Lace Up Those Shoes, Kiddies

I don't get the phone calls as often as I used to.

I could guarantee at least half-a-dozen phone calls between February and May from the parents - or grandparents - of potential youth running prodigies.  And the phone message, give or take a few words, always sounded like: 'I found your name on the (blank) web site, and I see that you do track workouts on (day of week).  My (child) runs for (coach) at (school), but I want to help them improve at the (race distance).  Please call me back with more details about your program.'

So, I'd call back and graciously decline their offer to potentially coach the 'next great American runner.' Lake Wobegon syndrome ("...all the children are above-average") notwithstanding.  To me, youth coaching is a trip to the dark side of the Freudian pleasure-pain calculus.  Think Clarence Thomas at a confirmation hearing.  Bill Clinton defining 'is' during a deposition.  Lance Armstrong in an interview with Oprah Winfrey.

My (nearly) hard/fast guideline is that I will not coach anyone younger than 16.  If the kid can't drive themself to the track, I want no part of working with them.  And if they already have a coach, well, I'm not going to take another guy's/gal's kneecaps out, just to have another young athlete.  I've had family members recruit me within earshot of the other coach (a personal friend).  We had a good laugh over that one after the parents were gone.  The scariest thing about running, especially when youth are involved, is that a family member can screw up more than one person's career at a time.

Kids should be encouraged to take up running as sport.  It's one of those activities which needs little more than a place and decent shoes.  The list below contains most of the Road Runners Club of America guidelines for youth running, based on developmental principles of training and racing for young distance runners written by Larry Greene, Ph.D. and Russ Pate, Ph.D.

My sport is your sport's punishment.  Every time I've seen youth baseball players do sprints or laps around the field for screwing up a double play I want to shriek in horror.  First and foremost, running should be fun.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it; if it looks really broke, make very small adjustments.  Once upon a time, a family member made a wise-crack about my run form (back when I played baseball); they said I appeared to have been impaled by a broomstick.  Strangely enough, my father recalled this observation during the height of my (healthy) racing career.  A proper (erect) form and reasonable stride length, taught early on, will eliminate bad habits and potential injuries later.  There are other little things which can be discouraged, like excess arm movement, twisting the upper body, or over-striding.

You might not be the best, but you can be a good one.  Strangely enough, the over-emphasis on awards, trophies and personal accomplishments also seem to scare away many adult runners.  The goal is to develop the habit of life-long activity and participation; middle school, high school and (some) college competition can/will come soon enough.  Personally, if not for a college coach who encouraged me to "just go out and have fun," I might not have even considered racing.

We're all individuals, exactly the same as the next person.  In the same way that one marathon training program - or race distance, come to think of it - is not the best fit for every runner (differences in time to train, time to recover, resiliency), it's important for adults and coaches to allow for different abilities and physical maturity levels within the group.  Around age 12-to-14 training distances and durations can be slowly increased, leading to systematic and competitive training.  I was questioned the other weekend about the optimal training volume for 5K racing, at which point the father of a young man who was working out with the group looked at me in a shocked manner.  I then had to remind him my answers and guidance focuses more toward adult runners, and that in the case of his son I would have to err on the side of slightly less intensity and duration.

I am thankful that running is the most egalitarian of sports:  Simple persistence and patience can turn any individual into a more-healthy, more-active, and more-engaged person.  As a well-known running writer has often said, 'there is no limit where running can take you.'

Alice's Restaurant

Went out for a run on New Years' Day with a couple of (former) athletes and good friends. Late into the run, my friend Beverly told me about a mutual friend of ours, Mel, who became so motivated by his performance at Ironman Florida he took up running with a passion. Next thing she knew, she said, he read Christopher MacDougal's "Born to Run" and began training for a "real" marathon. We spent the remainder of the run discussing the next book to recommend; she thought it should be John L. Parker, Jr's. "Again To Carthage," I held out for "Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner," by Dean Karnazes.

Listening to "born-again runners" is a joy. Most of them cannot help but reveal what they consider their personal (secret) revelation to the world around them. Most runners know there really are no secrets, other than 'train your heart out, rest when not training.' I also like to hear someone speak about running, as Arlo Guthrie once sung, "with feeling..."

Sometimes the feeling can make us parochial, even dogmatic, about what we think is best for our fellow runner. As a coach, I admit I've recommended running specialty shops, web sites, coaches, training plans, races, lodging, and - on rare occasions - shoes, equipment, and gadgetry. Years after my last lodging arrangement, I still get 'hey, just curious if you're booking rooms for such-and-such race' e-mails. From people who never trained with me.

"...you should tell every young runner to use (brand) running shoes and (device)," the boy said to George and myself over a beer last night. That's the type of statement to which my old coach, Dale Fox, would reply, "Oh? Really?" Rather than immediately shut my ears to what Steve (a.k.a. "the boy") said I decided to take a few moments and listen. Not so much to dissassemble his assertion like an assault rifle, eventually laying the greasy little parts in front of him. I trained for a few years alongside Steve's his father, so there's a familial obligation involved. I also appreciate the boy's "salta de qualitat," or recent leap in his run performances.

Shoe manufacturers can market their shoes with a statement saying "the way you should run," but normative statements don't get marketing gurus and advertising agencies in hot water. That kettle of fish is usually saved for the coach or the running emporium proprietor who has to hear from the athlete, 'so, what do you think of...?' So the shoe, which costs about 20 percent more than what the athlete already wears, is designed to make the athlete adapt their running gait? Ah, but if I were to focus the athlete on a faster turn-over and a shorter stride - the very same mechanics the shoe purports to encourage - would they give me the additional 20 percent they would have spent on the shoe?

Probably not. Shoes are sexy. Coaching isn't.

There are an abundance of gadgets on the market which are a great help to runners, but there are certain things a massage therapist will be able to do that a roller, stick, or ball won't. But a runner on a tight budget may consider self-massage items a good (inexpenxive) substitute for regular massage therapy. I have a retired friend who knows his way around a dollar. I guess when you can retire before 55 you have a blend of skill, luck and the ability to know your way around a greenback. Rather than spend 40 dollars on a self-massage modality, he took the same 40 bucks and made a bunch of very-workable self-massage sticks, giving them out as holiday presents a couple of years ago. I still have his stick in the corner of my living room, next to a 100-dollar massage kit. You can take a wild guess which gets used more often.

A new friend, Galen, ran (at least) seven marathons in seven days last week here. He told me he sees the strangest things at some of the distance runs he does. Probably the most frightening was the (his words) "runner wearing the Camelbak as well as the 'hand grenade' bottle belt."

Overkill? I think so. Galen told me he asked the name of the running store proprietor, probably in order to tell newbie runners "enter at your own peril."

So before I "rhetorically" sing a bar of "Alice's Restaurant" ('you can get anything you want...') and walk out of any conversation, I always like to remind friends that every runner is a unique experiment, a sample population of one. What works for you, works for you. If you see something cool and new, take the time to do the research or ask if you can give it a trial run before springing the big bucks.

That's probably one more race entry, from what I can figure. Races are more fun than gadgets.

Marathon Musings: "Tip Of The Iceberg"

On the drive to work this morning, I listened to a live concert recording of an artist whose best stuff (in my humble opinon) is rarely heard; his most sappy dreck gets lots of "soft rock" airplay, however. Thirty-plus years in the music business, and never once did he look the part of the typical pop star. There was a year where his tunes were on everybody's favorite radio station. He still talks self-deprecatingly about his "'fifteen minutes of fame' at the top" of the music business, a little over three decades ago.

How much alike, the "fifteen minutes of fame" and the marathon. There is no such thing in the entertainment business as an "overnight sensation." Each "minute" of the "fifteen minutes of fame" was more likely the end result of more rehearsal spaces, ramen noodles, rough commutes, and relationship hassles than "right place, right time" situations.

Follow any major marathon from the Rock n' Roll Series to the Marathon Majors, as well as the World Championships and Olympics, and everybody focuses almost solely on the 26 miles, 385 yards of race day. That's the cherry of the sundae, the tip of the iceberg, the nose of the hound dog. Very few focus on the 1000-to-1600 miles of preparation, depending on the training plan, the average citizen spends get to the starting line. That's, on average, six-to-ten days of a life preparing for four hours. And small change. On the average.

I'm not saying, as Bill Bowerman once mused about the non-running world, that we engage in "a frivolous activity." What I am saying, especially about the marathon distance, is that it's not for every runner. About a year ago, my friend Charley recommended I watch the movie "Run Fatboy Run." My wife went and bought the DVD and we watched it one evening. I won't ruin the plot for those of you who haven't seen it, but in 25 words or less:

A guy decides to make himself look good in the eyes of his ex-girlfriend by running a marathon. He's sorely unprepared for the task.

I have friends who, for some insane reason, "jump into" events on little (undertrained better than overtrained) or no training whatsoever. If they were fitness buffs they might probably say to themselves along the way "this was a bad idea." Usually when I see them after the event they tell me, with not only perfect but magnified hindsight, they would never do it that way again.

Naturally, every person is a unique individual, and for every participant in a race there are many reasons to participate:

Some want to beat everyone who's ever run the distance.
Some want to beat everyone who's toeing the line on the day.
Some want to beat their best time.
Some want to beat their last time.
Some want to post a time.

When it comes to the marathon, I'm more in favor of the undertrained rather than the untrained state. While there's a lot of recovery (and the risk of injury) involved with the thousand-plus miles which lay between day one of the training plan and the finish line, I believe it makes the last 26.2 that much more possible...and even a little bit enjoyable.

Who Do You Want Me To Be Today?

"When the school bell rings, the learning day is done. It's time to trash the books, and work on having fun. Through the door comes Jimmy, with hopes and dreams of his own. But little does he know that they'll be crushed when he gets home. There's so much he wants to share. But his parents they just don't care. You see his daddy never made it...and momma thinks she could have....Always telling him who they think he should be; now they're left alone with a desperate written plea, that says: To Whom It May Concern: Who do you want me to be today?" (Stuart Hamm, 1991)Athletic coaching is a blend of art & science; the coach, ideally, has learned all of the physiology, psychology, sociology...and maybe even a little early childhood education...either through a formal learning process in a high school or college, or on the fly under the tutelage of their coach. Naturally, the art side of coaching comes to the fore when dealiing with the individual athlete. Each is an experiment of one.

And not every coach is - or should be exactly alike. If it were so that all coaches were, there would be a world of athletes without 'em. It's why athletes (sometimes) move from coach to coach throughout a career; the relationship gets stale or old, or the parties realize what was a great fit at one time wasn't quite so years later...maybe when goals changed or modalities didn't. My coach(es) & I are completely different people, socially, politically, geographically, emotionally, and even to a small degree athletically. They communicate with me a lot differently than I do with my athletes. I try to give the athletes I coach the feedback I felt I needed as an athlete...sometimes it's too much, or at the wrong time. Once again, I guess that's where the human element comes in. If I were the perfect coach I'd be a robot.

I've friends who are coaches, in running as well as in other sporting disciplines, and we've bounced thoughts across each other at times, just to get a sniff test. Some of them are gentle, yet open and a little gregarious. Others are a touch more guarded and cautious. Yet the common thread which appears is that of success on the part of one or more of their athletes. Can you define success without resorting to the hard numbers of wins and losses, lowered finishing times, longer throws and higher jumps?

I used to think I needed to mold all-around renaissance athletes to be considered a good coach. When my coach's coach mentioned something along the lines of 'I just want to build a better machine' I realized the rest of the person - especially when dealing with athletes over a certain age (since I deal with runners older than age 16, I'll say adults) - was probably coming to me already developed. My chance to reinforce (or undo, in some cases) the work of parents, teachers, preachers and other outside influences was pretty much out of the question.
And yes, I know that in the case of school athletics coaches, there is that need to live (as my friend Dr. Ed Cloutier would say) a PG life. But I don't think there's a great divide between a person who lives a more liberal life and a person who is more conservative in their dealings.

Give me a coach who will make me a better engine. I'll trust my family and my preacher to help me in the rest of the categories...if they haven't been successful in influencing me up to this time it might be a little too late.

All About Soul

Had to juggle a boatload of stuff this morning on my way out the door...of course, those mornings where I meet the man with the rubber stick mean a longer stay in bed, and a shorter window of time to get to the gym without p!$$!ng someone off because they are on the last spinning bicycle with Look pedals...and they're wearing running shoes...and there's another bike they can ride. As always, another story. Actually, it wasn't the moment of getting out the door to the car that was entertaining. It was getting from the car to the locker after the spinning workout. Clean clothes, water bottles, Snickers Marathon bars, eyeglasses, sunglasses, wallet...and the hits just keep on coming...

"This life isn't fair; it's gonna get dark, it's gonna get cold. You've gotta get tough, but that ain't enough; it's all about soul..." - Billy Joel, "All About Soul" (1993)

TLC's spin-off to Miami Ink featuring Kat Von D, LA Ink, started this last week. Great program. One of the artists Kat recruited to work her shop - Corey Miller - is an absolute genius...not that the other two artists are that bad in their own right. However, Miller's work is completely original. He did a design on a guy's arm, sketching with a ball-point pen and working forward...then with the tattoo gun. No xerox machines, computer-generation, light tables for this guy, no sir. I marveled as I watched this man work, comparing his craft to the advertising campaign of a local tattoo parlor (touting computerized designs, templates, and the like). In comparison, Miller's work is so soulful - the man's essence was put into the labor.

I couldn't help but think about the similarity between tattooing and coaching. Each person has a background story, a reason for coming to me. I can use the myriad of tools available to everyone (computer programs, books, calculators), but if I don't put my soul into it I'm doing no more than a tracing of someone else's work. All the research, prior workouts, races (both good and bad) and life experience will have gone for naught. In the same vein, an athlete who comes to the track with strong preconceptions of how their training should go (usually based upon something they've read in Runner's World, "Galloway's Great Big Honkin' Book o' Stuff," etc.) usually has missed a big portion of the story.

It's like going to a tattoo artist with a photo of something you've seen on someone and asking for the same d@mned thing.

As the late runner-philosopher/author George Sheehan said, we are all an experiment of one. Taking a cookie-cutter approach to training may - or may not - be effective. Downloading a list of workouts, paces, distances and times can be all well and good, but it's all in a vacuum. While I may write a training plan (in macro) weeks or months in advance, the last two hours leading into the workout are fraught with deep thought: How do I (or my athletes) feel today? What are the weather conditions? Is there a race in the coming weekend? As always, if I had a dollar for every time I've planned a workout and did something completely different once I got to the track, I'd have enough for at least another coaching book...ha, ha, ha...

The training plan, writ large, months in advance may be the heart, but the two hours of thought spent on the couch, walking through the kitchen, and especially the last half-hour during the drive to the track...are the soul of coaching.

Las Vegas Has Elvis Because Key West Picked First

There' nothing like going on a week's vacation...arrive in town to find two hundred portly, middle-aged-to-elderly men who all have worked very hard over the years to look like Ernest Hemingway in his later years. Each years' winner becomes local royalty. For them, it's a good thing; all they have to do is come back each year to this overpriced spit of land out in the Atlantic and judge future contests. No more political campaign-like madness for them, thank you very much.

And it does feel much like a political campaign, when you look at it from the surface. I saw screen-printed t-shirts, fans, placards; heard chants of individual supporters - usually family and close friends - more money raised and thrown about (in the general direction of the Key West High School scholarship fund) over the course of three days. Sloppy Joe's, the KW bar where 'Papa' Hemingway was reported to have written some of his greatest works, appears to be the center of the universe; Capt. Tony's, just up the block heading west, probably handles the overflow handily.

So, what would 'Papa' do?

I had the chance to talk to the preeminent, the primary, and the persistent. On Saturday morning just before a ritual "running of the bulls" finalist parade, a kindly gentleman, one of the more recent 'Papas,' took the measure of my question. He thought for a few seconds, and replied, 'I'm not certain that "Papa" would understand it.' The family member of a first-timer, fervently (and drunkenly) cheering for his Italian-accented, stumbling moment in the spotlight during the second round of 'Papa' wannabes, told me she did not think Hemingway would understand it, either.

They may be right. A man like Hemingway, who wrote much on the dignity of the individual identity...the aloneness of the man on a mission (or fool's errand), would have been confused by the number of men over the past 27 years who have tried to physically emulate him...many of them on their 20th attempt at last count; the organizers provide pins counting the number of years each participant has show up to pony up his U. S. Grant...and then some. The closest one was a local. The farthest one came from Australia.

And it's the elderly, portly 'Papa' they emulate; a young man was prohibited from competing in years past as the young Hemingway, complete with World War I-era Red Cross ambulance driver uniform.

I guess it means something. We - and by we, I mean our society - look at the decadent, white jump-suited, paunchy Elvis; to the paunchy, hard-drinking, hoary and hirsute Hemingway, as our ideal men. Perhaps this has much to do with the lives of leisure they led prior to their tragic departure from this mortal coil. Problem is, we forget how much labor and effort, the ball-busting, blood, sweat, toil and tears they shed in the development of their craft. A Hemingway short story, such as A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, or Death In The Afternoon takes much longer to write than it takes to read. It's the work, and the life experience that seeps into each word, each page, that takes so much longer. All that labor and expense paid dividend in the end, allowing both their aimless, chemical-induced life.

I have more respect for 'Papa' than for Elvis, though. At least he was still able to walk from Sloppy Joe's to his house, with a potty stop at the kapok tree on the way. Hemingway could be content with buying a drink. Elvis had to buy his friends.