The Fairness Doctrine

Every so often data gets thrown in your general direction sans context which makes no sense whatsoever, makes you frustrated, & causes you to doubt your abilities. Everyone needs an ear to bend at least once a month; not to try & solve the problem, but to sometimes just listen & to ask questions, forcing the frustrated one to discover clarity. I vaguely recall Parker Palmer writing about such "clearness committees" in his book, The Courage To Teach, which I received as a holiday gift from an old friend I haven't talked with in a long time. I think I owe you a call, Hunter. Blessed are those who provide context, for they right the listing vessel...so to speak.

I guess you can't call a training group dead if there are eight-to-ten persons training as part of it at least once a week. Stop listening to detractors. You're not (as John Parker, Jr. would say) Once A Runner, just a person with different short-term & intermediate goals. Stop basing your happiness on another persons' expectations. And, regardless of what other people have to say, you are one lucky SOB. Consider the massive list of alternatives.

But, right now, even that doesn't seem a bit fair.

Why is it that I, a guy who won't throw a leg over any bicycle without strapping on a helmet, only wore my seatbelt approximately 30 percent of the time I drove my car? I, mister-living-on-the-edge-of-stoopid-by-not-wearing-a-seatbelt-all-the-time, walk away from a 35 mile-per-hour automobile accident with perhaps a square yard of minor bruises & contusions on my lower torso, some small cuts on my right hand, & a little scrape on my right knee. My seatbelt-wearing, cautious-to-the-point-of-near-paranoia (I say that with much love & appreciation) bride looks like she went 15 rounds with Mike Tyson? Is it to show me the stoopidity of not wearing the devices by displaying the potential damage, which could have been on me, on her?

My own personal clearness committee of two would probably respond, if I were to ask them:

"Is it not more dangerous to drive in this country than to fly in an aircraft?"

"Is life always fair?"

I Can't Get No Satisfaction

In my professional (defined in this venue as for which I am paid a regular salary) line of work, we are regularly under the gun to prove our worth to our customer. In most cases, the question is fairly well rhetorical; it would cost our customer far beyond our pay & benefits to contract for an equally-qualified (foolish?) worker, or hire a replacement should we be made redundant. However, we are under the thinly-veiled threat of contract replacement, as well as a pay-for-performance system...which has the unintended consequences of scaring off the highly-qualified potential employees.

It doesn't mean the process of knowing how your customer feels about your work is coals to Newcastle...or what I like to call (when describing some days) a complete waste of make-up. However, the greatest challenge is making certain the customer has the ability to be honest about their opinion...with the hope they will continue to use your service in the future should you make what changes you feel are necessary. It doesn't take a doctoral degree in rocket science or sociology to tell a coach when their athletes are happy or unhappy with the program. If they're happy with the end-results of your training they'll stick around...if not, they'll go off to someone else. When (or if) a coach resorts to survey instruments, especially to ask the opinion of former athletes, it's much the same as if they were invited to drop an atomic weapon at the coach's front door. Merry freaking Christmas, 'Coach.' Once again, I borrow from my wife, who now is a member of the Professional Organization of English Majors (POEM, for those of you into acronyms), and her dictum: '...care, but try not to care too much.'

I swear, one of these days I'm going to retire and let her coach runners like me. :)A report on NPR's Morning Edition this morning mentioned research which proves non-primate animals have a sense of fairness, and react when things don't seem fair. When trained dogs responded to a command, saw another dog receive a treat, and received none of their own they initially questioned (hard look) the trainer's response. After a while they tried another behavior to get the attention (and the treat) of the trainer. As they realized there was no chance for treats to be had, they had to fight their instinct and look away to not gain hope of a treat. Eventually, the dogs refused to listen to the trainer's command.

My strange sense of schadenfreude comes every so often when I participate at a local race or encounter a former athlete from my training group. I like to see former athletes do well, regardless of whether I coach them or they resort to a book. I hate to see former athletes sustain overuse injuries, though...it's as though I could have done something to keep them on the right path and not on the injured list. The hardest encounter comes when I see them frustrated at their lack of progress. How do you say, 'well, I could help you with that issue if you wish,' without sounding like an arrogant jerk?
Again, I have to listen and repeat my wife's dictum: 'care, but not too much.'

At least not for the ones who have gone down the road.

Benchmarks

Listening to the radio this morning on the way to the pool, I couldn't help but think about the difference between the present administration's take on Iraq, compared to the General Accountability Office. The GAO says that 13 of 18 political and military goals have not been satisfactorily met.

If you're doing the math, that's a little under 28 percent accomplished. A baseball player with a batting average of .277 might be nearly an All-Star, however, if that's their fielding percentage I can guarantee you he's not taking the field on my team.

If you're doing repeats on the track, say, 18 of them, and the goal is to hit them in 90 seconds, and you only hit five...I think I'm going to tell you your goal of running 13 of them (that's a 5,000-meter race for those of you doing the math) in 18:40 is not likely; a 20:06 is more realistic. Or, we might start to take a look at whether you need to deal with a longer distance, where a slower pace and greater endurance are going to trump sheer foot speed.

Maybe you, like the administration, cry out in anguish, saying 'but that's not fair to place an all or nothing measurement on a benchmark; just because I didn't make it in 90 seconds doesn't mean a 94-second quarter is a bad thing.' Racing is the purest benchmark of all. Either you make it, or you don't. If you get beat by three persons, and the awards are three-deep, there's no 'close, but no cigar' award for fourth place. You get to stand by and clap.

Hm...beer-drinkers at post-race parties are rather Zen, don't you think? Choose between putting down your beer or providing the sound of one hand clapping. Oriental thought meets western philosophy in one hot, sweaty, alcohol-induced conundrum.

Love of coffee, digestive functions, and...yeah...that sounds like 30 minutes into our old Sunday morning runs. I have a love-hate relationship with them right now; since there's no one at my level I spent most of my run by myself the other weekend. Payback is going to come this Sunday, since Christian, Petra and I are going to ride instead (partly because of the three-day weekend, partly because it's too d@mned hot to do otherwise).

Tomorrow is the last day for my runners to commit to doing/going to Jacksonville in December. What's been maddening this time is the obvious fact that marathons are not something you just jump into for giggles. You have to train. Many of the team are focusing on shorter distances and local events, so there's no problem there. Really. What has been the most galling is the lack of direct communication between some folks and me. If you wanted to go on a road trip and someone was taking care of the reservations, etc., etc., wouldn't you have the decency to say, 'hey, dude, I would love to go on that trip. Can you save me a space?'

Not this bunch. Well, not one or two...they obviously missed the memo with all the instructions, especially the one telling them to contact me directly...no excuses, no exceptions, no whining.

Aarrgghh...enough of this. I need a cup of coffee.