Debacle in Dallas: Raw Thoughts

I wrote or received the following thoughts to/from some friends of mine and later thought these probably form a good timely record of what might have gone wrong.  Thought I would just put them down here in the old blog for the record.  It's also heart touching to again look over these guys' thoughts.  Nobody can empathize with a failed runner like another runner.  First of all, here is my response to Troy, written the day after the race.  I also passed along this same note to Jeff, whose response is farther below.

Me:
I’m OK, but my knee is sore (which it normally never is, even after a hard workout).  I think it will be okay in a few days.  Knee wasn’t the problem.  Not sure what the problem was.

Weather was part of it.  It was about 65 degrees, humid (dewpoint = 61), and definitely breezy (West to SW wind 12 mph according to the NWS at DFW).  Definitely the wind came whipping across the lake in my face for a good few miles there and I was running almost all alone for that stretch.  Too warm, too windy for me.  But that still doesn’t account for a complete implosion & I’m still doing the mental autopsy to try to figure it all out.

Mentally, I know I had a lot of anxiety about the race.  Probably I had too much “riding” on it after training so hard all fall.  Probably made too much of it.  That didn’t help.  And going into the race I sorta had a sense of dread, not a sense of optimism & not really a sense of confidence.  I don’t know, I just never felt *good* at all during the race, not even during the first 5k.  I mean, it didn’t feel like I was working very hard at it, but I didn’t feel good, either.

Probably I shouldn’t have spent 3 hours on my feet at the Sixth Floor Museum (JFK assassination museum) downtown, except my 8^th grade son really wanted to go, and how do you say, no, son we are not going to go learn about history this afternoon?

In retrospect, probably I ran the first 6-10 miles too fast, although in fact I DID try to use my brain and when I felt like those early miles were just a little harder than they should be I backed off like a smart runner, dropping back from maybe 6:15-6:20 down to about 6:30s.  Kept trying to tell myself to just relax and try to conserve energy and maybe the race would come back to me as I have experienced in other races.  Except yesterday it didn’t come back.  I hit the half marathon at 1:24-flat and I just knew that barring a miracle it was going to be a long long morning.  I just didn’t know how total the breakdown was going to be.  But after plowing into that headwind (right after the HM point) for a couple of miles I knew for certain that there was absolutely no way I could (a) negative split that race according to original plan (b) even run another 1:24 or (c) even possibly keep the beast under 3 hours.  I kept plugging along, getting progressively slower, and by the 21^st mile or so I started taking 1-minute walk breaks every mile just to get across the line.  And I haven’t been this sore after a race in a long, long time.  I’ve run marathons much faster than this and been much less sore.

So, it just sucked all around.  It was a great weekend with my son, and I enjoyed the trip with him.  But the running part I should like to forget, at least after I have maybe learned a thing or two about what went so wrong.  The weather might have been worth 5 or at most 10 minutes, I think.  But not 30.  I just didn’t’ feel it yesterday.  I didn’t have “it.”  I haven’t had a total collapse like that in a marathon in 7 years.

Troy's kind response:

I can SO relate to everything you told me about the experience.  You are the type that 9 times out of 10 can overcome a day like this and still come out with a good one. 

But even great warriors will have a bad day once in a while.  The best runners have the worst memories – a quote from my running buddy back in the day.

Don’t hold your head down.  The only thing worse than running, is NOT running – if  you know what I mean.

Take a few weeks off or with little to no running.  Enjoy the holidays and start back when it feels right again.

Given the same training, same conditions, but different day, you can still get a 2:40 next go around – I know it.

Thoughts from my coach, Jeff:
First off, I really feel for you. I was following online and when I saw that when you were a little off pace by halfway on what was a conservative start that it was going to be a long day. You put in so much work this cycle, and made a ton of sacrifice and I feel really bad for you.

Looking at what you've written here, I don't think you made any tactical errors. I'm not sure how 6:30 pace (or even 6:20 pace) could have felt so bad after all the work you had done. When I look back at the work that you did, the primary explanation that I have is that sometime around that 26 mile long run [Nov 4] you went from training and recovering and growing to feeling flat and a bit burnt out, both physically and mentally. That's the only explanation I can give. Sure, the weather was bad, but you -- with your talent and spirit -- should have been able to run 6:30s in that weather, which still would have put you within striking distance of first masters.

At the very beginning of our time together, I was worried about this -- worried that you were hitting the workouts too hard, and worried that we wouldn't be able to sustain that work rate. And worried about recovering from one very good marathon  and sustaining energy over a couple months to an even better marathon. Since I was just getting to know you, and since those early workouts were going so well, I tried to put those doubts to the side, but I guess in hindsight they were pretty reasonable. 

I don't think that you made any mental or tactical errors -- like you say, the legs and the spirit just weren't there, which means that we left them in the training [Emphasis added]. That's my assessment.

....  I think that if there's something to learn from this it's that we made the classic mistake of building both mileage and intensity too quickly. It happens again and again in marathon training. Both coaches and runners need to remember that in the end it is the runner and the talent that makes the race -- the training just brings that out. I think that we both erred in putting too much emphasis on the hard work and too little trust in how well you can run when well rested and fully fit.

A few comments from my friend Tom:
It sounds like you felt like you didn't "feel it" even before the weather would catch up to you. I suppose that's true when I look back at your half split.

What I'm about to say is just an observation ...

At first glance, I think... you [did] too much hard stuff.  For a couple concrete examples:

1) I had a 1/2M scheduled about 1 month before my key race. [My coach] specifically said, "Do NOT race the whole thing. He said to run the first 10 miles at MP, then if felt good, I could run the last 3 miles
as fast as I could handle."  I just barely broke 1:25 in that race, and my 1/2M split in my marathon was under 1:24.  His reason was that a raced 1/2M, at my/our age, would really take about 2 weeks to recover, and he didn't want me to lose 2 weeks of training. As it was, I did only easy runs for 1 week after that race. When I looked at your log, I see you ran a 1:18 half, and then 3 or 4 days later, you were back at hard running.

2) I saw in your log a workout with 10x1mile repeats w/ either 200 or 400 r/j.  [for the record they were only 200m recovery jogs]  That seems like way too much...

... Clearly you did/could handle the training.  However, I have to wonder if you left your best race in the training session.
....
The fitness is still in you Joe... perhaps you just need to get rested and back on the horse!

Finally, a nice note from my best running buddy and training partner, Todd:

I knew the moment I heard your voice yesterday that you’d had a bad day.  I’m sorry that happened, but I guess nothing’s guaranteed in life ( and it seems that good marathons are LESS guaranteed than most other things ).  I have a strong feeling that your hard work is going lead to success in the near future.  One bad race doesn’t erase the gains your body has made from the incredible training you’ve put in.  There’s equity in that, and you’ll cash it in at some point.  All you need is the character to soldier on.  No problem there.  I’ll call you later for the recap.

 

State!

Before too much more time gets away I definitely need to create a written record about this past Saturday, even if it is a very brief one.

Leaving Josiah with Lulit at the little clump of trees just north of the finish line at Rim Rock Farm I set out some forty-five minutes or so before the gun for the 6A Boys’ State Cross Country Championship in search of my firstborn son.  Finding his teammates proved to be no problem.  They came jogging up and Nate asked me, “Where is your son?”  I said I didn’t know and that I thought they would know.  They were looking for him because they all wanted to start their warmup.  They decided that they would make a quick pass by through the general vicinity to look for him and then go on if they didn’t find him.  Some 15 minutes later I found the girls’ team near the team tent and asked them if they had seen Wyatt.  Yes!  They had!  But to my dismay they had not found him warming up with his teammates, but they had seen him a while before in the porta-potty line.  They reported that he was about to bail out on the porta-potty line so he could go run a warmup.  By himself.  

Race time was rapidly approaching when the boy’s mother showed up after a long drive up from Wichita that morning.  I relayed to her that no, in fact, I had not seen Wyatt, and that while the boys’ team did not know where Wyatt was, the girls’ team had at least reported a sighting!  We were both concerned about the potential state of his bowels, although I think he made the right decision to warm up, and I hoped if it was just a matter of #1 that he had the good sense to find some trees on the back side of the course during his warm up.  Not everything goes according to plan on race day, of course, but it was the State meet.  I was sure hoping he would be able to get past the logistical difficulties and focus on his race.  I told Kay not to worry.  In 2007 I had run the entire Marine Corps Marathon with a serious urge to go pee.  Sometimes we just have to rise to the occasion in spite of the difficulties.

The first time I finally spotted Wyatt that morning he was at the starting line with his teammates.  Well, that was a relief, I can tell you!

The race itself was a thing of beauty, and I have perhaps never more enjoyed watching a race unfold.  Wyatt and his teammates looked good out of the gate, after which I positioned myself near the mile mark. 

I find the State meet to be the coolest thing ever.  On this day the boys (and girls) get to run against the best teams from all over, many of whom they have never seen before, and it’s just inspirational to see these kids who live 300 miles apart competing against each other for place and pride at the most important meet of the year.  Wyatt came through the mile in about 5:17 sandwiched between a couple of Dodge City kids, and he was looking good.  Oh yes, I thought, this is going to be okay. 

At the two-mile point he was still looking good.  I think he came through there in about 10:42, and he looked fine.  He seemed to be holding his own in there, and it also started occurring to me then, where is Olathe East?  They had nudged us out of winning the Regional Championship.  Man, I wasn’t exactly sure how the scores would stack up at the two-mile point, but I was pretty sure we were having our way with East.

After our runners came through the 2-mile I ran hard up the hill to my new favorite third viewing spot at Rimrock positioned about 500 or 600 meters from the finish line (as measured along the course).  Fortunately the course makes a big sweeping curve there, so it’s only maybe a couple hundred meters for me to get from there then to the finish line.  At this point Wyatt and Nate crested the hill right next to each other, and Emmet, our usual #5 guy was not very far behind them (and coming on strong).  I looked at my watch.  I yelled at the boys that I thought they were going to run good times today!

Having a huge breakthrough race with a strong finishing kick, on the absolute best possible day, Emmet surged past Nate and Wyatt in the last 100 or so, and Wyatt beat Nate, although just barely, for the first time all season.  Really the finishing order on the team didn’t matter much.  Those three guys came in 17:03, 17:05, 17:07, and just like that Olathe North had all their scorers across the line.  Of our top 5, Easton, Wyatt and Emmet all ran personal records, and Alex and Nate ran very well.  I think Nate was a bit disappointed for not matching his sub-17 time from the previous week, and maybe for just getting edged by Wyatt and Emmet, but he still ran a great race.  He always leaves it all out there on the course.  As usual Alex paced the whole team, running a nice 16:20, only 3 seconds off his PR.  Carlos ran 6^th for us and had an 18-second PR for his part, and poor Zan, our only freshman varsity runner just had one of those terrible days that I think he will like to forget.  Hey, every runner has bad days, and Wyatt knows from personal experience that freshmen especially can be susceptible to falling apart on a big race day.

When the final scores were tallied, our Olathe North boys placed 5^th in the State, a huge accomplishment for them.  I doubt at the beginning of the season if anyone would have picked them to do so well.  I’ve never been so pleased and so proud.  Of course, I am proud of Wyatt.  I’m proud of him going out and really competing hard two weekends in a row to get to State and then to place well there.  The fact that he got his PR at State is sweet.  It sure helps pass the winter when you can look back on that last CC race with fondness.  I am also proud of the whole team.  They worked hard and they came and competed when it counted.  

Four or five weeks ago my younger two sons ran in a middle-school cross country meet at Olathe East High School.  My wife told me that when they were kicking off the event the public address announcer had stated something like, “Welcome to Olathe East, home of Olathe’s cross country team.”   That statement, if she heard it correctly, rather annoyed me.  So for this reason, and others, I took no small measure of satisfaction from the overall team standings at State.  Olathe North, it turns out, was “Olathe’s cross country team” on this cold, cloudy day, October 27, 2012, a few miles north of Lawrence.

6A Regional Cross Country Runners Up

No matter how much I enjoy my own running, and I enjoy it a lot, it can't touch the joy I feel in my heart when my kids enjoy it and have their own success.  Yesterday was what the kids these days call, "best day ever."  Every single boy on the team, Alex, Easton, Nate, Wyatt, Emmett, Zan, and Carlos, ran a personal record on the second most critical day of the season to take second in their regional meet and advance to State.  They rocked.

For his part, Wyatt finally shook off the curse that has seemed to plague him on the Lone Elm course and crushed his PR by 19 seconds.  About the race he told me a couple of critical nuggets.  For one thing, when he was going by me right before and right after the 2-mile mark I had told him that he looked good, that it was his day.  And I meant it!  I wasn't trying to fake him out or psych him up.  He did look good to me -- he looked smooth, relaxed, and most importantly fast.  "Dad, what you said was just what I needed at that point.  I thought I was doing OK, but it really helped me to hear that from you."  I think it reassured him that he was O.K!

Another thing he said was that he had passed quite a few people in the second mile, and he said he just decided that he wasn't going to give back those places.  He determined to race well.  In particular he said he was dueling against 2 or 3 East guys in his general place in the race, and although he lost a couple of spots in the final kick (not his strong suit), he pressed hard that third mile and held on to most of the spots he gained, including at least one of the rival East runners.  He was justifiably proud that he had raced well and not just "run as fast as he could."  He was proud of his teammates, too.  He felt like all of them came to compete, and they did just that.

Interestingly, although they all ran hard and raced well, none of them had any idea of the times they had run.  There was no finish clock.  I came up to Wyatt after he came out of the chute and showed him my watch.  17:16.  His jaw dropped.  Then his teammates started getting excited because, with Wyatt's time as a reference point, it started dawning on all of them that it was a very special day.  Not only had they raced hard and competed well, but they had run good times, something that every runner cares about.  Nate broke 17 for the first time. So did Easton -- by a lot!  Alex went deep into the 16s.  Our six and seven guys, Zan and Carlos, broke 19 minutes big time, and Emmett knocked a dozen or so seconds off his PR.

In the end it was not quite enough to win a Regional championship.  Olathe East also had a banner day, it seems, and beat us by a meager margin of 3 points.  It's okay, though.  I don't think it tarnished the accomplishment for any of the boys and it certainly didn't tarnish it for me.  They were all smiles, as they should have been.  Besides, we ain't done yet....  Although perhaps OE might have had an off day out at Rim Rock on Monday, we smoked them good on that day.  This Saturday we'll be back out there at Rim Rock again, for State.  We'll get 'em.  Maybe we'll surprise a few other teams around Kansas as well.

GO EAGLES!

Racing the past

I get asked from time to time if or where I was a collegiate runner. I guess my running credentials have come far enough in the last handful of years that people suspect that I might have been a good runner, you know, “back then.” Then I have to tell them, no, I was an okay runner in high school, and I did not run in college. As if to say, I coulda, woulda, shoulda, I sometimes tell people that it is one of the greatest regrets of my life, although my beautiful bride somewhat justifiably finds this hurtful. Had I been a college runner, indeed the odds would have been greatly diminished that we would have met and shared the life together that we have, and I certainly wouldn’t change the primary course of my life. The Lord has blessed me by truly bringing all my dreams to reality, bit still I have this nagging sense of what could have been. How good could I have been?

In the summer of 1984 another former runner from my high school arranged for me an entrée to the University of Kansas cross country team as a walk-on runner, and I was quite excited about it. I went down to Lawrence a few days before the dormitories opened and stayed with him so I could start running with the team. Over the summer I had run a little bit on my own, but not very consistently, not terribly far, and not very hard at all. Looking back I realize that in high school I probably got by in competition a lot better than I deserved with a reasonable talent level, coasting through off seasons with sporadic running and responding quickly and fairly well to the training stimuli when the seasons started. Running with the KU guys, however, was a bit of an eye opener to say the least.

The first handful of runs at KU I don’t remember as being terribly long or terribly fast, and although I struggled a little bit because of my lack of sufficient summer preparation, I was okay. But along there somewhere toward the end of the first week a coach took us out in the country 12 or 14 miles and dropped us off with instructions to run back home. The guys all took off. I stayed with them as long as I could, but it wasn’t long before I was dropped and really struggling. I don’t think it was until years later, running my first marathon completely unprepared, that I ever had another experience like that. I probably used up everything I had in the first 6 or 7 miles and then it turned into a death march. And then it dawned on me that this was not going to be at all like high school. No, indeed, this was going to be work, and probably a lot of it. Certainly coasting through the off seasons was not going to be an option, and I doubted myself, whether or not I could handle running at the college level and also being an engineering student and, quite honestly, whether or not I could do both of those things and still have any fun. I was also intimidated by the other runners on the cross country team.  These guys were good.  They were far better than I was and had much better high school running records.  So, just like I walked on, I walked off. 

As pathetic as that was, quitting without giving it anything like an honest shot, I was nevertheless given a second chance!  It is seared into my memory the day I was walking along campus after just up and quitting.when Bob Timmons, the legendary KU coach, spotted me, drove up next to me and called me to his car. He asked me why I quit. I gave him my lame excuses. I remember these words exactly, “Joe, I don’t want you to quit.” Here was this man who had trained Jim Ryun to run a sub-4:00 mile in high school talking to this kid who was literally a nobody also-ran from the middle of Kansas, encouraging him to stick with it and not quit. I am still disgusted with myself when I look back on that day and consider the choice I made.  Lame, lame, lame.  Fear.  Fear of hard work.  Fear of failure.

Now 28 years later I can never know what would have been.  C.S. Lewis argued that none of us ever gets to know that.  I also don’t know what Timmons saw in that scrawny 18-year-old kid, but now I should at least like to have some idea. For this reason as much as any other I’ve set for myself some really ambitious goals for the next few months. It’s always dangerous to make goals very public, even if only to the reader of my blog (hi, mom), because there is of course a real risk of failure. There is also a real risk that I won’t even be granted the attempt. That dumb knee of mine…. I think, though, that the Lord is giving me at least a season, perhaps a brief one, to take a shot at settling some old questions in my soul. It’s pretty hard to compare race performances between 46- and 17-year-old boys, but nevertheless I’d like to at least beat my old high school self at his best, and also I would like to run a marathon time that proves, at least in my mind, that I am a “real runner” and that maybe, possibly, had I the work ethic and mental toughness then that I have now, I could have run with those guys at KU and succeeded. Maybe I can’t go back and do it over, but I sure can press forward from here and see where some of the limits are.

So, concretely this means really 3 things to me. First up, the marathon. I know there are a lot of college runners who have run under 2:40, but although that’s not a particularly spectacular time among “real runners”, I am content that achieving this would put me in pretty good company across runners of all ages, and certainly it would put me among some very very good masters runners.  It also means that I would have qualified for the Boston Marathon under any standard of qualification at any point in time.  I remember that a couple of my high school teammates ran sub-2:40 marathons during their college days.  It would be nice to be in their company.

Second, I would like to run a 5k under 16 minutes.  This also is definitely not a special time for collegiate runners.  Heck, one of my co-workers, a former collegiate runner, was somewhere down in the 14's back in his prime.  I suspect that 14:59 is probably out of reach for the remainder of this lifetime of mine, but 15:59 sounds nice.  When I was in high school we didn't run 5k for cross country (as they do these days), so I don't really have on old PR to compare, but sub-16 around these parts is almost a guaranteed state qualifier for a high school runner.  With my placements in high school I never would have made the state meet as an individual; I was just fortunate enough to be part of a team that was good enough to go.  So, 15-something seems like a pretty good place to set the bar, and it has that nice round feel to it that we runners love.  I am fairly certain this time represents a bettering of my best high school self.

Finally, there is a race where I have a good solid time to beat, my 3200-meter time of 10:01.  Yeah, although I am still proud to this day of how gutsy I ran that race, I sure would like to have shaved off a couple more seconds.  At our league track meet in Topeka I decided at the start that I was not going to run where I was "supposed to."  I was going to run with the leaders (one of whom went on to win State) and take my chances.  My chances were OK through a mile or maybe even 2000 meters, but then I really started to hurt.  I labored hard through the 6th and 7th laps, and by the 8th lap the guys in 4th, 5th and 6th place were coming up hard behind me.  I don't know if I have ever dug more deeply than I did in the final 200 meters of that race, but I held those guys off and earned myself a nice bronze medal and a personal record.  I'll never forget that my coach was ecstatic because apparently by holding off a couple of those guys from Manhattan I had managed to push their whole team down a spot in the team placings.  On a fresh day I feel pretty confident that I could go out and run under 10:20 right now.  But I sure would like to run a 2-mile, or even the 19-meters-short-of-2-miles 3200 meter, in 9:59 or faster.  I think almost all the college guys I have known at least broke 10:00 in high school.  I'd like to do it, too.

Do I have a chip on my shoulder?  Something to prove?  Yep, you bet.  I sure like running fast.  I enjoy it thoroughly, and as I have written before I think running is a part of who I am as God designed me to be.  So, while I'm on this chase to find out where my limits are as a 40-something dude, I'd also like to beat some young guys along the way, including me.  

Day 1

Today sort of kicks off for me the first day of serious training for my big hairy audacious marathon goal.  I took some fun money I had squirreled away and some of my winnings from the Sioux Falls Marathon and hired a coach.  Now just for a few weeks of hard running.  Log book.

KC Corporate Challenge 2012 -- A Wonderful Mile

To quote, as near as I can remember, Pippin from The Two Towers movie, I am, “sitting on a field of victory enjoying a few well-earned comforts,” taking my time with a large bowl of ice cream before getting serious again tomorrow about removing more of my unnecessary fat, the enemy of speed.  I won the corporate challenge 800 meter tonight in an OK time of 2:11.5, leading it from the gun to the tape.  Tonight’s race, however nice it was to win, was not the highlight of KCCC for me this year, but it was the one I lost on Tuesday.  The Mile.

Since I started racing again in April I have run some decent times that I have been very happy with considering my relative lack of training, a couple of barely sub-18 5ks and a 1:24 half marathon.  Oh, and I ran that 5:03 1600m for the company mile tryout a couple of weeks ago.  All of these were nice confidence boosters that I have been very happy with, but nothing that has really stood out dramatically.  The half marathon was a real brutal struggle for the last 5 miles when I felt like my lack of training really hurt me, but I was nevertheless able to hang tough and to my utter surprise take my co-worker and running buddy Troy in the last half mile of that race.  Troy and I see-saw back and forth against each other year in and year out, and in the half marathon the teeter-totter tipped in my favor.  Truthfully, he had burned the fuel too hot in the early miles and he was really used up by the end of the race.  In the mile though, I had no confidence at all that I would even have a remote chance to beat Troy.  On tryout day he had run a very solid 4:49 to my 5:03.  Fourteen seconds is an eternity in a mile race.   

Nevertheless, I pictured myself running sub-75 quarters and I wondered how much, if any, fitness lift I might have gained from racing the half marathon as well as from running 15 miles this past Saturday morning.  Why not give it a shot.  I resolved that I would do whatever it took to hang onto Troy through 1200 and let the chips fall where they may.  Sometimes in those scenarios where the chips fall is that place of deep oxygen debt and lactic acid buildup where you can barely move your legs, and that makes for a very long, slow, uncomfortable, unsatisfying and even humiliating last lap in front of one’s friends and co-workers.  I decided to risk it anyway.  There was no way of telling where I was really at in my running physiology without going to the limit.  If you don’t touch the limit, you don’t know where it is!

Troy and I lined up next to each other on the inside lane for the waterfall start 9 or 10 meters behind the “normal” starting line because this race would be a true mile, not a 1600.  When the gun went off I took off at what I felt was a rather leisurely pace, basically inviting Troy to go around me and take the lead.  He did not.  I led the race through a fairly slow first 200 meters and when I heard old Andy (my high school coach and the PA announcer) call the 38-second split I picked up the pace a bit.  Still, we came through the first 409 meters in a rather easy 76 seconds.  And then Troy took off.

So I thought, OK, here we go.  To me it felt like he was really surging and for a split second I doubted my ability to hang onto him, but my will was set beforehand and I clung to him for dear life.  We came through the second quarter in a much quicker 72 seconds and then he seemed to wilt at about the same time I felt like I was actually beginning to hit rhythm.  So the lead changed again. 

It felt like I was pushing hard into the third lap now, and as we passed through 1000 meters something happened.  Something wonderful.  Here I feared would be where I would start to feel my lack of conditioning and the beginning of my doom, but what I felt instead was completely different.  Oh, at this moment I did begin to feel the burning in my legs.  I could feel the lactic acid accumulating.  But!  Despite the increase in discomfort I also felt strangely like I could push through it.  I felt like “what it takes” was going to be there, and although it would certainly hurt before the end, I could handle it and I could race another 600 meters without descending completely into the pit of iron legs despair.  I think it was about then I first thought about winning it.

Although I was trying to push that third lap hard, it was nevertheless only a 74 (being the third lap, however, 74 feels like 70!), and that pesky D-1 runner from Tennessee was still hanging on.  He told me after the race that I *almost* dropped him back there, but my surge wasn’t quite enough.  We hit the gun lap with me still in the lead and determined to press my advantage even harder.  I gave it everything I had in an aerobic gear for the next 300 meters, but still he hung on.  I could feel him behind me and I started to kick with 100 meters to go.  So did he!  And then it was like one of those slow motion movie scenes.  I was running as fast as I could under the circumstances, but seemingly centimeter by centimeter Troy came even with me, and then he was just a shoulder ahead of me, and then maybe a meter, and then we crossed the line….  Ahh, so close.  0.35 seconds separated us.  I absolutely hate losing races that I could win, but it has been impossible to be disappointed with this one. 

In many ways, this was one of the most fun races I have run in many many years.  To duel a guy whom I like and respect for a full four minutes and fifty four seconds, was just pure joy.  This is what I love about running, about racing.  I feel like we pushed each other and pulled each other and challenged each other the whole way and in the final analysis it was the battle itself that was a victory for me.  In my mind I really had no business running a 4:54 mile this week.  As I have written before (quoting a friend of mine, actually), there are no flukes in this sport, and guys who are not 4:54 guys cannot run 4:54 miles.  Period.  Still, this race felt like a major breakthrough for me for where I am.  It tells me that I am progressing quickly in returning to the shape I was in many months ago before surgery, and it tells me that I probably yet have a lot of headroom for improvement since I have not really trained very hard.  I am more proud of this mile, even though it was a second place finish, than I am of several races that I have won.  Seeking my limit and finding that it was a lot further out there than I thought it was, losing a hard fought tactical battle to a respected opponent while giving it my all, taking risk and being bold, that feeling in the third lap when I knew I could race it the whole way – all of these things made this little race really special to me.  It was a dandy.

Breakthrough!

The 3200m has always had a very special place in my heart.  It’s the second to last event, and in the bigger varsity meets when I was in high school that usually meant that it was run after dark under the lights as the spring air started to cool.  It can be a really tough race, too, if you run it right.  People talk about how the 800m is the hardest race, but let’s be honest, although the 800 involves a good 40-60 seconds of serious discomfort, that 2-mile will hurt you profoundly for a lot longer than that!  It’s a long enough race that you have to really be an aerobic machine to be successful running it, but it’s also short enough that speed can be a factor the whole way.  It is almost the exact distance that one can run at maximum oxygen capacity, and as anyone can tell you who has run at that speed, it’s rather uncomfortable, especially for, say, 10 minutes.  Two of my most memorable races from my own high school running career were two-miles, and both of them were under the lights at the end of the day.  One was a win in McPherson and the other one was a lifetime personal record in Topeka at our league meet.  I love the two-mile on a cool evening under the lights.  It’s been a long, long time since I’ve personally experienced the love, but Friday evening I remembered again through Wyatt why I love it so much.

The Sunflower League is a group of a dozen of the biggest schools in Kansas.  Each school has somewhere around 1500 students, and as a consequence there are a lot of talented runners when all those schools come together.  The meet was last Friday, May 11, and it was a cool, overcast, mostly still day that was perfect running weather.  The winner of the girls’ 1600 ran a national top-ten time of 4:45, and the boys’ race winner ran a highly impressive 4:18.  Wyatt’s teammate, Ben, ran his personal record and school record 4:23.  In my whole high school career I don’t think I ever personally saw another high school runner break 4:20.  I told Ben after his race that I had never seen anyone that I knew personally run a 4:23.  Those boys’ times may not be in the national class for high schoolers, but they are still darn fast times.  It was a fast night.

And so on that nearly perfect evening Wyatt lined up against a field of about 25 good, strong 3200m runners at 9:27 PM and the gun went off.   He came through the first quarter just under 75 and then through the second quarter just under 75 again.  When he came through the third quarter in 79 on pace to hit is mile PR, I ran across the infield to meet him on the backstretch with an urgent message.  The fact is, he looked strong.  He looked really strong and completely relaxed, not at all like he was struggling with running an opening mile close to his mile PR.  So, on the far side of the track I told him as he went by, “You might come through the mile under 5:10.  That’s OK, don’t worry about it.  You look good.  You look very good.”

Sure enough, he came through the fourth lap with a 5:09 cumulative split, only 5 seconds off his mile PR, and when I saw him on the subsequent backstretch I knew he was thinking about taking off and going for it.   “Relax,” I told him.  “Just relax and wait for 6.”  It seems he heard me and heeded me because he sat in behind his teammate, Mike, and cruised through his slowest quarter, an 83.  On the backstretch of the 6^th lap he and Mike were starting to have to work at it, but they dropped a second off the previous lap, and by the backstretch of 7 I could hardly believe what was shaping up.  I exhorted Wyatt and Mike to chase down two Olathe East runners several meters ahead of them (in the end they caught one and Mike missed getting the other one by a fraction of a second).  With 600 meters to go Wyatt was running great and was far far ahead of his previous personal record of 11:00.

On the final lap, I said this to Wyatt as he went by, “This is a special, special night.  Stay strong through the finish and you are going to crush your PR.”  And so he did, running a final 78 and setting a HUGE personal record in 10:35.  When he heard his time, I think it nearly brought him to tears.  He hugged me, he hugged his coach, Dan, and he hugged his mom.  He raised his tanned arms to heaven and several times said, “Thank you, Lord.”  Several of his teammates came around him and congratulated him on his outstanding race, and although he was completely exhausted he was walking on air.  I certainly was.  He had now, as a freshman, run a faster 2-mile than almost all of my high school races except for just a few of my very best ones.  I was thrilled for him.

Beyond the obvious elation that any runner experiences after a big breakthrough, I think this race had a lot of additional significance for Wyatt.  I suspect he had been having some doubts about his innate abilities as a runner and about his future potential.  He had been stuck for several races right around 11:05 +/- 5 seconds and I think he wondered if that’s where he would always be stuck!  Anyway, at the finish of this beautiful race he said some other things that really came from deep in his heart, but I don’t think I will write those things down here in a blog where anyone in the world might read them.  I think maybe those things are more deeply personal and part of his story that are better left for him to tell someday whenever he thinks it is time to tell them.

Epilogue:

Although there are no flukes in our sport, no lucky three pointers or lucky holes-in-one, it was nice last night (5/18) at the 6A regional meet for Wyatt to get further confirmation of his breakthrough.  On a much more difficult evening (more wind, warmer) Wyatt ran another 10:35, whereas almost all of his teammates’ times fell off from last week.  Certainly he has arrived solidly at a new level.

As for me, I managed to run a 1:24:28 half-marathon in the Kansas City Corporate Challenge this morning.  My knee never hurt.  I ran within myself and competed well for where my fitness level is.  During my race this morning mental images of Wyatt’s toughness in the last 1000m of his race last night inspired me to be strong and keep competing to my best to the very end of the race when I honestly wanted to just give up and cruise in.

City Track Meet -- Boy Number 2

I never would have thought an April could be running paradise without the Boston Marathon, but it was outstanding.  Wyatt managed a couple of 3200s under 11:10, including a wonderful effort at Shawnee Mission West where he ran 11 flat.  He also ran a strong 5:04 at ODAC on the 6th.  I ran a post-microfracture debut 5k in 17:54 on April 21 that was a wonderful surprise since I would not have guessed that I could manage a sub-18 race off only a month of running.  The biggest surprise of all last month, however, was the emergence of boy number 2, Josiah, as a middle distance runner.  He has run the 800 and the 1600 for Frontier Trail Middle School in every meet this spring and, oddly, the 75m hurdles.  This post, however, is not about this past, wonderful month of running, as good as it has been.  This post is about one of the gutsiest, most fearless races I’ve ever seen.  This post is about the Olathe Middle School (7^th Grade) City 800m championship race that happened on May 3

.

Honestly, I’ve never before thought of Josiah as a distance runner.  For one thing, he is my basketball boy, so I think of that as his primary sport.  For another thing, when the kids were littler he was always the first one to wear out.  When we hiked in the mountains, for example, we would barely get 200 yards from the car when he would need to sit down and rest and start asking, “Are we almost done?”  I thought then that he might lack the innate mental toughness needed to be a good distance runner.  Boys change, however, and it turns out I was wrong!

He wasn’t even going to run track this spring, but fortunately his mother had the good idea to conspire with Mr. Blasi, the head track coach.  Josiah wouldn’t listen to her encouragement to run track, but he did listen to Mr. Blasi and decided to go out.  At the start of the season he was the number 2 or 3 distance runner on the FTMS team, but he immediately started improving:  6:08, 6:01, 5:51, 5:45, 5:39 in the mile, and similar improvements in the 800 to get down to 2:34.  Going into the City Meet this week he was well positioned to do okay against the best runners from all 9 schools in Olathe. 

I took the afternoon off Thursday so I could see him run all of his events, including the hurdles.  In the previous meet he finished second in the hurdles and complained that the wet bottoms of his shoes slipped coming out of the blocks and slowed him down, so I took my spikes down from their perch up high in the closet to see if they would fit him.  They did.  And at City, then, he nailed an excellent hurdle run, taking 2^nd place in his best time of the year.

In the mile (1600m) there was stiff, stiff competition in the 7^th grade this year in Olathe.  He ran a very commendable race, making a nice surge in the third lap to move from 8^th to 6^th, burying the two guys he left behind.  He finished in a nice personal record 5:36, ten or more seconds ahead of 7^th place but also ten or so seconds behind 5^th.  The winner ran 5:14, and as good as Josiah got this year and as much as he improved, it definitely would have been expecting way too much to think that he would be competitive against kids going under 5:20.  He will get there against those kids if he wants to – I know he will – just not this year.  But still, he ran a nice 3-second PR against a really tough field.  I was really proud of his mile.  But then came the 800.

Had I just finished a mile in 6^th place 20+ seconds behind the winner there is almost no way I would have run the 800 – against almost all the same runners – the way Josiah ran the 800.  Seeded 7^th in the race, he was apparently completely unimpressed and unintimidated by the competition he just faced 75 minutes earlier.  At the gun he took off like he was shot out of a bow, and in the first 200 opened up at least 10m of lead over the second place runner.  By the time he came through the quarter he was still in the lead with a wicked fast 68.  

Leading at 400

Other runners were starting to close on him between 500 and 600, but I just had a fleeting thought that just maybe he might be able to actually hold it up.  Alas, no.  Mr. Lactic Acid jumped on him hard at 600, as he often does to runners who over-reach in that opening quarter of a half-mile, and Josiah’s opponents started going around him.   Coming through 600 and around the final turn he dropped to 2^nd, then 3^rd, then 4^th, 5^th….. 6^th.  Ahh, he had tried so hard.  He had given it everything he had, I figured.  He had risked it all against some really good competition, and he could hold his head high, even with another 6^th place finish.  But then with 100 meters to go something happened.  That boy of mine – the one who used to frustrate me when he was little because he didn’t seem to have toughness or competitive fire – did something competitive, something tough, something especially fiery.  He decided he was not going to finish 6^th, and he threw down a final, ferocious kick, and clawed his way back to 3^rd.  As he went by those three boys they all tried to respond, they tried to answer, but he continued to answer back, refusing to give up and refusing to be denied his spot on the podium, and he finished the 3^rd best 800m 7^th grader in Olathe in a massive personal record time of 2:26.9. 

Go Jaguars -- Josiah scores well-earned points in the 800

I wonder if someday Josiah and I will look back on this little 7^th grade track season as a watershed.  This year he learned he can run distance events.  He learned that he can be successful and win races (he won several).  I learned that he can be very tough.  I learned that he can be very competitive and absolutely full of fire.  May 3, 2012.  Write it down.

Good Friday, Duck-Duck-Goose and 5:04.8

If you’ve never played duck-duck-goose 1-on-1 against a 3 year old, you have not truly lived.  During my sitting turns, Lulit would walk around me and tap me once or twice as “duck” and then take off at “goose.”  Of course, for me there was no catching her as I tried to get my 45-year-old body quickly up off the rug while she raced out of the front room through the kitchen and then back into her spot in the front room.  Then, when I was “it” and tapped her as the goose I’d follow the same path through the kitchen, but that little quail would cheat and come around back the other way to make sure I was caught.  This was the joyous start of my Good Friday after the boys all got off to school.  I had the day off, which was a wonderful break from the awkward place that work has become for me lately.  I was blessed with lots of great time with the family on Friday, capped off with a nice mile by the firstborn boy. 

On Thursday afternoon he asked me how fast he would have to run for me to pay him five dollars, and we agreed on 5:05.  Here then are the splits from his high school mile debut (they don’t come out perfectly due to some slight rounding error):

72.9

77.8

77.6

76.6

Put another way, 2:30.7 + 2:34.1 = 5:04.8, and just barely fast enough to put me out an Abe Lincoln!  Dang, that is a well paced race, and 25 seconds faster than his fastest 8^th grade mile.  What a runner he is becoming.  What a runner he is!

Good Friday is good for me, isn’t it?  Jesus died for my sins and displayed the glory of His love for us all.  The original was a horrible, shocking Friday, but it was definitely a good Friday.  This Good Friday was also a pretty good day – much smaller by comparison, but still a good day.  Thank you, Jesus.

11:07

The boy ran a stellar race in his high school track debut Friday night.  What a thrill for the old dad to watch.  Before the race we discussed (he asked – I did not offer unsolicited) where his fitness is and about what we thought he could do.  I told him that while I was quite confident that he was sub-11:00 capable, one never knows what will actually happen in the race.  I told him to try to relax the first mile and that if he came through in about 5:25-5:30 he would have a good chance at a really good race, but if he came through the mile in 5:15 it would probably be a really long second mile.  In any case we talked about maybe setting two goals, 10:59 as an “A” goal and 11:25 as a “B” goal, because he absolutely should not view it as a failure if he didn’t break 11 minutes. 

So he went out and ran a wonderful set of splits, coming through the first quarter a little hot at 77 but settling down for a 5:26 first mile.  After 2000 I could tell (and he so reported later) that he was really starting to have to work at it, but that’s what happens to everybody who runs the 2-mile.  That’s just par for the course!  So, he hung on through those hard 6^th and 7^th laps and ran a nice 83 final quarter. 

In the car on the way home from the school he told me that he never lost focus during the race.  Sometimes, he said, his mind has drifted during races, and on those days he doesn’t usually run very well, but this time his mind stayed on the problem the whole time.  He was ecstatic (as he should have been!) about his time.  He was also ecstatic about feeling like he justified his entry in a varsity meet.  He could hardly believe that he had just run a 2-mile at about the same pace as his mile PR from 8^th grade, and he asked me what his mile PR is now.  Of course it’s 5:26 now, and it’s quite soft at that! 

His senior teammate, Ben, who is an excellent runner and a wonderful team leader told Wyatt after his race that his own first freshman 2-mile was an 11:20, which Wyatt could hardly believe after watching Ben run 4:27, 2:02 and 10:07 in a very strong and astonishing triple.  Wyatt looked at me incredulously and asked me with his expression and body language, but without spoken words, “Is that in me, too?”  I answered him with words, “It is all within your reach, son.  It is all within your reach.”

Most importantly, he said he had fun.  It was a fun race.  His coach thought he didn’t enjoy the race and asked him afterwards if he didn’t want to do the 2-mile next week since he didn’t like it.  He responded that, au contraire, he really enjoyed the race, and so his coach told him that next week he could have it.  That he ran well, that he enjoyed the experience and that he enjoyed the achievement I find absolutely wonderful.  I couldn’t be happier for him.

Luke 9

In my mind this is one of the greatest chapters in the whole Bible:  Jesus feeds the five thousand, Peter confesses Jesus as Christ, Jesus is transfigured into glorious appearance, He teaches that the least shall be the greatest, and twice Jesus foretells His upcoming persecution and death.  The chapter is rich and it has been up next on my devotional list for at least a couple of weeks now but I haven’t got around to it until today – partly because I have been avoiding it.  The Lord in His mercy has also diverted my attention to other Scriptures, but in part I have been avoiding this chapter because I knew what awaited me.  More and more I feel the Lord speaking to me, calling me to be “all in.”  100% for Jesus, as I used to say when I was sixteen years old.  Here are the words I have known have been awaiting me from the Lord.

“If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me.   For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake , he is the one who will save it.  For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself?  For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory….”

 
This is scary but good.  Very good.  I feel His life awakening in me in a way I don’t think I have felt for many years, and with His life in me I am beginning to experience the fruit of His Spirit much more than I have in a long long time:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self-control.