New York, I'm Coming Atcha from Appalachia

(Yes, the title rhymes. In Appalachia we say Appel - latch - uh.)

It's not goodbye, just see you later

I'll get the announcement out of the way early: I'm moving to New York City with Joanna!

Fittingly, I'm starting a new life chapter in the same city where the special moment I consider to have opened this past life chapter took place:

In the Fall of 2011, anemia nearly cut the legs out from under my senior cross country season at Princeton. But a ferritin test late in the game prompted me to start taking iron supplements, something I'd never done. Within two weeks, workouts began indicating that something positive was happening with my fitness: I wasn't struggling to hit fast paces anymore. Unfortunately it was too late. I wasn't named to travel with the team to the NCAA championships in Terre Haute; I simply hadn't proven to the coaches I was ready in time. But there was a consolation: the IC4A cross country championships held the same week in Van Cordtland Park, the Bronx. Many northeastern teams that didn't make the national meet as well as the "B" squads from schools that do make NCAA's compete at IC4A's.

Do you know what it feels like to finally have your hard work pay off at the eleventh hour, when it was beginning to look totally futile? I'd spent the summer of 2011 running month's worth of 100+ mile weeks at altitude in Park City, UT, chasing my team mates on tempo and long runs, lungs burning for what I only now know was anemia. I was over trained, and when the season began the results showed it. 25:53 and 26:01 8k performances, about two minutes slower than what I'd run a year earlier. I wasn't even close to making the 12-man Heptagonal (Ivy League) conference team, a hard pill to swallow for a senior.

But the summer training in Utah didn't go away. My blood iron levels on the rise, I was less handicapped. We showed up to IC4A's in New York, and I led Princeton's junior varsity squad to an individual and team win. I ran 24:49 for 8k, not bad on the hills of VCP, with fellow Tigers in a tight group not far behind. Celebrating our win with my team mates after, I felt that a switch had just flipped. I had turned a corner. 

On that day I started becoming the runner who would break four minutes in the mile, set school records at Princeton and Texas, and go on to run professionally. On that day, running grabbed hold of me tightly, and it led me all the way through my twenties to now.

Since then, I've spent the better part of decade in pursuit of a simple but evasive quarry: running faster. Living and breathing running at ZAP, sacrificing a "normal" life in the North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains. Two things from this place are going to leave an everlasting impression on me: the physical landscape and the people.

The view was different every day I lived here

Here it is rhododendron forest, ancient gray rock heaving at crazy angles out of ridge tops, and mountains that fold and fold to the horizon. If you're running, you're inevitably next to a creek or river, and the steeper the road or trail you're on, the smaller and younger the water. The topography funnels us around here, controls where we go, and sculpts us physically and mentally. I've been profoundly inspired by these ancient mountains.

The people: the team mates and coaches at ZAP who each left their own unique impression on me. A group of runners is a like a cast of cartoon characters: each with strengths and weaknesses that are amplified and caricatured by the demands of our sport. I could write a book about each one of them. Few work-life situations could have developed in me the type of empathy, patience, and love for others that ZAP has.

The people.

Having lived in the North Carolina mountains for seven years, Manhattan is going to be quite a lifestyle change. But none of my running goals are modified. I'll still be affiliated with ZAP and On Running, training for next year's Olympic track trials in Eugene, and looking forward to a career in the marathon. In moving to the city and working a job in engineering (hire me!), I'm taking a leap that will force me to radically alter what daily training looks like, and more importantly, provide distraction from running. Which, believe it or not, is a good thing.

I never could quite sit still at ZAP. Pro running is about spending a few hours working really hard, and then chilling for the other 21 hours of the day. The best athletes can turn their brains off and let stress-free recovery take place. I always wanted to be producing: building something, starting a company, climbing a mountain. I alternately fought against and accepted relaxation throughout my entire seven year career at ZAP. I'd tend to categorize activities as either worth my time or a waste of my time, which can become unhealthy. Sometimes your best memories with friends or your clearest ideas come when your time isn't structured.

In New York, I hope to appreciate my free moments more. To make running a release.

I've given full-time running a really good shot. I competed with success at everything from the 1500 to the marathon, lived and trained with 21 other team mates and friends over the years at ZAP, and competed all over the country and world. It was a hell of a good time. 

But the thing is, the hard work has not yet paid off.

Here's to knocking it loose at the moment it's really beginning to look futile.

Really going to miss this place.

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Little update on training & racing amidst the pandemic: We somehow managed to sneak two real races in this summer - the WISCO Mile in Milwaukee, where I ran 4:06, and the Music City Distance Carnival in Nashville last weekend, where I ran 13:45 for 5k. Both did a good job with COVID precautions, especially MCDC, which required two negative tests the week of the meet. There is a possibility of competing in a 10,000m next weekend in LA, depending on city health department permissions. 

Joanna and I are carrying out our mandatory 14 day quarantine in NYC, having traveled from North Carolina. We bought a cheap treadmill to train on while we're holed up in the apartment, so that's going to be a lot of fun. In all seriousness, I believe it's possible to maintain a high level of training AND good levels of virus precaution. You just have to be willing to do a little extra work and be a little uncomfortable at times. That goes for whatever your passion is: find a way to adapt.

Thanks for reading.

MCDC 5,000m in Nashville 8/15/2020

Now

There is nothing else than now.  There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any tomorrow.  How old must you be before you know that?  There is only now, and if now is only two days, then two days is your life and everything in it will be in proportion.
    - Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

Once upon a time there was an alien race from the planet Tralfmalador*.  These creatures perceive time differently.  Actually they have no notion of time, seeing every moment simultaneously, as we might view a broad landscape from a spatial point of view.  Events in our lives happen in places at singular times:  When your wedding is over you can't come back to its moment.  Your first kiss is finished.  You can return to the baseball bleachers it happened on, but the diamond's been plowed into a Whole Foods parking lot.   While Tralfmaladorians get to be everywhere and everywhen, we're caught in a swollen  river of time after a rainstorm with garbage and treasures rushing past us.  Clutch at them. Save some of them, put them in photo albums.  But they are hazy.  They fade.  We can't hang on to the bobbing grandfather clock with the warped veneer  flapping in the current coming around the bend.  

But I think the Tralfmaladorian alternative would be boring.  Sure, that's an emotion invented by a species concerned with time, so I might be biased.  But time makes for challenges.  Time is the sap of progress and goal setting.

The earthling world of olympic sports takes four years to journey around the Sun.  (It must be easier for people born on February 29th to understand this.)  When I got back from racing in Europe last month I looked at my Egyptian water clock and noticed there are less than ten months until the Olympic track and field trials next June.  I’ve been counting down to 2016 since the day the 2012 trials ended in Eugene. Does the countdown “year” field ticking to zero change my training?  Why would I not have been training to my full potential already?

A year ago after the thrill and swagger of peak fitness that comes with a season's end faded, my break was over, and I began building base again,  I forgot some things.  Normal running waxed routine, workouts grew longer and aerobic, and there was little to remind me of sharpness and lactic acid and racing.  The battles of summer were once again far-off dreams, each training mile a block I mortared distractedly into a slowly-drying conglomerate that would later, I knew, become my rock but was today only the necessary work put in.  I forgot what it was like to sit in a warmup area in silence surrounded by the nervously stretching and shuffling competition.  Their affiliations, brightly colored plumage, adrenaline, the start, calm, and the finish.  Things that are far from Zap's quiet home on Bass Lake in Blowing Rock, NC.  But maybe there's a reason for that.  Taking a breath.

All his life has he looked away, to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was, hmm? What he was doing. Hmm. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things.
     - Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back

Beginning the drive.  The last few years have been about prodding, testing what the sacrifices feel like each day and each season.  Learning what it takes to do everything within the context of Zap Fitness, our training, and our racing schedule.  That took some distraction; some rest.  I suffered some mental lapses and learned from them.  But it's now, and if now is only these ten months, the next two months, these two days, make them your entire life and all will be in proportion.

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European track meets are an irony.  Plopped in rows of corn or along an old canal is a track lined by chest-high fence.  Sensory reminders of high school meets:  scents of icy hot and overflowing toilets at odds, spikes scraping on concrete and distant cries circling through still twilit air following straining combatants heeding anciently laid instinct.  The sun sits low and an insect hatch clouds the air, tiny sparks spiraling in random paths about each other in the failing light.  Here the athletes outnumber the spectators, and they are good at what they do.  Accents and languages from across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas meet, endpoint of various pilgrimage to staged trials.  To a Belgian out for a causal trackside beer, this looks like another athletics circus come to town.

I didn't look at the clock with a lap to go like I always do.  The 5000 field in Ninove, Belgium had broken into two groups; one in front running 64 second laps and a chase pack running 65's.  By one kilometer remaining our slower group had caught and overtaken most of the first bunch.  My fifth race in only 24 days between Ireland and Belgium, this was the last chance to grab a 5k personal best in the summer.  After a painful and sloppy 14:14 performance in Portland two months earlier, Pete asked me seriously if I was mentally ready to travel to Europe and compete.  The U-turn from that point to now took some patience and confidence building.  I looked to all the good work I'd put in since January and couldn't settle.

Eyes on the prize in Ninove, Belgium last month

Up front Great Britain's Andy Vernon and Azerbaijanian Ibrahimov Hayle were stretching the pace out.  It was going to be a kicker's race with a lap to go and a pack of nine vying for third.  (The group had some good international flavor: Burundian Irabaruta Olivier, Djiboutian Bouh Ibrahim, Somalian Ali Mohamed Mohamed, Moroccan Hadadi Tarik, and representation from Germany, Australia, and Canada.)  In many of the 5000s I've run in the past two years the final lap has been the sticking point.  As in someone sticks a knife in my leg and twists it.  I tense up knowing the finish nears, trying to muscle out a kick and straining, in the process actually slowing down in some cases.  I'd had enough of that.  On an international trip and in a race hinging on time, I need to paradoxically forget the clock and just race the guys here, around me, now.

Tunnel vision kept my brain from laying down a detailed memory of the final minutes of the race and that's a good thing.  In the moments after the finish I relished in the thrill of racing others to the finish in a 5k instead of just trying to get there.  I'd closed the final lap in 60 seconds and finished eighth with a small PB of 13:32.21, my first 5k personal record in over two years.  

I won't deny that I have to improve greatly to accomplish my 2016 goal.  I would have liked to be further along this year; I'm still in the 13:30's club three years after joining it.  But that's not how I'm thinking.  The pressure for a breakthrough has built.  Every run, every day, every week and month are fractal components of the time remaining, and as they march by they are each Now.

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The final race of this late spring / summer / early fall season is the US 5k Road Championships in Providence on Sunday.  A calf issue kept me from working out for a couple of weeks recently, but with the help of Zap's Alter Gravity treadmill, some pool running, and time off it's stopped mooing.  The workouts this week showed that it was only a graze and that I'm still milking the track fitness.  I'll stop with the cheesy puns now.

It's been a busy time at Zap Fitness lately with running camps and preparation for our yearly Mayview Madness road 5k in Blowing Rock this weekend.  It's illuminating chatting with our campers during their stay; the team learns just as much from them as they do from us.  The interaction helps keep everything in perspective and reminds me how lucky I am to be able to run full time and pursue a difficult goal with life-changing implications in the process here, now, and tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

Sunday's CVS 5k US Road Champs:
Entries
Runnerspace coverage

VERY tentative upcoming race schedule:

Date	Race Name	Location	Venue / Distance
September 20	CVS 5k / US Road 5k Champs	Providence, RI	Road 5k
November 15	.US National 12k Championships	Alexandria, VA	Road 12k
November 26	Manchester Road Race	Manchester, CT	Road 4.748 Miles
December 28th-ish	Third Annual Grind Fest	Milwaukee, WI	Indoor Track / Speed Skating Oval Battle To The Death

*Real creatures living in the mind of Kurt Vonnegut and in some of his novels including Slaughterhouse Five

Float On Down

Monday night I sat in an eddy pool in the creek on the edge of Zap Fitness' campus. The waning half moon cast age-smoothed boulders around me in shadow but was luminous enough to reveal the colors of pebbles in the stream bed.  While cold water washed over my legs, trout minnows nibbled at my toes, no doubt cleaning the gnarled result of the miles I've been running.  Sitting under the moon, stars, and canopy of pure green forest after a long day of travel, I reflected on the season and races and training to come.  The only sound was of the creek racing between the two large boulders that held back my pool.

The night before in Portland, David McNeill was quickly opening a gap on the field during the third lap of the Portland Track Festival 5k after a slower half mile split of 2:12.  Third in a chase pack with Mo Farah and Aron Rono, I felt the pace surge as Farah worked to stitch the rift to the Australian.  By 2k we four ran in a straight line, locked into 65 second quarters.  This was it: a chance to exploit the stellar training of momentum May in cool Pacific Northwest conditions under the lights.  Minutes before on the line, my blood stream a cocktail of adrenaline and caffeine rushing after pre race strides, the anticipation of the start reached near uncomfortable levels.  I love every component of racing:  The nervous excitement of the warmup, the focus on the track during the race, and the runner's high saturated wind down afterward.  I've come to thrive on the highs and lows of a meet, and being on the line of a race might be the most alive I ever have and ever will feel.

3000 into the Portland Track Fest 5k, Mo Farah leads Aron Rono, Tyler Pennel and I.  German Fernadez is in fifth and David McNeill (orange shorts) sixth.  We had a great crowd cheering us on.

Two months ago in the Mt. Sac Relays 5k it was only halfway into the race when I faltered, bleeding places and time.  Tonight I flew through that mark relaxed, smooth, and on the rail.  On the backstretch I heard children screaming "Go!  Go Daddy Go!" and thought "I'm racing men with kids, that's funny" before realizing they were the Olympic champion Mo Farah's kids cheering him on.  Daddy surged on the seventh lap with Rono following and I made the second major pace change of the race to catch up.  Zap Fitness team mate Tyler Pennel bounced along behind me.  McNeill having dropped back, our pack of four split 8:42 at 3200 meters as Tyler surged to the front.  In the next 200 we formed a Mo Farah - Zap Fitness sandwich with Tyler bravely leading.  A half mile later we passed 4k, the checkpoint where I met my demise a month ago in the Payton Jordan 5k.  Again I broke through, running stronger this time around.  McNeill had worked back into our pack and now took the lead from Farah, pushing hard with two laps left.  I swung wide and closed the gap over the next half lap, splitting 30.0 seconds from 700 to 500 from the finish.  At the bell, Farah hit the afterburners and scorched a 53 second final lap.  Finally the lactic acid caught up with me and all I could manage was to hold pace for 13:36 and fourth behind Rono.

In the moments after I felt disappointed with the time.  It wasn't a personal best or under the US 'A' standard.  But having watched the video and thought about it, I realize how well I raced.  Making at least three significant pace changes throughout probably took the sting out of my kick.  In the larger time frame of the season, I did the best I've done yet, coming within a lap of running a perfect Five.  The best part is that I have opportunities to execute that finish this summer.

In the past two years I've run 13:33, 13:34, 13:36, 13:38, and 13:40.  That's consistent, which is desirable.  But it's also somewhat frustrating running without improvement.  I believe that enough water against the dam yields a breakthrough, and that I'm on that edge right now.  No matter what level you're at, there will be times when you can't seem to get faster.  Sometimes a change in training and a fresh mindset is needed.  But there's nothing better for a runner than patience, poise, and belief that the breakthrough will happen.  Every performance, good or bad, is a movement towards that day we all dream of.

Back in the creek I watched a fallen leaf trapped in the eddy float slowly once, twice, three times in a circle around my pool. Finally it found the gap between the boulders downstream and went rushing onward.

Race Results

Race Video

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Bit of an update on my remaining track schedule:

June 26	USATF Outdoor Championships	Sacramento, CA	Outdoor 5000
July 5	Flanders Cup Oordegem	Oordegem, Belgium	Outdoor 1500
July 12	Flanders Cup Kortrijk	Kortrijk, Belgium	Outdoor 3000
July 19	KBC Nacht	Heusden-Zolder, Belgium	Outdoor 5000

I'll be blogging regularly during my European travels, be sure to check that out!