A running club based in Chapel Hill/Carrboro, NC
I cannot yet write about the pain-filled feelings I have concerning the latest findings of my aforementioned “mysterious back pain.” But I can write the facts.
The timing of this event in my life is very unfortunate. I look forward to being healthy again in the coming months. Until then…
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I’m sitting in a Starbucks, nursing my second cup of coffee in Menlo Park, California after my fourth meeting with my Chiropractor, Dr. Brian Kolozsi. I’m writing to share my experience with everyone concerning Sunday night’s race, or lack thereof.
First, let’s set the tone for this post:
I’ve spent the entirety of my adult life questioning my ability to make it in this sport, only to reaffirm over and over again that I have what it takes to make it to the top. There are poignant moments etched in my mind to illustrate this point. One is a memory of a 35-degree, rainy morning at 4:30am. I am sitting in my car in this memory, going back and forth with a decision to get out and begin a solo workout before work. I thought to myself, “if you can’t get out, then you’re finished as a runner.” I got out.
I flew to California on Friday morning of last week. By Saturday evening, I could barely walk. My great friend, Steve Sundell, picked up some Aleve for me at the drugstore and helped me get into bed. Sunday morning, race day, I woke up full of hope that I was cured by a fitful sleep. My first step confirmed that there was a real problem. The rest of the day was filled with searching for a physical therapist. I found one. She helped me, a little bit. And then I looked for a chiropractor. I found one. He helped me, a little bit more. By Sunday evening I was feeling determined to race and believed I could do it. My SI joint had slipped out of place. Dr. Kolozsi had fixed it, but the surrounding muscle tissue was spasming and inflamed. 
I jogged for twenty minutes as a part of my pre-race warm up. I stretched after the jog, and then attempted a few strides or pickups of about 80 meters in length. In short, I was sprinting while simultaneously trying not to fall down. I can take pain; I’m used to it. But my body was fighting my every step - even with the adrenaline from my looming race. I limped over to the clerks’ table and scratched from my race. And then I walked over to the fence and watched both heats of the mens’ 1500m. My race unfolded before me, as I watched, crippled on the sidelines.
I watched the races in silence, absorbing the pain and loss of not being able to compete.
Now, I am healing. I acquired a few emotional scars from this experience. I feel a little meaner, a little fiercer, a little calloused, a little more prepared to race with my “whole soul,” as Joan says. I fly to Eugene, Oregon tomorrow evening for a race at UO on Friday night at 8:00pm. I still cannot run, but I am hopeful that my muscles will calm down by race day.
I wanted to pack up and come home after Sunday; I wanted to quit the rest of my trip. But here I am, another moment in my life dedicated to pushing through to the other side. If I possess any toughness, it is in my ability to persevere. I hope to write in with a positive experience from Eugene.
Thank you, fellow CAC members for all of your encouragement.
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Dear Friends and Family,
I am alive and well in Carrboro. Here is a long-overdue update in regards to my recent training and preparation for the 2008 outdoor track season and Olympic Trials:
The summer sun has yet to scorch my newly shaven head as the last few weeks have been overcast and damp in the Triad. Two weeks ago encompassed several extremely hard training sessions involving hills, race pace work, and general hard running all-around. To illustrate, one of my “easy” days included a 10 mile run completed between 5:30 and 5:40 minute / mile pace over the rolling hills of Duke Forest. I had to sleep 12-hour nights and it still did not feel like enough to absorb the hard training.
For anyone wondering why in the world I am training this hard within the confines of my upcoming races, I can explain: The window of opportunity for this type of training is very small during my outdoor racing season (April 1 – July / August), and with a race as short as the 1500m, there is little physical training benefit from the race itself. So in order to make the next fitness jump, I have crammed in some high quality training sessions to catapult me all the way to the Olympic Trials in July. Also, I needed to “right the ship,” so to speak, with some hard work. I suffered through the Flu a while back and missed some vital training, and in turn my confidence plummeted. But with 5 repeats up Lone Pine hill now under my belt, I feel ready for anything (thanks, Joan).
Now that the foundation has been laid and secured, I am looking forward to some fast racing to make a withdrawal on the deposits I’ve made since last August.
What does it take for you to feel confident and ready to line up on the starting line?
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Yesterday afternoon on a rainy run with Joan (my first run back after an awful week-long fight with the flu), I ran through every muddy puddle in my path. Dirt splotches dressed the back of my legs up to the middle of my back. When I arrived home and toweled off, I thought back to high school and a quirky tradition that was one of my favorites.
At Seton Catholic High School in Plattsburgh, NY, we had a tradition of dirtying our shoes. If anyone on the team showed up in brand new running shoes, shiny and unworn, then they were subject to at least one muddy scuff from every other member on the team. To illustrate, if I was guilty of clean shoes, I would have to stand patiently while the other athletes formed a line and one-by-one wiped the bottom of their shoes on the top of mine. Veterans on the team were accustomed to this practice and enjoyed it. But NEW members of the team were consistently incredulous. At times we would have to chase kids and catch them to enforce the tradition. Was this hazing? Probably.
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I’ve lost a lot of races. In 2000, at Madison Square Garden, I lost a fight to the finish with Tristan Colangelo during the Millrose High School Invitational Mile by .06 seconds. It was so close that I actually thought I won when I crossed the finish line. In May of 2007 at Duke University, after leading from the gun, getting passed, then fighting back, I lost a race to David Proctor from Boston University by .03 seconds. I don’t know what distance that equates to, but it couldn’t have been more than an inch. Losing like that, well, it left a sour taste in my mouth.
I lost another race recently. At Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA this past weekend, I lost a race with their timing system. The clock beat me by .13 seconds. It’s entirely different, running against the clock versus running against other bodies on the track. Racing for time requires patience and the ability to mete out your energy without relying on the all-powerful drug of adrenaline.
When I crossed the line on Saturday, just over 4 minutes after the race started, I was incredulous. I saw the clock as I approached the line, it ticked off the seconds: 3:57, 3:58, 3:59, and then the screen flashed, 4:00.13. My consolation came in the form of a collective moan as the crowd joined me in facing the clock and the brutality of that tiny sliver of time.
I apologize in advance for asking you to dredge up awful (or celebratory?) racing memories, but I have to ask: What’s your closest finish?
Editor’s note: I ran fast enough to qualify for USA Indoor Nationals on February 24th in Boston, MA. But I really wanted that sub-4 minute mile indoors…
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On Saturday, January 26th I lined up against an international class field of milers at the Reebok Boston Indoor Games at the
Well, if you watched the race on television, or glanced at the results, you saw my 7th place finishing time of 4:02, and (I hope) wondered, “What the heck is he doing?”
I have an answer: nothing.
I sat in the back of the race and did nothing about my position, and worse still, I did nothing to impact the race. Joan and I talked often in the spring of ’07 about the major players in a race – you know, the players who influence the race, shape it, mold it into an actual contest of wills. I was learning to be a major player, by staying toward the front in nearly all of my races in the spring. But, like a deer in headlights, I did nothing this past weekend to affect the race. I just let it go by.
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I like listening to John Hinton. Mainly, I like listening to him because he posesses a voice of reason. Hinton-Dog is usually the person who reassures me that it’s important to listen to my own body, that anyone can overtrain, but what separates the champions from the masses is intelligence.
But tonight John had different words of reason, in sharp contrast to what I expected and wanted to hear from him. John Hinton told me to take the pain, and then take some more.
Tonight, John and I completed 10 by 80 second hill repeats on a newly paved (and deserted) bike path. This particular hill follows a deceivingly sinister route: gentle incline rising in steepness until a slight plateau is reached, followed by a steep, snakey turn that forces you to reengage your mind and body and feels like a sprint-finish.
We wheezed after the first interval and acknowledged the hill as a formidable opponent. I was shocked at the difficulty of effort required to run at a “reasonable” pace up the bike path. I ran the second interval a little more controlled, just to see if it really made a difference (sometimes a monumental effort while running uphill results only in a slight gain of ground). It made a difference, as I was 10-15 yards behind the first effort’s finish line.
Intervals 3 and 4 resulted in me getting farther up the bike path, and closer to the elusive “end,” which is just a couple yellow-painted posts. Number 5 was a searingly difficult effort. But I made it to the yellow posts.
I made a deal with myself to take a set-break after interval 5. In part, this is why I ran it so fast. On the 2 minute jog back to the start I told John about my plan for a “water break,” and that’s when John began to speak: “No set-break,” he said between breaths. “When I first moved here, I saw Joan do a hill workout and she was grunting and taking more pain than anyone I had ever met. I thought I was training hard at Virginia, and then I saw what she was doing. It’s like she wanted to see how much pain she could take. I guess that’s what you have to do to run the 10,000 meters.”
“That’s what you have to do to become a champion.”
Silence.
Number 6 was similar in effort to numbers 3 and 4, but the mood had changed in the workout. No more jokes on the jog down, no more complaining about this tricky little hill. John then told me about Joan taking the lead during the 1996 Olympic Trials in the 10,000m, and how she threw in surges to shake off as many of her competitors as possible.
Interval 7 was strange, the scenery melted away and I reached the yellow posts again.
Number 8 was the same.
Nine deserves to be spelled out, because it was special and apart from the rest. While 7 and 8 were tough, bone-grinding efforts masked by the trance-like state I had entered, Nine was something new. I (and this isn’t the right word) decided to ignore any preconceived notions about the bike path. There was no destination (the yellow poles), there were no markers, I was not wearing a watch (figuratively); all that mattered was the purity of effort. This might sound silly and new-agey, but it worked. I ran right off the bike path, out into the road and up a different hill, in 80 seconds.
Interval 10 might sound anticlimactic, but it wasn’t, it was triumphant. I followed John and he led me nearly to the yellow poles again. I grunted to stay up with him and it required the rest of my strength. It was John’s fastest one.
John told me afterward that he intended to run 8 x 70 second hills, which turned into 8 x 80 seconds, and then to 10 x 80 seconds. Joan inspired each of us to take as much pain as possible tonight. And she wasn’t even there.
So, CAC teammates and everyone else out there, don’t be shy about offering encouragement to your peers, through words or by example. You just never know when something ordinary can be salvaged into something special.
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ac·count·a·bil·i·ty [uh-koun-tuh-bil-i-tee]
–noun
| 1. | the state of being accountable, liable, or answerable. |
At work, where I live during every weekday, I have a few running-related decorations adorning my desk and walls. I have a big poster of Pre asking, “Where Are All The Rock Star Runners?” I have a small carolina-blue paper clock that reads, “Gone Running.” And I have a little yellow sticky note that sits unceremoniously atop my desk, often buried under mail or miscellaneous paperwork. It reads “ACCOUNTABILITY,” and it is underlined.
I wrote the note a couple months ago, when I was making my final preparations for US Outdoor Nationals and a hopeful bid to make the US World Team in the 1500m. In light of Joan’s recent post about stating our goals, this topic seems especially relevant. I thought it was important to speak my goals aloud, to make a statement to my community and be held accountable to more people than just myself. The note was a reminder to myself to write a post on the CAC Blog about my goals, kind of like a press release… But I was too scared (of success? of failure?) to tell people my goals, or even say them out loud. The note has since become a blemish on my desk, a constant reminder that I did not believe in myself enough to be forthright with other people invested in my running (my family, my co-workers, my training partners and teammates, my friends, my coach to a certain extent, and my community).
I held myself accountable for my goals but quietly in the safety-net of my home and journal (I don’t think I even spoke them aloud at home…). Well, here are my aforementioned goals that I was too shy, frightened and unsure about to admit to the world: I wanted to make the world team; I wanted to travel to Osaka, Japan and compete for the US; I wanted to run a personal best time in the 1500m; and I wanted to beat every single person in that final. Broken-heartedly, I will admit that I did not even make the final. But I’m coming clean; I had aspirations of greatness, not to be confused with delusions of grandeur (I hope).
And now, after all that soul-searching and confessing, I have one last confession. I’m training this year with one goal in mind: to make the US Olympic Team in the 1500m. There, it’s out in the open. Now I’m held accountable to everyone who reads this. And I’m carrying the pain and baggage of not making last year’s final with me. In more poetic terms, I’m going to train my body to perfection in order to purify my soul. With that, I will reach a new plateau and become eligible to earn a spot on the 1500m US Olympic Team.
Before you cast me off as crazy or heroic or naive, ask yourself: Who do you hold yourself accountable to? Youself? God? Your wife? Husband? Children? Parents? Significant other? Coach? And do those people know what really drives you? Do they know your goals? I’m not going to lie to you, it’s an emotionally-charged subject, maybe because it requires an honesty that’s inescapable.
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I like to train hard, I like to run a lot of miles, and I like to exhaust all of my physical resources. My father would say that I’m great at “burning the candle at both ends.” And while in the past that may have meant late nights and hard training, now it just refers to the training. Unfortunately, the majority of the year I have to pull in the reins and save my resources for small windows of opportunity (races). But with nary a race in sight for the next 10 weeks, I am feeling fiery.
So, if you see me during the next couple of months, don’t worry about the bags under my eyes. Please disregard any signs of wear and tear like if my cheeks look hollow, or my clavicles are unusually pronounced. Don’t worry, I eat plenty of food. This is the time of year where I can run, run and run. And I love it.
How about you?
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I ran a tough workout today: 6 x 700m on a horseshoe shaped loop at the UNC Golf Course, also known as the “Upper Loop” of the UNC Cross-Country Course. It was fairly hot but enjoyable training weather.
Intervals 1 - 3 were standard. I ran hard enough to experience some discomfort but easy enough to maintain my form and finish all 6 intervals in around the same time (roughly 2:00).
Interval 4 was the beginning of the “pain zone” as Joan affectionately refers to it. I’ve come to appreciate the pain zone, it is the point in the workout where I hurt the most but get the most benefit for my future races. The point of training (for me) is to race; each workout becomes a piece of ammunition or a new weapon for a later race. I like to line up for each race with a full arsenal and lots of ammo. Forgive the violent metaphor.
Back to the workout: Interval 4 hurt, plain and simple. I bet you’re wondering, “why is the title of this post ‘relaxation?’” Well, at this point in the workout, the point where the pain really sinks in and your muscles feel like they’ve dissolved, the natural human response is to either fight back or give up. I did neither, or you could say, I did both. I didn’t “dig down” or “fight through” or “push” or “punch” or try harder, what I did do was relax.
You could say I fought for composure. This isn’t just a silly play on words, this is my training style. I drop my shoulders, relax my face, and show to the outside world tranquility; inside, I am suffering.
I relaxed. And then I ran faster. And by the last interval, I ran faster still. Every step was a learning experience. It amazes me that the workouts Joan designs always teach me something new about my body and my mind.
Getting off the track for tonight’s workout was a great idea. I get trapped on the track sometimes, too curious about every split for my own good. But in a sport that is governed by time, is it any wonder that I am so susceptible to looking at my watch every 100 meters? Tonight’s workout was an excellent chance to get away from time dictating my effort and instead focus on my body, my breathing, my cadence, my stride, and all the little minutiae inbetween. I got a little better tonight. I can feel it. Thank God for the pain zone.
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