Double Trouble, Explained

Act IV Scene I:

In a cavern, somewhere in Scotland, three witches chant

Double, double, toil, and trouble;

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt and toe of frog,

Wool of bat and tongue of dog,

Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,

Lizard's leg and owlet's wing,

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

The hell-broth mud cauldron boiled coldly under our feet, squirming its way through shoe mesh  and plastering down leg hair (if you had it) through four circuits of Holyrood Park's two kilometer course in Edinburgh, Scotland.  Nothing (especially the hotel showers) escaped the bubbling black mud, and no tourist could we have immersed themselves in Scotland as we did.  The wind screamed and whipped us from the West, streams lapped at our ankles, and the sizable crowd bore witness to a dominating performance by team USA over the likes of Great Britain and Europe.

Kicking home in Scotland

At the post race trivia game, my team won best name with "We Kilt It", though "We Got Bag Piped" would have been a more appropriate description of our quiz performance.  It being my first ever senior US team berth, this brief trip to Scotland was especially memorable.  As runners we're measured greatly by US team qualifications, performances at international events (read: medals), and trivia prowess.  With USA blazed on my chest for the first time, I feel I've broken the ice.  I'll admit, Edinburgh is probably the easiest team to make, but (raises voice) I MADE IT!  You have to start somewhere.

The race was like nothing I'd ever experienced before in cross country.  The course put  many of the grass track-like venues in the US to shame.  It had rained for days leading up to the day of competition, and the junior races before ours made the 2k loop nice and sloppy.  Every lap featured two small but sharp uphills, a longer hill, two small stream crossings, one of which contained a boulder that only allowed one body through at a time, and plenty of ankle deep grass and mud mixture.  ("He must be a King."  "Why is that?"  "He hasn't got shit all over him.")  15mm spikes were the fashion of the day.

Team USA senior men before and after the race.

They say in Scotland that if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes.  It was sunny during our race but began snowing during the women's senior race.  It wasn't unlike Heps 2010.  It all created a very surreal cross country experience, one that made me feel happy and very alive.  I didn't finish up where I would have liked to in the field, but I'm concentrating on the positive of having fought hard in difficult conditions on a big stage.  Tough races never are easy to swallow, but I think you get over them more quickly as you grow more experienced and mature.

Perhaps my favorite part of the trip followed the awards ceremony.  Zap team mate Andrew Colley pointed to a distant volcanic peak, barely visible through the snow, and said "Letsrun up there."  My legs were tired from the race but I couldn't pass up the adventure.  We walk-jogged to the top of Arthurs Seat over rocks, mud, and snow and were rewarded with another abrupt change in the elements: the sun erupted through the clouds and we saw all of Edinburgh below; the castle, the sea, the cross country course, and surrounding pure green countryside.  We didn't bring phones (so did it really happen?) but we kept the image in our memories, which is sometimes better anyway.  On the way down some strange women asked if we had any fillets of fenny snake, but alas, we'd run out.

On the flight home I reflected on where I'm going and what's at my tail.  I'm on the cross country plunge: no indoor track, many and frequent miles, lots of strength workouts, and four (count em!) four cross country races by February's end.  Then I'll run the US 15k Championships in Jacksonville, FL in March.  Only after all that big boy work will I step back on the track and roll, and if all goes as planned, I'll have lifted myself in strength and toughness.  I think it's good to try and make every year a little different in terms of racing calendar and training to keep the body and mind from dragging, pitching out the things that don't work.  I'm excited to see where it propels me.  (sorry please don't mach me)

Zap Fitness is fully inundated (that is not appropriate use of that word) in winter training camp in Tallahassee.  For those who don't know, Trailahassee is secretly an excellent running location for its extensive and beautiful parks and trails.  Don't tell anybody though, because I like the lonely sound of footsteps on grade 10 crushed limestone laid over red clay dirt in silent prehistoric spanish moss-adorned woods.  This time of year, our lives consist of running, eating sweet potatoes and quinoa, napping, going to coffee shops, running again, eating more sweet potatoes, and sleeping.  Ok, we eat and do more than that, but the point is we're focused.  I just hope I run into an alligator this year while we're down here.  Not literally though.

Andrew and I are training for the US Cross Country Championships in Boulder, CO on February seventh.  After that we'll return to Tallahassee for a few days then head to Zap for a week, and finally begin training camp beta in Greenville, SC with the Furman Elite crew.  Here's to doubling for a charm of powerful trouble and a Packers win today.

The Zap Fitness crew working out on the grass in Tallahassee.  L-R Joe Stilin, John Simons, Cameron Bean, Chris Moen and the beard, and Andrew Colley hiding.  I ran this entire workout with my eyes closed.

Going Fast and Taking it Slow

On an unseasonably warm late September 2011 day in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania I'm trying to prove myself.  A mile into the Paul Short Invite gold 8k race, I navigate slime slicked grassy spots, the course softened by prior races as if masticated by some giant possessing thousands of half inch spikes for teeth.  My thighs are already beginning to burn and I begin to think, not again.

That summer in Park City, Utah the Princeton Tigers had trained hard.  Some of us older guys put in multiple triple digit mile weeks at between 6000 and 8000 feet, constantly on hills.  We were running 10 mile tempo runs and 20+ mile long runs in August, and to me they often felt nearly like races.  I'd wake up and need several minutes to get myself out of bed, fighting through the desire to just fall back into the pillow.  But I viewed it as typical training fatigue, and believed all the work would cash out during an epic senior cross country campaign.  That fell into doubt when the races started.  First a no-finish on the Bronx's Van Cortlandt Park's course in early September.  Then at Paul Short I faded from that 4:51 opening muddy mile all the way to a disheartening 26:01 clocking, totally disengaging from the race.  Some moments in practice were promising: I'd be able to hang with my workout group for shorter bouts of fast running.   But I couldn't string together five consecutive miles without rest in a race.

I watched the snowy and muddy 2011 Heps Championship from courseside in Princeton, not having broken into the top twelve on the team - the year before I had been in our top five for much of the season.  I was working hard and injury free: my performances didn't make sense.  The not knowing why bothered me - I would almost rather be totally injured for the knowledge of it.

That is until a blood test showed I had a ferritin level of seven.  Coaches, trainers, and doctors cite various numbers for appropriate ferritin levels, but they'll all agree that seven is extremely low.  Most likely the deficiency came on during the summer while I was potentially overtraining at altitude.  I began taking ferrous sulfate supplements - I hadn't ever before, and just 17 days later things turned around.  We held a 5k track time trial for the guys not on the Nationals cross country team.  As planned, we ran 70 second laps to two miles in 9:20, at which point I knew my red blood cells were back.  I ratcheted down the pace to 66s laps, closed with a 4:21 mile, and ran 14:12, a new PB.  The next weekend I and Princeton won the IC4A Cross Championships, getting revenge on Van Cortland Park.

The late fall turnaround continued into spring.  I obliterated every personal mark from 1500 to 5k, broke four, won Penn Relays titles, and had success at the conference, regional, and national levels.  I learned that year that every inch of work you put in helps you somewhere down the line, even if years later.  Through 7/8 of college I trained at a much higher level than races indicated, but it fortunately showed in the end.  I ran a lot of miles probably too fast and too tired, but they weren't for nothing.  They stayed in my legs, waiting for health to return.  When it did, I became a totally different runner with a different perspective.  I formed an altered point of view of the unwanted and unexpected.  

Label failure differently.  Make the good times models and the bad times lessons.  What was once failure - a godawful race, a bad workout, an injury ridden season - becomes success.  You successfully failed the race.  You learned something.  That terrible race is a part of You now.  You can think back to it, hate it, laugh at it, but whatever you do, make the future better.  You define what losing really is for yourself.  When you finally do win, it's only because you've lost many times on the way there.  Training is a microcosm of this:   A calculated series of blows to the body in pursuit of the triumphant gain in fitness.

I may be older and wiser (probably not, I just got carded twice in half an hour even though I'm 25) but running never stops challenging me.  This fall has been about learning to be patient.  Our training has focused on aerobic base building: lots of fartleks, hill climbing, tempos, and surges on long runs, to a degree I sometimes have been uncomfortable with.  At times I feel the need for some faster, more specific workouts in practice in order to execute well in races.  The week after a bombed race in Boston in October, I brought this up to Pete in a pretty uncharacteristically demanding way.  He just looked at me and said, "I need you to be patient.  I know you are going to run fast this year."  Something as simple as that calmed me down.

Your 2014 USATF Club Cross Country team champions, Zap Fitness.  L-R Andrew Colley, Cole Atkins, Joe Stilin, Tyler Pennel, Chris Moen, John Simons, Griff Graves.  Not pictured are assistants to the assistant regional manger George Alex and Cameron Bean.  Photo credit Michael Scott.

On Saturday I was back in Bethlehem on Lehigh's cross country course for the first time since that race in 2011.  I finished tenth and the team won in probably the deepest Club Cross Country Championships in history, showing I could run cross country without necessarily needing the battery acid intervals and repeats I adore so much.  I was reminded how sometimes I need to just shut my mind off, pull the plow in training, not ask so many questions, and run.  If you stay in it long enough, things have a way of working themselves out.  And many times, turnarounds happen when you least expect them.

Rejected at the Paddock

I'm going to remember that moment for a very long time.  Sunday at the US Championships, minutes before the 5000 final started.  My heart racing and sweat dripping down my face in the Des Moines heat, waiting for the check in clerk to finish the phone call.  I was ready to run: burnt orange Texas uniform on, spiked up, everything.  Over the last hour I'd somehow managed to calm myself and prepare mentally to race, even after a long weekend of wondering and hoping.

She ended her call, looked at me and said, "sorry, no, you can't run"  It didn't fully hit me until I'd gotten barefoot and walked over to the stands to watch the race I'd visualized myself in over the past year during almost every workout and run.  When I saw nine men lined up, only one of which was a collegian, I couldn't believe it.  Nine.  Of the original 18 accepted into the meet, half scratched.  Four days before, when the words 'Not Accepted' appeared next to my provisional qualifying time of 13:33.13 on the online entries/declarations page, I still held hope.  But USATF didn't fill the field after scratches.  Not even for a 23 year old hopeful, there, warmed up and ready to race.

This weekend hurt me.  I saw and heard a lot of things I wish I hadn't.  I feel disillusioned by what I've cherished as the purest of all sports, the one that's defined my life for almost nine years now.  This episode is the tipping point in my gradual realization over the past two years that US track and field isn't what it seems on the surface.  There are politics like you wouldn't believe.  Better have a friend in a high place or you're not getting anywhere.

This weekend's meet shouldn't be solely about selecting three people to go to Moscow.  The name of the meet says it all - The United States Track and Field Championships - so why did the 5000 final include such an alarmingly small fraction of the talent in the country?  Why wasn't the second American in the NCAA indoor and outdoor championships for this event - Maverick Darling in the race?  The meet should help younger guys gain experience and exposure.  Instead, the race ended up being a jog fest for Nike's athletes in front of a small crowd.  How hard would it have been to add Maverick, myself, and Andy Bayer, among others, all of whom were at the meet and ready to run?  A little bending of the rules in place.  Apparently the resistance to change is strong.

I wasn't going to blog about this in favor of forgetting about it and moving on.  But over the past couple days I've thought about it more and couldn't let it go.  I can only hope that USATF starts itching its scratches in future years.  People need to know what's going on.

At 1:30, three hours before the race, Flotrack held an impromptu press conference with myself, Maverick Darling, and his coach Mick Byrne about the situation. As Mick says, "It should be about the athletes."