Big Swim: Rec League

You should really read the previous posts about Gwinnett County Swim League and the county meet before you read this one.

This is a story about John when he was thirteen or fourteen years old at the Championship Meet for the Gwinnett County Swim League. John had been swimming with the Dynamo Swim Club for a couple years by this time, so he was an experienced and capable swimmer. John told us part of this story after the fact and part of this is what I observed, but I’ve never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

The county championship meet is a mind-numbing experience. For each age group and gender there is a 50-yard race for backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, freestyle, plus a 100-yard freestyle, a 100-yard individual medley, a medley relay, and a freestyle relay. Two genders, times a bunch of age groups, times a bunch of events, times 50 swimmers per event, equals a HUGE number of swim heats diving into the pool; each one to be announced, started, swum, timed, recorded, and get their butts out of the pool for the next heat to swim.

Each successive heat is generally faster than the previous heat. Parents make sure to catch their own kid’s swim, and fans of the sport will pay attention to the final and fastest heat to see if there is a talented swimmer worthy of notice. Generally the noise level around the pool is steady. On the rare occasion when a swimmer in the final heat does something spectacular, the audience noise grows noticeably and erupts at the finish.

John was swimming the anchor (final) leg of his team’s 4x50-yard freestyle relay. It is a down and back swim. This was the final heat, the fastest seeded heat, the third swimmer was already in the water, and John’s team was in second place by two body lengths. By this I mean there was a full five feet of empty water between the head of John’s teammate and the toes of the lead swimmer coming into the finish. This is generally regarded as an insurmountable lead. I was there to see John and the anchor swimmer for the leading team step up on the blocks and prepare to take off.

Swimming competition was generally a friendly event, and John had been taught to be courteous, so he turned to the other swimmer up on the blocks and genially said “Good luck”. The other kid scowled at John and said, “You’re going down!” Talking trash at swim meets is only done in jest between good friends, so this did not sit well with John. The other kid foolishly gave John some extra motivation. John was ticked.

As I said, the leading team had a two body length lead, and the other kid had confidence in that lead, so the anchor swimmer didn’t risk anything on his takeoff. He was very safe and probably wasted some time. On the other hand John had a lot of distance to make up in only 50 yards, so he took a chance on a perfect takeoff with his toe leaving the blocks just as the third swimmer touched the wall.

John put a lot into his takeoff, had a good entry, held a really tight streamline for a long ways underwater, and came up at the other kid’s feet. Making up that kind of distance so quickly is really rare. He’d made up an entire body-length and you could hear the crowd react. The reaction of the spectators who were watching caused all the others who had their heads buried in books or engaged in conversation to look up and take note.

John caught up some more on the swim to the far wall, but really attacked the turn, and held another long tight streamline underwater. It’s hard to know where the swimmers are in relation to each other when they are under water during the turn. It isn’t until they both come up after the turn that you know what has happened during the turn.

The other kid came up first and immediately started thrashing down the pool, but there was no sign of John. He was under for what felt like an eternity to me, and I was wondering if he had totally botched the turn. He finally popped up almost mid-pool and was ahead of the other kid. This was an exceptional come-from-behind performance and the crowd knew it; would it be too cliché to say that “the crowd went nuts”? That’s what happened. John took the few remaining strokes and put some more distance on the other kid and won the race, big.

The crowd made a nice buzzing noise after the race as they talked about what had just happened. It was a really neat moment. Of course I was proud of him. I still am.

Don’t tick John off.

Rec League County Meet

At the end of the Gwinnett County Swim League season there was a county championship meet. The top 50 times in each age group and gender from the 6-meet regular season were invited to go to the county championship meet.

The county swim meet was held at a small pool in Briscoe Park. It was like any typical neighborhood pool. It had 25 yards of water with 6 lanes. There was a small amount of deck space where they had a couple sets of portable metal bleachers for spectators. Lawn chairs occupied every remaining piece of concrete. It certainly did not accommodate 46 teams of swimmers plus their grandparents, parents, and siblings. It was so crowded that they asked parents to enter the pool area only for their child’s swim, and then to please exit the area.

The munchkin age groups competed on one day and the older kids on the next. Each was an all-day event in the hottest part of the Georgia summer. It was a hellish experience when John was competing on one day and Ann on the next, necessitating two full days of attendance, morning till night.

The county meet had all of the same issues that a dual meet had, except 46 teams were involved instead of two, and thousands of swimmers rather than mere hundreds. Cars were parked door to door for hundreds of yards in the surrounding fields. Areas were roped off for each of the 46 teams to inhabit outside the pool. Little kids, and big kids, ran noisily everywhere throughout the day, and the garbage crews were constantly emptying the fifty gallon drums.

In spite of it all, or because of it all, it really was a fun swim meet. The atmosphere of excitement was contagious. We waited all day long to watch Ann and John swim a couple of times for a minute each. To a parent it was well worthwhile. I loved watching the kids swim and compete.

Rec League Swim Meets

Ann and John were both in the Gwinnett County Swim League through high school. This was a summer recreational swim league operated at neighborhood swimming pools. There were 46 teams and roughly 6,000 swimmers. The teams were broken up into divisions according to size to compete against each other during the season. Each team had three swim meets at home, and three swim meets away.

Putting on a swim meet at the neighborhood pool was a major undertaking. The list of details was astounding and required the involvement of every parent in at least one capacity. The list of things to be done for each swim meet included lighting, sound system, timers, stroke and turn officials, starters, bullpen, event board, results, ribbons, concessions, starting blocks and parking. Every detail had to be thought of, and handled, in advance. Each successive swim meet was slightly less chaotic that the meet before. By the time you knew what you were doing, it was time to put everything away for the year.

Rec swim league meets were chaotic even with the greatest planning and preparation. Our team had 150 kids aged 4-18, with an equal number of parents, and the other team had the same numbers. Cramming that many people around a neighborhood pool on a hot Georgia summer night is the definition of chaos. It really didn’t make much difference what kinds of preparations you made; that is a lot of people!

Being the lazy no-good bum that I am, I initially tried to get by with minimal involvement. This was not possible. During my time of incarceration in the swim league I did time in the bullpen, timing, event board, stroke-and-turn official, and starter/announcer. I helped set up lights, starting blocks, parking arrangements, sound system, bullpen chairs and anything else that needed doing. I also helped take everything down and put it away at the end of the meet. (May God bless those who did not help.)

Jean did pretty much all of the same and much, much more. Jean spent several years as team vice-president, and several more as team president. Being president of a team of roughly 150 swimmers, and about as many parents, took the diplomatic skills of the ambassador to North Korea; really. Budget, coaches’ salaries, swim and racquet club council meetings, swim league council meetings, and arranging all of the infrastructure items I mentioned earlier were all Jean’s business. If you’ve never done it, (“it” being the loss of sleep and sanity) you cannot fully appreciate the time and effort; all done as a volunteer. No greater love hath a woman for her children.

Swim meets started at 6pm, which meant that we had to start setting up the pool at 3pm, so the home team could warm-up at 5pm, and the visiting team could warm-up at 5:30 pm. Swim meets typically lasted until 10:30 pm or later, clean-up till after 11pm, and then home to bed and get up for work at 6am. Jean and the swim team would often go out for pizza after the meet. I went home and died.

Jean would make incredible dinners of chicken salad or ham and macaroni salad and pack them in an ice chest for each swim meet. We each had our own labeled container inside. A second ice chest was necessary to carry sodas, chips, grapes, celery, carrots and Jean’s soon to be famous chocolate chip bars. The kids would swim an event and wander by our chairs (the chairs we rarely got a chance to sit in) and grab some chow between events.

When the kids were little Jean and I would take turns working at the swim meets. Jean would work the first half of the meet while I watched kids, and then Jean would watch the kids while I worked the second half. As the kids grew older they became swim meet orphans as both Jean and I worked the entire swim meet. They knew the routine by that time and only needed us to make dinner. (That means they needed Jean, not me.)

Jean and I spent 16 years going to (working) rec swim league meets, and 8 of those years were spent doing double duty at USA Swimming meets. When you add another 4 years of attending University of Virginia swim meets, it adds up to 20 years of swimming for Jean and me.

It was all such hard work that we had no idea how much fun we were having at the time.

Big Wheels

When Ann and John were really little we got them each a tricycle for Christmas. Specifically, these were Big Wheels made by Mattel. It probably isn’t necessary to explain these as they seem to be universally well known, which means I am going to describe them anyway.

The Big Wheels were built low to the ground and were virtually impossible to turn over. They were like recumbent bikes with a seatback so the kids could generate great power and acceleration even though they were small. Best of all in the kids’ minds, they were all plastic so they made a loud rumbling noise as they traveled across the concrete. I did not know that when I bought them.

These were the best toys of all time. Ann and John spent hours pedaling those tricycles up and down the driveway. We’d put out obstacles for them to weave around, and sometimes open the garage doors so they could speed in one door, make a controlled skid on the smooth pavement, and zip out the other door.

The kids worked so hard on the trikes that their faces would turn red and would soak whatever they were wearing with sweat. They were disgusting after a session on the tricycles. In an attempt to keep them cool we began a steady practice of keeping John’s hair in a buzz-cut, and Ann’s hair as short as socially acceptable. They basically kept these hairstyles through high school.

Unbeknownst to us when we bought our house in Stone Mountain, there was a low spot in front of the garage door that became a large puddle two inches deep after every rain. It was of considerable size and did not evaporate for several days. Of course the kids took great pleasure in riding the Big Wheels through the puddle at great speed and splashing the dirt, grit, and dead worms that had collected there all over themselves and the bikes.

Sometimes the garden hose preceded bath-time at night.

Sometimes the garden hose preceded lunch!

Clyde Partin, Sr.

I attended the memorial service for William “Doc” Clyde Partin, Sr. this afternoon. Clyde was 85 at the time of his death. The service was held in Glenn Memorial Church, a rather large church. The church was full, as was the balcony. The attendance was a true measure of the goodness of the man.

High School Orchestra

By the time I reached my senior year in high school, 1969-70, my parents freed me from cello lessons and playing in the high school orchestra. I enjoyed the music, and I enjoyed the people, but academically I could not afford to be in the orchestra. I was already missing one academic course by being in the concert choir. It didn’t make sense to be in two music performance groups. There were some academic courses I needed and wanted to take, and orchestra was in the way.

As a runner on the cross country team, and a distance runner on the track team, I carried a pretty big chip on my shoulder (still do) for the lack of recognition and respect given to my sports, and particularly, to my beloved distance events. If you didn’t play one of the BALL sports, and you weren’t a sprinter, you were nobody. It was natural for me to also carry a chip on behalf of the orchestra, band, and drama departments, which I also felt were under-recognized. I went to every band, orchestra, and drama production I could get to in order to show my support.

I’d been playing with half of my classmates in the orchestra since middle school, and most of them the first two years of high school, so I made a special effort to attend the orchestra concerts. The one concert I remember particularly during my senior year featured Beethoven’s famous and most recognizable Fifth Symphony. They were doing it “ala Bernstein”.

Leonard Bernstein and the New York Symphony appeared on TV several years prior where Bernstein explained the symphony and the orchestra demonstrated what he had described in short segments. It was a huge hit at the time and made classical music understandable to Joe Six-Pack.

I was a little bit nervous for my classmates. I was worried the piece might be too difficult for them. Also, I was worried about the orchestra director pulling this off. He’d never impressed me as having any dramatic ability whatsoever. I worried needlessly.

The director, whose name escapes me after 40 years, did a great job explaining the symphony in segments, and the orchestra did a bang-up job playing it piecemeal. The director even exhibited some personality; something he rarely showed in rehearsal. He wasn’t the showman that Bernstein was, but he did an impressive job, as did the orchestra.

While still impressed with the performance the next day, and still carrying a chip on my shoulder on behalf of all under-recognized groups to which I belonged or had belonged, I wrote a note of congratulations and thanks to the director and the orchestra. I wrote it on a piece of notebook paper, stuffed it in an envelope addressed to the director, and dropped it off at the principal’s office.

A couple of days later Jerry Moore grabbed me in the hallway at school and told me I was a hero to the entire orchestra and especially to the director. The director had read my letter to the entire orchestra at their next rehearsal and had talked glowingly about the contents, and about me, at length.

It was one of my better moments.

Jerry Moore

This is a blog, which means I have permission to write about anything I want. I want to write about Jerry Moore, and I don’t know why.

I met Jerry Moore when my family moved to Cedar Rapids. We were in the fifth grade together. We had the same home room teacher from the fifth grade through our senior year in high school. We shared a locker all three years in high school. I only remember one class we had in common, and that was orchestra. In spite of these regular intersections with Jerry, I did not know him well.

The thing that always intrigued me about Jerry is how different his life was from mine. Jerry lived with his mom who taught music lessons out of her house. He lived in a modest house across the street from our elementary school. Jerry’s instrument was the violin. He had an older brother who played the cello. In the eight years of elementary, middle, and high school that I knew Jerry, I never saw him playing games or having fun like the rest of us.

While the rest of us would gather after school and weekends for pick-up baseball, basketball, and football games, it was rumored that Jerry spent hours in his house practicing the violin. This was whispered about as if it were a nefarious activity; not as bad as being a communist, but clearly abnormal behavior. I never saw him having fun. He never went out for a sport. I never saw him anywhere but at school, and didn’t know anyone who had seen him out and about either.

I understood and enjoyed music. I could read music, and make music, with my voice; I just couldn’t do it well with an instrument. I’d been taking cello lessons since the third grade. I did not enjoy it, but I did it because my parents made me. Proper playing of the cello required me to contort my hand and fingers in a painful fashion I could never master. I could read the music, but translating it to finger movement never came naturally. Holding the bow properly also required a painful contortion of the right hand. I could make some sounds come out of the cello, but nothing I would be proud for others to hear.

My experience with the cello gave me some appreciation for Jerry’s well hidden pursuit of the violin. My appreciation for Jerry’s pursuit changed considerably in the ninth grade.

Our junior high school covered grades 7-9. Several times a year there would be an all-school assembly where there would be a special speaker. They would pack the entire school into the auditorium for these events. They brought in a man with a menagerie of reptiles to exhibit and talk about their biological features. One time it was a man exhibiting birds of prey. Another time it was a man who could play multiple instruments.

The school called an unannounced assembly, and I thought this was quite odd. Usually an assembly was promoted weeks in advance to generate excitement and interest in the subject. I remember walking into the auditorium and seeing Jerry sitting in a plain wooden chair onstage. There was nothing on the stage; only Jerry. I remember thinking, “Oh crap, Jerry has done something really bad and they are going to make a public example of him in front of the whole school”!

When the school was finally seated quietly, one of the school administrators proceeded to interview Jerry. Through the interview we learned that Jerry got up early every morning to practice the violin for two hours before school started. We learned that Jerry went home in the afternoons and practiced for several more hours. We heard about the junior honor orchestra he played in with other select young musicians. He had won several prestigious honors and awards that we didn’t even know existed. I am not sure of this, but I think he was also already playing with the Cedar Rapids Symphony, which was no small feat. It turned out that Jerry pursued the violin with greater dedication and discipline than any athlete we knew. Jerry was quietly better at his pursuit than any of us at ours.

At the conclusion of the interview Jerry picked up his violin which was waiting offstage, tuned it expertly, and began to play. He played so beautifully that I was touched, and I cried. I cry now just thinking about the moment. I don’t recall what he played, just that it flowed and soared and resonated in that ancient auditorium. No one made a sound. A school full of self-centered adolescents actually wanted to hear every note. Jerry had a gift, a gift he had developed to the fullest, and shared it with the school. At that moment Jerry had the respect of everyone in that school.

When Jerry finished the piece I popped to my feet to begin the standing ovation. If I didn’t, I should have. Someone did. The auditorium roared with approval. I could practice the cello for a thousand years and never make the kind of music Jerry did that day. He had a gift.

I was proud to share a locker with Jerry Moore the next three years of high school. I always asked him how the violin was going. He always asked me about cross country, wrestling and track. He was a good guy. He was different.

I came across Jerry again one day in 1974 during my senior year at Coe College. I was walking across campus one evening near Sinclair Auditorium and Jerry was standing at the stage door. The Cedar Rapids Symphony had a concert there that night. I hadn’t seen him for 4 years since we graduated from high school, so we exchanged greetings and briefly got caught up on each other’s lives. I naively asked him why he was in Cedar Rapids and not in Chicago or New York with one of the major symphonies. Jerry thanked me for the compliment, but patiently explained to me that there existed yet another stratum of gifted musicians above him. It was hard to believe.

Jerry was as good as any violinist I’ve heard over the years, and I have heard a fair number. To hear him play in person defied description. For him to say that there were better violinists was unbelievable to me, but Jerry insisted that the difference was there. It was yet another humbling moment to realize that not only can I not make music like Jerry Moore; I also cannot hear music like Jerry Moore.

Jerry, you da man

Children’s Sermons

Another story about Ann and her precocious childhood –

First, some background:

Somewhere along the way Jean and I had been taught in a class, or read in a book, that kid’s questions are teaching moments; that you should answer every question you can, and research the questions you can’t answer. We encouraged questions at home and attempted to answer them fully. We did not talk down to Ann and John; we used words they could understand, but we didn’t avoid new or big words either. Thus we hoped to improve their vocabulary, their verbal skills, and their knowledge base.

The story:

When Ann was a munchkin, rug-rat, and curtain-climber, we were members of Highlands Presbyterian Church. The minister there was Harry Cain. The format of the church service had all of the kids sitting in the church pews with their families until the children’s sermon with Harry. The kids would sit on the floor at the front of the church for the children’s sermon, and then they would head off to the nursery just before the adult sermon began.

It was the children’s sermon that we came to dread. Harry came prepared to give a children’s sermon, but he wasn’t prepared for Ann. Ann was used to asking adults questions, and the presence of a congregation of adults did not intimidate her at all. Harry was repeatedly interrupted with questions from Ann, which provided great entertainment for the congregation. Some of the children’s sermons devolved into a conversation between Harry and Ann. The other kids sat there dully and waved to their parents, while Ann peppered Harry with questions.

We weren’t exactly embarrassed, but it sure made us uncomfortable. Ann’s vocabulary was impressive. We were frightened because we had no idea what Ann might say, but did not want to discourage her inquisitive nature. Is it possible to be embarrassed because your kid is so obviously bright? All the other kids were mute, and Ann wouldn’t hush. Sometimes she would begin to relate something that she felt was relevant, and it generally was, and she would go on at length, and Harry would just let her ramble along.

Church services often ran long.

Rug-Rat Reader

It is time to embarrass my daughter, Ann, with a few words specifically about her; about the days when she was still in diapers and discovered books.

After a day at work, and a quick run at Stone Mountain, I liked to sit down in an easy chair and relax reading the newspaper before dinner. I would have liked that, but it never happened. My sitting in the chair was Ann’s signal to hunt through the toys on the floor for a book. She would come toddling over to the chair with a book giving me the two arms “up” gesture. I didn’t pick her up. I made her climb up.

It just seemed the right thing to do; to make the easy things hard; to make the kids overcome as many obstacles as possible. The goal was to make them self-sufficient adults. Making life easy doesn’t teach them anything. At each stage of their childhood we allowed them to do as much for themselves as they could possibly handle.

I stuck my legs out and patted them with my hand saying, “climb up”. And so it was that she would grab little fistfuls of my pants, or while wearing shorts in the summer, fistfuls of leg hairs and flesh, and proceeded to commando climb up my body. I would attempt to ignore the climb and get another newspaper paragraph read, but it was difficult to do with her fingernails digging into my soft tissue.

When she reached my lap she continued to climb up my chest by grabbing handfuls of t-shirt or whatever else was handy until she was face to face with me, making my own reading impossible. (All of my t-shirts were eventually stretched out of shape and ruined by Ann’s brutal climbs.) When Ann reached my face, and all too often grabbed a handful of that during the climb, she would turn around and plop herself down with great vigor on my most tender and prized possession. Ouch. Just to be difficult I would continue to try to read the newspaper, but she would slap the newspaper down and shove her book in my face. “Read”, she commanded. It was one of her first words. (“No”, was first.)

As commanded, I would read the book with all appropriate enthusiasm and sound effects. Sometimes I would attempt to turn multiple pages to get through with the chore and back to the newspaper, but she had every book memorized and would turn back to the missed page. As her reading progressed I intentionally misread words or pointed to the wrong objects so she could correct me. It was great fun, if the process was not repeated endlessly hour after hour, and day after day.

When the book was done I placed it on the floor next to the chair and pronounced it “all done”. Ann would then climb down my body in the same fashion she came up, find another book, and repeat the process all over again.

It wasn’t long before Ann was reading the books to me. We kept a large collection on hand. If we were going to be forced to read, or listen to reading, for hours, the least we could do for our own sanity was to provide some variety. It was also nice to have a book with a plot, and dialogue, so the books became increasingly more interesting and difficult.

We weren’t trying to get Ann ahead of other children in preparation for her first day at school; there was simply no way to hold her back. Ann liked to read, and reading was the doorway to knowledge. Whodathunkit?

Ann went to kindergarten and first grade at Stone Mountain Elementary School. They tested her reading ability and found she was reading at the 5th grade level. She was so far ahead of the other kids they did not know what to do with her. The teachers ended up sending Ann to the Principal’s Office during the reading period each day. At the Principal’s Office Ann would read books out-loud to the Principal and the secretaries.

Though I complain about Ann pestering us with reading books as a pre-schooler, it really was fun.

In retrospect, it was all fun.

Soccer Field Respect

(Revised from May 2009)

Back in the fourth grade our son, John, played recreational soccer for a team called The Storm. The recreational league played on a series of fields across from Parkview High School, which was no more than a mile from our house, which is relevant only because all of my kids’ activities had to be close by for my convenience, but is completely unnecessary for the telling of this story.

The Storm was a team that was formed during the fall season along with all the others. The league had hundreds of players, perhaps as many as a thousand, from the under six-year olds to the teenagers, all in two-year age groups. I heard that the league actually had “drafts” where the coaches picked their sons, and their son’s friends, and chose the best players they knew. Most of these kids had been playing soccer for several years. Most of these coaches had been coaching for several years. They, “they” being kids and coaches, went to spring camps. They went to summer camps. They knew each other well and all had decided in the fall to play soccer together for the rest of the year. Actually, they had decided that year or earlier that they would be specializing in soccer for the rest of their athletic careers.

It was during John’s time with The Storm that I came to the unhappy realization that parents, and organized sports, were forcing young kids to choose the sport at which they would specialize through middle school, high school, and college. If you were going to be any good, if you were going to be competitive with your classmates, you had to choose a sport in elementary school and stick with it into your adolescent years. You could not wait to find out if you would grow into someone big (football), tall (basketball), skilled (baseball), fast (most anything), or tenacious, skilled AND gifted like God’s greatest athletes who are wrestlers, distance runners, and distance swimmers. You could look it up! The little kids who accidentally choose the right sport for their fully matured physical and mental makeup will be successful someday. The rest will have modest careers in sports, possibly in a sport they do not love. What a shame.

John had tried some baseball in the backyard. I never knew enough about baseball to teach him anything nor the ability to determine whether he was any good at it. He tried church league basketball. He was doing the county recreation league swimming in the summers. He’d done peanut/munchkin soccer the previous year which resembled a swarm of moths around a bright light. He’d tried youth wrestling a couple nights and did not care for it. We sent Ann and John to Emory Sports Camp several summers where they were exposed to all kinds of sports. Jean and I wanted the kids to have some experience at several sports and hopefully find one or two they could love for a lifetime. We (in truth, I) secretly hoped that they would be good at something, but the important thing was to find a sport they would choose to pursue for a lifetime.

So John had tried all of these other sports. I don’t know what he was doing in the fall, but it was not soccer. Kids who wanted to sign up for soccer mid-year and play in the spring games were randomly assigned to teams. The kids who signed up mid-year were generally trying soccer for the first time or nearly so. The teams they were joining were made up of kids who had been playing soccer for years, and had been playing together as a team for the fall season at least, and probably the previous year as well. This is the environment John was walking into.

The kids on John’s team were experienced. They knew each other well. They knew the coaches and the coaches knew them. These kids had ball skills that John didn’t have. They did things with the ball so quickly I had no idea what they had done. John was also one of the youngest on the team. The team was made up of nine and ten-year olds, with most being in the fifth grade while John was in the fourth grade. By every attribute you could conceive, John was an outsider on this team, and he suffered for it. He was not readily included.

During John’s soccer practice I would run laps around the perimeter of the soccer facility to get in my own workout. I would try to watch what was going on without being noticed and to avoid any semblance of interference. I did not want to be a smothering parent. I wanted him to have some privacy; to try things; to succeed or fail on his own; to get hurt without a parent rushing to his aid; to cry in pain or frustration without embarrassment; to get knocked down and decide on his own to get back up. I saw him take his share of knocks. It hurt to see this, but I kept on running knowing these were problems that John had to solve on his own.

One day when I finished my run and was hanging around the practice field I noticed John was running after this big older kid on the team. Let’s call him Bubba. John was red-faced and clearly ticked-off about some abuse he had suffered. Bubba had done something to John and John wanted revenge. Bubba was running easily; zigging here and zagging there, faking left and going right, and John could not catch him. After only a moment or two the other kids on the team started to notice, and they started pointing at the two of them and laughing at John’s futile attempt at vengeance. Bubba was laughing and enjoying John’s inability to catch him.

If you have ever run for 30 seconds at the fastest speed you can manage, which is a distance of around 200 meters, you know first-hand how very tired you can get. After about 30 seconds this is exactly what happened. Bubba was getting tired. All of the zigs and zags were taking a toll. John was not getting tired and seemed more determined than ever. This was my first observation that John had been born with the gift of stamina. Though John trailed, he had the advantage of cutting corners. For every ten steps Bubba took, John was taking nine, and wasn’t wasting any breath on laughing. John was getting closer. John was on a mission. John was pissed.

Pretty soon Bubba ran out of breath for laughing. Bubba was running for survival. A desperate look crept onto his face. The team was still laughing, but they were the only ones. John was getting closer while Bubba was getting more and more frantic. John may have been smaller and slower, but he was determined to have some amount of justice even if he got pounded in return.

I did not know what to do. I was afraid of what John might do if he caught Bubba. I was also afraid of what Bubba might do to John. Are there rules in fights between kids; I was hoping so. As a father I am not supposed to condone violence, but Bubba had done some injustice to my son and I wanted him to receive justice by John’s hand.

We’d taught our kids not to fight, but I wondered if this might be a good thing for John, just this once. Doesn’t every kid deserve a measure of self-respect and the respect of their peers? The coaches were standing back doing nothing, so I stood back and did nothing, too.

John finally did catch Bubba. John caught him from behind while both were running. John reached out with both arms, grabbed both of Bubba’s shoulders, and pulled back hard. It was a cartoon moment. Bubba’s upper body suddenly stopped moving forward while his hips and legs continued on. He was laid out parallel to the ground, but still several feet in the air. Gravity then had its way with his body and he fell flat on his back, all points arriving simultaneously on the ground from a height of several feet with a sickening thud.

Everyone was silent and Bubba wasn’t moving. I was half afraid that Bubba was dead. John stood over Bubba looking down with his hands clenched in fists, as if to say, “Do you want any more?” Bubba had a shocked look on his face, and the air had clearly been knocked out of his lungs. Eventually Bubba took a big gasp of air and began to cry. John seemed satisfied with this and walked calmly away. In the meantime I saw John’s surprised teammates begin to whisper amongst themselves, “Did you see that”, and “Oh my god!”

The coaches made John and Bubba run laps as punishment. It was a small price to pay for respect.

I don’t remember those kids giving John a hard time after that incident. I still don’t think they passed the ball to him as often as they should have, and he rarely, if ever, got to play forward or goalie, but he had respect. I was very proud of him.

John played one more season of soccer the next year with a new team. That team lost every regular season game. In this league every team went into the championship playoffs. John’s team proceeded to win every playoff game with the exception of the championship final.
How fun is that?

Epilogue:
John’s most recent soccer games were with an intramural team while enrolled at the University of Virginia.

Way to go, John - Life of the Mind, and Life of the Body

Reflecting

There is a lot of schlock in coming of age stories about getting to know yourself. These stories typically have the hero going to college or joining the marines to learn meaningful life lessons. Ala Forrest Gump, who is my personal hero, I don’t know about that.

I spent my childhood and early adolescence wondering who I was going to become. It took way too many years to realize that I could have some impact on the outcome. I am not sure when I came to realize that I had some involvement in my own life. Anyway, getting back to the point, those early years were spent wondering if I was going to be like my father, my two older brothers, (both great guys but distinctly different), my mother, various grandparents and relatives, or some amalgamation of them all.

With absolutely no understanding of genetics at the time, I vaguely understood that I was more likely to be similar to my relatives than dissimilar. A scary thought to every child! So I listened closely to family stories to learn what kind of people “we” were. I thought these stories would give me a clue to my future. I listened to my dad’s stories of wrestling for Iowa and watched my brothers participate in various sports. What sports are we good at? Do we get good grades? Are we good at, and destined to be in, some particular profession?

I think we spend a lifetime trying to figure out where we fit in. Am I smarter than the average bear, or am I the fry-guy at McDonalds? Am I a gifted athlete, or a wannabe? I don’t see any great shame in being at the bottom of either spectrum. We are each born with certain skills. You can only do so much with what you have. If you are not born with slow-twitch fibers and a great capillary system, you will never be a great distance runner. Sorry about that.

It would be nice to win the genetic lottery and be as bright as Einstein or as athletically gifted as Michael Jordan, but I am just as happy to live a normal life. I think the anxiety of growing up ends when you find out where you fit in the world. It’s more about finding that place than it is about where that place is.

So I came to find I wasn’t the brightest of the kids in high school and college, but I could pass the same classes they did and found that I liked them and they liked me. I found I enjoyed math and science and knowledge in all forms, and enjoyed associating with similarly minded souls. I found that I can run long distances and through this pursuit have developed lifelong friends and training partners. Over the years I’ve found I enjoy music, have some talent for sacred choral music, and enjoy people who are likewise inclined.

The list of activities I am not good at is long, but I don’t think being good at something is all that important. I think enjoyment of the activity is important, and sharing the experience with others is important. For many years I’ve sought a sense of belonging, a desire to fit in, to be part of a group, to be accepted. I think I have fulfilled those wishes through the activities I enjoy and the like-minded souls I’ve encountered; through the camaraderie of my friends who also enjoy exercising their minds and bodies.

High School Cross Country

I entered high school in the fall of 1967. Our high school had grades 10-12, so I was a sophomore. I was too small (112 lbs) to even think about football, and cross country was supposed to get you in shape for wrestling, so cross country was it for me until wrestling practice started. I wanted to be ready to wrestle.

The cross country team was small, maybe 20 runners at most. Roughly half of the team was made up of sophomores; first-time runners. The workouts were hard; attrition was severe. The workouts were hard on sophomores because they (we) were physically and mentally unprepared for the sport. Some of the sophomores quit after the first week of practice. Only half of the sophomores would come back for a second year. Another handful would be lost between the junior and senior years. We had two seniors on the team that first year. We were always looking for recruits to perpetuate the team next year.

Football and tennis were the other fall sports. I’ve had a perpetual chip on my shoulder due to the lack of recognition for my sport. Football was, and is, everything in high school. One time they arranged a “cross country” (bullshit) race on the track during halftime of a home football game. While I was simultaneously thrilled and scared to death to have all of my classmates see me run, I was also humiliated that my sport was a mere circus sideshow, a freak show, to the main event which was the football game.

I knew nothing about distance running, but the seniors and juniors on the team taught me everything I needed to know. Pacing, arm carriage, hand position, stride length, foot plant, running posture, head carriage, protocol, etiquette, repeats, oxygen debt, long runs, tempo runs, speed work, recovery runs, rest days, tapering, strategy, starts, finishes, and scoring were covered as we trained. Running wisdom was passed on from seniors and juniors to the sophomores. There were rumors that there was a book or two about distance running, but we never saw one. It was the 60s and the running boom had not begun.

The coach was a quiet, pleasant gentleman; generally harmless; seemingly ancient to a teenager. I suspect he was there mostly for the pay supplement that came with coaching a sport. How to put this in a kindly fashion? He knew a modest amount about the sport. He did not need to know a lot because the real knowledge resided in the hands of the juniors and seniors. The workouts did not need to be elaborately well thought-out; we would get out of the workouts whatever we put into them. We only needed a coach to read splits off of the stopwatch, enter us in meets, record the results, and provide the general infrastructure under which the team operated.

It turned out that I was pretty good at this distance running gig. I liked the hard work, the straightforward nature of the activity, and the lack of trickery. The better runner would win due to hard training and supreme effort during the race, not because of a trick play or an errant ruling by a referee. So I worked hard, and found myself able to keep up with the upperclassmen during workouts. I finished in the top seven at the first time trial to make the varsity. The upperclassmen were thrilled to have a new teammate with some ability. They adopted me as a disciple. I was thrilled to be a novitiate, to belong, to be accepted. I was part of a team.

Grocery Store

When the kids were little and Jean was working, Jean would go to the grocery store on Saturday mornings. Shoot, when the kids were really little the whole family went to the grocery store on Saturday mornings. I wasn’t man enough to be left at home with BOTH of the little monsters. I wanted Jean’s help keeping them in line.

In the parking lot the kids had to keep one finger on the car after we unloaded them one at a time. Failure to comply resulted in a firm swat. They learned that rule quickly. We didn’t want a “dead kid by car” in the parking lot. Reading the Atlanta newspaper revealed all kinds of bizarre deaths of kids due to stupid parents not paying attention. There were plenty of other opportunities for me in the coming years.

One of us would hunt up a grocery cart while the other rode herd over the two munchkins keeping a finger on the car. We’d load one kid underneath the cart and the other up top. While loaded below for the first time John must have been fascinated by the wheels while in the store. He promptly played with the cart wheel and nearly had his finger ripped off. His scream reached every corner of the store. Everyone in the store looked at us like child abusers; not the first time nor the last time that happened; being looked at like child abusers.

The grocery store was at the top of a hill. We always parked the car at the bottom of the hill, far from the store and the other parked cars to minimize the chances of “dead kid by car”. When we left the store we had this grocery cart full of kids and groceries. It had wheels, it had mass, and there was this beautiful long downhill of asphalt leading to our car. So I stepped up on the back frame of the cart and kids plus dad coasted down the hill to the car. The carts did not go straight, so I had to repeatedly touch the back wheels with my feet to maintain direction.

We were moving pretty fast, faster than the cars in the parking lot. The kids loved it. Jean tolerated her husband’s behavior. I liked the notoriety and aberrant behavior aspect of it. Kids love anything odd, different, quirky, or abnormal. I was the right man (kid) for the job. The people in cars were surprised to see a young man and two munchkins go zipping by.

When the kids got older they had their own activities to pursue at home. Eventually the lure of the grocery store lost its appeal, so I stayed at home with the kids. I could manage them by that time. When Jean came home from the store we would hear the garage door going up and Jean would honk the horn to be sure we all heard. We would all yell “Mommy’s home”, drop what we were doing, and head for the garage. If Jean was going to the grocery store by herself while we stayed home and had fun, everyone had to help unload the car when she arrived.

Those were fun moments. The three kids (for I was, in truth, one of the kids) stampeding for the car/garage to welcome Mom home and discover what kinds of goodies we were going to be eating for the next week. Everyone was happy and busy grabbing bags from the trunk and ferrying them into the house; it was a team effort. It was a rule. It was expected. We also wanted to get back to playing as quickly as possible. All Hands on Deck!

Freedom of Employment

There are some websites that claim that employee turnover costs 150% of that employee’s annual salary. When you add up the costs of the separation of the old employee, the job vacancy, the search and interview effort, the training costs of the rookie employee, the lost productivity, the loss of expertise; it all adds up to roughly 150% of the annual salary. When I hire a new employee to work in the office I expect that they are going to stay for a few years. I’d like to think that they will stay long enough that they become a fully functioning member of the office team and that the organization gets some productive years for the salary.

I am certainly motivated to try to meet an employee’s wants and needs as best I can to hold down turnover, but more importantly, it is the right thing to do as a human being who is trying to do right for others. Regardless of what I may do to retain staff members, employees have free will and are going to change jobs from time to time. I have no right to expect lifetime employment from anyone.

I wrote the following paragraph for my annual report to the organization where I work. I think it does a nice job of conveying my opinion.

When employees choose employment here, or leave for employment elsewhere, we celebrate these staff opportunities. Though we try to look out for the best interests of each employee, the employee is the better judge of what is best for them. The employee might have been looking for better pay, hours, duties, working conditions, or some other benefit. So when voluntary staff turnover occurs, we celebrate the occasion because it indicates that staff member has found a better job fit according to their wants and needs. If we truly want to make the world a better place, we are pleased to do it one employee at a time; be it in their coming, or in their going.

Brains AND Balls

Cross country runners are outcasts. They don’t play with balls. They don’t play football, basketball, or baseball; the sacred big three sports. Runners don’t need others to pursue their sport. The balls needed by runners can’t be bought in a store. Running is all about pushing your genetic makeup to the maximum. You don’t know how far and how fast you can go until you do the miles to find out. Running is all about pushing your heart until it is pounding out of your chest; your lungs until the brain fogs from lack of oxygen, your legs and arms tighten with lactic acid from anaerobic exertion; the brain screams with feedback from all systems that you must stop or die; and yet your will and your balls insist that heart, lungs, legs, arms, and brain go one more lap of the track, one more repeat, one more mile.

Distance running is a cerebral sport. There is just you and the body given to you by the genetic cesspool of your parents. Only after running for months and years can you find out what you are capable of. And only you know whether you gave your best effort. You inhabit your body; no-one else. The coach and your friends have no idea if you wimped out, or toughed it out. You know how badly your body screamed for relief from the workouts. Only by pushing the limits day after day can you go from one level of fitness to a higher level. Several days of rest only take you backwards to where you were, not where you want to go. Your mind has to be master.

The runs are too long and boring unless you have a good mind. Fascination with the visual world passing by during a long run is briefly entertaining, but does not last. You have to be an interesting person. You must have an inquisitive mind. You have to entertain yourself. You have to know interesting things, recall them, ponder them, and ponder the imponderable as the miles go by.

Take a minute to Google search the average GPA of a cross country team. The first hit I came across showed the University of South Carolina Women’s Cross Country team finished the 2008-2009 academic year with an average GPA of 3.767

Now do a Google search for the average GPA of a football team. The first hit for me was an article announcing that the University of Florida football team had just set a record high average GPA of 2.81

I rest my case.

Racing - The Aftermath

Every runner is a kindred soul after the race. They know exactly how hard you worked to place where you did, because they did too. They know the hours spent and the effort expended.

The storytelling begins in the finish chute, continues at the water station, and becomes serious bullshit during the warm-down. Everyone tells stories about who did what, where, and when. Who went out too fast, who made a big move in the middle of the race, who could not hold the pace, who dogged who during the race, who ran like crap, and who ran well. There are discussions about whether the mile marks were right, the length of the course, whether this course is harder than another, the number and operation of the water stops, the course monitors, the traffic, and the weather; it all gets covered with good-natured gusto. On and on it goes, like Indians counting coup after a battle.

There is a sense of happiness and satisfaction knowing that you did the workouts necessary to prepare for the race, and ran it as well as you could, given your current fitness level. On the other hand, if you wussed out during the race, I pity you. Wusses can’t get dates; dogs shun wusses; wusses can’t get jobs; wusses can’t graduate from high school; priests won’t forgive wusses; wusses are the lowest life form on the planet; wusses hate themselves, at least until the next race.

Running the Race

There are plenty of books and magazines that adequately cover this subject. I don’t intend to cover this topic in a comprehensive fashion. I’d just like to say a few words; a few too many words.

Expect something to go wrong, several things. Getting lost on the way to the race, a broken shoelace, no bathroom access; something is not going to work as planned. Plan what you can in advance and prepare your gear the night before. Have backup gear. Still, something will go bad and don’t let it disrupt you more than necessary. Remember, you expected it, you just did not know what it was going to be this time around.

Warm up for a mile or two, gently. Don’t waste your race effort during the warm up. Nervous energy makes this all too easy to do. Relax, as best you can. It’s practically impossible to do, but try. Think positive thoughts and banish negativity. Stretch AFTER the warm up and before the race.

Place yourself appropriately in the pack at the start of the race. Experience at races will tell you whether to place yourself at the front of the pack, or somewhere further back. If you place yourself too high in the pack, you are obstructing faster runners and that is just plain rude and selfish. If you place yourself too far back, you will have a lot of slower traffic to weave through before you can start running your intended pace. Picking your way through slower runners is a frustrating waste of time and energy. A good race depends on ALL of the runners placing themselves appropriately within the pack. This never happens.

Start the race at a pace that is comfortably uncomfortable; not too fast and not too slow. You cannot risk going too fast and tie up with lactic acid in the middle of the race. Neither do you want to waste time and distance running slower than your ability. You need to race aerobically. Focus on where you are relative to known competitors. Are you ahead of people you normally beat? Are you behind people who normally beat you? Are you judging your position against people who dependably run intelligent paces and races? Get to the place where you belong relative to others and settle into an intelligent tempo. If you don’t know your place, you had best know your pace!

Pay attention to the other runners and think ahead, especially early in the race. Watch out for slower runners blocking your path. All too often a couple of wide-bodies will run side-by-side. Don’t get hung up behind them waiting for an opening to pass. God bless them for not placing themselves further back in the pack, but hey, you know it is going to happen. It helps to run on the outside edge of the pack early in the race to get around the slower runners. The several extras steps may be worth it.

Eventually the pack will sort itself out and you will be running with people of comparable speed. Start paying attention to running the tangents. Race courses are typically measured and certified on the tangents. Don’t run a step further than necessary.

Closely monitor your pace, heart, lungs, legs, and arms during the race. Every step is a decision point to go faster, slower, or maintain the existing pace. As the race goes on you will have a better idea of how much energy you have left to spend. The goal is to arrive at the finish line completely spent. Don’t engage in racing others until the end of the race. The beginning and middle sections should be used to run your race at your best pace given your current fitness, the course conditions, and the weather.

You are both the jockey AND the horse. As the jockey you need to be patient and analytical. Hold yourself back when you find yourself going too fast, and whip yourself forward when you find yourself going too slow or being lazy. Pay attention; stay focused. A few moments of daydreaming or idle thought can easily lead to a slippage of your pace into gentle running. Run like a wise veteran runner in the early and middle stages of the race. Run smart and don’t cut yourself any slack.

Constantly bump up against the upper boundary of pace that you can hold to the finish line. Several times throughout the race you should be saying to yourself, “this is too fast, I cannot hold this the rest of the way, I’d best back off just a hair or I may not finish!” The decrease should be the least amount possible to ensure finishing the race. Soon thereafter, as the jockey and master of your body, you should again be wondering if you could be running just a tad bit faster. Be brave enough to test your limits, but don’t be stupid.

Towards the end of the race find some people to race. Pick a victim to catch. Pick a person to put away. Begin a long steady crescendo of running that ends at the finish line. Your intention, this time, is not to back away from this final increase of pace. Try to shake hangers-on with mild surges. Run side-by-side with a competitor and gently raise the pace. Listen to their breathing for weakness. Gauge your own. Break them if you can. If they are better, today, not forever, just today, then hang on. Maybe they are pressing too soon. They may break themselves. It might be possible to get them late with your finishing speed.

As the finish line approaches you finally know the exact distance to be traveled and the amount of energy you have left to cover it. Plan to use all your energy. Attack the final yards from a quarter mile or more out, depending on what you have left. Don’t be afraid of the pain. Welcome the pain as a familiar friend known well to you through countless workouts. Concentrate on efficient running form while fatigue tries to distort your efforts.

If this is an important race to you, then run these last yards for someone other than yourself. Gather into your heart and soul everything and everyone you hold near and dear. Run for God, spouse, siblings, loved ones, relatives, teammates, and friends. Think of how much they mean to you, and what you mean to them. Mentally pull them into your heart and at long last run with the emotion you have not permitted until this point. Feel their presence with you. Allow them to flow into your heart and your body. Feel their emotional support allowing you to run faster than you could by yourself. You are no longer alone. You have all of them to help you with this final push to the finish. Run with passion. Run the final yards with reckless abandon.

(See what I mean? More melodrama, but it seriously works.)

Mid-Race Strategies: Foes

So then, what to do if you come up on one of your foes during a race? Again, there are some choices to be made, mostly predicated upon your ability to accurately assess the pace you can hold for the remainder of the race.

IF your rival is having a bad day and you are feeling good, you need to blow right by them. Gather your energy before you do so. You want to demoralize them as much as possible. Break them. You want to go by with good running form while breathing comfortably. You don’t want to appear tired or concerned with the pace. Your face should be inscrutable or show confidence. Go by your foe and be prepared to keep on going until you have significant separation between you. Note well that you cannot look back to see if they are close or not. They are likely to attempt to match your pace. Disabusing them of this notion is imperative. You don’t want them thinking that they can keep up with you now, or think that they can catch you later.

IF you don’t have it in you to go by your rival, you might want to consider drafting for a while. Let your foe carry the pace. Focus on their back and stay a step or two back of them. Let them worry about who is behind them and whether or not you are in the same age-group or gender. Don’t breathe so loudly that they get confidence from how tired you sound. Watch them and look for signs of fatigue. Magnify these thoughts in your own mind to boost your own confidence. After you have drafted for a while, perhaps you will be ready to make a push past your foe.

If you are feeling good and are confident of ditching your foe, you might want to pass closely by them. This makes the differences in your relative speeds readily apparent and all the more disheartening. They would be foolish to attempt to keep up with you, or so you hope.

Beware racing your competition in the early or middle stages of a race. Don’t let your competitive nature trick you into running a pace you cannot manage. Let the competition run stupidly fast and blow up late in the race. If you run stupidly you may both get beaten by a lesser runner. You need to be in better shape than they are AND run intelligently. On the other hand, you also cannot waste time running too slowly early in the race. The clock is ticking and you cannot get those seconds back.

Sometimes beating a person isn’t the goal. Sometimes the goal is to run a particular time and you don’t care who you beat. If so, a rival can become a teammate in achieving that goal. Just know that if you sidle up next to this person and ask for their collegial assistance during the race, you may or may not get it. This is a race and they are just as likely to try to bury you through an increased pace or a series of morale-breaking surges.

Okay, so this is a bit melodramatic. Wait till you read the next one. It’s full of it.

Mid-Race Strategies: Friends

What do you do when you catch up to another runner in the middle of a race? It’s a complicated question with many IF-THEN statements to consider. IF “X” is the circumstance, THEN you should do “Y”. The problem is that it is never entirely certain whether the “IF” portion of the statement is true, which then makes the “THEN” portion of the statement iffy as well. Confused?

I said in an earlier post that you had little effect on other runners during a race. I did use the qualifier “little”. Catching another runner from behind is the single greatest moment when you can have an impact on another runner.

Friends
IF, there is that word again, and you will see it often in this essay, IF this is a teammate, or someone not in your competitive age-group, or not of your gender; i.e. someone whose ass you don’t necessarily need or want to kick and in fact would like to do well and would otherwise aid and assist if at all possible. IF that is a true statement, there are a few things you can do to be helpful, or at least friendly.

You could call out their name with what little breath you have available to let them know you are right behind them. “Bob!” Not so loud you scare them and tire them out with an adrenaline surge. You can let them know it is you who is catching them from behind so they don’t bother to pick up the pace in an effort to destroy a rival. You are a friend and non-competitor in this scenario, yes? So you say, “Its Tom”, to let them know that they need not fear that an enemy is approaching.

Sidle up next to them, not too close so as to compromise their running form, just close enough so they feel your presence and know you are there. In case they did not hear you before, identify yourself again. “It’s Tom”. They don’t want to waste a stride looking over to see who you are. They are presumably running at top speed, right at the red-line of the body’s tachometer. You are the one who caught them from behind. You presumably have one or two RPMs to waste; they don’t.

You run with them for a few moments. Don’t match their stride cadence and stride length, just match their pace. You don’t want to compromise your own race too much. Running together for a few moments provides an emotional relief; for both you and your friend. Setting and holding the pace is a mental effort, but it feels altogether physical. Sharing the pace together makes you both stronger and provides a nice respite from the rigors of the race. Use the moments to restore your mental and physical energy.

Also use these moments to assess your own status. At every moment of the race you are assessing whether you could go faster, should just hold the current pace, or need to slow down. Just because you are compromising your own pace briefly to run with a friend does not mean you can neglect your obligation to mentally monitor your own pace and all of your body’s systems.

If it was a struggle to catch up to your friend, you may wish to linger there and simply get through this section of the race with the most efficient use of your physical and emotional capital as possible. If so, tell your friend that you are going to hang with them for a little bit.

If the friend is just a bit too fast for you at this stage of the race, let them know that you are going to back off a little bit and that they should continue on. You would not want them to unknowingly match your slower pace and drop back with you. Use a minimum of words, energy, and oxygen to communicate your intentions.

If you are feeling good, or after a few moments you feel ready to press on, let your friend know. It would be impolite to suck them into a pace they did not intend to run and cannot hold. They may want to stay on their current pace, or they may want to press on with you. You should always welcome company from anyone who is not your foe.

Sometimes you will find yourself running with a complete stranger who, after observing their age or gender, is quite obviously not your foe, and strangely, form and alliance or friendship for the duration of the race. A word or two properly phrased can turn a competitive moment into a team effort for several miles. Many times in long races I’ve turned small groups of runners into a small team who share the pace and take turns breaking the wind. All it takes is overcoming your natural shyness and verbally encouraging your nearby runners to engage in a behavior that is in your collective interest. You will all be faster if you cooperate together. It is also a wonderful distraction from the pain.

All of this is predicated on your ability to accurately assess your ability to maintain a certain pace throughout the race. Read that sentence again. Hard workouts, and frequent racing, develop your ability to make these critical assessments.

Warmups

Runners are polite, but distant, during warm-ups. At most you wave a hand of acknowledgment and maybe call out the name of your rival. Yes, they are your friends and acquaintances, but they are your competitors first, even the guys on your own team to some degree. You can be friends with them later, after you beat them as badly as you can.

You have a mission to accomplish and you cannot waste any time or energy on being overly friendly before a race. It might make you mentally weak later on when you need to be mentally tough. There can be no compassion or mercy for this person who is/was your friend. No, not friend, not now, think instead rival, competitor, enemy. These guys have to die a horrible death of excruciating pain on the last hill in the last mile. You cannot think of them as your friends, not now, not before the race. Being nice could lead to mercy, and you cannot have that. You have to mentally prepare yourself for a self-crucifixion also known as a road race, and “nice” doesn’t belong anywhere in your train of thought. Go warm-up your body, and steel your mind.

Nobody says much at the start. You avoid looking anyone in the eye lest they see the fear that lies behind yours. You aren’t afraid of any of the other runners. They are going to do whatever they are going to do and you will have little effect on them during the race. You can only control yourself. What you are afraid of is the pain that awaits you throughout the race and the inherent mental struggle.

You know how much pain awaits you. Are you up to it today, one more time? Will you seek it out and embrace it as you have day after day in practice? Have you pressed yourself in practice runs to know exactly how much abuse you can put on your body early, middle, and late in the race? Are you sufficiently hardened and accustomed to the pain through track repetitions? When it really gets difficult at the end, will you press on, taking a chance that it is too much and too soon, and tie up with lactic acid.

Or will you play it safe? No one will know. The pain is miserable in the middle of the race. The miles are so much longer when you are hurting. The seconds creep by at a snail’s pace. If you ease up just a little bit, here, now, in this middle mile, it won’t hurt so much now, and you will have some extra for a spectacular finish; a horrible time, but a crowd-pleasing finish. The veterans will know you wussed out in the middle of the race to make that big finish possible. Only you will know, and the veterans will know, and every other runner in the race will know it too, you wuss!

Everyone hates a wuss. Most of all, you hate wusses, and you don’t want to be one, and you don’t want to hate yourself for being one in this race and have to wait until the next race to redeem yourself. You dread the thought of living a whole week knowing you were a wuss and everyone else knowing it too!

Oh God, you pray, please don’t let me be a wuss. Help me be strong. Help me endure. Don't let me fail me. Help me to run a race that I, and everyone I know, can be proud of.


Don’t be a wuss.

Be strong.

Be brave.

Last Apologies

Until I get a feel for what I am doing in this blog, it seems reasonable to write what I know. There are going to be pieces about running and competition. I am going to spend a lot of time writing about myself. Being self-absorbed will lead me to write about myself all too often. Writing about myself may help Ann and John to know their whacko father a little better. It might not do me any harm, either.

I had hoped this would be a cathartic exercise; that it would be good for my mental health; a form of self-psychoanalysis, just like the effects of running. So far it seems to be having the opposite effect. All too many nights I toss and turn in bed thinking about topics for future posts, and sentences and phrases I might use. What should I say, and more importantly, what should I not say. I did not sleep much after my first post.

Quite frankly, I am afraid that no one will enjoy this blog except me. During my periodic delusions of adequacy I imagine an audience greater than my wife and two adult children, but that is too much to hope for. The kids will say it is good because that is what they are supposed to say. If it isn't any good, so what; I am not supposed to care, right? Yeah, right.

There are all too many movies with a wise old sage in them saying not to dwell on the past. I hope that it will shortly become clear to me whether to abandon this pursuit or keep at it, because I intend to dwell on the past quite a bit. I’ve enjoyed writing this blog a lot already. I hope to be brave enough to occasionally write about the unpleasant experiences as well as the pleasant ones. My first post briefly headed in that direction.

With great fear and trepidation I share with you the following, and, well, the former pieces I’ve already posted. This is a public web page which could be read by anyone and everyone, at least I like to hope so. I will stick to first names to protect the innocent and remain generally nebulous.

Is it a bit odd to be posting an introduction and general apology mid-blog?

Anyway, this will be the last of my posts to engage in apologies.

It’s time to get on with the mission.