After the success of Jim Vermeulen's XC Journal in the many Falls of Cross Country, we've asked again for him to provide some news and notes once a month. Think of these as the thoughts that cross the mind of your average coach. Coach Vermeulen is also the recent author of The Middle Distances-Running Seasons and the Wildcats of West Genesee High School.
Up from Section 3, we present you with "Thoughts From Three."
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Not that we lacked disappointments. We lost two league meets by a total of seven points, those seven points becoming the difference between a winning and a losing season. Neither loss was the fault of the athletes on the track or the runways or the throwing circles. Those competitors gave it their best. It was more about the team members who weren't there, drawn away by decisions that other places were more important than competing with teammates. But so it goes in what is most aptly described as "the season of conflicts." There are, however, other measures to consider in summing Outdoor.
When the gun goes off, I can visualize their perfect races, the ones they have not yet run. I can 'see,' in the 1500m for instance, our runner shooting out and quickly finding a safe lane toward the far turn, then settling, stepping off the gas a little and finding the pace for the longer haul ahead. When the racers fragment in lap two and my runner is momentarily caught between groups, I can watch the thought-bubble pop up, and inside it the runner is resolving: no, I'm going; I'm closing the gap. I can imagine that runner positioning on a competitor's shoulder, hitching a ride through the rough stretch of lap 3, and then, when the final 200 meter arrives, taking the deep breath with a focus so narrow the outside world goes quiet and it's guts-and-go to the finish. Personal record. A championship standard. Maybe a podium medal.
My impatient imagination, though, always gets the better of me. Perfect races are an illusion. For any such race, there are always efforts that will be better-or worse. Success as a racer is not an arrival. It's simply a satisfying percentage tilt between those two extremes.
The 1500m race is a myriad of skills, aptitudes, and abilities-as are most prolonged athletic endeavors such as mountaineering, sailing or cross-country skiing. All those require learning under varying conditions, something called mixed practice or, by researchers, "interleaving." As the English proverb goes, "Smooth seas never make for a skilled mariner." Deep learning, the kind that lasts, requires mistakes and failures and repeated attempts to get a little better and acquire a smidgen more athletic knowledge. So, one of my middle-distance racers who's been on something of a tear recently, sniffles and struggles to a forgettable performance but then smiles on the infield later when I tell her, "Well, glad you got that one out of the way."
Sandy decided to join outdoor track for the season. She wanted to develop more stamina and speed and strength for what really mattered-soccer. She didn't dance around the plan. Right up front, she said that was why she was there, but she never explained picking the distance runners instead of the sprinters, where some of her other soccer buddies had landed.
It was a tough transition from the stop-and-go world of fútbol to the keep-moving demands of middle-distance running. She couldn't finish our first alternations workout. In the final mile interval of changing paces, she just ran out of gas and stopped, shaking her head. The second quality day, it was supposedly an ankle blister that saved her from accumulated fatigue.
But as the weeks went by, Sandy was still there, and though the pain and discomfort of the necessary work never subsided, she no longer needed to rescue herself with this or that reason. Encouraged by her new sisters of the long miles, Sandy started setting goals beyond surviving the afternoons. She made friends with pain and warmed to the challenges.
Post-race under the lights of a Friday night meet, she offered: "I should have started my kick earlier," then gave a thumbs up. "Next time." Pausing to chat after a tough afternoon practice a few days later, she concluded about her new sport that it was hard but rewarding. And about her new teammates, she said, "They are so nice."
"They aren't comfortable with bewildered kids," David Epstein wrote of parents who too often offer shortcuts or hints to their kids rather than allow them to productively struggle with ideas, concepts, principles, or practices. Coaches should do all they can to avoid that problem. Athletes facing challenging training ideas, the logical consequences of poor tactics, nagging injuries from faulty technique, or the brute demands of racing pain, are all, at one time or another in a season, bewildered and wondering what to make of it all. It requires coaching restraint and a belief in the athlete to allow the necessary time for them to forge solutions to the questions, the same ones which the coach has long ago answered. Epstein also notes: "But for learning that is both durable(it sticks) and flexible(it can be applied broadly), fast and easy is precisely the problem." Nate Kornell, a cognitive psychologist, called those protracted, anti-'ahh-haa' learning circumstances "desirable difficulties."
"I gotta be honest with you," is a phrase Peter often employs to start our summation conversations, the ones with an overall view of his running life. I used that phrase once myself the afternoon I discussed his difficult year to date. Struggles in XC. A missed indoor season due to repeated illnesses and small injuries. A slow start to the outdoor season. Talk about UN-desirable difficulties--but difficulties to be dealt with nonetheless. We'd been at work fashioning a positive finish to the year by putting some things in the past and others in perspective.
I never knew, day to day, how that was actually going. So, by 8:45pm, the lights were on at Hilton High School, and the Glavin Memorial 3200m field of elite athletes was stretched along the water mark. Chloe had already clocked a ten-second PR in her girls 3000m side of the races, and I wondered what the mild spring breezes held for Peter. My expectations were constrained: a strong effort, smart when necessary, bold when it mattered. We never discussed strategy or time.
The race unfolded traditionally. A lead group wary of each other broke ahead into the third lap. Peter was one of them. The first split-time I bothered to glance at was the 1600m mark: 4:42. Under control but still bunched up. Next lap, a movement occurred that threatened to box him in. He didn't hesitate but bounced all the way out to lane three, passed several and angled back onto the shoulder of a competitor. That aggressive gamble meant something. With two laps remaining, he was in the front four. I thought about all those other races and my seasons of harping on the development of closing speed, his initial weakness. Down the backstretch, he passed a runner and around turn two disappeared from my sight amid spectators and reflected stadium light. What I saw as he barreled down the front straight toward the bell lap was Peter in front and glancing around once, as though astonished to see nothing ahead of him but night air. Into the last lap, he gathered and charged the backstretch. I mentally crossed my fingers. When he came around, there were no challengers as he powered down the final meters and crossed the line, arms stretched skyward, stadium light revealing a face stunned with pure pleasure. My watch had recorded a sixty-one second closing lap.
Slow and steady is the conventional mantra, the training and racing approach that gets you there eventually. But there must always be a place reserved for serendipity.
In the calm and comfortable mid-spring air, the other team members were packed up, bunched in chatty groups, and waiting for the signal to march back to the team bus and head out. Katie slumped against the track perimeter fence, fencing herself off further with sadness. Most others had solid league championship performances to take home. Not Katie. Her race plans under the lights had followed high hopes and a good plan for several laps, then things had gone south. Ballooning lap times and the lengthening gap to her earlier competitors could be traced back to earlier training time lost to an unnecessary injury-but that's another story.
So she sat, head down. I knew, though, it wasn't just self-pity. That wasn't Katie's style. She was part of an admirable training group that, over the past two to three years, had accomplished a lot together. They'd forged close friendships; they'd made shared commitments; most importantly, they'd learned to develop-and value-obligations. As much as anything, Katie's head sagged because she felt she wasn't pulling her weight; she wasn't doing her bit for teammates-and that sense had more weight than self-absorption.
"What is lost in freedom is gained in community and belonging," wrote Brad Stulberg. I let Katie sit for a moment with her obligations before finally calling her off to the bus. It was a marvelous moment.
The most commonly accepted Merriam-Webster definition of 'perfect' is the layman's go-to explanation: "being entirely without fault or defect: FLAWLESS." But there is another descriptor for the word, a definition we should use more often: "satisfying all requirements: ACCURATE." Perfect, in that sense, describes a season punctuated by successes and failures, one with flaws but one which, in the end, becomes the truthful representation of itself, a season that offers up opportunity and lessons for learning. Those kinds of perfect seasons are always balanced between joy and tears, resolve and doubts, disappointments and pleasant surprises. They are the ones we should expect. They are the ones we should, in fact, hope for.