Mud

“And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.

Lucky me, lucky mud.

The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn’t get to sit up and look around.

I got so much, and most mud got so little.

Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.

What memories for mud to have!

What interesting kinds of other sitting-up mud I met!”

- Excerpt from the last rites of the Bokonist Faith, Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut

Here are some of the kinds of things I think about during a run:

[This is a run amongst trees and on dirt, pine needles, and rocks tumbled from the oldest mountains in the world, the Appalachians, which are beginning to look soft and rounded now, after all this time.]

I can't help but think, me being a piece of mud that got to sit up and look around, that running is just Earth playing catch with itself. With a piece of itself. A piece of Earth’s own mud. Every stride, lasting around one third of a second, a parabolic hop, an orbit, albeit short, about the planet. This leads to some questions.

What happens to Earth when I push off of it? Does Earth move below me? Wouldn't you feel more important if every time you leapt off the ground you moved an entire planet? Why haven’t all the runners pushed Earth out of its orbit with all their pushing and shoving and hopping over the years?

How much of the mud has been a human at one time or another?

As it happens, you do move Earth when you jump off it. It moves away from you in the opposite direction. Earth has a mass of 5.972 trillion trillion kilograms, and a 150 pound runner, for example, whose stride bounces her center of mass up and down three inches every step, would move Earth 341 billionths of a trillionth of an inch. A pretty small amount, but you can be proud that you made a difference.

Don't forget that you exert your own gravitational pull on Earth.

While you're floating through the air, dreaming of brunch or whatever, Earth is attracted to you [All matter in the Universe is attracted to you for that matter]. When you push off, Earth begins moving away, but immediately its speed begins lessening. At the height of your parabolic, beautiful gliding stride, the Earth also reaches its [much, much smaller] furthest distance of shoved-ness, and as you start falling back to terra form, Earth begins moving back to you. You crash into each other, exactly canceling each other's motion.

So no matter how much running you do with no matter how many friends, once you stop, everything is as it was. Like life. Like mud that got to sit up. But that’s ok. Enjoy your orbit.

You can calculate what percentage of Earth has been part of a human being at one time or another, given the 107 billion humans who have ever lived, their average weight, their average lifespan, and the myth that your body’s cells get replaced every seven years. It’s like 5.56 trillionths of the planet’s mass. Not much mud, relatively, has been lucky enough to sit up and look around. But some has.

All that is to say:

On one hand, it’s tempting to write off your impact on the world as minuscule. "All we are is dust", "Alas poor Yorick", etc.

On the other hand, you could view your life's effect as a force that, no matter how minuscule, still moves a massive world. A massive universe. Which sounds cooler.

Walk across the room. In 105 years, some particle of dust floating in space 105 light years away will feel your movement, you gravitational influence having traveled at the speed of light through space to it. That should make you feel Relatively Special.

Who are we, then, to claim that our effect on the world and on one another isn't large, doesn't matter? We move planets when we go running.

Pardon, Andrew and I moving some mud around in hopes of turning mud into food
for mud that got to sit up and look around.

But sometimes I get caught up in trying to attribute too much matter and meaning to what I do.

If someone asked me at the post office, “who’s your biggest enemy?” my third answer would be “myself”, after burnt toast and car commercials that ruin perfectly good classic rock songs. It’s easy to get in your own way trying to attain something you want perhaps too badly.

Let me bring this back to the genre of this blog.*

Running’s challenge for me boils down to a fight against my serious side. It helps me work hard, but often keeps me from relaxing. Relaxing is the main ingredient in running well.

In the fall, when I was hurt, I had a “Why do I run?” existential crisis. I kept trying to attach a meaning to running (besides the millions I make, of course). I was inspiring others. I was bettering myself for the future, when an improved work ethic would pay dividends. Whichever way I spun it, the answer still had a tint of selfishness in it.

As Pete gradually nursed me back to my current state of health and fitness, I made a pact with myself. I would enjoy running for running, without a higher motive. This basically required thinking less and having more fun. It meant paring my sight into the future down to the level of a couple days, rather than dwelling on what I wanted to happen two months down the road.

And I came to the conclusion:

There is a meaning. There’s always a meaning. You don’t need to know what it is though. Just trusting that there’s a meaning is enough. That’s why I think about shoving the entire planet around by infinitesimal amounts while I run on it. You don't have to be as weird as me to prove this to yourself.

Still, that serious side of mine got me in trouble a few times this track season. I came into a few races a little jumpy and rigid, and found myself in places I didn’t particularly want to be. I wanted to run fast so badly that I got in the way of myself.

In the Payton Jordan 5,000m early in May, the whole field was looking at each other as we fanned eight wide in the first half lap, no one wanting to set the pace. I had “too good” of a start and found myself leading the race from the gun on an unusually breezy Palo Alto night, at a disadvantage compared to those tucked in behind me. I couldn’t get relaxed and in rhythm and it cost me. The field beat me over the final lap to a 13:57 5k.

At the Adrian Martinez Classic 3,000m earlier this month, I found myself in a similar position, leading, when the pacer dropped out after a mile. Someone’s gotta be the sacrificial lamb, leading the race far from the finish, but I’d prefer not to be. The extra fraction of a percent of mental effort spent keeping the pace moving took away from my finish once again.

Adrian Martinez 3,000m in Concord, MA

But I kept thinking short term and ran better at the Oxy High Performance meet in L.A. (13:39) and last weekend at Portland Track Fest (13:34), increasingly relaxing mentally and physically.

Hands, face loose, mind blank, run tall, chin up, don’t muscle out the last lap. Don’t think so much. Run to run.

Meaning is revealed in hindsight, when you see where your gravitational waves spread to.

This coming week is the USATF Championships in Sacramento, California. Zap Fitness has seven athletes running (Joanna, Aaron, Johnny, Andrew in the 10,000m, Brandon in the 3,000m steeplechase, and myself in the 5,000m). It’s going to be hot out even at night, so anything can happen in the distance events [I mean, someone could slip on a banana peel!]. The top three athletes in each event qualify to represent team USA at the World Championships in London in August†.

Workout on Bass Lake in Blowing Rock, NC with the Zap Fitness men's team.

Zap is a really healthy place to be training and living these days. I've always loved our training base in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but this year there's a special energy around the team that's really made it fun to work hard. Adult running camp season has started up and that adds a ton of energy to the elite team too. Our campers come from all over the country and world, and every one of them has had an inspiring journey in running and life to tell. We learn just as much from them as they do from us.

Last thought: If running is the Earth playing catch with itself, is interplanetary spaceflight just the planets playing catch with one another?

Thanks for reading. Here's a list of upcoming races:

Date	Race Name	Location	Venue  Distance
June 23	US Track Championships	Sacramento, CA	Track 5,000m
July 7	Letterkenny Intl. Track Meet	Letterkenny, Ireland	Track mile
July 12	Morton Games	Dublin, Ireland	Track 5,000m
July 18	Cork City Sports	Cork, Ireland	Track 3,000m
July 22	KBC Nacht	Heusden Zolder, Belgium	Track 5,000m
August 4	Sir Walter Miler	Raleigh, NC	Track mile

*nominally running but primarily misquoted literature, self deprecation

†provided they obtain their event’s world ‘A’ standard by July 21st

Calcallous

"You have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves and everything will fall into place."     - Paul "Mustang" Chelimo's Instagram account


Without a wristwatch, there are two ways of knowing intuitively how fast you’re going.  One way, combining a running pace’s affect on your body with past training experience, triangulates your speed feel-ologically.  Or you can gauge pace based on how fast things around you seem to be scrolling backwards into your periphery before they disappear in your wake.  

The latter is much less accurate, especially at night, when running always seems faster (and therefore more fun), or in the middle of a desert or something, when there isn’t much optical (or digestible, for that matter) fodder for your visual speedometer.  By the way, four minute mile pace (15 m.p.h.) looks disappointingly slow viewed from the cockpit of any semi sportsy car.  Forgo the eyes.  (Most) Well-trained athletes can easily and accurately run within five seconds per mile of a target pace, completely on feel.

Finishing the Gate River Run / US 15k Championship

I didn’t need my body to tell me I was running slowly up “Green Monster”, the sisyphusian bridge spanning the Saint James River in the final two miles of the Gate River 15k Run in Jacksonville, Florida.  The structure’s weathered green I-beams oozed viscously from Dali’s paintbrush into and out of my tunnel vision as we raced upward, hundreds of feet above the river.  The brackish waters below were replete with dolphins I would have given anything, (please, anything!) to be playing with instead of this.  The long curve of the bridge deck rolled over painfully, deliciously slowly, its false summit a tangential mirage that kept dancing away from the couple of others I was running with as we surged and yo-yo-ed to the top.

You needn’t be a mathematician to understand the calculus of that bridge’s curve.  In your legs you felt its concave belly inflect mercifully into its convex shoulder, a curvaceous spine transmitting hurt to its foolish pilgrims of pain.  Your best bet, a trick of the mind, was to celebrate inwardly when you reached the point of maximum incline, grateful for its rolling over, though there remained eons until you actually summited.  When you did, you had exactly one mile to go, all down hill.  

By the way, I was not running in the lead pack by the time Green Monster reared its head in the eighth mile of the race.  That maglev train of frictionless speed rolled through this elevated station minutes ago, roadside trash rollicking and concrete span joints groaning in the shockwave left by their hasty departure.  Race winner Leonard Korir ended up running the final, all-downhill mile in ‘only’ 4:08, finishing when I had about 900 meters (nine football fields + on your own 16 yard line) left to go.  

I extracted revenge on Korir when Gate’s athlete coordinator / benefactor in selfless deeds of U.S. distance running Richard Clark Fannin Jr. came up to me, ray banned, at the after-race pool-pizza-beer party (what other race has a scheduled, mandatory post-run pool party, not to mention after party w/ fried gator + after-after party?) and said “Joe, you’re a big guy, [thanks.] help me throw Lenny in the pool!”  After which, terrified, I chucked one of America’s greatest runners / Olympian, who can’t swim, into a four and a half foot deep pool, praying his legs cleared the ledge.

<——All that is to say, I survived (I type therefore I am) the first race back in a while, survived it and enjoyed it, even if it was a donkey-whipping.  On to the next one.

… In which, on North Carolina State’s track in Raleigh last weekend, I tithed Gate River’s 15,000 meter pain payment, stepping down to a mercifully bridgeless 1,500 meter race.  I was again beaten soundly, running 3:46 and experiencing what the industry calls booty lock: when your hamstrings and butt turn into rigor mortified slabs of round steak. 

Start of 1500m at Raleigh Relays

One of Pete’s Peteisms is that progress in distance running isn’t linear.  He’s right.  If you’re lucky, progress progresses sinusoidally, rising and falling across pretty snow capped peaks and lush river valleys in the off seasons.  More likely though, progress approximates some crazy thirteenth degree polynomial with random, remorseless asymptotic plunges to what seems like negative infinity, at the time.  Runners (like gamblers) live for those somewhat rare, glorious ascents to new maximums despite the powerful and totally obvious odds stacked against them.  And we love it. 

Given the comeback from injury in the fall, I have to be satisfied with getting to these start lines healthily and move on from losses quickly.  After a certain number of beatings, the legs figure out how to race again.  Neither of these first couple races were anything special by themselves, but they were good enough to serve as platforms for a great season.  Runners and humans should know that success can follow any sequential jumble of highs, lows, and failure.  You never  truly know when the next home run is: it could even come after your cat just died, you're sick, and your basement just flooded.  Or something.  

Just keep going and eventually it'll stick.  That's it.  Finding Nemo said it better than I did.

Upcoming Races:

Date	Race Name	Location	Venue / Distance
April 15	B.A.A. 5k	Boston, MA	Road 5k
April 21	Larry Ellis Invite	Princeton, NJ	Track 1500
May 4	Payton Jordan Invitational	Palo Alto, CA	Track 5000
June 22-25	USATF Championships	Sacramento, CA	TBA

9555 Blackberry

Sunday evening I went for a walk.  In the running world Zap Fitness coach Pete Rea's style falls on the eclectic side, and one of his slightly quirky training tidbits is prescribed Sunday evening walks following the morning long run for the week.  They're meant to knock loose some of the inflammation in our legs.

The Zap campus sits at the bottom of a valley in the Appalachian Mountains.  Blackberry Road dips down into our little hollow complete with a creek that rushes by and a mile section of dirt road that somehow never got paved.  Just up the hill from the long Zap driveway the construction site of a new house is already daily bustling with activity as a new athlete lodging rises from its foundation.  It replaces an old white house that just months ago was my home.  The white house held a lot of Zap history but needed to be torn down.

Darkness falls earlier now and as I come upon the equipment and mounds of dirt left by the contractors, I try to find remnants of our old house.  There isn't much.  But on the edge of the site where a chain link fence was bent into a tangled mess by the bulldozer are a set of busted-up wicker chairs.  And a dirt stained bed sheet.  It was Cameron.  He used to love getting people together around the fire in our backyard and projecting movies onto the sheet against the fence.  That stuff sat out in the weather all summer long since the last showing.  I'd look at it from my bedroom window and think, "I better bring those chairs in from the rain and get that sheet."

I imagine where the old house was, my room floating in the air and Cameron's below it, his cat Nala chasing birds around in the yard.  Cameron died two months ago after being hit by a car while running in his hometown of Chatoanooga, TN.  The magnitude of support from the local and running community is testament to how many people were influenced by his huge personality.  His dreams were not abruptly and totally ended that day.  They live on through us at Zap and everyone who takes on the challenges and strives to live the way Cameron did.  Cameron is cheering us on now, and I can feel a certain determination and electricity in the Zap team as we approach the Olympic year (Thanks in no small part to the occasional Drake and house music we play in his honor while lifting).

Cameron and I on the last night I saw him.  Wouldn't have wanted
it any other way.

-  -  -  -  -  -  -

The Olympic Year focus has had a strong effect this fall and early winter.  We've tweaked autumn training compared to the past two years, and it's already had good physical and psychological effects. 

Friday is now #FastFriday.  On Fridays we typically run 50-55 minutes in Moses Cone National Park before putting racing flats on and doing two to three kilometers worth of fast, uphill running.  It's not a lot of volume, and I wouldn't label it a full workout, but economy on hills helps with proprioception and activation of prime mover muscles (ok, now I'm using language that only Pete Rea understands).  This is nothing new - almost every serious runner does hills - but we've never made it this much of a focus this early in the buildup into the new year before.

Lifting.  Core, stability, and plyometrics have been in my training plan since high school.  The focus has gradually shifted from traditional core "abs" in college towards stability in the hips and pelvis at Zap.  Now we've added real, actual lifting with real, actual bar and plates twice a week, doing weighted squats and weighted step ups onto a box.  We save the core and stability for four other days during the week and take a break from the weight room on Sunday.

Diet.  I've always had what the average American would call a healthy diet, but as a bigger runner, I have to pay a little more attention to what, how much, and when I eat.  "The flame burns hot" mentality does not cut it for me.  I eat often during the day and in small amounts, eating just enough to stave off hunger until the next small snack.  Carbs generally go in early and protein more in the PM.  I have a medium-sized snack 45 minutes to an hour before dinner to keep my eyes small.  Tuna is my best friend.  I'm not gluten free, but I tend to avoid it with some wiggle room.  (Like if I go to my girlfriend's parent's house and we're having lasagna, I eat it.)  Figuring out how to stay lean while training hard and not getting hurt sustainably has taken me years, and I'm continually testing new strategies and foods.  What I have found for sure is a strong motivation to stick to the plan this fall.

The Manchester Road Race is tomorrow morning.  It's my first race in over two months and the beginning of the road to the Olympic Trials in July.  The course is 4.748 miles long and has a large hill in the second mile that will test what we've been working on a little bit.  Can't wait to feel some burn and taste some bile.  I'll be running for Cameron.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody.  I think Black Friday started already too.