Cross country season officially began last Saturday. As a forest fire raged in the mountains above Pasadena, the first gun of the season sounded. I am always reminded of “Hollywood” from Top Gun’s comment about dogfighting when I hear that first gun. It signifies so much that feels right to the world for me.
I started this blog by writing a lengthy and mean-spirited rant about the cancer known as club soccer. . . . In the name of positivity, and with full realization that my mental health is affected by this ongoing frustration far more than those I ridiculed, I hit delete. . . . Surprisingly, all of this started as a warmhearted story about my own befuddlement.
My wife is a professor at a local university. She recently shared a video with me about cognitive thinking that struck a nerve. The speaker was an authority on behavioral research — I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but he had me spellbound for the length of the video. In essence, his viewpoint is that we control the outcome of a situation by determining how we choose to view it.
My team is the smallest I’ve ever coached . . . [t]he kids that have chosen to run are special to me. I plan to push them very hard and get the most out of their potential. We’d all like to qualify for Nike Cross Nationals, but that’s twenty-two weeks away. Better to savor each daily workout and take things as they come.
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....
