A Very Scary Place

'My head's a very scary place; don't want to walk it alone...'
Christopher Cross, "I Know You Well' (1998)

In the past I've focused on advice and counsel which can be passed to a larger, more general public, especially since a sports editor asked whether he could borrow one or two of my posts.

Weekly exposure in a large-city newspaper leads to a number of outcomes: You end up with new 'friends.' You also gain new 'detractors.' Both are necessary to the aspiring writer. There's nothing like seeing your weak points exposed by a person who wants to "make points" in the public spectrum - they provide an unpaid (but not unappreciated) editorial function in the feedback loop. You go back and think a little more critically about the next topic; you read the first draft a little more critically. You make certain there's more "muscle" than fat. The editor has less material to polish, change or tweak.

This post is (most likely) not going to be sent up the line. Here is where I temporarily revert to that often self-abusive "make-you-go-blind-if-you-keep-writing-like-this" type of writing which to many appears to be the sustenance of bloggers. I feel a need to talk about a "very scary place" I briefly visited this past weekend. Some details will be trimmed to save friends and loved ones from needless exposure.

I like beer. However, I would not say I have a drinking problem. More often than not I am the person who sees the proverbial "line drawn in the sand," over which I dare not step for fear of ruining my personal, financial, or professional well-being. I will have anywhere from zero-to-three beers a day during the work week. There is the rare - perhaps two or three times a year - occasion when I will dance at the line and mock the Fates, after which I go back to my comfortable bed and sleep for a few hours. When I awaken, I chuckle at my good fortune, grab a cup of coffee and march smartly.

This weekend I have to admit I stepped over the line. It wasn't a big step, but it was a step. In the 25-plus years since I drunkenly stumbled out of a bar in my hometown and inflicted $600 worth of damage on my brand-new pick-up truck, I think I can say I've "stepped over the line" perhaps three times. For me, this involves or has involved drinking (probably in this most recent case) the equivalent of a 12-pack of American beer and climbing into or onto a motorized vehicle.
I've seen other people (try to) do this. In a far worse state of inebriation. With facial trauma from the outmanned tag-team match against gravity and disequilibrium that state of drunkenness so stealthily arranged. I've seen a few really good, and graphic examples of why not to drink to that state. Of course, when we are having a great time we don't quite think about those consequences.

I definitely thought about the potential consequences - financial, judicial, professional, medical, and so forth - once we returned (safely) home. The next morning's run turned into a long walk and chat with my wife. She now understands why I prefer to not drink as much as the next party animal. And naturally, my body decided to let me feel the lowest level of the potential consequences through the remainder of the day. A headache would have been acceptable. But no...my stomach taught me a lesson.

Small, 12-ounce opaque drinking cups are your friend. Large, transparent 21-ounce beer mugs are your friend, too...but for a brief period of time. Having the courage to say "I think I've had enough," or to ask whether someone (sober AND of legal driving age) can make certain you get home safely might not make the hangover, headache or gastrointestinal distress any less intense, but it might be much less expensive for you. And the ones who run with - or love - you.

Energy Conservation

The most dangerous time in event preparation lies during the tapering period. Coaches like Forbes Carlile learned that a tapered decrease in effort before an athletic event permitted the athlete to regain energies lost during extended bouts of hard training. Even an enforced time away from the pool, or track in the case of Emil Zatopek in 1952, can help. Often times the energy restored is physical; sometimes it can be mental.

One of the things I missed the most during the two months I walked around in a sling after my humeral fractures was the smell of chlorine in the humid pool air, & the aroma of the blossoms in the bushes along the trails near the track where I train. My body knew it would be time & time & time before I could get in/out, but my mind was the most injured part of the equation. It had energies to spare, as you can tell by going back into those months...I was writing every day, & not all of it was quality.

The mind is a terrible thing to waste. It controls the emotions & works to parcel out the needed energies; sometimes it helps to do what the Red Hot Chili Peppers & Robert DeNiro do (at least they said it in interviews) to prepare for their labors...steer clear of people, places & situations that suck out your energy & upset you emotionally. The Kenyans are masters of spending time doing nothing. When they work, they work. When they rest, they rest. Maybe that's how more developed running nations can defeat the Kenyans & Ethiopians; send every last one of them a high-definition television & two seasons' worth of American Idol, Dancing With The Stars & Lost. Plus wi-fi internet access.

As the individual athlete grows older they have to become more attuned to how their body works; how many times they can race hard, how long it takes to recover. In my humble opinion, I'd rather race well at three or four races, compared to toeing the line every weekend & nursing a boatload of injuries. Hey, it's my money I'm paying. If I want to stay healthy & race until I'm like that old guy who ran the London Marathon at 100 years of age, I'll have to pace myself.

I owe it to my achilles' tendon & my wife. Not necessarily in that order.

Changing Hats

A little out of character for me to write on a Saturday. However, I wanted to ensure the few who read my pithy (lisp not intentional) commentaries as they post that I am still alive and have all my body parts in near-optimal working order. Honest. The orthopedic consultant said so. Yep, he says I'm at 95-percent of normal, and the last five percent will come in the next couple of months.

The mental health, however, is always going to be questioned.

It's not often that my real job gets in the way of what I like to do; coach, train, write and ponder the mysteries of the universe. This week, however, is an entirely different story. I've been spending more time interviewing classroom instructors and entering their responses into an on-line database in support of a major, high-level (we're talking admirals here, baby!), high-visibility project which will provide my co-workers and me a vastly-increased sense of job security, regardless of what the Navy does to my organization 14 months from now.

If they do what we think they'll do in October 2008, I'll be changing hats...either from a performance consultant to an analyst/education specialist or from a civil servant to a retired government worker, depending on the amount of incentives provided. I don't suspect a great voluntary retirement incentive to be given to a guy who is five years out from the calculated minimum retirement age-plus-years of federal service thing.

But that's another story.

Being an athlete who also coaches, I place my confidence in several others to have my best interest at heart...especially in the realm of cross-training. If I were strictly running there would be no issue at all; I'd get on the phone with my coach and go through the 'here's what I think about this bit of training, here's how training so far has affected me...got any comments?' kind of conversation. But, I also swim and ride to prepare for triathlon. That means I have to balance the commitment level they want from me with the commitment level I want from my athletes (which in turn is demonstrated by my own commitment). Lots of communication; most of it frank, occurs within 24 hours of the workout.

I can tell my swim coach, with all honesty, 'dude, I am seriously beat up today. I'll push through to this point in the workout, but beyond that point it's time to crawl to the office.' Of course, he does the same with me when he's at the track.

Lately, my regular spinning trainer has moved down the road to another training gig, which means one of the other gym staff has taken over the class. No big deal to me; I'm there to get my workout in and I'll put forth the effort necessary (give or take a few pedal strokes or percentage points of effort) to get out what I've intended. However, there are some newer guys in the gym who don't really want to be there to work hard. They want to punch their 'I did my 45 minutes of physical training today' box on the checklist for their unit and go on from there. I don't particularly like lazy people screwing with my trainer. I don't like any person screwing with my trainer, because then they are expending their energy on dealing with the asshole and not on me, the person who really wants to be there.

I went to talk with her a couple of days later...just to make certain everything was all right. The guys in the class said they had trained with me (that I was their instructor) before, which was a f...ing lie. Well...that has my hackles up now. I almost told her I'd love to take them for a class...better yet, for a little sprint triathlon, just so I could see them drag @$$ through that. That's evil. And right now, I don't particularly care.

The worst thing you can do is lie to your trainer or your coach on how you're feeling. If you feel bad, I mean, really feel bad, then you should take the day off, or cut the workout short and tell the trainer or coach. If you're feeling lazy and you don't want to work out, don't waste your time going into the gym. Take the day off, start up fresh again the next day.

Someone REALLY Needs A Mental Health Day

Yes, I've seen that look before. Lately, I see a lot of it when my wife comes through the door. Most of the time she can get past a tough day (or several tough days) at work by going out for a run, taking the d-a-w-g for a walk, or slurping on a few cool beverages in the evening. However, yesterday's look took the cake. While she was looking forward to getting out to the beach for a little while last night, she was going to settle for a walk, instead. At first, I was wondering why a walk and not a run. However, the meterological conditions were, as some would say, gawd-awful.
It's difficult, if not impossible, to train hard in triple-digit heat indices. Well, you can train indoors on the treadmill, the spinning bicycle, the elliptical trainer, or hit the swimming pool. Depending on the air conditioning capability in the place where you're at, even a tough workout can be almost tolerable. However, lots of (average) folks don't have access to pools, workout studios, or indoor tracks (memo to self: build an indoor track facility when you hit the lottery.). That tends to turn a planned six-miler into a four-miler, or a sprightly four-miler into a more relaxed-pace (George says, '...this is relaxed pace!?') four-miler, with a short walk at the end.

The saving grace of all this is the fact I have all these training options. Getting back into the pool after weeks away from it has been wonderful. I'm almost back to the fitness level I was before I broke the arm; not as fast in the water, but I think the mechanics are more relaxed. Give or take a couple of seconds, my reps in the pool have not changed for the worse from early June. While swimming might not transfer much to running, it helps me to learn to control my breathing when at speed...if you can come up on another competitor without them hearing your heavy breathing, you just might be able to put a stride or two on them before they can react.

If Thomas Paine were alive today, writing a pamphlet on training in Florida in the late summer, he would begin it: '...these are the times that fry men's soles...' He could still entitle it The Crisis if he wanted. He could talk about the conflict between the conscious and the subconscious mind; it's a little over five weeks until the first late-summer/early-autumn 5,000-meter road race...and the panicky state of affairs that the very competitive local runners may be feeling. Hell, I'm feeling it, and it's only a stepping-stone race toward my main races; a half-marathon in October and a marathon in December. I've also planned a 10-kilometer road race in early November, but...

I haven't run any chunk of distance beyond 400 meters at near race pace for, oh, about two months to be exact. I did some 400s a couple of weeks ago at 95-second pace, but that was a slow ramp-up from the first ones, which were closer to 110. However, we will see how things go tonight. The plan is 8x400 at 95-97sec pace, with 100m walk breaks in between. This will be the first test of fitness. I might tell everyone to extend the 100 to a little closer to 150. We'll see.

Maybe I'm thinking too much right now. Maybe it's me who needs the mental health day.