Three Tomes To Tempt You To Trot

A metal baker's rack sits an arm's length from the bathtub (directly across from the commode) in the main bathroom of our house. At any one moment, six-to-eight books and magazines, which my wife and I are reading, can be found filling the middle shelf. Her reading preferences usually lean toward Wired magazine, techno-geek tomes or science fiction...oh, and a copy of Robert Heilbroner's "The Worldly Philosophers."

Occasionally a catalog from Kiefer Swim, Bike Nashbar, or Road Runner Sports will spend a brief (one bathroom visit) stay on the rack. Sporting goods porn, we call it. My latest reading materials are the two major John L. Parker novels, "Once A Runner" and "Again To Carthage," and an anthology of Tim Cahill short stories. Cahill is not as good as Hemingway, but I can more readily find a laugh after a day of work with the former than the latter.

There was a time I didn't have a television set, which meant I did a great deal of reading when not working, eating or sleeping. If not for the painful fact that sporting events are televised I could probably live without a television. Reading is more fun. Books allow the reader to think. At their own pace. It's fun to have the ability to backpedal a page or two, or to a particular passage which catches ones' attention.

One of my "summer vacation" athletes is in the "honeymoon" phase of running. She's gotten past the high school crush version; it's all for the team, the heartbreak can happen at any moment...and when it does it's earth-shattering. She asked during a warm-up jog last week, about good running books: "I've been looking for good running books since I've been on vacation. Are there any books you would recommend?"

So I promised I'd scribble a short list of fiction and nonfiction works which I found inspiring; one of those books which makes you want to lace up the shoes and go out for 30 minutes after a particularly good chapter. Here's my "very" short list...

1. "Once A Runner," John L. Parker Jr.

The American philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said, "all philosophy is a footnote to Plato". All running fiction is a footnote to Parker, especially this work, first published in 1978. My college cross-country team used to spend summer morning runs discussing, in cabalistic tones, which Parker character aligned with which former Florida Track Club member. Not long after that summer we began to meet some of the runners who inspired the characters... When we sat in a running seminar during the spring of 2001 Parker would not say directly which real life runner inspired what character, however, "Bruce Denton" and I tapped a keg together while working the road race the next afternoon. Nicest guy you'd ever meet.

If you find a first edition which is in good condition for less than 150 dollars, purchase it. Otherwise, the second edition, printed by a publishing house in Australia, will serve.

2. "Again To Carthage," John L. Parker, Jr.

Rare is the sequel which meets fan expectations. Runners are not only discerning consumers, they get Pavlovian, if not rabid, when the rumor mill begins to grind. A "promotional trailer" video posted on YouTube had the LetsRun.com crowd wondering whether someone was going to turn Parker's "doppelganger," Quenton Cassidy, into celluloid. We were soon disappointed to learn this was a film and cinematography project rather than the answer to our fevered dreams (ah, but it did look good). It's probable that Parker took three decades to write a tome, which does to road racing what "Runner" did for track-and-field, because of the 'how do I follow THIS?' feeling each time he sat with his journal books and typewriter. I was delighted to see more real-life runners show up in this fictional work, including some of my dearest running friends and former coaches. This work also answers one of the best running trivia questions nobody knows: "Who was the last American to win the Olympic gold medal in the 5,000 meters?"

3. "Running With The Buffaloes," Chris Lear

I ran track during my last year of high school and cross-country during my last year of college. Both occasions were similar in the fact I had time to spare during that semester, as well as that the coaches were willing to let another guy come out and play. The dynamics of a track team and a cross country team are stark: Sprinters have their own little cliques, weight specialists kind of do their own thing. Distance guys are looked upon as freaks or guys who aren't fast enough to sprint. Even buses were segregated that way. Cross-country is like boot-camp...you slog through muck and mire with a little band of brothers/sisters; long, hot road runs in the summer, and 15-passenger van trips in the fall.

Lear captures the "Saint Crispin's Day" feel from Shakespeare's "Henry IV" throughout the entire book, touching on the personalities and idiosyncracies of both athletes and coaches. He also looks at the highest levels of collegiate competition, as the Colorado teams train, bond, travel and compete in the 1999 NCAA national championships.

These three works are only the tip of the inspirational iceberg for me. I've loaned, lost and re-purchased copies, read and re-read these books on a yearly basis, because there's always a little something which jumps out and grabs your attention.

Are there any books which make you want to go for a run, or are an absolute must-read the night before a big race?

Teach Me To Lose, Coach

lose (transitive verb) 1. Miss and not know where to find. 2. Be deprived of; be parted from. 3. Cease to have. 4. Cause or suffer defeat in (a game). (intransitive verb) Suffer loss; be defeated.

"just learned to play this tune. i think you might like it," said the text message on my wife's cell phone.

Suzanne asked me to surf over to YouTube to check out a bluegrass song yesterday morning. After sweating my way through my long run of six miles (still on the mend, my friends!) and pushing my (seventh) anniversary present (a push mower!) around the back yard I was in no mood to spend excess time wrestling with a video which may be little more than a slide show with music in the background.

If the song is really that good I might want to buy it.

I decided instead to use the streamlined (and user-friendly) iTunes interface. What came through my speakers was a nice, hopeful but sad song. I instinctively thought of the joke: 'What happens when you play country music backwards? You get your job back, your house back, your spouse back, and your drinking problem is resolved.'

Then I considered the source. My young relative is struggling with the recent dissolution of his marriage. There's no doubt in my mind he's hoping for a "happily ever after" reconciliation. I've been there; at least the songs he's listening to are more musical than the ones I used to buck myself up almost two decades ago. No sooner do I get out of iTunes and go to my social media account to see what the rest of the world is up to, and find another friend's thirty-year marriage has gone to the rubbish bin.

Then, my phone pings a text message: The mother of my good friend Aaron Boudreaux passed away the previous evening after a struggle with cancer. Nothing you can do but either mull over the fleeting nature of our existence or go stand in the sunshine and appreciate it. Back to the yard, at least for another couple of minutes.

After my wife went off to spend the morning with the grandchildren I turned on the television and channel-surfed through the mens' and womens' college basketball tournament, as well as a spring one-day classic cycling race. The sprint finish of a spring classic, or even of a one-to-three-week stage race places victory and defeat, struggle and suffering, failure and success out for all (who care to understand) to view. Especially when the guy who finishes second or third, nipped at the line because of tactics, pounds their fist on the handlebar in disgust.

Earlier, before the cycling, I surfed over toward Ted Turner's classic movie channel. I'm not an old black-and-white movie fan but the title, "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner," naturally earned my attention. The book is (supposedly) a classic, as well as the film. I regret that to this point in time I had neither read the book nor seen the movie (either in the original black-and-white or the re-make), so I can't comment about the entire story. I happened to catch the last fifteen minutes of the film, which definitely is not a "feel-good" finish. The ending of this movie is as gloomy as the end of "The Graduate." Why the young reform schooler didn't go for the win is beyond comprehension, especially to his schoolmates and the masters at the school...until you follow (playing in the young man's mind as he approaches the finish line) the struggle of the young man to remain true to himself. In fact (and my wife reminded me this morning) it probably had to do with the small scrap of power or control he had over his destiny, the choice of whether to follow his will or the will of others.

So, do coaches teach their charges about loss?

I was thinking about the types of loss; from the simple and often silly "hidden in ones' sock drawer disguised as..." loss, which if we're lucky turns into an eventual find...usually after we spend money to replace it, to the very painful and very permanent departure of a loved one. Teaching about loss and losing happens it's one of those "oh, by the way" things. More often than not the role of the coach is thought to be like the role described in Kenny Moore's screenplay "Without Limits," the story of Steve Prefontaine and the relationship with his coach Bill Bowerman. One of the goal-setting sessions early in the movie (didn't make the "Memorable Quotes" section of the Internet Movie Database, but...) is a great rhetorical statement of the coach's role:

Bowerman (Donald Sutherland): What do you think a coach does, Pre?

Prefontaine (Billy Crudup): He teaches you to run.

Bowerman: To run a store? A business?

Prefontaine: To run a race.

Bowerman: In order to...?

Prefontaine: ...to win.

Bowerman: Yes. That's what I thought.

So few coaches teach how to lose because loss is more common in life. We all run the race, but there can only be one winner: the rest of the participants who were not the first across the line have lost. Race organizers and teachers and coaches can go ahead and put a silver lining on the dark cloud by giving age group awards, grading on curves and looking for the positives, but coaches need to teach, from personal experience and by illustrative example, that loss and losing varies in pain, in duration, and in permanence. The most painful and permanent losses are the ones from which the individual athletes decides not to learn, and decides cannot be remedied.

It's only a loss if you continue to allow yourself to be defeated.

(P.S. My condolences to the Boudreaux family. It was a pleasure to meet you, Ms. B. Rest in peace.)