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

Cork and Kortrijk, Fundamental Particles

These word travel in a battalion of binary, tinily constituent of a surging light pulse torrent hastening at the universal speed limit within a three inch diameter fibre optic cable on the bottom of the Atlantic.  Outside this intercontinental information superhighway lies absolute inky blackness, vertical miles of ocean hammering down in mute pressure.  At one point the cable passes a group of thermophilic deep sea organisms huddled around a volcanic vent for sulphur and heat.  We share some DNA with them.

Belgium was warm when we got in on the third of July.  That Saturday, Leuven set an all-time temperature record of 35, convert that, 95 degrees fahrenheit.  The bell tower near us played the Star Spangled Banner in the afternoon. #America.  Our apartment at the summit of its very steep and narrow staircase stuffed between buildings doesn't have air conditioning.  So it goes.

Ireland on Sunday was much cooler.  During the bus ride west from Dublin I was surprised to see large rolling hills and occasional stands of coniferous trees lining the highway.  Southwest Ireland was beautifully cast in late evening light filtering through clouds as we rolled into Cork, a harbor city.  The athletes competing in the Cork City Sports meet were put in student housing near the track a couple miles out of town.  There was one very weak wifi network set up for an army of twenty-somethings far from home.  We looked like thermophiles around a volcanic vent.

The 3k in Cork in front of race winner Brett Robinson

I think I enjoyed all the potatoes and sausage (bangers and mash) more than most.  The Irish are very hospitable and easy to strike up conversations with.  Most Irish will say they can't even understand the accent of the Cork Irish, and I could hear why.  The (friendly?) rivalry between Corkers and Dubliners extends to their respective local beers.  Drinking Cork's Murphys Irish Stout and Dublin's Guinness back-to-back, I'd have to say Guinness still takes the blood pudding.

Despite windy and chilly conditions for the meet, the 3000 went a relatively quick 3:08 for the first three paced laps.  I put myself immediately behind the rabbit and when he dropped off American Jon Peterson generously took over the lead.  We slacked a bit on laps four and five and I let my eyes off the front of the race momentarily which cost me.  Australian Brett Robinson and Jeff See plucked a lead ahead of the pack.  With 200 meters to go I was moving really well and passing Dave McNeil, another Aussie while the announcer billed it as an Australia versus America finish.  I was third in 7:54, a good start to the five race tour in Europe.

By mid-week the drove of American professional runners had settled in after their annual migration to Leuven, Belgium.  Like Canada Geese we are here for the climate, we fly in V-formations on runs, eat a lot, and generally piss off the locals.  Leuven is an out-of-the-way small town with everything Canada Geese need: a track to shit on (metaphorically), lots of awesome green space for our activity, and the by now famous waffle stand.

On Saturday seemingly everyone ran the 1500 in Kortrijk, a small town on the Belgium - France border.  Courtrai (the french name) has been nice Nice to me in the past: it's given me a 3k PB  before and nearly a 1500 PB last year.  This time the fields were large and loaded, perhaps to the detriment of the races.  I didn't get out quite hard enough over the first 100 meters, even though it was probably 13.xx, was far back in the pack, and had to make at least three huge moves, each on the backstretch of every lap, until I gained a spot in third with 200m to go right behind Lopez Lomong.  The moves cost me a strong kick to 3:42, a subpar time but decent considering the whipsaw pace.

George and I got in a little fartlek and 400s tuneup session this morning in light mist.  Both of us feel great coming into Saturday's KBC Nacht meet in Heusden, where we're both running the 5k along with Leuven apartment room mates Brian Shrader and Maverick Darling and several other US runners.  The Olympic qualifying window is open and a fast time is the target.

For now thanks for reading and I'll post an update after the next couple meets.  Here is my upcoming race schedule:

Date	Race Name	Location	Venue / Distance
July 18	KBC Nacht	Heusden, Belgium	Track 5000
July 24	Morton Games	Morton, Ireland	Track 3000
August 1	Flanders Cup Ninove	Ninove, Belgium	Track 5000
August 7	Sir Walter Miler	Raleigh, NC	Track Mile

Lions and Tigers and Squares

Staggering around like a drunken sailor in a bad storm, it took me a good ten minutes to finally admit defeat and limp into the Gate River 15k finish line medical tent.  Through chapped lips I kept telling my team mates and friends I would be alright, as a voice in my head kept saying "you know you're not ok."

Internal monologue.

You need to go into that tent.

I don't want to.

Whats the square root of 169?

13.  Doesn't matter, I'd only ask myself questions I knew the answer to.

Chris told me he read you release DMT right before you die.  Am I about to die?

What, are there researchers giving surveys at peoples deathbeds?

I feel really lucid, which means I'm going to die

And so on.  You're reading this, which means I didn't die, unless artificial intelligence has finally gotten smart enough to fool you.  Of course a machine would deny its own existence. Or would it?

My temperature in the medical tent was 103.1 taken well, back there.  I hoped after they cooled me off for half an hour with ice and wet towels that an oral thermometer would suffice for the required re-measurement.  I also knew that using one would be bad science. Needless to say, they used good science.

The ice-filled Lowes painters hat I donned before the start made me look kind of like Joan Benoit or Dave Wottle and made me want to Never Stop Improving, but it did little to prevent me from achieving critical core temperature.  Either way, there's something badass about pushing yourself to the limit and getting heat exhaustion to prove it.  Finishing 19th, I was initially disappointed, but while enjoying the Jacksonville afternoon at a friend's party I drew positives.  

Tyler Pennel (c), Griff Graves (r) and I combined for a second place team score
at the Gate River Run / US Road 15k Championships

Never let anyone, including yourself, take an all-out effort away from you.  I've questioned my effort and toughness after a bad race before, and it's not a good place to go.  You don't suddenly just get less tough.  The killer instinct you've honed in countless training sessions and races doesn't go away.  Unless you're Prefontaine, you have one, maybe two critical moments in each race.  Whether to follow an early surging pace or to start kicking far away from the finish, for example.  You have to trust that instinct will surface at that moment, and if things don't go your way, realize that your body can only do what it can do.  

Mistrust in your grit is often false and destructive self-analysis.  That mistrust probably accounts for most of many people's post bad race anxiety, and it sucks worse when it's shaken not stirred with pain into a cocktail of depression.  I've found the quickest way to stoke the fire isn't by agonizing over results or splits or other people or past, more glorious races, but (this may sound cliche) actually looking for positives in the race you just stumbled through.  They won't be positives you'll hang on your wall, but you're not weak for settling for sub par achievements either.  As weird as it may seem, running myself into a medical tent was my positive in Jacksonville.


Gate River was our final fall and winter foray into cross country and overdistance.  Now it's time for a later than usual return to the track.  Imagine a full sized, half starved tiger released towards a huge slab of red meat on a cedar stump across a gently sloping downhill grassy field - that's me.  It's a calculated debut designed to extend the season well into August and even September.  Sans indoor racing and with a week-long break after the Gate River run, my legs should be well prepared for the hands-to-knees acidic workouts and races ahead.  I'll begin with a 1500 at Princeton next Friday against some velocitous tigers, lions, and other assorted beasts.  Can't wait.

Now for what we call running porn.  The last two weeks have seen some of the best training I've ever done with Zap Fitness.  I won't go into details.  But two weeks ago as the gray mountain skies sent flakes of snow laterally across the whitecap kissed aqueduct of lonely Bass Lake, five 1500 meter repeats on dirt working from 4:26 to 4:19 began a series of fitness-bumping sessions.  That Sunday in better weather we went 18 miles on the long run with a nice 5:13 final mile.  The first major track session of the year was with Tyler that next Wednesday, run entirely "ins and outs style" (faster straights, slightly slower curves).  Beginning with 2400m at 4:40 pace (7:00) we went on to run 8 x 800m working gradually from 2:13 to 2:07 for an anaerobic bank deposit.  More training with Tyler on Saturday saw a 4:15 fifteen hundred on Bass Lake and threshold climbs in the carriage trails of the park.  

Zap Fitness practice on Bass Lake in Blowing Rock.  L-R Griff Graves, Joe Stilin, John Simons, Brandon Hudgins, Tyler Pennel, Chris Moen, George Alex.

Hump day this week brought with it one of the hardest sessions I've done in some time, mainly because of its length at a fairly intense rhythm.  Everything was run back and forth on a slightly hilly paved one kilometer section of the brand new Middle Fork Greenway that will eventually connect Blowing Rock and Boone.  Bouts of 2 kilometers, 6 x 1 kilometer, and 2 kilometers formed the meat of the session, the five of us averaging 5:55 for the 2k's and 2:53 for the 1k's.  Tyler and I threw in some economy (speed) with 3 x 600m "snowballs" (getting faster every 200m) and 3 x 200m touching under mile race pace to finish.  We're beginning to stir not shake together strength and speed within these sessions, and feeling fit has been feeling good.

After Princeton it's the trip to Palo Alto, CA for the Payton Jordan Invite and a 5000 opener.  I've run there the past two years and it's been one of the best distance meets in the US every year.  From there we'll head to the Oxy High Performance meet in LA two weeks later and then begin gearing up for US Outdoors later in June.  Those months are sure to bring more good tales and hopefully less thermometers.  Thanks for reading!


Next few races:

Date	Race Name	Location	Venue / Distance
April 17	Larry Ellis Invite	Princeton, NJ	Track 1500
May 2	Payton Jordan Invite	Palo Alto, CA	Track 5000
May 14	Hoka One One Midle Distance Classic	Los Angeles, CA	Track 1500

Here we are on the second of six one kilometer repeats on Wednesday:

First ever ZAP workout on the new Middlefork GreeenwayTrail which will ultimately connect Boone to Blowing Rock. This is the Tweetsie Railroad section recently opened.
Posted by ZAP Fitness on Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Run The Story

C'mon, get him all the way in... Dammit.

Damn her, Thetis, for failing to fully immerse her son Achilles in the River Styx.  He, made only partially invincible by her act, ultimately fell by his heel, with which she held him under, not touched by the chilly, black water. Achille's end was Hector's arrow to this sole mortal piece of flesh, and today, us runners suffer the vestiges of Thetis' mistake in the guise of Achilles' tendonitis.  It doesn't always halt training like stress fractures or serious illness do.  But it has a way of punishing good faith training by competitive (read: stubborn) athletes.  Lingering, then withdrawing and encouraging, again returning and dismaying.  And so, when I felt Hector coming back for the kill late this fall, we immediately played it safe and took some time away from running.

Not much time.  I have no right to complain about injury given what many runners go through, missing entire seasons and years of training to broken bones, Lyme disease, coffee tables, you name it.  I prefer to draw positives from injury and the associated lull in the waves.  Coming during an effective intermission in my career, this most recent bout of Achilles tendonitis timed itself well, relieving Part I: Student-Runner and Part II: Professional Runner.  (Stay tuned for the epilogue, Joe Runs 100 Miles and Drinks 100 PBR's In One Week at Age ___.)

I used the extra time to mull over one question: why do I want to run and to win?  I sought a concise answer - the pillar of my purpose, season to season and day to day.  Awareness of purpose beats sickness, injury, motivational lows, and the naysayers.  Instead of blindly throwing thousands of miles and hundreds of workouts into a mysterious black box and hoping for a good result, I wanted to get inside and take control.  I was looking for a few words I could sharpie on some paper and tape to my bedroom wall.  Something that would take me, day by day, to 2016.

It was hard working through the bullshit; the multitude of superficial reward systems we set up: personal bests, chasing mileage, roaring crowds, victory laps, award stands, descending order lists, traveling, media coverage.  So many things that motivate me seemed egocentric and impure.  Or maybe I was being too harsh, seeking a sugary answer to an interview question.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

- Shakespeare, As You Like It

I arrived at this: By the time I've shuffled off this mortal coil, I want to have written an absolutely enthralling story.  Not with a pen, but with my feet.  One featuring great running accomplishments and the events that brought me to them.

So I put on my wall: Run the Story.

Those three words contain the instructions for training, everyday.  Mileage, paces, race tactics, recovery, workouts, strength, strides, injury rehab, planning: encyclopedic knowledge by now, but driven  and motivated by the story.  The story holds me accountable.  It gives me reason to run.

Nine days into winter training camp in Tallahassee, FL, Zap Fitness is working hard for the track season.  We have a special mix of personalities and types of runners that I'm enjoying training and living with. In the best week of training I've had since May, I've completed two strong workouts (Fartlek + 200m hills and 9 x 800), brought strides back into the equation, and had good long runs coming off that Achilles injury.  I always forget how quickly fitness and that feeling of confidence comes back after a break.

My next race: Mile at the Boston University Terrier Invite on January 25, with perhaps some Distance Medley Relay action the day before.  After that it'll be a 3000 in early February, date TBD.