Camillus NY - Hot on the heels of cross country, Winter Track is back. After the success of Jim Vermeulen's XC Journal in the fall, we've asked again for him to provide some news and notes once a month this winter. Think of these as the thoughts that cross the mind of your average coach. Up from Section 3, we present you with "Thoughts From Three."
Thoughts From Three
July: Soaked Feet and Toes in the Water
I pull over in farm country to monitor our approaching runners, but Kal has already passed. Half of his distant body is visible along Benetts Corners Road, half by now is hidden behind the pavement's curving descent toward the wooded valley flats below. He is feeling it. Without David, his normal run partner for our Thursday team long runs, Kal is going alone, and it seems to suit him fine. Earlier in the run, when he'd already paced out ahead of the others, I pulled up alongside, slowed, and stuck my head out the car window. "Hey Kal," I told him, "you know how this past year you've been constantly trying to catch up from last spring's injury?" He shot me a quick glance, understanding the question to be rhetorical--no reply necessary. "Well, that year is over," I said loudly and drove off. But not before I saw the smile.
He deserves as much. A freak accident while helping carry pole vault mats during spring track put him in a back brace for the summer and eliminated his entire sophomore cross-country season. Students of the sport know the implication. His indoor and outdoor seasons this year were simply a struggle to regain six months of forfeited aerobic fitness building. He plugged through it all, though, and regained enough speed-endurance this spring to go under 2:00 on his third leg of a school record 4x800. Now, the relaxed, open miles of summer must seem a gift.
But not everyone on this team is feeling that blessed. Summer training remains voluntary, so our attendance sheets tell more than simply who's on vacation or who's making college visits. Unexplained absences have a voice all their own, and for coaches like us who still allow themselves to dream big on their soon-to-be teams, those 'conversations' are not always inspiring. "You can't want it more than the athlete" the hackneyed quote advises, but during those critical summer months of foundational training, a lot of us do exactly that. We fret over why Johnnie's in town but has missed the last three voluntary team runs. We worry that Susie, the promising new cross-over athlete, won't even make it to the first team practice because the longer miles seem to strike her as boring or too time-consuming or too hard or some combination of all those. We tire of the fact that no-cut cross-country actually does have a tryout period (it's call summer) but we don't make the final choices. So, some of us double-down, schedule 4-6 team runs a week and take over the runners' summers, putting a squeeze on the fun-factor of high school sports. And some others, unfortunately, throw in the towel, tell their runners in June what to accomplish the next 8-10 weeks and wait to see who shows up in what shape on Day 1 of official practices, a runner-roulette of sorts.
Kal's team long run is the product of compromise. Rather than coaching either extreme of summer involvement/disregard, Coach Delsole and I identified two obvious components of developing basic endurance: long runs; tempo/threshold runs. We hold team runs for each, and we plug basic speed (hill and flat-land sprints) into the tempo days. Team members form independent groups for their other GC runs and for their second traditional long run on Sunday. The athletes then have weekly opportunities to run as a team; they also have opportunities to demonstrate initiative and commitment by forming groups or going it alone. I still grumble about team run attendance. Coach D. still worries about those other days. But those are aggravations of choice.
Space, after all, is needed. Time is also necessary because at some point before our official August practices, more than a few of those who signed up this spring to run Cross-Country will need to ponder and then answer several important questions. They get that job because we don't hold four try-out sessions and then show a certain percentage of them the door. With such athletic opportunity comes responsibility. I've always felt that competitive running on a serious level requires you to answer, in some reasonable, internally articulate manner, three basic questions.
The first is the obvious one: Why do you run? Flippant or cliché-ridden pronouncements are not uncommon, but they are also pretty useless. I'll tell any new athlete on my team that it's preferable to be honest about why you've signed up to race 5k's--my friend convinced me; I'm not very good at other sports but maybe this one; my baseball coach told me I needed to be in better shape this coming spring--and then to change your reasons if your reasons change. I'll tell my veterans and better runners that they've had enough time; they should already have the words to explain why they've kept at it. One of the saddest letters I ever received was from a very talented modified cross-country runner explaining why she had decided not to continue on the varsity level. She wrote, in part, I run for the thrill of winning, and I would not be able to win as much on the varsity level. At least she knew. Not all runners actually do, but it's everyone's job to figure that out. Being able to explain yourself is, after all, considered a life skill.
Question #2 is this: Who do you run for? If the only answer an athlete can come up with is me, that person is going to have some trouble until he/she can squeeze onto the Nike or New Balance payroll and start lighting up the letsrun.com message board. As far as I know, I am not hired year after year to run the West Genesee 'Me' Cross-Country program. It is no coincidence that some of the best teams I have coached (not merely in wins) also contained the most other-directed, the most communal, team members. Striving in service to others--it's a concept, an athletic attitude that will never become cliché because the value and benefits of doing so will never get old and will always resist cheapening. Still, thinking beyond oneself during difficult practices and tough races is, for some, an un-mastered skill.
The third question cuts closer to home: What are you willing to sacrifice to run well? In a culture preoccupied with consuming, taking, and getting 'stuff,' the notion of giving up something doesn't always receive a warm reception. Passing on the junk food, moving up a training group when the lower one's more comfortable, rolling out of bed early mornings for summer runs instead of rolling over--sacrifice for the aspiring runner is a necessary, but seldom dramatic, affair. Not many people noticed, for instance, that nary a spoonful of ice cream had passed Lindsay's lips since November when she made dietary changes to improve her training and racing. No trumpets would blare whenever the former "no-kick Conroy" issued internal memo's at the end of practice intervals to reject the discomfort and 'finish strong.' But a senior-season school record 4x800 performance was one result. In the end, dedicated runners are defined as much by what they are willing not to do as by what they do. So it's always a valid question--and one that needs answers.
The runners are strung out along this evening country road. Fields of nearby corn undulate upward toward curtains of trees that mark boundaries. Clouds mill around above, occasionally spitting light rain. It's turned out--dire forecasts of violent storms aside--a fairly pleasant evening, and I can think of a lot worse places to be. Hopefully, the runners, a number of them now confronting their mounting perceptions of fatigue, can ultimately conclude the same. Kal knows where he's going and what he's willing to do to get there. Some of the others are still not so sure.
The moniker at the top of our web site says: Somewhere between the start and the finish are the reasons you run. So true. And without getting too kumbaya, the hope is that enough runners this summer will figure out those reasons. Those reasons, after all, will be the answers to the questions. And if enough of them answer the questions, our eclectic collection of personalities and talents will become teams.