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.

#BeBackSoon

It's been a while since I posted.  This isn't a post, it's more of a promise of a post coming soon, to hold myself accountable... school's over for me soon, and it'll be all running and no bumming very soon!

stay tuned.

for now, here's a poem:

Dirt.
That I ran on,
Soaked but smooth,
Giving under my feet, pliant to my stride.
This dirt if the salt of the Earth and the malt of my mirth.

Ten Minute Battle: Izumo Ekiden, Japan Pre-Race

On Wednesday I board a Boeing 777 for a thirteen hour flight to Tokyo.  I am part of the nine-man Ivy League Select relay team bound for Izumo, Japan for the 25th edition of the All Japan University Izumo Ekiden Relay Race.  It consists of six stages run on the roads of Izumo in the Shimane Prefecture with lengths 8.0 kilometers, 5.8k, 7.9k, 6.2k, 6.4k, and 10.2k for a total of 44.5 kilometers.

Roughly the Japanese equivalent of the American fall cross country system, (but on roads) Ekiden racing is run at the high school, university, corporate, and international levels all over Japan.  Races vary in number of stages (usually between five and nine) and length of stages (from 3k to 13k).  Our race in Izumo serves as the kickoff for the university Ekiden season and is part of the "big three" of university Ekiden events, along with the All-Japan Collegiate Ekiden Championship in early November and the Hakone Ekiden in January.  Most of the races, including ours, are gender-specific, but the International Chiba Ekiden, which draws teams from all over the world, features stages run by both men and women.  Ekiden is a unique Japanese sporting event: these races draw hundreds of thousands of spectators roadside and attract huge national television audiences.

Alone, a trip to Japan is an amazing experience - but I believe we are going to encounter more than the average American tourist ever will.  Sure, we'll see the sights, enjoy the food, language, and culture of the country.  But on Monday the fourteenth of October, when we line up alongside twenty one Japanese teams in front of the Izumo Taisha Shrine,  I expect we'll be seeing and feeling, through the hurt of the race, a lot more.

Of the week long trip, I am specifically looking forward most to an approximately ten minute period: the last ten minutes of my relay leg.  I have imagined it many times now: an unspoken understanding, an absolute focus,  a complete determination to win in my competitors.  I have heard and read of, and experienced myself in the US and most recently in Belgium on the track, how fiercely competitive the Japanese are.  They won't pack up.  They won't wait and kick.  They will be doing everything in their power to deliver the sash to their next man with a lead, to give their remaining runners a better chance.  When the freshness of the start has worn off, the acid has begun to accumulate, when the pounding of the road begins to add up; that's when I'll learn about Japan.  From men from Tokyo, from Yamanashi, Komazowa, Fukuoka, and Sappro.  From places I've never been to, and perhaps never will.  I'll learn a little bit about each of them in that ten minute battle.

Where the 44.5 kilometer relay road race will start with an 8 kilometer stage: outside the Taisha Grand Shrine in Izumo, Japan.  The Shrine is dedicated to the Shinto god of marriage, Okuninushi-no-mikoto.

I have huge respect for who us Ivy League boys are up against.  In the fifteen years the US has sent an Ivy team to Izumo, the highest we've finished is a respectable eighth.  The quality of competition in Izumo is stellar - I would venture to predict that the winning team there would do a great deal of damage at NCAA D1 Cross Country Championships every year (yes, even against Wisconsin or OSU)

In recent editions of the race, guys from outside the Ancient Eight have been used on the American team, potentially expanding our firepower.  But this year the Japanese required Ivy Alumni exclusively, and we're bringing a very good team.  All of us have continued training and racing at a high level since college.  We have speed in guys like Kyle Merber (Columbia, 3:35, 14:02) and Trevor Van Ackeran (Princeton, 3:39, 8:46 SC), who now run for NJ*NY track club.  We have strength in Dan Lowry (Brown, 3:59, 13:34, 29:22), Brendan Martin (Columbia, running for Hansons-Brooks, 14:06, 64:38 HM), Tommy Dialynas (Princeton, 29:41), Ethan Shaw (Darmouth, 14:06, 29:17, 64:45 HM), and Jonathan Gault (Dartmouth, 14:25).  And we have good combinations of strength and speed in Mark Amirault (Princeton, 7:53, 13:45) and myself (Princeton, running for Reebok / Zap Fitness, 3:39, 7:49, 13:33).  Many of us have former team mates in the group, making us a cohesive unit, much like all the Japanese teams will be.  And we're coached by 1976 Boston Marathon Champion Jack Fultz - that can't hurt.

I hope to take away from this trip a new perspective on running - one that reflects the culture and work ethic of the Japanese.  The more I see of the world, and the more I learn about athletes outside the American system, the better a competitor I become.

The teams competing in the 2013 edition of the Izumo Ekiden on October fourteenth:

1. Aoyama Gakuin University

2. Toyo University

3. Chuo University

4. Hokkaido University Ren selection

5. Tohoku University Ren selection

6. Nippon Sport Science University

7. Komazawa

8. Teikyo University

9. Waseda University

10. Juntendo University

11. Meiji University

12. Hosei University

13. Chuogakuindaigaku

14. Hokushinetsu science Ren selection

15. Chukyo University

16. Kyoto Sangyo University

17. Kwansei Gakuin University

18. Hiroshima University of Economics

19. China Shikoku University Ren selection

20. Nihonbunridaigaku

21. First Institute of Technology

22. Ivy League selection

Don't Scorn the Base Degrees By Which You Did Ascend.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat,

And we must take the current when it serves

Or lose our ventures.

 - Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (4.3.224 - 230)

Fresh out of the collegiate running scene I found myself in a somewhat  middling position: just fast enough to keep running and support myself a little, but not yet good enough to make an Olympic or World Championship team, marry and raise between three and seven children.  People might call my choice to delay an aerospace engineering career for one in professional running risky economically - but no one enjoys any real accomplishments in life without indulging in some risk.

When I do begin real life after running, I'll invoke Brutus: on Opportunity: when the interviewer asks what I've been doing the previous four years.  For now I sit on a precipice, squinting far across the divide to "real" life; in between a vast chasm of "work".  Miles to run; goals to accomplish.  Why brave the rift?  Because the opportunity is perishable... existing  now in strong legs that only weaken with time.

Death of Caesar, Vincenzo Camuccini

On a hot n' sweaty morning run in Austin recently, a sophomore on Texas' team (who loves questions) asked me what I'm going to do to 'get faster' in the coming years.

Until this December I'll be living, training and going to school in Austin at UT, following Reebok / Zap  Fitness coach Pete Rea's instructions day to day.  I have a very solid fall road racing schedule set up, but the focus is outdoor track next year.  Once I have my Master's Degree I'll forget everything I know about airplanes (hopefully not) and head to North Carolina to train, where Zap is based (and airplanes got their start).  Thus begins my full immersion in running. For the first time in my career.

The simple answer to Brady's question, and something I'm very excited for, is that all of me will be a runner beginning soon.  In college, and even now, one hundred percent has never been possible.  In fact, it's taken me this long - since I began running at fourteen - to get (somewhat) close to understanding what one hundred percent even looks like.

The runs take care of themselves.  In high school, to be good, you run year round, and you'll do well.  You can beat superior talent.  In college, everyone runs year round and talent plays a larger role.  There, everyone talks about 'the little things' - Drills, stretching, icing, napping, strength, strides, eating, sleeping, hydration - that fill out those last percentage points.

But 'one hundred percent' is not stubbornly abstaining from things you enjoy in a martyrly pursuit of perfection.  That's not sustainable.  When I make a sacrifice for running, I make damn sure it's worth it.  It's something I'll do again- and never dread.  It's taken time, but I've come to truly enjoy spending time outside of runs doing many things to recover and stay healthy.  A sustainable recovery system - something I'll never half ass - something that's become habit - that I practice because I understand why it works and not just because someone told me to do it - is what I think causes longevity  and consistency in the sport.

...Running + The 'Little Things' + Knowing Why.

The other element of improvement in my plan is running stronger.  The types of 'fitness' I've brought to races so far in my career sit atop tall, pointy pinnacles of anaerobic work - temporary, fragile.  At their foundations, base fitness stretches far to the horizon: permanent, unmoving.  I want to move that base higher above sea level so I don't need to build such lofty towers.  The longer approach featuring more base building and aerobic work throughout the year is a natural consequence of post collegiate running's structure - something I'll need to get used to, that requires patience.

'Tis a common proof,
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost rung,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend.
- Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (2.1.22 - 28)

This is my 2013 fall racing schedule:

September 22:   CVS/Caremark USA 5k Road Championships in Providence, Rhode Island

October 14:       Ivy League Alumni Ekiden Relay.  Izumo, Japan

November 2:     Dash To the Finish 5k.  New York City

November 17:   .US Road Racing Championships (12k).  Alexandria, Virginia

November 28:   Manchester Road Race.  Manchester, Connecticut

Arrival in Leuven

The past two weeks have moved incredibly fast: I signed with Reebok / ZAP Fitness three days ago and got the opportunity to race in Europe, something I dreamed of doing coming into this track season.  I count myself very lucky to have spent less than four months in the 'unattached-drifting-limbo' phase, something that can be difficult to get out of for post collegiates and even pros - look at Leo Manzano, the Olympic Silver Medalist for crying out loud (into a microphone).  His situation is a different story.

I'm writing from the lobby of the Mercure Hotel in the town of Leuven, which is the beer capital of Belgium and home of Stella Artois.  Tomorrow I'll be running a 1500 in the town of Oordegem at Memorial Leon Buyle, part of the Flanders Cup series.  That race serves chiefly as a rust buster/shakeout for the 5000 a week later in Heusden-Zolder at the KBC Nacht Meeting.  Tomorrow's meeting features quite a few Americans, many of whom I've already raced this season.  Of course there will be stiff competition from Europeans and Africans there as well.  It'll be nice introduction to European racing.  (Entries)

I arrived in Brussels around nine AM this morning and am doing my best to stay awake.  I did a pre meet shakeout run with IU Alum Danny Stockberger from a nice little track nestled in the woods next to the Movements and Posture Analysis Laboratory Leuven, out into the countryside on a rustic soft surface trail.  We followed that with lunch at a sandwich shop we found.  Leuven is a nice little town; a great place to base... the only problem: the amount of chocolate, waffles, ice cream, and beer that tempt at ever corner (alley, crevice, hole in the wall) you encounter.

Working out in Leuven on 7/09/2013 with Will Leer and Aisha Praught

 Geez, I've only been here four hours and the girls are already after me.

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."

Take The Chance

I've migrated North from Austin to my hometown, Milwaukee in favor of cooler temperatures and proximity to my next few races.  Between mama's home cookin' and the familiar high school running routes it makes for a good training base camp.  The comfort of home isn't without its consequences: training alone changes the mental game up a bit.

Today I drove to Marquette University's track for the last hard workout before the US Championships.  The gate was closed so I hopped the fence, thinking how much it would suck to get kicked out halfway through a rep.  The track is blue, just like it will be in Des Moines - that's training specificity for you.

I'm assigned a set of six thousands at 5k pace with three minutes (generous) rest.  I'll follow that with some 200s at mile pace to turn the legs over.  The workout is starkly simple compared to others I've done this year with Texas - sessions I've come to call 'mixed workouts' that might hit a wide range of paces and recovery lengths.  But today it's no nonsense Jack Daniels taken straight, no chaser.

The disadvantages of training solo become apparent during a workout like this. Warming up I feel a bit negative.  'it's warmer this morning than it's been, it's windy, I don't feel that good.'  The usual distance runner whining.  This time of year, as championship season begins, we're especially on edge, believing everything should be feeling perfect.  Today I'm putting the workout on an undeservedly high pedestal; as I begin the first rep, I sort of feel like I'm climbing up to a gallows.

The guy mowing the grass around the track has flooded his engine and I smell gas every time I run the curve.  The first interval usually feels off because your body still needs to warm up.  I run it in 2:42.7, on the low end of the 2:42 - 2:45 range I should be in.  Most of the time I can execute a workout without too much mental agony - focusing on the current rep and not the rest of the workout.  But today I'm being negative.  On the second and third thousands I run 2:43 and 2:43, @StilinIt but not feeling good.  Usually the halfway point serves as a nice mental checkpoint but today the workout is half empty rather than half full.

Hubris attacks on the fourth interval.  Somewhere during the second lap I start letting up.  These thousands require sharp focus literally the entire time, and the slow down snowballs when I check my 800 split at 2:15, five seconds off.  I start thinking about ending the whole thing as I finish in 2:50.

If you go off to die, then take us, too,
to face all things with you; but if your past
still lets you put your hope in arms, which now
you have put on, then first protect this house.

Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 2, lines 914-7

For the next couple minutes I wage a mental war with myself.  Had my coach been there he would have pulled me off the track.  If I end the workout now, my confidence will be shattered leading into important races.  If I try to go on, I'll most likely continue dying and end up feeling worse.  But there's a chance I could sack up and salvage the thing.  I reach a compromise: I'll run 800 of the next rep, on pace, in spikes, and see how I feel.  I beat my chest, let out a war cry that echoes off the casino across the street, and go for it.

The internal soliloquy of recovery period four is for me the pinnacle of the workout and perhaps the entire season.  Reaching such a low mental and physical point and rebounding motivates me.  I'm a touch slow halfway through the fifth interval when I start feeling good again.  I decide to run all thousand of it as I come through 800, still slow, in 2:14.  I speed up and finish with 2:44.  Suddenly I'm almost there, just one rep separating me and the 200's which are just icing on the cake anyway.  I sense the end of the set and run the last one in 2:41, my fastest split.

Nothing changed in my body from that fourth agonizing interval to the last one.  The 2:50 outlier was a product of my mentality.  This isn't an isolated incident: two weeks ago I ran an outlying 2:10 on the fourth 800 of a set of six, the other five averaging 2:04.  And my last two races at Stanford and Oxy had slower fourth kilometers.  Anyone can open well and I'm able to close well, sensing the finish.  But it's that portion of the work - that third quarter - that seems to get me.  It's like traveling from far away, coming around the bend and finally seeing home and being reinvigorated.  Only the trees were in the way.

Today I was shown, by the workout, that it's in the tank.  No matter how hard it is, I have to take the chance and continue working during that third quarter phase.  In the form of a race it will mean going with the leaders after 3k, something I failed to do at Oxy.  I have to trust that instinct will take me home to the finish.  As I put the final preparations in for USA's I'm confident in my strength and toughness, and being aware of my ability to rally, no matter how hard it gets, is valuable knowledge.