I didn't go anywhere this weekend.
After filling the summer with flights from grief (literally), I cancelled a New York trip to see the USA National Track and Field Championships and attend a Foundation board meeting. Stayed home to coach the long run, watch the Tour for hours at a time, and sit on the porch with a good book. Maybe crack a few beers.
Reinventing yourself after loss can take a childish form, like my attempt to recreate the legendary Chicago hot dog last night for dinner. I over steamed the bun, which gave it a consistency only Joey Chestnut would like.
But the point is I don't normally eat hot dogs for dinner. I don't usually even eat lunch but for some reason I've developed a fondness for Board & Brew's tuna fish sandwich. No cheese. Toasted sourdough. Horseradish on the side. No one around to give me limits so I need to invent my own.
I remember the hot mess of a 25-year-old I was when I first met Callie and compare him with the guy I am today. She didn't change me or put restrictions on me. I just knew that I loved her, that I no longer wanted to be the angry young man I'd once idolized, and aimed for that. Forty years later, flying solo, I still am. It is odd to have met my special someone just as my prefrontal cortex started making good decisions, and to have lost that person at 65, the accepted portal into life's stoppage time. I am so lucky that everything in the middle was life's sweet spot. Having kids, finding a career, watching the milestones fly by, making love in the middle of the day with the windows closed. Whew. Man. Good memories.
I am, however, traveling next week.
The annual Mammoth training camp is coming up. As with every year, I treat camp like it is my last. 2005 was when I was writing Chasing Lance, leaving the condo before dawn to drive up to Minaret Vista to open my laptop and put words on the electric page as the first rays of sun dappled the Minarets across the valley. Callie and the kids were asleep in the condo and I couldn't write without waking them up. I was just back from covering the Tour and waiting on word from my son's new high school as to whether or not I would be their cross country coach.
I'd write for three hours, drive back down the mountain with "The Price You Pay" cranking on the car stereo (I have no idea how that became the book's theme song), then spend the day hiking the trails with my young family. I'd imagine my new team running these same paths, inventing places for hill repeats and speed work. I was a veteran runner but didn't know a thing about coaching. I got the job. The next year marked the first Mammoth camp.
Do I want to keep coaching after this year? I am attracted by the prospect of a month in some foreign Airbnb.. But I also know I would be miserable driving by the high school and seeing runners out on the track, knowing I had nothing to do with their race readiness. I'm a pretty good coach now. Give me a new runner and I can make them a champion. I've done it many times.
But when do I let go? My therapist definitely thinks it's a bad idea. Callie would have fought me on this. I connect remarkably well with teenagers. I'm certainly just as keen — perhaps, more so — to stand at the section known as the "Christmas trees" at the California State Meet, calling my runners home with 600 meters to go. Even typing that sentence gives me chills.
Yet every year I go through this Clash-like process of "should I stay or should I go." If you've been reading my stuff long enough, like Camille and Kennie going back to my Tour days, you've seen that dilemma many times before.
I feel like a glider pilot who just pulled the mechanical release knob and watched the rope from the tow plane fall away. Reached altitude and off to soar on the currents. There's no longer anyone else in the plane, just me, munching on a tuna fish sandwich and wondering what the hell is next.