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

Arrest Yourself

"They are human, like me.  Why should they be any better than me?  We have the same color blood."

       - Mark Wendot Yatich

Up here the wind sluices steadily down through the valley, crashing against thousands of trees loaning millions of branches to a symphony imitating the sound of surf and beach far to the east and below.  As if nature's ultimate tone is everywhere a powerful thrum, the wind sawing against forest and sea with the same taught bow.

We trot down amongst rhododendron on sparkling mica dust trails to a lake that reflects scurrying clouds, swirling haven while above the pine tops lean slowly back, give, and oscillate murmuring against the gust.  At an overlook the mountains fold and scrunch in rows endlessly towards Tennessee and Virginia, each face a hue of blue-green assigned daily.  Cataloochee is the Cherokee word for their arrangement.

The olympic trials begin in just nine weeks.  Its tractor beam has the hearts and minds of every American track and field athlete with olympic aspirations in its grip, the supply of time for adjustments and gaining fitness quickly fading.  Some have the advantage of having made the team before, but many will leave Eugene first time olympians who had to have total belief in themselves when they stepped to the line.  In some cases unwarranted, against-the-odds belief.  Owning such belief, especially if training or results haven't yet added up, takes more than simply banging your head against the wall, willing it to exist.

“Rest is the conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be… To rest is to give up on the already exhausted will as the prime motivator of endeavor, with its endless outward need to reward itself through established goals. To rest is to give up on worrying and fretting and the sense that there is something wrong with the world unless we are there to put it right.”

       - David Whyte*

The non-physical component of rest, at times neglected by athletes (including myself) and all kinds of people facing any challenge or job, deserves some attention.  Many runners understand and get recovery training, sleeping, napping, staying off their feet, and therapy right, but they stop there, or rather embark on other projects.

Focused rest is described in that last line of Whyte's - not worrying whether you should be doing something else.  In that peace and quiet, the ability of the mind to control the body gets stronger.  When you rest without distraction, you’re preparing to compete without distraction.

Everyone has the will to prepare and the will to win, but will is exhaustible.  It gets damaged when things go wrong.  It takes energy.  You can want to run a fast time or achieve a goal really badly, but when that painful moment of decision comes in a race, your body doesn’t care what you want.  On the precipice of breaking, above your inner voice frantically yelling “mush!”, the body instead hears something we have less explicit control over: the Subconscious.

In Lewis Thomas' Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony he describes "one of the great mystifications of science: warts can be ordered off the skin by hypnotic suggestion."  Skeptical, I looked further into this example of the Subconscious playing a wieldy role in the mind-body dynamic.  There have been cases involving years-old warts targeted amongst groups of warts that when ordered to disappear obey within two weeks, and studies that hypnotized all the warts of one half of the body as desired.

In Thomas' words, "This is not the sort of confused, disordered process you'd expect at the hands of the kind of Subconscious you read about in books... Whatever, or whoever, is responsible for this has the accuracy and precision of a surgeon."

When the mind rests the Subconscious is fed.  Hypnosis is the catalyst in the wart example.  I’m not suggesting we start putting ourselves in trances, but wart surgeon or not, the Subconscious’ power to influence the body is incredibly more powerful than the Conscious'.   Estimates put "conscious processing power" at a mere 3% of the total compared to 97% handled subconsciously or autonomically†. I think it’s possible to orient the Subconscious in the direction of the will when we rest, and call upon it when the will weakens, for example during a race.

When you train, your body breaks down and adapts to the stress you put it through.  Meanwhile you shape a portion of the Subconscious related to pain and discomfort by continuously willing forward a body that wants to stop.  In time, instinct is honed.  You learn to relax at paces on the edge of your ability.  Crucially, when you compete, you hardly have to think.  Pacing off competitors, making strategic passes, and shifting through levels of effort becomes automatic.  The best races and workouts feel effortless because something deeper is taking over.

Getting “up” for a race.  Worrying whether you’re going to give it your all.  Questioning your motivation.  All of it comes from a fear that your body won’t respond to your will.  The workaround is training your Subconscious with rest.  Reflect on the workout you did that day, not worrying about whether other tasks need tending to.

Be ok with periods of boredom.  Get away from the phone and feeling like you constantly need to be producing something.  Meditate.  Do what you love to do by being how you love to be: relaxed, focused, and not worried.  As always, this stuff applies to more than just running and sports.  Any time forces are against your will, resting could help beat them.

Stretching on the side of the lake after the run with spring growing around me, I remember how grateful I am for the opportunity to do this.  Things are simpler when you just let them happen.

 - - - - - - - -

George, Johnny, Joanna, and I travel this weekend to Palo Alto for the Payton Jordan Invite at Stanford, where many of the fastest American performances are run year to year.  Not counting rabbiting the 5000m a few weeks ago at Raleigh Relays, the 5000m on Sunday night will be my outdoor season opener.  We’re looking to grab Olympic (13:25) and trials (13:28) standards out there.

In memory of our late team mate and friend Cameron Bean,
the Bean House is nearing completion up the driveway from Zap.

Things are great at Zap. The stream keeps trickling and the birds wake me up every morning. Now that Sinead, Joanna, and Nicole have joined the team, Andrew won’t be able to mow the Zap field naked anymore.  Chef Michael Ryan returns for the summer season on Monday and we're looking forward to his tasty meals, especially the beets. The new Cameron Bean house, which will house some of our athletes, is nearing completion and complements the eight month old Andy Palmer house just up the hill. We're looking forward to a busy running camp season full of new campers and  returners in the Zap family.

Thanks for reading.

Race schedule for the next few weeks: (June races TBA)

Date	Race Name	Location	Venue / Distance
May 1	Payton Jordan Invite	Palo Alto, CA	Track 5000m
May 12	US 1 Mile Road Championships	Minneapolis, MN	Road Mile
May 20	Hoka One One MD Classic	Los Angeles, CA	TBA
July 1-10	2016 Olympic Trials	Eugene, OR	Track 5000m

*Whyte's short essay on rest is a great read

† Good blog on using the Subconscious by Catherine Collautt, PH.D.

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.

-    -    -    -    -    -

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.

-    -    -    -    -    -

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

A Contest for Speed in Running

First of all they held a contest for speed in running.  
The field strung out from the starting scratch, yet all at the same time
flew on together, turning up the dust of the plain.  Of these
stately Klytoneos was far the best in the running,
and was out in front by the length of a furrow for mules plowing
a field, and came back first to the crowd, with the rest behind him.
  - Homer, The Odyssey Book VIII 120-25

For forty meters my legs rode a wavelet of power; a small but resonant surge prevailing stubbornly against the spring tide of choppily rising blood PH levels.  In the video of the race you see me get passed with 220 meters left but briefly stick on, no gap opening, a bungie cord still attached, that last sun-weathered tether stubbornly keeping the canoe from flying off the car top into the ditch.  A lap earlier I'd taken the lead from Michael Atchoo after 61 and 63 second laps, the plan to push the pace and give myself the best shot at making the final.  I went for it, and I'm glad I did.  On a second chance I'd go to the front a lap earlier.  If I'm having a good race it means I'm focused when I'm focused I usually don't remember much afterwards (call it getting "track-out").  But I do remember feeling electric in that little moment, truly racing the 1500 and not caring if it was a world silver medalist I was kicking against.  In our soon-to-be demolished-and-replaced house on Blackberry Road at Zap Fitness, one of the ages-old Zap wall ornaments is a Reebok poster of Jorge Torres leading the 2005 US Cross Country Championships and a quote: "Someone out there has a better time than me.  And I'm going to beat him."  

I recently spoke with psychologist and author of Elite Minds Stan Beecham about competition mindset and racing.  We worked out that you never know how good you really are, so why not be open to being really good, open to beating a world beater.  What if one day you pull up alongside him with half a straightaway remaining and aren't open to the possibility of beating him?  He already has an advantage over you.  And you'll be swearing ya coulda have beat him at the tavern that night over something strong.  Why would you run a race if you didn't think you could win?  You don't know the future, so why make it up beforehand?  Give yourself the best possible chance of winning by thinking you will win.

Just over 200m to go in the 1500 Prelim last Thursday at USA Track and Field Championships (I'm in orange)

On Thursday I didn't take down Matt Centrowitz or Jordan Macnamera, the car top on the other end of the struggling elastic.  The bungie broke and we all clambered for the finish at speeds exceeding sixteen miles per hour, the other seven guys in the field drifting by at lazy relative velocities on the peripherals of my acidic tunnel vision as I closed in 55.9 for the final 400.  With that, I missed earning a Q or q to the 1500 final of the US Championships in Eugene at Hayward Field.  On the day the outcome wasn't a win or even a qualification, but I was running2win and my mindset was fearless.  Having that outlook in racing, hell in meeting challenges anywhere in life whips up a tailwind that tends to nudge you, over time, across the brink to meeting your goals.  Long-suffering Odysseus eventually made it home.  Bonus: you can't really be mad for long after losing if you did everything you could to win.  I spent the rest of the warm weekend swimming in the Pacific (for about 24 seconds) and watching track and field from a spectator's point of view, athlete credential perks of mini gatorades, austin cheese crackers and legs massages shamelessly included.  

I enjoyed it.  Sunday afternoon's smorgasbord of simultaneous men's triple jump, shot put, women's pole vault, high jump, and track event finals was incredible.  Former Florida Gators pumped the crowd all afternoon and went 1-2-3 in the men's triple jump, busted out mini dust pans and brooms, and literally swept the track surface.  There were heart breaking falls and weird pull-ups short of the finish line.  Galen Rupp lost.  Robby Andrews almost broke 12 seconds over his last 100m in the 1500 final.  Friends made teams and personal bests.  The meet troposphere was incredibly delectable, and next year's Olympic Trials are only going to be about one hundred times cooler, literally (I hope).  Speaking of, the window to post qualifying times for the OT just opened up, which brings me to what's next: Europe and #Euracing 2015.

George and I fly to Brussels on Thursday.  Last year he and I had a great time basing in the little town of Leuven, Belgium and living in a combination of unfurnished dorm rooms and overly modern business flats, the major perk being the queen sized bed we had (got to) share, now part of a storied Zap tradition, that is, men sharing beds on trips.  We're thin.  This time around we're living in different spots in town but I think we'll manage.  We still plan to be the first group on the practice track every morning, jam smeared croissants having been washed down with Aquarius sports drink and rented bikes locked up on the fence.

Racing around Europe is about train stations with names at the whim of local dialects, converting from kilometers, converting everything really, waffles, convincing yourself that the same brands of beer really do taste different here, running into other American runners on tiny streets and in massive churches, quests for establishments that serve tap water at dinner, sources of wifi, and hanging out with awesome Belgian dudes in fifteenth century underground bars who somehow know more about NCAA football than you do.  And of course racing every 3-7 days in perfectly set up opportunities at meets that serve beer and ice cream.  (Jeez, I've mentioned beer a lot in this paragraph.  Don't get the wrong impression.)  We train and race hard year round, but there's always a little voice that keeps repeating, "July.  July.  July.  Relax.  July."  Sounds oddly like Mugatu.  Our training at Zap is strength based with a long term view, but in July and a bit of August I get to rip it. Race six times in just 26 days.  The way they did in the '70s.  Race.  Recover.  Repeat.  Get sharper than a blade of Valerian steel.  I'm excited and emboldened by the moves at USA's.

I'll be writing approximately weekly on our Euro Odyssey across the wine-blue water, so check back for more.  For now, here's the race schedule:

Date	Race Name	Location	Venue / Distance
July 7	Cork City Games	Cork, Ireland	Track 3000
July 11	Flanders Cup Kortrijk	Kortrijk, Belgium	Track 1500
July 18	KBC Nacht	Heusden, Belgium	Track 5000
July 24	Morton Games	Morton, Ireland	Track 3000 or Mile
August 1	Flanders Cup Ninove	Ninove, Belgium	Track 5000