It's not often I want to leave a cross country meet early. But yesterday's Central Park Invite saw temps in the high 90's and a little muggy humidity from being just a mile from the beach. In all my years as a coach I've never seen so many runners walking the final mile. I even saw three kids collapse. I was wiped out just walking the course to cheer.
So I made the command decision to put all my guys and girls into a single race rather than separate them by grade. What would have been a day starting at 8 and ending at 2 became a hasty departure by 11:30. Lunch with the Mater Dei coaching staff (the Roldans and Martinez) in an air-conditioned taproom soon followed. The jolt of satisfaction I normally get from a full day of racing was instead satisfied by a couple hours talking about distance running.
Coaches don't post TikTok videos or spend hours working on the next Insta post, but we're influencers in a much more powerful way. As the five of us gathered around, the conversation was technical (VO2 max or thresh at this point in the season) and personal (the very funny coaching stories that can never be repeated outside our circle of life, along with the modern lament that even the most occasional and well-placed F bomb is no longer part of the motivational quiver). I left uplifted.
That was needed. There's always a week in the middle of the season when nothing seems to be going right. The runners get sick at homecoming or some school retreat, they miss practice to make up a test, they can't remember the beginning and they can't see the end.
I feel it, too. We've been at this since June. Eight or nine practices a week. I try not to fall into a rut with my methodology, but I hear myself telling them to run the same route they've already run hundreds of times if they're a senior. The week will pass and with it the malaise. It might stretch one more week but it's usually a thing of the past by mid-October and the promise of championship racing in the weeks to come. In the meantime, I keep telling the teams to do they best they can. That's right up there with Keep Pushing... Always on my mantra list.
I used to just grit it out, finding ways to keep my runners focused during these midseason speed bumps. But about ten years ago I found a way to recharge my coaching batteries: get out of town. Leave the team in the hands of the other coaches and spend a couple days in a distant place. Some years it's Mammoth. This year it's Marquette, Michigan. A college reunion followed by the Packers-Bears game in Green Bay. The team is traveling to Fresno for a meet and will be just fine without me.
I'm sitting out back as I write this. A hot wind is blowing. Small invisible flies are biting my bare ankles. The back door just swung open and a garden lizard darted inside. I have no idea how I'll get it to come back out. It will be wonderful, if only for a weekend, to be someplace colder, where the leaves are turning, and I have to wear a coat to go outside — or maybe not. It's supposed to be in the high 50s in the UP next weekend. Perhaps a sweatshirt is a better fit.
If you've been reading these missives for a while you're probably noticing that this idea of getting out of town is not unusual. I seem to be getting out of town quite often this year. If you're taking the next logical step and thinking I'm searching for a distraction, you'd be right about that, too. Very often I will slap hands with my runners as they perform intervals on the track.
"GIve me some E!" I say sometimes. E for energy.
I give it to them as we low five, they give it to me. So yeah, I'm getting out of town yet again. I'm doing the best I can, but right now I need a whole lot of E.