dried grass and dust, with just a hint of autumn. Nothing I can pinpoint. I pluck the LA Times off the driveway, then turn in a slow 360, scanning the starlit skies for signs of rain. There are none. It's going to be a perfect day for racing.

            Back inside I read the paper just long enough for the coffee to brew.  I search in vain for mention that this morning is the opening meet of cross-country season. I am not surprised. Cross-country will never get the headlines; even the occasional mention in the agate's fine print will be surprising. It is as if there's some presumption on the part of editors that this sport exists far outside the mainstream. In fact, more athletes will compete in this one contest than in any sporting event this weekend. Thousands of spectators will line the course. Each runner's sweat, suffering and desperate internal battles will go unchronicled. The only glory they  will know is the self-satisfaction of pushing past preconceived personal limits. The race will be -- MUST be-- enough.

            My phone, sunglasses and car keys are waiting by the front door, where I placed them last night. I grab them on my way out.

            The team's pop-up canopy rests across the back two seats of my Suburban as I make the right turn on Alicia that will bring me to the invitational. I live at one end of Alicia, and the meet is at the other. I haven't tested the theory, but I'm fairly sure that if I put the Sub in neutral at the corner of Alicia and Olympiad I could coast the next six downhill miles to the race. Later in the season there will be meets that require six-hour van rides and overnight hotel stays. There will be chaperones and time schedules and meal stops and interminable rides home, after the expectation of competition has been replaced by the parsing of results and hard reality of winning or losing. But on this first day of the season I sleep in my own bed and drive my own car.

            I drive in silence. The hot coffee burns the back of my throat with every nervous gulp. I revel in the quiet, the darkness, and the hope that all thirteen weeks of summer training will yield a bumper crop of champions. When I am just a mile away, the road still empty, I slip in a Springsteen bootleg and turn the music up as loud as I can bear. Adrenaline courses through my veins. My considerable career cares are forgotten. I am alive.

            My goal is to be the first coach to arrive, so that we can get a prime area to set up the team canopy. I am successful. Slinging its eighty pounds over my shoulder, I march through the predawn silence to the same patch of grass where we set up last year. It seems like a small thing, but team canopy location has an effect on morale. Get there late and we end up making camp in a swale or hundreds of yards from the starting line. Get there early, before the other dozens of teams that will soon be clamoring for prime real estate, and I have my pick of the most level patch of green grass, with the best drainage, and hopefully well removed from the traffic lanes of runners and spectators that will soon flow back and forth over the course in a fluid continuum of humanity until the racing day is done. There is an element of Feng Shui to the logic. The team canopy is that calm amidst the storm. Setting just the right vibe is vital.

            All around me, as I raise the canopy, I can hear but not see race officials making last minute preparations: setting up scorer's tables, plugging in power cords, prepping the snack bar. Another coach arrives and sets up his canopy twenty yards from mine. We know each other well, and have not seen one another since track season. But we just grunt a quick good morning. Another coach arrives. Then another. Soon the sun is rising and the grassy field lining the course is a medieval carnival of multi-colored canopies. Tarps cover the ground beneath them. Coolers of ice water and Gatorade are wheeled into position by eager parents.

            The runners themselves arrive in ones and twos, nervous but eager to race. The 5:30 a.m. patch of empty grass is a portable city by 6:30. Coaches pore over race schedules as runners gossip or plug in ear buds to shut out the noise. Parents look on helplessly, not sure what they can do or how they can do it, but eager to show moral support for the team and their young runner. My two assistant coaches arrive, dressed just like me. I have always rebelled against wearing uniforms, as if it somehow threatens my creative instincts. But I like how my coaches and me look, and the spirit of cohesion it displays to the runners.

            The sun is up now, hidden by a gray marine layer that keeps the morning cool but humid. At 6:45 sharp I gather my team to pre-jog the course. Studies have shown that the mind has a survival instinct that causes the brain to convince the body it's tired before true muscle fatigue has set in. However, if the mind knows the route and distance and what's around the next corner, that instinct is held at bay. So we routinely pre-jog the entire course, studying the hills and turns for strategic purposes, even as we quiet that part of our subconscious that would spread doubt at a point in the race when we need strength.

            The first race starts at 7:45. The crack of the starter's pistol -- the first of hundreds I will hear through the season -- fills me with electricity. It's on.

            I love this moment. I love this day. I love this sport.

            The meet is over by noon. I have spent the morning sprinting about the course during each race, yelling encouragement and strategy to each runner. My behavior could be considered manic, even by the rabid standards of a cross-country meet. The new runners on my team, the ones who know me only as the laidback coach from those long summer miles, are startled. They shoot me a midrace look that says I'm possessed.

            Some very successful coaches speak softly to their athletes as they run past. Maybe someday I will be like them. But for now I am who I am, the coach who demands very loudly that his athletes get up that hill right now, while in the next breath screaming that they are awesome and they can do this. Then I am sprinting off that hill, cutting a tangent to some other demanding section of the course, to wait for those same runners so I can yell more and probably louder. I want them to know how much I believe in them. My reward comes after each race, when an athlete walks toward me with a medal draped around their neck and a grin as wide as the Pacific spread across their face. "Look," they always say, "I won a medal. Can you believe it?"

  Yes, I can. 

 Keep Pushing... Always

All in all, a wondrous weekend. 

Keep Pushing... Always

Alas, the meet was canceled. The track was empty, though remarkably clean after all that rain. Knowing that my wife was at a kick-boxing class, I decided to drive home down the coast. The Pacific was in full roil and PCH was flooded by the Newport jetty. On a whim, I turned onto the Newport peninsula, where I lived during the four-year wilderness of my early twenties. I'm not a fan of that epoch (the four years is officially known as an Olympiad, but as these were not competitive times, I feel wrong using that term), and haven't been for quite awhile. But as I got out of car and walked along the beach by the Newport pier, I heard a little voice telling me to go easy on myself. Those wilderness years were just me trying to figure things out. So lighten up. It might be twenty years before I can write about it, but when that day comes there will finally be some self-forgiveness.

Good to know. 

Made it home in time for the second bout of rain, but by then I needed to add some physical effort to my catharsis. Put on an old pair of shoes, grabbed the leash, and took my dog for a run down in the canyon. The mud was so slippery and thick that I spent the eight miles bracing myself; by the time I was done the muscles of my thighs felt clenched and bruised. The creek was a muddy knee-high torrent, which had to be forded twice. Bella got a kick out of that. And the hills were slick as glass. I had to run them toes out, like a cross-country skier. I did not feel Olympian, but if I were training for the Olympics, I would imagine these would be the sort of bold miles that would make their way into my training on a more regular basis. 

The rain didn't stop the whole run. It only got harder. I had my hat on, the "Navy Cross-Country" cap that I wear when the sun is blazing or when the skies are falling. I washed Bella on the back porch when it was all done, then hosed myself off for good measure. 

I stood there in the driving rain, my head tilted toward the sky like a turkey who doesn't know better. Some sort of burden slipped from my shoulders. I let it go. I was spent, but fortified. 

Keep Pushing... Always

Onward. We are in track season now, and I am experimenting with yet another training regimen for my athletes. This coaching thing is such an evolving science. Just when you think you've got it all figured out there's another variable to figure in. I added tempo work, lactate threshold runs, and some short alactic training during cross-country season. Now, after reading about the Kenyans' affection for the hill repeat, I'm increasing the weekly dosage of vertical. What am I looking for? A few things. The first is competitiveness. I coach at a relatively small school, but am convinced that if I can become a good enough coach we will be able to run head-to-head with any school of any size, anywhere. The second is knowledge. There is something invigorating about learning a new subject. Long ago I was of the mindset that my education was completed the day I got my college degree. Then I tiptoed back into the library when I began writing history books and soon found myself wallowing joyfully in the minutiae of various lives and centuries. The new knowledge kept me from getting stale or stuck in a rut. Now, as I research and write a new book, I also immerse myself each night (the days are for historical research, the nights are for running research) in the physiology of crafting better young runners. I have become a fiend for logging workouts and comparing the effects of past workouts on performances. Am I becoming a full-blown geek? Definitely. 

By the way, the McMillan Group offers a nice overview of the training modalities that make a great runner. It also works for cyclists and pretty much any endurance athlete. The trick is to tap into the body's various physiological systems. Many Tour de France riders, for instance, have become devotees of lactate threshold training. See Joe Vigil's Road to the Top and Jack Daniel's Daniel's Running Formula for ways to apply them. 

The third thing I'm looking for is that gentleness we spoke of at the top of the missive. To know me is to know that I appear laid back and non-judgmental. We all know that's a facade. I drive my runners as hard as I drive myself, asking them to run so hard that they will never know the regret of not pushing to their limits. I strive to do that in an upbeat, praise-oriented environment that makes everyone feel like a success at workout's end. But "strive" and "accomplish" are two very different things. Sometimes I get a little cranky. Not that cranky is a bad thing, but a little more Zen might go a long way. On the other hand, I'm not good at Zen. I am mercurial, impulsive, passionate, and driven. I like to win. I like to know that at the end of the day, I pushed my limits. I am not manic. At least not that I know of. And I am not obsessive or mean. But I just know that everyone gets a big smile and sense of satisfaction from striving just a little bit every day to be the best they can be. Sometimes that's physical. Sometimes that's spiritual. Sometimes that's emotional. The trick is putting them all in one package. Usually when I'm succeeding at one, the others are slipping. Then again, I'm hardly a perfectionist and I'm hardly perfect. I guess that one of life's great struggle is balancing the physical, spiritual and emotional. And financial. And educational. And professional... 

Anyway, like I was saying. It's track season. In less than two weeks the racing begins, which means a near-perfect segue from the Olympics. So maybe the post-Olympic void won't be so bad this time around. 

Keep pushing... always

I'm not sure how this is going to look. I think I need to learn more about uploading photos. Anyway, this was my attempt at an artistic photo of the guy holding the dolphin (I am assuming that was Poseidon), and then the bus came along and added a splash of color. Ah, well. I'm still learning this photography stuff. I'm much better at absorbing a scene through osmosis, then writing about it after I've sifted and sorted the odd emotions. There are writers, and there are photographers. There are writers who think they're photographers (not me) and photographers who think they're writers, but I don't believe you can do both. I mean, it's physically possible, but the merger dilutes the excellence. 

So the subject is the Olympics. For starters, I have to say that I loved Chris Del Bosco's wipeout. Not the fact that he crashed, but that he had a bronze medal sewn up but continued pushing his limits because he wanted gold. The crash was beside the point. I think he may become more well known for putting it out there, than if he'd actually won. I hope he comes back in four years. 

Listening to The Dan Patrick Show this morning, he asked a legitimate question: at what point does a Team USA hockey game get shown in prime time? More to the point, which figure skating event gets bumped for this game? He was referring to the USA-Canada game being shown on MSNBC rather than the big network, which gave us the usual endless sequins on ice. Last night it was ice dancing, which is why my wife was waking me up at 10:30 to go to bed. After the wonder of Bode Miller's victory, and the earlier joy of watching that hard-hitting USA-Canada game, I got so bored with all that endless ice dancing that I almost committed the heresy of turning off the Olympics (!) to watch the SURVIVOR episode I missed last Thursday. Instead, I tried very hard to appreciate the ice dancing, only to give in to the comforts of my big leather chair and the land of Nod. Tonight, and perhaps later in the week when women's figure skating comes on, I will opt for the DVR list. 

Ah, but Bode. I love Bode Miller. I love his iconoclastic ways. I love that he believes in the purity of competition and the pursuit of individual best. I love that he told Matt Lauer this morning that he took the governors off when he raced yesterday. When Matt Lauer asked if the governors would be re-applied for the evening's celebration, Bode calmly replied that once they're off, they're off. I think the question was an attempt to capture a more settled and mature Miller, and the answer assuredly reminded one and all that Miller marches to his own beat. Call me crazy, but I love that. It's a deeply held belief in sentiments like that and the power of individuality that made me such an awful corporate employee. Anyway, I'm a sucker for redemption, too. For Miller to come back and win after being lambasted so deeply four years ago in Torino is nice to watch. 

An aside, but I have noticed that women friends of mine either align themselves in the Bode Miller camp or the Apolo Ohno camp. My wife is a Bode girl. Her sister is an Apolo girl. Noonan, determined to upset my theory, is a Shani Davis fan. I guess everyone has a type. Just interesting to note the distinction. 

And finally, this is my last dispatch from my beloved PowerBook G4. After five years of diligent service that saw three books, as many Tour de Frances, hundreds of dispatches, and thousands of emails, the folks down at the Genius Bar tell me it's time to put her down. Something about the logic board. A writer and his laptop have a deep bond, and I will miss the oddities such as "a" and "s" which have almost been rubbed off by the years of tapping on those keys, the right arrow button that doesn't work at all, and the annoying way she puts herself to sleep at random and often maddening times. Sort of like me, watching ice dancing. I will be buying a new laptop today, moving all my data on over, then handing this one off to my twelve-year-old as a starter laptop (I should note that this may not work for him. Like any modern child, he's technically light years ahead of me. This laptop may not have the juice for the more advanced applications he favors. But then again, that's what hand me downs are all about). 

So off to the Mac store. 

Keep Pushing... Always

It is raining lightly. Actually, it is now dark and raining lightly. For the first time in two decades of international travel, I've brought a camera. This is a new habit, and I'm just getting used to it. So far I've taken four pictures. That's not much, considering allt here is to see and do here.

Couldn't sleep last night because I was still on California time. Passed hours watching BBC Olympic coverage. I have to admit that I never realized how much of the WInter Olympics is subjective, with judges and politics controlling the action. They even managed to much up something as simple and pure as men's cross-country skiing. So I am necessarily revising my belief that subjective sports don't belong in the Games. I had way too much fun watching snowboarding to think otherwise. I am, however, not rescinding my no-sequins dogma.

I would ask, politely, that Susie B post an actual picture of herself on Facebook. I like to know who's slapping me around.

Speaking of snowboarding, I know absolutely nothing about boardcross, but it seems to me they could go a scoche faster if they wore speed suits instead of parkas. Call me crazy. And, yes, I know that speed suits would look as out of place as tuxedoes on snowboarders, but I'm just saying.

I am going to attempt to post some of my photos tomorrow. Technology is catching up with me.

Hey everyone, enjoy your Olympic coverage, wherever you may be. London is a mighty fine place to be, if only for a day or two. This is that pause to reflect before the hurly-burly of effort and hyper-focus. I am awash in the grace of wandering aimlessly about this city in the rain, utterly content amd duly fortified.

Keep Pushing... Always

My favorite Olympic moment so far came this morning, in the LA Times. Check out this quote from snowboarder Graham Watanabe, on what it feels like to qualify for the Olympics: "Try to imagine Pegasus mating with a unicorn and the creature of that birth. I somehow tame it and ride it into the clouds and the sunshine and rainbows. That's how I feel."

Awesome. 

So it is Monday morning and I am exhausted after three straight nights of Olympic coverage. Today will be no better, what with the men's downhill. Funny, I watch skiing in non-Olympic years and it's OK, but nothing great. Come the Olympics, it's the most dramatic thing imaginable. Go figure. 

Speaking of figure... I for one would love to see figure skating, in all its many lame guises, yanked from the Olympics. It's Vegas. It's cheesy. It's, above all, subjective. Politics and dealmaking and favoritism should never be allowed to determine an athletic contest. On top of that, it's boring. I'd much rather watch heat after heat of speed skating, where the real athletes show how it's done, than to watch yet another pubescent figure skater flounce around the ice under the disapproving gaze of their vestigial Iron Curtain coach. Perhaps if they could find a way to make it a contact sport, it might be worthwhile. But as it stands, this stuff is a little too precious. The Olympics should have a very simple and steadfast litmus test for what does, and what does not constitute an Olympic sport. It is this: any contest requiring sequins is not a sport. 

Onward. 

Up at dawn, despite the late hours. Lots and lots to do today, starting and ending with research and writing. Knew I would lose my way (and my sanity) if I didn't run, so I snuck out at dawn with Callie for a quick four in the canyon. The air smelled of dew and new green grass, and the temperate was just cool enough to warrant a sweatshirt. Sometimes those a.m., just-out-of-bed runs are the toughest at the outset, when sitting down for a cup of coffee seems far more practical. But they're also the most settling when they're complete. 

On that note, the piece I wrote Saturday morning that mysteriously vanished into the internet was about morning runs with my team. And about getting pushed, working hard, etc. In retrospect, I think the fates saved me from myself. The piece was a caricature, in many ways, with me thinking of ways to stay competitive without letting my competitive drive overshadow my athletes. So I'm glad it went away. Sometimes I need to be saved from myself. 

Keep Pushing... Always

Keep Pushing... Always

       These are all the things I noticed during the first two miles of our run. The pace was light and the physical act of running was incidental. My ears and eyes and ankles were the focus. I guess this is what it means to dissociate. Or, as I like to think of it, looking at the scenery.

         After those first two miles we raced some mountain bikers up a switchback, then I broke them into groups for a fartlek run - two minutes on, two minutes cruise, three minutes on, two minutes cruise, four minutes on, etc. Normally I'm an observer, but I've been trying to get myself back in shape lately. I've cut out a lot of the garbage from my diet, made a point of training in some fashion every day (running, mostly, but also a couple weight/plyo sessions at the House of Pain. I'm also giving serious thought to getting back on the bike), and have prepared for an upcoming few months of intensive writing by raising my level of fitness. So I thought it would be fun to jump into the fartlek session. "Fartlek" being Swedish for "speed play" it all sounded like a whole lot of fun. And it was. But it took everything I had to keep up with my runners. I was cognizant of each footfall, my arm angle, the pattern of my breathing. I kept track of each runner in front and to my side. I'd like to say there was someone behind me, but that would be a lie. I knew the pine-scented loop we'd be running, but had forgotten how impossibly far it was to the turnaround point. What had seemed like a short trot on an easy (dissociative) day, was actually more than a thousand meters. The grade, which once seemed so flat, was actually slightly uphill on the outbound portion and wonderfully downhill after we rounded the cinderblock public restroom and pushed back to the start, where we would do it all again. This, as Flotrack tells me, is associative running. I paid attention. I was in the moment -- so in the moment that time slowed down, expanding itself into the minutiae of running. The two minute rest periods, on the other hand, flew past in what felt like five seconds.  

     Racing feels like this, too, only with a higher level of focus and clarity. I know that some people like to dissociate during racing, to take their mind off the pain. But I'm so ADD (or ADHD, or whatever I am that makes me so easily distracted), that a moment's dissociation takes me to some other emotional place. Suddenly, the race seems unimportant. So I don't go there, because bad things happen when I do. At the Raid Gauloises in Ecuador a few years back I dissociated on the fourth day, while walking across an Andean plain. Within minutes, I was thinking of all the better ways I could be using my personal time. Out of nowhere I decided to quit the race. 

            This is dangerous territory. The Navy SEALs point out that once someone has made the decision to quit their basic training, there's no turning back. The mind has faltered long before the physical act of ringing the bell has taken place. What saved me in Ecuador was sharing this impulsive decision with a teammate. She reminded me that I was in no way fatigued or injured, merely bored by the scenery. In this way, I carried on. 

            OK. So we have associative and dissociative. But I would posit that there is another mental state comprising a little of both. It's the hyper-focus before the run, which carries over into the workout, so that it passes in such a blur that it's as if it never happened. Case in point: any day that my writing is going well. It's my habit to get the kids off to school, write for a couple hours to get the synapses firing, then go for a run to let all those new ideas percolate. Afterward, I'll head back into the office and write for three or four more hours. weaving all those endorphin-laced, highly oxygenated thoughts into the story or the book. My best writing -- or, let me say, my most fulfilling writing -- follows this process. I've got the basic idea, I add a little run, then I plunge back into the written word. No phone calls, no emails, no distractions. It's an introvert's dream. 

            Sometimes, however, I plunge too far into the psyche. These are my bunker days. I am so consumed by writing that I am transported to another time and place. I do not exist, other than as a vessel for whatever thought needs to flow onto the page. Only reluctantly, and perhaps out of obligation, will I break out for a run. 

            These are scary times. I am physically running, but my brain is still writing. These are the runs where I stand at a stoplight and run a hand across the drape of my running shorts, just to make sure I remembered to get properly dressed. These are the runs where I look back and forth two or three times before crossing the street, because in my mental condition I might actually forget why I'm looking both ways, and sprint out in front of a car. A run like this can last an hour. All the while I am associating in a monster way with writing, while apparently dissociating on my run. 

            Here's the weird part: the spell is broken if I run to the top of a hill. No lie. The whole way up will be a grind that will not register in the slightest, but once I stand atop Chiquita Ridge or the hill I like to call Falcon, or that spot on the Live Oak Trail where I have a 360 view of my world, I snap from my reverie. Very often I will pause to appreciate what I'm seeing. Sometimes I offer a short prayer of thanks for the tremendous beauty, or for my sudden lightness of being. Summits purify me. They let me see. It's no wonder that on the morning of my wedding I went for a run, and somehow found myself standing atop a hill. It just happens. 

            I don't know the clinical term for this hyper-focus, and then the loosening of one's cares and focus that occurs when all the world is laid before me in some glaring display of perspective and beauty. I don't want to know. 

            The mind-body continuum is one of the most overlooked aspects of running and life. To run is to think, whether we think we're thinking or not.