I am bracing myself for the ebbs and flows of a [cross country] season that will inevitably be filled with laughter and tears. And through it all I must find a way to motivate and inspire. So for some strange reason having to do with the grieving process deciding it was time to deal with some old pain, I am dedicating this season to the memory of my late sister, Monique . . .
Way back when I started coaching in 2005, I thought it was something of a lark. I’d long wanted to coach distance running and the job fell into my lap. After years of writing training articles for running magazines and more than a decade traveling the globe writing about endurance sports, I thought myself uniquely suited to the rigors of coaching high school cross country and track....
What a weekend to be a distance coach. Sometimes progress is measured in small personal bests, as a runner moves their times faster by a second per race, so that by the end of the season the improvement is actually quite sizeable. Sometimes progress is measured in the ability for a runner to think tactically, seeing the race unfold in an almost prescient manner, knowing when the time is right to make a move or to hold back. . . .
