Must be the Shoes
From an early age, my family members were imbued with the belief that a quality purchase could assuage a thousand ills. For years, I have watched my mother pick up her purse and head out the door for the nearest sale whenever she felt “blue.” It is a tradition that my sisters have nobly carried on, without judgement, I have noticed that they don’t even need a minor bout of depression to put the recuperative powers of acquisition to use.
As for myself, circumstance has rarely afforded me the opportunity to really splurge. I’m one of those guys that out of guilt/fear/responsibility still calls my wife (and CFO) for approval when making a purchase over a hundred dollars. A high roller, I most decidedly am not.
But the past couple of months have been tough on my running. It’s been a struggle with injuries and I will admit that, while I promote fitness on this blog, I really was kind of down on training. To use my mother’s expression, I was feeling a little “blue.” And so, I bought myself something: a brand, spanking, new pair of hideously yellow and black Adidas racing flats. Firm, lightweight, with the flex right under the ball of my foot, their arrival from Marathon Sports brought a bit of Christmas cheer to my Trumbull home.
I was excited, ready to run and more importantly, eager to race. I decided to try them out at a 5K in Milford on Sunday.
Despite the Happy Face yellow of the shoes, my mood had soured a bit by the starting gun. In my warm-up, my groin was tight and causing some pain. Going out easy, looked like the best option and I promised myself not to get the “Run faster you pussy” monologue going.
We took off on the flat course, a handful of serious guys up front and then myself and several isolated runners before the pack in back. Focusing on a quick turnover and good form, I ran easily on the early sections, not working too hard and somewhat surprised to see no cones, arrows or volunteers at many of the intersections we passed through. I made a mental note to keep the lead pack in sight because I had no idea where I was going having barely glanced at the course map.
Not wanting to look at my watch as part of my commitment to “take it easy”, the turn away from the seashore alerted me to the finish line fast approaching. There was one very tall runner ahead of me, he’d gone out bravely but I could see his form starting to break down. Tailing him for a bit, I passed him right before an uphill and turned on the gas. Still trying not to work too hard, I brought it home with some authority.
Over a footbridge, then a hard right for the line, I looked up at the clock and saw 16:20, the fastest 5K of my Masters career. I could not believe it. Barely breaking a sweat, I’d hammered out a hugely respectable 5:15/mile effort. Laughing out loud, I thought to myself, “Surely, it was the shoes!”
Giddy with excitement, I put on my jacket and did my cooldown by retracing the course. In my head, I was making serious plans to step up my training, reset my goals for my “A” races and wondering a great deal as to how I had really managed this breakthrough performance. At best, I’d hoped to run a 17:40. 16:20 was almost miraculous.
Then coming up from the seashore a second time, I noticed a volunteer waving me down a turn that I was fairly certain I hadn’t taken before. Slowly it dawned on me that my epic “relaxed” 5:15s might not have had all that much to do with me. When I hit another unfamiliar turn, I asked the volunteer (whom I hadn’t seen before) what was going on with the course adjustment. “Oh, we screwed up at the beginning,” he said, “we forgot a turn.”
Crestfallen, I dropped my head and looked at my Happy Face shoes. They hadn’t done a thing to make me faster. There was no Miracle in Milford, I’d run easy and I’d run on a shortened course. My 5K was a whole lot more like a 4.8K.
I made it back to the car, put on a dry shirt and vowed to write a letter to the race director, demand my money back and promise to warn everyone I could find off of this race for years to come. But by the time I’d made it home, I was considerably more reasonable. Mistakes happen, the important thing was that I’d gotten out and had some fun.
And, if only for a brief twenty minutes, I believed that I was still capable of an effortless 16:20. Racing was exciting to me, the possibilities seemed endless and most importantly, I wasn’t moping about my injuries and that was pretty cool. It certainly was worth the price of my new shoes.
Filed under: Inspiration, Race Reports | 2 Comments
Tags: Adidas, Marathon Sports, Milford 5K, racing
Pilgrimmage
It’s refreshing to know that at 43, I’m not too old to find new heroes in my life. This past weekend, I had a chance to spend some time with a runner that is truly extraordinary. In July, he became the first Vermonter to ever win the Vermont State 100 Mile Endurance Run. He’s finished 3rd at the Wasatch 100, arguably one of the toughest races in America and he’s a finisher of the Grand Daddy of all ultras, the Western States 100. On a more personal note, he kicked my ass on his way to second place at this summer’s Nipmuck Trail Marathon. Despite all of his impressive credentials, he only started running 8 years ago. His name is Jack Pilla and would you believe, he’s fifty-one years old!
A couple of months ago, I thought he would be a good candidate for a profile in Running Times and so I made the pitch and asked Jack if he was interested. He said “sure” and invited me up for the interview and a run on a few of his home trails in Charlotte, VT.
Outside Jack's backdoor is a trail runners paradise
Preparing for the weekend, Lulu razzed me on more than one occasion about how excited I was to meet “my friend.” I laughed at myself but made no effort to hide my feelings. The truth is, running had gotten very hard for me over the summer with the Lyme disease and my groin and I needed a little outside help to get me going again.
Jack proved the magic elixir. Meeting up first thing Sunday morning, we headed out into the Vermont frost with Lake Champlain and the surrounding mountains as our backdrop. For ninety minutes we rolled through a wildlife sanctuary, over Puke Hill and through several bumpy miles of rugged forest. The pace was reasonable, the conversation easy and the benefit to me: enormous.
51 and unstoppable.
Jack has in spades what I have only scraps of. No dilettante in the great outdoors, he’s an avid skier, surfer, skydiver, biker, hiker, you name it, he’s done it… lots of it. As he put it, he just likes to see, “how far his body can go.”
He runs 70-100 miles a week. When the sun goes down early in the fall, he puts on a headlamp and runs the trails in the dark. His long runs might go anywhere from 26 miles (the day before we ran together) to a casual 45 he felt like doing on a whim a couple of weeks before. To test himself for his “A” races, he heads over to the White Mountains and runs the Presidential Range. For those of you unfamiliar with the Granite State’s “little mountains” they’re known for having the “worst weather in the world.” And a good day of running there can easily bring over 10,000 feet of elevation gain. One day this summer, just to see how far his body could go, Jack ran 20 miles, stopping only once to drink.
All of this was passed on to me in a wonderfully understated way. Jack was only talking because I was asking questions. He seemed more eager to tell me about his garden and the two hundred pounds of potatoes he harvests every year than he was in recounting the 88th mile of the Vermont 100 when he took the lead and never looked back. Like most of the big “doers” I’ve come across in my life, Pilla wasn’t much for tooting his horn. I’m guessing here but I believe he knows his actions do all his talking for him.
More than anything, what I took away from my morning with my hero was how important it is to surround yourself with people that support your passions. Jack’s significant other is a trainer/running coach/ultra champion. He belongs to the Green Mountain Athletic Association that boasts over 500 runners and he’s got a group of about 18 plus50 year old guys that he trains with regularly. But there’s nothing regular about them. They are a freakish group of aerobic performers. One of them, at 55, just ran an indoor 5:01 mile. Working together, several of them including Jack, recently won the National Masters 5K team championship. If you’re looking to take some old men to the woodshed, these are not the guys for it. They push each other and they perform on a level that begs you to rethink what it means to be an athlete for life.
After a big post run breakfast, he sent me on my way south with a couple of pumpkins from his garden for the kids and a totally energized attitude about running. I don’t think I’ll ever get to the fitness level he’s at but it’s damned good to know that the time limit on getting there is a lot longer than I thought.
Filed under: Inspiration, Training | 2 Comments
Get Away
By Friday, I’d had my fill. Buckets of emails, too many decisions and too little reward; a last weekend of summer called and I answered. The kids, the dogs and my wife packed up in the SUV and pointed it West for the Catskills. Behind, I left those things that put me on edge and settled in to those things that make me feel good.
Ready to rock Ashokan
Lulu thought it looked about right. Ashokan High Point is 4 miles to the summit, stripped with creeks and severely steep over the last mile. Plenty for the kids to do on the way up and enough exercise to make sure that we all slept well. 6 of us in a tent made for 3-4. It was a wedding gift, our favorite one.
2 hours to the trailhead, we got there by 12:30. Very different for me, I’m usually a Nazi when it comes to this stuff. But this weekend I wasn’t stressing about anything. On the trail, we walked for an hour without meeting anyone. The woods were old growth, the kids shot up between the trees exploring, chasing the dogs, playing. Two years away from my last hike, the pack was heavy on my shoulders but familiar and welcomed. Lulu and I used to spend a lot of weekends like this, now they were too few and far between.
There was a lot of goofiness in the early going
Lunch by a little creek, there was talk about breaking open the peanut M&Ms but we all (but Nona) thought it better to wait ‘til nighttime. Drew swam, the water so cold, he struggled to catch his breath.
For a moment, I thought about breaking out the tent and parking it right there, in the little grassy opening a stone’s throw from the water. But it was only a mile in, too close to civilization. Upward and onward we went.
The girls were monsters on the climb
Pumping clean water at the creek, I thought maybe we should just park it here.
By two miles, Nona abandoned her pack. Tired and a little pouty, her enthusiasm was waning with the work. By three miles, the serious climbing began and I thought we’d lose her. 1000 feet up in a single mile is a big climb no matter how fit you are. I thought she’d blow up, break down, make a scene; she started running instead. For big chunks at a time, she burned up that hill. Not jogging, running like she meant it. Her brother was non-plussed. With his pack on, he started running too. Then the ledges came and because they couldn’t run, they started to crawl. Below them, Lulu and I watched and sweated. It was tough with the packs. I loved her more than ever.
Almost to the top
Finally, to the summit. The guide book had promised campsites on the top but I was afraid they’d all be taken, our arrival too late. But no one was there. Just the six of us, a beautiful view of Ashokan reservoir and a perfect campsite on a ledge just below.
A perfect site
We made a fire, chased the bugs away with the smoke and started in on dinner. Drew climbed the rock ledges, Fiona cheered him on between helping me gather wood.
Sitting by the fire, roasting marshmallows, watching a big, fat, full moon lift up over the trees, I believed things couldn’t get better. I believed that everything I had was all that I needed. Looking into the faces of the people closest to me, through the smoke, I felt no anxiety, no fear. All was good, simple and within reach. In the moonlight, we tucked into our sleeping bags, pushed together for warmth, kept close by the nylon walls of our mountain home. The kids giggled when I broke wind, mom just groaned. Then it was still and I slept for hours.
Because it's there.
Waking up, the seasonal switch had been flipped. Summer no more, the wind had picked up and there was an edge to it. Crisp and chilly, a forerunner of what was coming. Drew and I talked about climbing Ashokan in the winter time. He wants to wear crampons and use an ice axe and I want to teach him how. We got up before the girls, wearing long sleeves and pants, we stoked the ashes in the stone ring until little flames lapped at the kindling and the fire kicked to life. Breakfast was oatmeal and Folgers instant, for Lulu: Irish Crème. A too big stack of wood was burned, we didn’t want to leave. Just sat in our sleeping bags, around the fire, laughing and talking and watching the wood burn.
A few hours later we were down the trail and in the car. Just under a day in the woods but it could have been a week. Things were the same back at home but I felt different. The ride home was quiet, everyone slept and I thought of nothing, only making note of what lay off in the distance, who was in front of me and who I needed to pass.
Sunrise at Ashokan
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Running Together
When I was trapped in a soul numbing relationship with drugs and alcohol, I had the good fortune to one day walk into a room full of people that had once suffered like me. But they were sober, for the most part happy and entirely ready to show me how to get myself in a similar condition. Walking into that room was the single most formative experience in my life, it changed everything.
The wild times made me feel a great many things but none greater than the feeling of being alone. I could be at the biggest party in the country, surrounded by friends, people that actually cared for me and still, I could not shake a frantic sense of isolation. So when I started turning things around, one of the first things I noticed in my new life was how important “community” was to living on the straight and narrow. Sure, there was a program I was supposed to follow, suggestions on how I should conduct myself but the heart of my new way of life was all about reaching out to other people both to ask for help and help them in return. That’s how things worked in this program, that’s how it worked for me and that’s what I try and work into as many aspects of my life as I can.
Since 2002, I’ve worked on four Olympics: two winter and two summer. I am an Olympic evangelist, I believe in the mission, I like to try and spread the spirit of the Games and I try and do that through the television I produce. But sometimes that’s not enough. My connection to my audience is distant. I see how many people watch in the ratings but I’m largely at a loss as to whether they are moved, inspired or challenged to take what they’ve seen on the screen and make it essential to their own lives, even in the smallest way. Sometimes, I need a closer connection to seeing the Olympic movement in action.
Doing my warm-up, I was joined by three kids visiting from Annecy, France. Felt great to have them by my side.
This summer, there was a group of races scheduled in Central Park called “The Media Challenge.” HBO, The New York Times, CBS and many others showed up to hammer out two trips around the lower loop of the park for a 3.5 mile jaunt. I meant to get to the earlier races but it didn’t work out. Instead, I ran in the second to last competition and was stunned to find myself grouped with a tiny number of my fellow NBCer’s. Where HBO and others showed up in strength (and in uniform), Peacock employees were scarce and sartorially disparate. We made a sad little group when we finished that race. Good efforts all around but a far cry from what the Olympic Network should be putting out there.
When I talked to my boss about this, he suggested I do something about it, send out an email and see if I could get some of my coworkers to sign up for the last race of the summer. I sent an email to my group and suggested that our relationship to the Games basically mandates that we take part in athletic pursuits. That’s what the movement is about, not just for Olympians but for everyone.
With a wary eye, I waited for replies. People can be sensitive about what they’re asked to do outside of work and I was sure there was someone that was going to be pissed about my call to action.
If there was, I never heard from them. Instead, my inbox filled up with runners and non-runners, people that wondered if they could make the distance, people that were ready to crush all comers and some people that couldn’t make the race but wanted to commit to doing something physical on race day as a sign of solidarity with the group.
It all made me feel pretty good. Even better when race day rolled around and our tiny group from the race before had swelled to over twenty.
We ran on a gorgeous summer night. The course hit some a little harder than others. And though there was some definite suffering going on before the finish line, the post race conviviality made it all seem worthwhile.
For one day, we’d all done something for ourselves and for each other. We’d made a commitment and saw it through, anxious not to let each other down. We’d tested ourselves physically and were all better for it.
Most importantly, there was a lot of talk about what to do next: find another race, organize a ski event, do something. There was a general feeling that this was an opportunity we should build on to stay active, work as a group, keep the spirit we all felt standing around in the fading light, a little bit of Olympism going in our corner of the world.
Sweaty, smiling and invigorated, it was a community I was content to be a part of . I felt a little less alone, my friends had inspired me to a decent run and in turn, I was happy to help them in anyway I could. Tomorrow, I’m having lunch with a fellow racer that wants to pick my brain on marathon training. Before the race, we’d never spoke. Of my knowledge on the subject, I’m more than happy to pass it on. That’s the way I was taught to do it and like I said, it changed everything for me.
Team Peacock showed up over twenty strong and brought home 3rd place as a team.
Filed under: Inspiration, Training | 1 Comment
Tags: annecy, France, HBO, Media challenge, NBC, Olympics, running, sobriety
My Fiona
Quite the runner's bod on little Miss Fi
From her thin muscular limbs to the walnut brown skin that covers them, Fiona is the opposite of her older brother. Their physical differences are mirrored by their contrasting personalities and that is clearly seen in their approach to sports. At first, I assumed this was just a reflection of gender difference but now, I don’t believe that. My daughter is a very different animal than my son and as keenly aware I am of what makes Drew tick, I am equally at a loss to motivate my daughter. She marches to her own, wonderfully independent rhythm: you’re always welcome if you choose to keep in step but are met with frank indifference if you don’t. As to engaging in competition with the kind of ferocity that her older brother does, one example speaks volumes. In a soccer game this spring, I was miffed to see her take herself out of the action to sit on the sidelines. “What’s going on?” I asked her as she came out. “My friends are here,” she said indicating a small group of girls a little ways away, “I wanted to say ‘hi’” Yes, the differences between her and Drew are large.
And though her head might not be ‘ready for primetime athletics” just one look at Fiona and anyone with a head on their shoulders can see that her running potential is a little scary. Naturally, she has the kind of lean, hard and light body that most runners spend a lifetime trying to achieve. She doesn’t have a big appetite, is conscientious (for a six year old) about eating things that are good for her and when she runs, her stride is efficient and happy. There’s a bounce to every stride and an effortlessness that inspires parental dreams incongruent to her tiny size and small years.
For the most part, I keep myself reined in with Fiona. She doesn’t ask to run with me much and I don’t push it on her. But this week, her mom bought her a new pair of running shoes. Light blue, from New Balance, my daughter loved them for their style way more than for their comfort. Still, she asked me if we could run together this weekend and I was all too happy to honor her request.
A blanket of heavy, suffocating humidity fell on Trumbull this week and yesterday, it seemed at its worse. I went out for 7 miles in the morning and finished up wetter than if had I taken a shower. And so, I was not surprised when Nona initially begged out of her run, claiming fatigue. This is a bit typical of my relationship with my daughter, there are many things (physical ones especially) that she expresses a desire for doing and then changes her mind. I was okay with her decision, I thought it was a little too hot and to be honest, I was a little gassed. However, after some muffled discussions with her mother downstairs, Fiona showed up back in my office a few minutes later, dressed for her run with a big smile on her face.
“Come on, Dad. Let’s get it done.”
We headed outside into the heat and I nonchalantly asked her what she wanted to do. Unlike Drew, who always seems to respond in the affirmative to a challenge, Fiona is far more likely to rebel against a suggestion. I try and let her set the agenda whenever I can.
“I want to break my record around the neighborhood. 4 times,” she proclaimed.
My heart leapt a bit at the ambitiousness of her goal. It’s a third of a mile around our little loop with a smallish but not insignificant hill on the back end. In the ninety degree heat, 4 loops around would be a challenge for my little six year old. I made a mental note to be prepared for an early bailout.
We started and, as always, her stride filled me with a delicious mixture of pride and happiness. You just have to smile when you see her little bod bouncing down the road, her ponytail bopping along with her.
Though she’s only six, she already has a bit of a teen’s attitude about too much parental advice. So, I keep my comments short and sparse. “Keep your hands low and keep your head still” I told her, “you want to conserve as much energy as you can.”
For a while, we ran in silence but for her little breaths. When the road bent up, she put on a burst and got ahead of me. This is a game she’s liked playing since she was about two. My part is to yell in protest that she’s “going too fast” and that there’s “no way I can keep up.” I did and she looked over her shoulder and smiled at me then slowed down so I could “catch up.”
By the third loop, we were both sweating and Fiona was laboring a bit. The heat was taking its toll and I was bracing for the inevitable request to stop. But it never came. Fiona powered through all four loops and in the last 100 meters, she threw in an impressive little kick, taking it home with a seriousness that surprised me. She was all business.
Had it been Drew, the finish line would have brought on an ear to ear grin. He relishes completion in a way that makes whatever the task seem worthwhile. But Fiona is different. As we walked up the driveway, she did not smile, there was no discernible joy in what she’d done or achieved. I went to get her a Gatorade as she sat outside and when I came back, she was grateful for the drink but still seemed overworked by the run.
The answers with Fiona are rarely apparent on the surface.
Because I’m her father and she’s my daughter, I was worried that maybe I should have dissuaded her from the run. Given more significance to the heat and encouraged her to another easier goal. There was nothing tangible or immediate to the result of what we’d just done. My little girl looked tired and almost stressed. Not until I suggested a photo did she perk up. And then everything changed. Knowing that I was going to write about her, Nona began talking away about what she’d just done. First and foremost of her talking points was that Drew had not run that day and she doubted seriously, if he could run that far in this heat. Her sibling competitiveness surprised me, I had no idea when we’d walked out for the run that this was perhaps her motivation for getting out there. When we walked back into the house and found her brother eating his lunch, Fiona threw down one more physical gauntlet, out of nowhere she banged out fifteen push-ups under her brother’s watchful eye.
It was quite a display of naked rivalry, a little depressing but honest and real.
A day away from it, I don’t really know what to make of my daughter and our run together. Having seen that it was, at least in part, a chance to “show up” her brother, I’m not sure it was the best thing to do. But just as it is way too early to have dreams of Fiona dominating the world in the middle distances 14 years hence, it’s too early to judge the value of her motivations. Sibling rivalry might make for some uneasy dinner conversation but it can’t be all bad. The key thing for me to take away, however, is that even though I now have a little more insight into what makes Fiona tick, it’s a card I will never play. Her life will be full of competitions that will frustrate her, make her crazy and cause her to lose sleep. I promise myself that those contests will never include one designed by me that pits her against her brother. It’s too hard to keep families close to risk that kind of mind game.
So, our four loop run gave me some insight into my little Bean but the finish line of real understanding still seems a long way off. She’s like one of the girls Bob Dylan used to sing about in the early days of his career. On the one hand, she’s just a little girl. On the other, she seems a bit complicated, surprising, way more of a mental challenge than my boy. But man, oh man, she’s something special.
Filed under: Family fitness | Leave a Comment
Tags: Bob Dylan, family, father, fitness, kids, parenthood, running, sibling rivalry, Trumbull
36 Miles
My mother doesn’t remember it but I do. It was 1972 and we were living in a Westport, Connecticut where the parents smoked like chimneys, Nehru jackets were worn without comment and physical fitness meant a game of doubles on Saturday afternoon. Forty three years old when she had me, my mom smoked and drank through all four of her pregnancies including me, her smallest and last baby. I weighed in at a scrawny 8.9lbs. Aside from the occasional tennis game and a swim at the beach, my Mom didn’t do much in the way of regimented exercise but she would always get up and dance, work around the yard and walk anywhere you wanted to go.
When I was six, I wanted to walk a mile and so she took me to the local track and the two of us briskly covered four full laps. She forgot about it pretty quickly but it burned a lasting impression in my mind. To know in my bones what that distance felt like, to understand physically the truth of that measurement made me feel as though I belonged, to what I do not know.
This winter, I asked Drew to write down a couple of things he would like to accomplish in 2009. At the top of his list was “Ride 33 miles.” Last year, on a warm summer day, we’d done 22 on the Cape Cod Rail Trail: 11 miles up to Marconi Beach from Nickerson State Park and back. For the months that remained of that year, this event was most frequently cited as his favorite.
With what looked like my last weekend on the Cape for the summer, I decided that Saturday should be the day Drew nailed his goal. The closest parking lot to the trail put us 18 miles from Destination Marconi, I thought if we took it slow enough, he could handle the extra 3 miles.
Onto our saddles, we banged out 8 miles with hardly a thought. Riding by cranberry bogs, saltwater lakes and long stretches of shaded straightaways, we kept up a decent tempo but never fast enough to get breathing heavily. A quick break for some Gatorade and a call to Mom, who was meeting us with Nona at the beach, and we got back on our way. When asked, Drew said the pace was “fine.” I decided to make things a little more interesting.
The mile markers on the trail are cause for celebration. Drew and I took great delight in shouting their numbers as we neared them, “9 miles to go!” “8 more, Buddy Boy!” I didn’t see much of Drew. The trail was fairly crowded so he tucked in directly behind me and hung on my wheel like a regular Tour de Francer. Instead of studying his body and face for fatigue, I listened to his breathing and heard very little in terms of exertion, the pace was easy for him.
“Here’s what we’re going to do” I called out, “we’re going to keep our legs awake by giving them a little pick-up. You hang on my wheel and we’re going to sprint every once in a while.”
“Okay” he said.
And I took off. Dropping my gears as quickly as I could, I mashed down my pedals and leapt away from him. For a moment. Then he was right back on my wheel, I could hear him breathing now but when I turned to look over my shoulder, he had a savage look on his face, there was no way he was letting me get away.
For the remaining ten miles on our outward bound leg, we dropped in one of these sprints around every passing mile marker. On the last one, no longer content to ride my wheel, Drew pulled up alongside me and would have passed me by, if I hadn’t hit the gas. We rolled up to Marconi Beach, smiling big and a good ten minutes ahead of schedule.
Major waves, a little lunch with Lulu and Fiona, some more swimming and we were ready to head back.
“How do your legs feel?”
“Pretty good” he said, “I don’t think I can do any sprinting.” He sounded a little nervous and so I asked him if he was.
“I’m a little nervous I might not be able to make it back” he confessed. He’d played very hard on the beach and 36 miles is a long way for a little guy to ride.
“Well, I’m afraid we don’t have much of a choice, Bug. It’s the only way we’re going to get home.”
He didn’t say anything else. Just tucked in behind me with a little bit of a smile and we started to pedal. The pace was easy, 6:00 minutes a mile. He asked me to slow down once but when I did, he quickly asked me to pick it back up. With my back to him, I tried to imagine how what I was feeling translated down into a little nine year old body. My legs were pretty fresh but it wasn’t as though I couldn’t feel them. They felt like they were working, what must that mean for him? The last thing I wanted to do was make this an unpleasant memory.
I’ve written here before about putting a little extra pressure on Drew in certain moments. There is enough evidence out there that points to the benefits a person derives when they actually find a way to succeed under duress. Responding to unexpected challenges leads to good habits, a mental toughness that can separate an athlete or a person from the crowd. With 6 miles to go, I put a little extra pressure on the Bug.
Waving him up alongside me, we coasted along the sun dappled trail for a moment as I took full stock of his appearance. His form was great, his cheeks were flush but he wasn’t sweating a whole lot and his breathing was good.
“Drew” I said, “most guys would be happy just to finish a ride like this.”
“Yeah,” he said with an acknowledging laugh.
“They’d be happy to just hang on, finish out the ride and go home”
“Uh huh”
“But we’re not going to do that. We’re going finish this ride with a bit of a push. We’re going to close it out. It’s going to be hard and it’s going to hurt a bit but some day, you’re going to be in a race and you’re going to be the strongest man because you did things like this.”
My son looked at me with what I choose to believe was faith. I’m quite certain there were other things he was hoping to hear from me at that moment. And if he had a choice, he probably would’ve kept on at our very respectable 10/mph pace. But all he said was “Okay.” And with that, we dropped the hammer. A couple of miles passed away in the low 5:30s, and I could hear him start to breath. With four miles to go, we stepped it up 4:40, then 4:20, an uphill had us back at 4:30 and then he smelled the barn. Only a mile from the car, he was now pushing the pace, not me. We made a right hand turn and faced one last uphill climb to the car, it was about 100 meters. Standing on his pedals, his muscular shoulders whipsawed the front of his bike back and forth in a furious charge to the finish.
Rolling into the parking lot, I was plump with joy. His flushed face rippled in an ear to ear grin. “Yessss!” he yelled coming to a stop. “I did it! 36 miles” Without a hint of exaggeration I looked him in the eye and told him, “Drew, you’re incredible.”
“Thank you so much, Dad. Thank you for taking me.”
In the August evening, we stood there astride our bikes. The light was golden, epic, cliché if it had been a movie. But it was better than that, it was absolutely real. As my mother had once given me the gift of knowing a mile, I’d passed on to Drew the power of knowing 36 of them. At 9 years old, what a frame of reference. “Take a lap” will never intimidate this kid.
I packed up the bikes and we headed back to Centerville. In the passenger seat, his blonde curls dripped with effort and in minutes, Drew was asleep. His resolution fullfilled, his world a little bigger than it had been that morning.
For those of you that read this and take umbrage, I leave you with this final tidbit as I think it speaks volumes about the “abuse” I put my little boy through. When we got home, he asked me if I wanted to go out for a paddle in the canoe.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 5 Comments
Tags: cape cod rail trail, cycling, marconi beach, smoking, westport
Tour Home Movies
Lance Armstrong didn’t win the Tour de France this year. He didn’t really even come close. But of the 180 best riders in the world, he was third best. Without a full year of training (he was injured in the spring) that’s pretty damned impressive for a 37 year old.
Over the years, he’s obviously served as an inspiration for millions of people in need of far greater resources than my life has required. As revered as Lance is in the cycling/sports world, it is nothing compared to the power of his story in the desperate world of cancer patients. For many, he is nothing short of one very significant reason to believe.
I certainly was a fan of what he did during his first six Tour de France victories but my understanding and appreciation of him reached another level when I worked on CBS’ coverage of his seventh. Up very close, I had the incredible opportunity to experience the race he dominated like no one before. And also witness the meaning he carried for so many that had never watched a bike race before their diagnosis.
Below is my first day, actually out on the Tour. I hung around outside of the Team Discovery bus and waited, like the growing crowd, for just a glimpse of the man that would wear yellow. When I did see him, I actually cried a little. Not really sure why, I just did. From the bus, I followed him over to the start line of the prologue Time Trial. You’ll see him briefly shake hands with Jan Ullrich, his longtime rival and then get up into the start house before riding off into history.
Two things I hope you’ll notice is 1) how incredibly close you can get to the riders in the Tour. There simply is no other sporting event that actually has you within an arm’s length of the competitors. 2) Jan Ullrich has a big bandage across his neck. The day before, on a training ride, he crashed through the rear window of a car at about 30mph. Everyone remembers that Lance actually passed Ullrich during this TT but how many remember Ullrich’s toughness to even show up after such a close brush with death? It speaks to the German’s fortitude, which I’d say, is fairly typical of cyclists. These guys are, hands down, the toughest athletes I’ve ever been around.
As thrilling as it was to be around Lance, I was also pretty excited to be working with Paul Liggett and Phil Sherwen. Two guys that are largely thought of as “The Voices of Cycling.” This next clip is from a video diary I kept during the Tour and recounts my first meeting with Sherwen and the wonderful impression that I made.
Hope you enjoy.
Filed under: Inspiration, Uncategorized | 1 Comment
Tags: Jan Ullrich, Lance Armstrong, Paul Sherwen, The Tour de France
Summer Snapshots
A few semi random thoughts from the Thompson Family Vacation
Just off Exit 5 of the Mid Cape Highway, there’s several hundred acres of green space called The Trail of Tears. You pull into the parking lot and stretching away before you like a yellow snake is a sandy, rock pitted trail that curves its way over hills and under power lines. The sand is mostly loose and the hills, like most hills on the Cape don’t last that long but they’re sharp and if you stack enough of them up next to each other, they’ll take it out of your legs. It’s a pretty miserable looking trail but as a two mile warm-up, straight out, it’s a good way to get the heart pumping. And if you do get to the end of that two miles and bang a sharp left into the woods beside it, you’re treated to a spider web of single track, threaded through fresh smelling pine forest. The footing is sure back here, roots non-existent and if you’d like, you can go for hours. Of all the hotspots on the Cape, this is my favorite.
On July 4th, Team Thompson celebrated by running a road race. Just over two miles, the Hyannisport Civic Association course started uphill, ran out along the ocean and then ended up where it started in front of the Post Office. The entry fee was two bucks per person, there were no t-shirts, no loudspeakers, no huge, inflatable cans of sports drink to run through when you finished. Simple and fun, I ran with Drew, Lulu ran with Fiona. As a newly minted six years old, my daughter didn’t have much competition but she hammered home with a serious game face, not breaking a smile ‘til she came across the line. Her mother told me Fi had run the whole way and for her effort, she clocked a highly respectable sub 19. With me, Drew worked very hard, suffered a stitch at the end of the first mile but recovered sufficiently to reel in several adults before the finish line. Coming in 32nd in a field of just about 200, his best moment was with a 100 meters to go. We saw a fading 30something up ahead of us and I suggested to Drew that he could “Beat that guy.” Drew man took off like he’d been shot out of a cannon . At the line, he caught a very surprised runner.
No family summer vacation would be complete without a trip to an amusement park. We hit Water Wizz in Wareham. With several excellent slides including a sixty foot plunge in total darkness and some serious speed on just about every option, we had a spectacular morning. The park was only about 20% full and there wasn’t a single line we had to wait in. As much fun as we were having, the warm temps brought out plenty of pasty flesh and it was hard not to think about just how obese we’ve become as a society. Everywhere you turned, there were parents and children with heartbreaking amounts of fat spilling out and over their suits. With national health care reform on everyone’s mind, wouldn’t it be nice if we sought some simple solutions to getting costs in line. For starters, real leadership at the Federal level would encourage America to get in shape. The medical cost of obesity is exhaustive. It contributes to everything from asthma to cancer to joint replacement and yet we seem to hardly take it seriously as an issue. Every time I hear our president talk about how “complicated” health care reform will be, I wonder if it really needs to be so. Before we start paying for everyone’s medical costs, let’s make sure (as best we can) that everyone’s taking a modicum of responsibility for their health.
Out of nine days on the Cape, it rained for seven. There was a time when conditions like these would have sunk me in a hole of self-pity: “why does this happen to me… my one week off… etc etc.” I didn’t go down that road once. As a family, we made the best of it. We played tennis between the rain drops, found things to dig up and collect on the beach, made up “workout” games with a deck of cards, held Wi sports tournaments, read and sometimes turned on the TV to watch Wimbledon. My wife didn’t know Michael Jackson had died til three days after he was gone. And you know what? She was okay with that.
It’s good to get away sometimes, to get away from everything.
Filed under: Family fitness, Training | 3 Comments
Tags: Hyannisport Civic Association, Michael Jackson, national health care, Obama, obesity, Trail of Tears, Water Wizz, Wimbledon
Start Again
For the first time in 5 years, I won’t be heading overseas to write about the Tour de France. The CBS show I used to work on has gone away to be replaced by one that will be done by Versus and air for one hour on only the last Sunday of the Tour. As disappointing as this is for me, I am grateful to have been asked to write elements for Versus from here at home.
5:15am outside of Hybrid Athletics. Time to pick up the strength training.
While the race in question remains the same, the way to tell it and the people doing so has changed. My challenge as a writer is to find a level of simpatico with the decision makers that exceeds their expectation and satisfies my hunger to bring the clearest, most exciting insight to the Tour possible. For me, anyway, this is not easy work.
As we hammer our way through the creative process, with my new group we have plenty of awkward moments, conversations that strain to remain civil and ideas and opinions that work at cross purposes. In the end, it will all be for the better. The work will not be exactly as I would have it and that’s okay.
It’s been two weeks since I finished the Nipmuck and I have drifted a bit. In the early morning, I wake up, wide awake, hours before the alarm will ring. I’ve eaten in volume, denied myself little. My training has followed my whim, no program, as yet I have no goals. This is all okay, I’ll get there, I always do.
Just like my day job, my running sometimes goes through a little “feeling out” process. It’s humbling and beneficial to spend some time unfocused, not operating at full tilt. Going down roads that end up nowhere, turning around and trying a different way. In the end, I’ll get started towards something. My writing will get where it needs to be and my running will make sense again, have purpose and a destination.
Starting over is a hard business but giving myself the opportunity to do it is what makes me stronger. It pushes my skill set, taps new parts of my brain and keeps my body alive.
Filed under: CrossTraining, Inspiration, Training | 1 Comment
Tags: Hybrid Athletics, nipmuck, running, The Nipmuck Trail Marathon, The Tour de France, workout
Warning Light
A little post race love from my biggest fans.
My engine light came on Saturday night, just twelve hours away from having to drive 90 minutes to the starting line of the Nipmuck Trail Marathon. Lulu needed the other car for her full day of driving the kids between a lacrosse jamboree and dance recital. With a queezy stomach, I knew I had no other option but to gas ‘er up and hope for the best.
Earlier that day, I had taken my final run before the race. Thirty minutes in the woods with the dogs and a few strides on a nearby soccer field. Finishing up, my right knee started giving me problems, another warning light right before a race and another that I chose to ignore.
Sunday morning, race day, broke orange and warm. Heading north with a bowl of Multi Bran Chex and a cup of Joe in my belly, I felt mostly relaxed thinking about the race and singing along to a little Bob Dylan, “Oh, Mama, could this really be the end?” Despite the signs of trouble ahead from my engine and my knee, I was geeked up to be running with none of the fear that I’ve sometimes felt around the pain of a hard effort. At this point, I’ve had enough of them to be comfortable with the misery that, no matter how intense, I know only lasts for a finite period of time.
Coming off the line, I hopped into first. That lasted for twenty five meters when the eventual winner (I never caught his name) took the lead. I settled into second at a pace that felt a whole lot closer to 5K than marathon, but I wasn’t too scared of it, I wanted to give myself a shot at winning. Having always run negative splits in a marathon, this time I wanted to open something up on the front end. The first half of the course is the easier section and I planned on taking advantage.
One mile in, I had someone on my back and close. I pulled aside and let them pass. Judging by the sound of their voice and the look of their body (from behind), I was sure this runner was in the sub Masters category and so I let him go without too much of a care. My goal afterall was to win the Masters. But right before the first turnaround at six something miles, I got a look at the two people ahead of me. The leader was a baldheaded rock star hammering like a diesel engine through the Connecticut woods and not too far behind him was the man in second place. He was blasting it too but to my bitter frustration, I found him to be not some young Turk but a gray haired guy with a few wrinkles and clearly over 100,000 miles on his engine. It was Jack Pilla, 51 years of age and a total running stud. I knew right then I was in it for third or worse.
From the turnaround at six to mile nineteen, I was running by myself which can be a nice place to be in the woods on a sunny day. I kept things positive in my head, took what the trail was giving me, running fast on the flats and downhills and shortening my stride and picking up the tempo on the considerable uphills. At the aid stations, I stopped long enough to drink deeply and thank the volunteers for helping out.
By the second and final turnaround, I was tired, my legs were a little sluggish but I was reasonably comfortable with having 3rd locked up. As I turned from the aid station to head back up the trail, a runner popped out of the woods like an evil child spit out from the womb of my fears. What the f*** was this guy doing here?
I wished him luck, told him he was doing great and started hustling up and out of the deep hollow we were in. I had to get moving or I was going to get passed. Screaming in protest, my legs had no interest in charging up this steep but I had no other option. Especially, when a train of eight guys blew past me on their way to the turnaround. Comparing their outsides to my insides, I was devastated. They looked fast, hungry and focused plus they were heading downhill. Inside, I was tired, beaten and scared. My long day in third, would soon be over.
There were about thirty seconds there, where I gave up. As my lungs and muscles rebelled at the change in tempo, I felt I had nothing left to give, that my engine light was on and blinking blood red. But the thing I really love about running distance is that you almost always have time to change your mind. And as I crested that hollow and got on a more level section of trail, I changed mine. If I wasn’t coming in third by God, I was going down fighting like a Pit Bull with a crystal meth habit.
For seven miles, I opened the throttle wide and let it all hang out. Downhills were a highwire act: a quarter inch here or there and I would have broken something. On flat sections, I gave up everything I had and when the trail went uphill, I threw myself into it like I was running from Alabama lawmen. At the final aid station, one of the volunteers said, “You’re doing great, honey.” To which I replied, “No they’re on me” and sprinted off back into the woods. It was only later that I understood why she looked so surprised.
That last aid station was at the top of a good ½ mile hill which you could see most of the way down. The volunteer could see that no one was remotely close to me and there was only two and a half miles to go. I kept the hammer down and finished the “back” section 6 minutes faster than I had the “out.” Third place was mine and I’d hacked 25 minutes off my pace from the last time I’d run this sucker.
This morning, I’m taking my car in to get that engine light looked at. And this week, I’m taking some time off to let my body rest up.
Finally, as part of my prep for this race, I reached out to my friends here and elsewhere to raise money for The Hole in the Wall camps. I am really grateful for everyone’s participation in this effort and that program will be better off for your generosity. There is still time to contribute, so if you’d like please go to: Team Hole in the Wall.
Thank you and keep running.
Filed under: Race Reports | 5 Comments
Tags: Bob Dylan, Hole in the Wall, Jack Pilla, Nipmuck Trail Marathon, Pit bulls, Trail Running
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