August again. Anticipation of another year of scholastic and recreational-league competitions hangs as heavy as morning fog. The fans are revved up for more championship runs. Coaches are prepped to build their win-lose records. Parents predict proud ‘my-kid’ moments in the grocery check-out lines. Did I forget anyone?

Oh yes, the athletes. Well, are they really that important anyway?  After all, as Mark Hyman notes in Until It Hurts, “By anyone’s reckoning, adults rule youth sports.” Need proof of that? Here are four words: Little League World Series. That annual August marketing extravaganza defies description as kids-playing-baseball. Or, if you have a few extra bucks, you can subscribe to the slick Youth Runner Magazine (comes with Youthrunner T-shirt, poster and sticker) and chart today’s 8-12 year old future superstars. Don’t forget all the ‘club teams’ tacitly promising that paying participants should be on their way to soccer, basketball or lacrosse stardom. And then there are all those parents who prowl the sidelines of youth and modified sports, already convinced of a ‘college ride’ for their athletic prodigy. Never mind that less than 1% of the middle-school students on sports teams eventually receive any form of collegiate athletic scholarship (National Center for Educational Statistics). It’s a dream were working on here, though not necessarily the dream of an athlete.

We need sunshine, some clarity of thought, some acceptance of glaring statistics to burn away the fog that envelopes too many of us in youth sport. Attempting to carefully illuminate the illusions surrounding youth sport, however, is usually like challenging a black hole. No light escapes. So here’s an alternate strategy, one that can be employed by anyone. It involves the timely application of a simple question: Why do you do this?

You can use it on coaches, parents, even fans. Use with caution, however. People aren’t typically comfortable discussing their real motivations. If you’re a parent directing that question to a coach whose program has literally taken over the life of your young athlete, and you’re told all the hours and all the haranguing is about “character building” or  “pursuing excellence,” take your child’s hand and walk away—quickly. However, if you are brave (or intensely curious), hold your ground and repeat: “No, really, why do you do this?” Ask twice; ask five times if necessary, because those former trite explanations are bogus, typically meant to mask the sad fact that a coach’s needs are dominating an athlete’s. For kids, championships don’t ensure good sports programs, and good sports programs don’t require championships. We repeatedly ignore that.

If you’re a conscientious coach confronted by an overzealous parent who’s pushing their kid to become the sport’s next superstar, it’s fair to ask them: why do you do that? Who is all this pushing really about, your kid or you? Suggest they actually listen to what their kid says about sports participation. Ask them to Google some useful reports on the destructive nature of high-octane youth sports mania. Remind them, if necessary, that their young competitor is far more likely to receive an academic scholarship than an athletic one.

If you’re a local sports fan who doesn’t care how a scholastic or youth team operates as long as it wins, who is willing to ignore inappropriate actions by athletes ‘needed’ on the field or who actually contributes inappropriate behaviors in the stands, the operative questions for you are these: When did you lose your life? Do you need help finding one?

And if you’re an administrator, a Board of Education member or a recreational director responsible for sports in your town, and you haven’t asked that question of your coaches or yourself—this might be a good time. It’s August. The kids will be returning to school shortly. A fair percentage of them will start fall team practices assuming the sport is about them.

It is, isn’t it?

Three times a year, at pre-season coaches’ meetings, my district Athletic Director instructs those assembled on the most positive procedures for cutting athletes following team try-outs.

It is a decent directive because for many athletes that moment will be their exit interview from scholastic sports. Few cut athletes return to reenact the Michael Jordan anecdote. To be sure, a lucky few make the team a second time around (the ones we laud at sports banquets for their perseverance) and another small percentage successfully find other sport teams. As the statistics demonstrate, however, the vast majority of cast-offs drift away from scholastic sports altogether.  This raises the basic paradox of high school sport, which touts itself as a teacher of character and positive values while systematically denying that learning opportunity to a great percentage of its students.

Ironically, that paradox is born in the promises of modern youth sport.  A fellow coach once described “the great soccer pyramid hoax” where kids and parents are taught if you start early, join every youth program available and, still young, focus exclusively on soccer, then you too will eventually step into the varsity stadium, bound for a college scholarship. Reality, however, limits the seats on that varsity bus, and through the years team cuts steadily unload the less talented, dashing dreams and denying sports opportunities along the way

To be fair, my coaching friend was probably describing any popular high school sport where this process of ‘narrowing the field’ is no accident. The functionalist theory of sport suggests this selection method is useful socially, teaching young adults the realities of the working world where competition for coveted roles is both commonplace and desired. Being cut, therefore, is supposedly a good thing because it prepares young adults for the demands of the marketplace. I doubt, however, that rationale goes over well with a sixteen year old who participated in every camp, made all the previous scholastic teams and faithfully attended all the ‘optional’ out-of-season intramural programs only to be shown the door after varsity try-outs.

The conflict theory of sport presents a less charitable view, one where scholastic sport is seen more for how it limits athletic participation through strict selection rules. That view reaches its macabre conclusion in school districts where making the team is no longer determined at try-outs but by whether an athlete participates in those “voluntary” pre-season intramural programs. Growing numbers of potential athletes, assuming they can’t master the intramural try-out process, don’t even bother, cutting themselves beforehand. It’s a tidy method of reinforcing the exclusivity of scholastic sports.

The obvious solution to such exclusivity is also the most radical: eliminate team try-outs and make all scholastic sports no-cut. Opponents argue that the popular team sports will be deluged by too many eager competitors and become unworkable; that ‘opening’ sports to everyone will degrade their competitiveness and value. Most are unaware that at Sagewood Middle School in Colorado, Francis Parker School in California and other no-cut athletic programs around the country, the true definition of sport as “physical activity engaged in for pleasure” combines successfully with public education goals promoting fitness and health for ALL students. Most also forget that properly run no-cut sports such as Track & Field have already shown us how it’s done.

          Regardless of one’s position, in a era when 17.1% of American youth are overweight or obese and where suicide has grown to the third leading cause of death among young adults 15-24 years of age, it’s time to reconsider ways of providing the positive aspects of scholastic sport to more students—not just the well-adjusted, well-supported average or elite athletes who can “make the cut.” It’s time to stop simply applauding divisional, sectional or state championship teams and start asking what those programs actually do for all the potential team members they cut, students who might, as the saying goes, need the sport more than the sport needs them. Right now, for too many school districts, the answer to that question is: not much.

Not So Lonely Anymore

A common portrayal of distance runners has been that of solitary, disaffected individuals who follow the beats of those different drummers. That overly romantic conception found its most popular expression in the 1959 classic, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, by writer Alan Sillitoe. Sillitoe’s protagonist was a British youth, Colin Smith, who had been sentenced to a boy’s reformatory for robbing a bakery. In the story, Smith’s distance running talent is discovered, and he subsequently revels in special opportunities at long, unsupervised training runs as the school’s prized competitor. Unfortunately, his rebellious individuality ultimately dooms him with the reformatory officials.

It’s 2007, however, and Sillitoe would have a hard time writing about the current crop of scholastic distance runners. Far from the angry, introverted model of runner embodied by Colin Smith, today’s distance athletes are about as gregarious as they come. They laugh, they joke--and they talk too much when coaches explain the day’s workout. If running’s in their blood, it’s an affectation they’re always willing to share. They behave, believe it or not, just like typical teenagers.

In this state at least, instead of robbing bakeries, our runners are hitting the books. On the New York State Scholar-Athlete Team rankings for the previous three seasons(Spring 06/Fall 06/Winter 06-07) girls running sports earned the top state team-averages of all sports. Wheatley’s girls track team had a 99.599 team average; the Greece Athena Cross-Country team earned a 99.070 team-average for the fall season, and during the cold winter months, the Smithtown H.S. girls indoor track team was booking to a 99.515 team-average. Boys running sports, meanwhile, were the top team of scholar-athletes in the fall(Clinton Cross-Country, 99.658) and second in both the winter and spring seasons.

If distance runners stand accused of being self-torturing egg-heads, then there are a lot more of them out there than previously thought. The National Federation of High Schools(NFHS) survey of 2005/06 school sports participation found that of all US girls sports, Track and Field enjoyed the second highest participation rate, with 15,417 programs and 439,200 athletes nation-wide, trailing only basketball. Cross-Country was 5^th in the number of programs(12,989), ahead of soccer, tennis and swimming. Track & Field and Cross-Country for the boys were also the 2^nd and 6^th most popular programs nationally. So much for disaffected youth….

The ‘jogging craze’ of the 70’s and 80’s had a largely beneficial effect on the popularity of running sports, though schools have been generally lax in promoting them as no-cut, life-long sports whose purposes dove-tail nicely with school mission statements. Today’s runners, however, don’t sulk about that. Here in central New York, their numbers continue to grow, their programs keep expanding and their visibility improves yearly(a team National Championship by the F-M girls cross-country team in 2006 certainly helped). Anyone who thinks distance runners only ply solitary miles back in the hidden woods has not watched those same runners push the long Manhattan Cross-Country Invitational finish through a gauntlet of screaming fans and teammates. We have, however, a shortage of local officials for the growing number of spring track meets and invitationals. And our Indoor track teams now confront the loss of their only readily available meet facility, S.U.’s Manley Field House, just at a time when they’ve had it bulging at the seams for noisy winter weeknight competitions. Support has obviously not kept pace with the growth of scholastic running sports.

Getting that proper and well-deserved support is the biggest challenge facing scholastic runners today. ‘Lonely’ is surely no longer their problem.

In Garrison Keeler's fictional idyll, Lake Wobegon, all the children are "above average." Those folks know. Here in America, average isn't good enough. And these days that certainly extends to scholastic sports.

"Average" is, of course, a subjective statistic. If you make the Olympics and come home with no medal, you are merely an "average" Olympian. If the vaunted Saratoga High School girls cross country team ends the season ranked second in the nation, they haven't even had an "average" year. And look what's happening because Barry Bonds wasn't satisfied being an "average" superstar.

In scholastic sports, "average" sports programs toil in anonymity, gathering nary a stingy paragraph in the local paper and often the ire of fans who expect winners and sectional crowns. Those teams are, however, the ones that fulfill the true intent of scholastic athletics as ably as any state champions. And though we invariably focus on the undefeated and the state top-10's, our average teams, those scholastic silent majorities, are the true foundation for successful high school sports.

That's the way it should be - and for one uncomfortable reason: it's only sports. Coming from a coach, I understand that is blasphemy and I'm due before the Boosters Inquisition soon. But winning as an ultimate measure of scholastic sports success often describes nothing but the passage of time. Good teams come and go. With coaching changes or administrative shifts in priorities, great programs do also. The basic values of scholastic sports, however, can endure. The dirty little secret of scholastic sports is that most athletes don't base their choices on whether they will play for a winning team, a losing team or an "average" team. Coaches may expect their teams to be terribly upset by losing and euphoric about winning. Parents may also, while the fans in the stands typically demand a thirst for victory. And the athletes, of course, understand winning is more fun, but for them the primary requirement is successful and enjoyable participation through their best efforts - not W's and L's.

Consider Amber. A neophyte 100-meter high hurdler, she would certainly admit she wasn't the fastest on our track team. During one meet, a misstep propelled her toward a collision with a hurdle, forcing her to literally stop short halfway through the race. She could have quit at that point; I'd watched others do so. Instead, with her opponents already speeding toward the finish, she stepped back, started up again and recorded her slowest time of the season. Dejected, she slumped off the track where my assistant coach stopped her. "That was great," he declared. She looked at him blankly, so he explained. "You could have quit, but you didn't. You finished. That was a great effort." She left smiling and ready to run again.

Alternately, I've stood in the warm twilight of a June evening in North Carolina, watching my 2,000-meter steeplechaser crossing the national championship finish line a few tenths of a second shy of sixth place and recognition as a high school All-American. Trudging off the track, totally spent, she gasped, "I had no more gears, coach." What do you say to something like that except, "Terrific, Kerry. Enjoy the moment."

In both circumstances, winning or losing was irrelevant.

Adults need to effectively coach and guide young athletes, of course, but we should also follow the lead of those athletes by organizing sports to elicit not just wins and losses but best efforts. That would prove an interesting paradigm shift, one that quantifies and then emphasizes effort and the development of athletic potential, rather than records or sectional championships, as the best measure of scholastic athletic programs. What might high school "average" look like then?

It is true that on the professional (and now even the collegiate) level, success is primarily about whether you win or lose. Perhaps that is why so many forms of cheating are condoned, or even promoted, on those levels. But scholastic athletics could - and should - remain the one arena where it still matters most how you play the games.

You don’t wait too long for the latest disturbing story about youth sports. One month it’s a radio spot on a coach publicly berating young players. The next it’s a newspaper article on a high school athlete who has died from steroid use. Wait another month and you’ll see the latest home video of fans attacking fans or parents attacking officials at a Pee-Wee football game. The lost innocence of youth sports is, by now, old news. And whether you like Bodie Miller or not, when he stated that we’ve taken American kids away from sports by taking away the fun, he was dead-center correct. The organization Youthfirst reported that startling statistic that 35% of kids quit after a single year of organized sports and 85% drop out between the ages of 10 and 17.  (Youthfirst.com)

 There is no single cause for that current problem in youth athletics and there is no simple solution either. But coaches are clearly an integral part of any solution, and because the vast majority of young athletes gain their first exposure to organized sports through coaches, these people—you people—can do a lot to give youth sports back to kids.

 There are, of course, many books and videos addressing successful youth sports coaching, but in my experience it comes down to two basic principles, two ideas that incorporate most of what good coaches try to accomplish with young athletes. The first principle has to do with motivation:

 In 1974, I started teaching at an alternative school that integrated severally autistic students into classes with typical youngsters. It was hard work making it work, and during one after-school planning session teachers were voicing a lot of frustration about creating a group activity viable for all the kids involved. No strategy made sense; no solution seemed to really work. After haggling for a long while someone suggested that maybe it would be easier to not bother with a group activity. At that point, my head teacher and mentor, Joe Marusa, interrupted the discussion. “Before we do that,” he said, “I think we should stop and answer the question ‘WHY ARE WE HERE?”

 That’s also a good place for coaches to start. Answer the question: why am I here?  Why do I do this?  I think effective and well-intentioned coaching occurs whenever coaches are able to honestly state, “I’m here because I like kids, and I’m also here because I love this sport.”  And then, of course, act on that belief.

It sounds simple, but we’re only too aware of what happens when we get coaches who love the sport but don’t really appreciate the young athletes they instruct—or when we get coaches who like being around kids but don’t know anything about the sports they are coaching.  You should like the kids and love the sport.

Incorporated into that principle is the sometimes messy notion of loyalties. Good coaches, I think, maintain at least two strong loyalties—one to their athletes, the other to their sport. Typically, those two loyalties are complimentary—but not always.  What should a coach do, for instance, in the case of Robbie?

 Robbie was a learning disabled student that I encouraged to take up competitive running.  He enjoyed three successful years on our cross-country and track teams. He earned varsity letters and showed improvement each season. Just as importantly, he made friends and learned a lot about discipline, effort and operating on a team.  Just before Robbie’s senior season of Cross-Country, however, his father informed me that Robbie wanted to take a part-time job after school to gain work experience. The father said Robbie would have to miss two practices each week in order to work and would that be possible?

 I told him I would consider his request—and I did, trying to balance those two loyalties, one to Robbie, the other to the sport of Varsity Cross-Country. The next day, before I gave the father the answer he didn’t want, I sat down with Robbie. I explained to him that he would need to make a choice. I agreed with him that work would be a valuable experience. I also told him that Varsity Cross-Country had been, and could continue to be, valuable to him also. I then explained how, for a variety of social and physiological reasons, 60% Varsity Cross-Country would not in my opinion be as valuable. Aside from our team and school rules about Varsity sport participation, I felt that making him a 60% team member would have done him a disservice and taught him little about success in the real world. 

 Understandably, the father disagreed, and then as a former strong supporter of West Genesee Cross-Country he accused me of running an elitist program. Ironically, however, it was Robbie who seemed to understand. After thinking it over, he told me that working was more important for him at that time and that he had decided to take the after-school job. I didn’t want to lose him, but I could only admire him for making a difficult and mature decision. I thank him and wished him the best of luck.

 My second basic principle for coaching is summed up by the American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Everson. Emerson wrote: “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful. O.K. so what did Emerson know about coaching football or baseball or basketball? Nothing, of course, especially since those sports didn’t exist in his day. Emerson did understand, though, that we live in a world of people, and it is the manner in which you interact with people that will largely determine whether you’re a success or a failure or somewhere in between.

The same goes in coaching. Simply put, successful coaching is about teaching and winning and losing in a way that’s ultimately useful to your athletes. Participating in a sport is important of course, but what coaches help athletes take away from a sport is often more important. Not one of the thousand plus athletes I’ve coached has ever gone on to make a living by competitive running, but a lot of them have since me told how much they learned from their high school sports experiences.  

Coaches, then, can be useful in three ways:

You can be useful by knowing your sport thoroughly and by teaching it properly to your athletes. That’s a lot harder than most of the critical fans think, but you don’t have to be a former superstar to coach well. In fact, it is true that often the best athletes don’t make the best coaches.

 You can also be useful by knowing your athletes individually and by understanding their age group. Have I kept athletes on my team with 57% attendance averages because they needed the sport more than the sport needed them? Yes I have. Is there a vast difference between coaching “fundamentals and fun” to 7 year old kids and coaching high schoolers and all their attendant social and academic pressures? Of course.  But the coaching job is the same: understand your individual athletes and respect the learning needs of their age groups. 

And you can be useful by understanding that sometimes—when push comes to shove—you change the rules. I wrote recently about Nicole. She was an incredibly talented young runner who might have been one of the best ever at West Genesee. That never happened, however. By the time she was running Varsity Cross-Country as a freshman, her father was already talking to me about the college athletic scholarship she was going to win. If Nicole wasn’t running up to his satisfaction, he would yell at her during races. As the pressures mounted, her performances dropped. At one invitational, I placed her in a Junior Varsity race to take some of that pressure off her, and the father publicly argued with me about demoting her. He would not listen, and things got worse for Nicole. And then there I was, sitting with her one October afternoon as she waited to be picked up late from practice. She was crying. She said she couldn’t stand it anymore. Cross-Country was no fun; it had become just pressure and arguments and oppressive expectations. So I broke one of those cardinal, unwritten rules of coaching. I told her she had my permission to quit.  It was, I thought, the only useful thing I could do for her at that point. Nicole didn’t quit, but though she decided to stick out the season, she never joined another West Genesee team.  

 Situations like that are by far the most discouraging moments of coaching—but they are also the reason it’s important we know why we coach and exactly what we are trying to accomplish for young athletes.

 In the end, principled coaching is always worth the effort, and it will help you get it right most of the time.  Regardless of everything else going on, coaches can make sure they are doing it right. And if they do, their athletes will know--some sooner, and some later.

 I’ll close with a letter from Morgan, a former runner of mine, a graduate of St. Lawrence University now living in metropolitan New Jersey and working in a running store.

December 20, 2005

Hi V:

I like how I tell you that I’ll write to you and then I don’t. I’ve been so busy since I’ve gotten back—curse of retail in the Christmas season—plus, I got a position as a coach with a local catholic prep school(volunteer basis). I can say that the first time they called me coach I was pretty excited.

It was really nice to see you at the race for Thanksgiving, glad to hear that your team is shaping up so well. SLU is always recruiting—please spread the word or feel free to contact myself, Kerry, or the coaching staff with anybody who may remotely have an interest. I think SLU can win anyone over. Our facilities are now the best in DIII[(and there may be some coaching changes/restructuring)]

Which I guess is a really crappy segue into a discussion about coaching that I wanted to share with you. I greatly underappreciated you while I was in school and didn’t realize that not everyone has a first coach like you(or even a second for that matter). What you taught me helped me to self-diagnose when I was having a problem(and help others) and “the shoe thing” obviously stuck(it did help me land this job). I find a lot of your style in me and my leadership techniques and coaching methods. My running philosophy is different than anyone else that I’ve run with and met—the most valuable being training by listening to the connection between your body and mind. No one can define “comfortably hard” by a time; you have to feel it. Although I could hit any split demanded of me—my favorite workouts remain those in which you connect time, body and mind—that’s why I love racing so much. I hope that I can take what you and the SLU coaches taught me and transpose it to my new runners. Being around “young blood” and excitement can really refuel my love for the sport.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is thank you. I know that I thought and sometimes still do think that theatre and the arts are my passion, but I have realized that running is my passion and the other is my hobby. Thank you for instilling this love and having faith in me and my decisions. Sometimes I feel very few people understand, but seeing you in Baldwinsville made me feel better that I’m doing the right thing. Thanks again. Happy holidays and best of luck for the coming track season.

Morgan

And I thank all of you for the opportunity to be here this evening.

One of my most discouraging experiences of coaching was not the fault of any athlete.

On a clear, crisp October day, I sat with Nicole(not her real name) after cross-country practice, waiting for her ride home to arrive. A young runner with impressive potential, hers had been an oppressive season. Only an underclassman, her father had already boasted about the college athletic scholarship she would earn. He had argued with me publicly once about placing her in a junior varsity invitational race instead of varsity. At dual meets, he would scream at her to run faster with the leaders, so much so that following one race another concerned parent confronted him in the parking lot and they argued heatedly. On that pristine autumn afternoon, Nicole told me she couldn’t stand it any more; it was all pressure and no fun. Having failed to influence the parents, I did what I thought I never would: I told her she had my permission to quit. She instead hung on for the remainder of the season, but she never joined another team.

There are, of course, such stories from other sports--discouraging tales of formative sporting moments and experiences stolen from young athletes.

That from a parent on a sports forum. What’s ironic is that while too many parents and coaches can’t seem to understand what youth sports are for, an increasing number of kids get the picture and are responding with their feet: "Over 35% of the millions of children who play youth sports quit after the first year of competition. 85% of the children who continue to play dropped out of organized sports all together between the ages of 10 and 17." (Youth First: Why Kids Quit Sports, www.youthfirst.info)

A once silly question now begs to be seriously considered: who really ‘owns’ youth and scholastic sports these days?

Looking around, it’s sometimes hard to tell. The possessive excesses are spread across the spectrum of those affecting youth sports. Over-zealous parents on one end who refuse to step back and simply let their child enjoy practicing and competing. Travel teams, clubs and out-of-season programs on the other end that step in and literally seize control of the evenings and weekends of a family for months on end. And the middle landscape is wide enough for everything in between: unrestrained alumni plotting against Athletic Directors; parents dictating school athletic priorities; pee-wee football practices run like high school teams and high school coaches trying to replicate college programs; school boards micro-managing sports programs. It goes on. Too many young athletes today are living every one’s sporting dreams but their own.

If we really want to know, the kids will tell us what they want out of sports. Firstly, they want to participate, to play, to compete. The Josephson Institute of Ethics, in their Sportsmanship Survey of 2004, found the following: "72% of both males and females say they would rather play on a team with a losing record than sit on the bench for a winning team." Watching winning teammates from the sidelines probably isn’t the great benchwarmers character builder that we coaches and parents pretend it is. The University of Maine Sport & Coaching Initiative’s report, Sports Done Right, cites the following as a Core Principle for student-athletes: "Each student who meets the eligibility standards has the opportunity to participate and learn through sports." Their report recommends several practices that will promote that principle: 1. Proper school funding of all interscholastic and intramural sports; 2. Support of alternative athletic programs for athletes who are cut from teams or who choose not to try out for interscholastic teams: 3. Academic eligibility standards that better reflect the potentially positive effects of athletic involvement. Added to that list might be stronger school support of ‘no-cut’ sports.

Secondly, kids value enjoying their sports more than they value winning at their sports. That’s a hard concept for many coaches to swallow. According to the same Sportsmanship Survey, only one in five athletes felt they had to win in order to enjoy their sport. ‘Having fun’ is a very real objective in youth sports, especially in the pre-high school years. And a big part of the fun is, believe it or not, learning. While school teachers struggle daily to make learning exciting for students, sports seem to have that all worked out—as long as athletes are allowed the learning opportunities that sports provide. I have taught middle-school students who seemed to view long division lessons as a form of state-sponsored torture. But after school, those same students can’t get enough of down-and-out pass pattern drills. Both are basic skills. Watch any well-coached Modified sports team, and you will witness young athletes having a good time learning the fundamental skills of their sport. Aside from social reasons, it’s primarily why they are there. The Sports Done Right core principle in that regard states: "Learning and personal growth form the foundation for interscholastic and intramural sports." The word winning is missing from that formula.

Thirdly, athletes don’t want to feel excessively judged by others about their sports participation and sports efforts, whether that be by a coach, a parent or the demanding spectators in the stands. This is a fine line to tread because any decent coach maintains two loyalties. One is to the athletes; the other is to the sport. Sometimes the two don’t mesh, especially where 50% efforts or lackluster commitment can’t be greeted by coaches with the enthusiasm that some young athletes have been taught to expect for any of their efforts. Still, this is where the logical consequences of sports, whether it be playing time, competitive competence or simply making a team, can be the strongest teachers. Young athletes figure out their comparative abilities pretty quickly. It’s when adults try to pretend otherwise that the stage is set for parent-coach battles. And the losers are usually the athletes.

For some parents, it’s difficult to remain appropriately detached from a child’s sporting efforts, but one thing is certain: athletes don’t need a second coach at the dinner table each night. What they need is a parent who views sports as only a tool for improving the life of their child. To the extent that they assist their athlete’s teams while refraining from usurping the roles of the coach, they strengthen those programs and enhance their athlete’s sporting experiences. Some of my greatest parents have confessed to knowing nothing about the nuances of distance training. But they sure raised great kids, disciplined, self-assured, goal-oriented kids who were then capable of succeeding at competitive running.

One healthy trend is the move toward teaching more individual, potentially life-long, physical activities in high school physical education classes. But why wait for high school when too many have already been ‘taught’ that athletic success means only team-sports success and have drifted off in negative directions? An improved balance between team and individual physical education experiences in the elementary and middle school years would be better for all kids. Physical education teachers on those levels who have introduced students to snowshoeing, hiking or running are already demonstrating just that.

Unfortunately, some simply claim the solution is a return to those "good old days." Their calls are fueled by memories of riding the bike after school to the dusty, weed-infested local ball park with a chicken wire backstop and a left-field home run fence that doubles as boundary for the local cemetery. In that perfect world, kids are choosing up their own sides, cracking jokes while wacking line drives and arguing ever close call until someone realizes it’s supper time and the bike tires spin as the place empties out in 40 seconds flat….

Yeah, well, those days are irrevocably gone. And they weren’t so "good" if you were a girl and not allowed to play with the boys. The next best thing is to give back to kids as much of scholastic and youth sports as possible. For adults, that means giving up some of what was never really theirs in the first place.

They sure know how to yank my runners’ chains. Any time one of the scholastic distance runners I coach gets dragged into a silly my-sport’s-better-than-your-sport argument with a non-runner and makes a loyal attempt to defend our arcane pursuit, the opposition can usually declare checkmate with seven simple words: yeah, but running is not a sport.

Talk about incendiary comments. You may as well tell a distance runner that he or she was switched at birth. Ever see a competitive runner froth at the mouth before racing?

When that ultimate put-down is indignantly described the next before a team practice, I try to sympathize. "Invite them to a week of our practices," I’ll offer, knowing full well that a week of hill repeats, segmented thresholds, surge intervals, a long run and races would simply reinforce why such fools utter their seven word invectives in the first place.

The truth is, they have a point.

As a competitive runner pre-dating Nike Waffle Trainers and as an long-time observer of the steady rise of team sports and the so-called ‘soccer revolution’ in America, it’s painfully obvious to me why your average scholastic students don’t flock to the no-cut, life-long sports of track or cross-country. Forget the mumbo-jumbo about adolescent lemming behavior. Disregard the soccer/basketball/lacrosse parents burning up with ‘Scholarship Fever.’ Ignore the rising average weight of American youth. From the perspective of the athletes themselves, there are other more potent reasons why most teens would rather eat dirt daily than run competitively.

If allowed, football players would probably wear their helmets to General Physics and lacrosse sticks would clog the classroom aisles of every northeastern United States middle school. Girls would style softball gloves into pocketbooks and soccer shin guards would become de rigueur apparel for navigating crowded hallways. Especially for young athletes, one of the great charms of any sport is its toys--all the ‘stuff’ necessary to play that particular game: shoulder pads, goggles, batting gloves, ad infinitum.

Distance runners, by comparison, are pathetically equipped. No ornaments--the physics of the sport prohibit it. For runners, less is more. How anti-consumer is that? Sure, they have the neat, removable spikes they can fiddle with, but try walking those weapons into any school and see how expertly janitors can gang tackle. For young adults, the apparel and toys of a sport are powerful symbols of identity, and the trouble is, runners just can’t muster up enough paraphernalia that shouts ‘look at me, I’m a distance runner.’ That’s a problem, a big problem.

Nobody wants to admit it, but we live for our sports rules. The more complex the rules of the game, the better. We prove our cerebral fitness not by our personal great books lists or analytical political discussions around the dinner table, but by how complicated we can make our sports. Consider, for instance, the myriad of rules regulating any particular football play: required line positions; time-between-plays; permitted backfield movement and blocking angles; designated pass receivers; allowable downfield hits, ad nauseum. Here, by comparison, are all the ‘directions’ you need to compete in a 1500 meter race: 1. Don’t start before the gun; 2. Don’t get in anybody else’s way; 3. Stay on the track. Not very impressive. Take a look at the American Federations Rules & Regulations for Track & Cross-Country. It’s a puny little thing. Face it, running the 1500 meter--or any other distance running event--can never become a mass sport. Not enough rules.

Here’s a familiar scene: Two rival cross-country runners at a Sectional Championship figuratively beat each other up for 3.1 miles. They fly from the start, neither giving any quarter. One surges, the other counters. One charges the hill, the other doggedly pushes the carry-over to cover the gap. Shoulder to shoulder for the last mile, they punch in a long, furious finish sprint and barely wobble out of the finish chute erect. Epic sporting battle, great contest of wills. So then what do they do? Does one sulk off to lick his wounds and secretly vow revenge while the other soaks up the adulation of an adoring crowd? No, they stand around congratulating and admiring each other’s effort like best buddies. It’s practically un-American, something not allowed in most athletic venues. Truth be told, nothing irritates the free-market capitalistic system more than the notion that cooperative competition often leads to superior performances. Distance runners suffer for that perception.

This would be a funny story if it wasn’t true. A coach had a very talented distance athlete who quit running to take up a ‘more popular’ sport and lasted exactly one non-varsity season. Why? Well, this former runner later confessed to really wanting to participate in a sport where ‘you get to wear a jersey with your name on it.’

Certainly not true for distance runners. They’re forced to toil heroically on the track or cross-country course in their nameless/number-less singlet, and when they finally lunge exhausted across the finish line someone in the small crowd says "who was that" so the guy next to him says "how the hell do I know?" Had this occurred at a football or soccer game that guy-next-to-him would have said, "look it up in the game program you idiot." That, in a nutshell, is one of the main problems with distance runners. They fail to advertise.

As the Nike ad for runners suggests: "Yeah, we’re different." Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Maybe, in an era of mass popularities, distance running provides a home for all the dangerous oddballs other sports and their spectators don’t know what to do with. And really, if you check closely, those scholar-athlete runners are doing just fine thank you. Anyway, if you took this discussion too seriously, my advice is simple: get qualified help immediately. Talk to a distance runner. Better yet, go out for a long run yourself.

©Syracuse Post-Standard, October 29, 2004

(1000 words)

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Hearts and Minds: Selling Scholastic Distance Running

Hoping to glean some illuminating recruiting tips, I once asked a very successful area coach how he, year after year, convinced gifted athletes to run Cross-Country in a fall scholastic sports arena dominated by football and soccer.

"I beg," he told me.

Unless you coach the perennial state-champ Saratoga girls team, you do what you have to as a Cross-Country coach. And in convincing athletes to endure the rigors of distance running during the fall and other seasons, dedicated area coaches have left few stones unturned.

One area coach speaks about the success he’s enjoyed with "soccer retreads," athletes possessing a running aptitude who tired of the endless battles to make a soccer team or to get playing time. With some quiet persuasion, they switched sports and immediately enjoyed the more direct correlation between effort and success in distance running. Another coach finds distance prospects by giving talks to elementary school classes about the positives of running. And still another creates a substantial database of all the middle school mile fitness run results from which he recruits potential runners. Of course, any distance coach who teaches in his or her school district can usually be found in the hallways between classes, talking up running with students, cajoling and encouraging future distance runners to give our ‘different sport’ a shot.

Still, within a culture that emphasizes ease over effort, and amid a sports climate that usually favors team-oriented spectator sports, promoting distance running among young adults is often a tough sell.

It’s tough because whether as Cross-Country, Indoor or Outdoor Track athletes, running is not perceived as one of those ‘popular’ sports by most high schoolers who place a heavy emphasis on belonging. Potentially superior runners are often drawn first to soccer, football, basketball or lacrosse. Once there, they may remain marginal team sport athletes for years due to the social pull of those sports. It’s no secret that distance running seldom draws the large, boisterous crowds for home meets. Nor do most school districts and booster clubs promote running as energetically as they do field sports.

Distance running is also a tough sell because the choices those athletes must make are demanding. You can’t dabble in distance running. It requires native aerobic ability and speed certainly, but realizing potential is a process of accumulations—accumulations of the miles necessary for maximum fitness, accumulations of the competitive seasons needed to reach running maturity. That means self-discipline and dedication. And sacrifices. Dedicated distance runners almost always give something up, whether it’s that extra school club, an after school/weekend job or just social hang-out time.

And distance running is a tough sell because, ultimately, it requires something of young adults that most other activities do not. While today’s youth don’t hesitate to mix it up physically--jumping high to head a corner kick into the goal or making that dangerous cut over the middle to grab a quick slant pass—distance runners face a unique challenge. For them, competing means no time-outs, no substitutions, no half-times. The bread-and-butter-reality of distance runners, whether training or racing, is sustained discomfort. Stop-and-go sports all have their extreme physical demands, but one are based on a steady, prolonged increase in physical discomfort as a normal condition. Distance running does. That may be why Jerry Smith, who with Mike Guzman coached the Fayetteville-Manlius boys XC team to a State Championship in 1998, recently told the Weedsport XC team that one of things distance running does so well is to define your true character. Or why one of the local legends of distance coaching, Oscar Jensen, observed simply of the long runners, "Those are special cats out there."

The positives of running, as any distance coach understands, are easily overlooked and often undervalued by students, parents and schools alike. Which means it’s usually the distance coach who’s out there promoting running as an avenue to long-term physical and mental well-being. They become advocates for distance running as a life-long sport, one that can be actively pursued years after the notion of a vigorous afternoon game of soccer or lacrosse seems dated—or dangerous.

Sometimes the messages register. At a recent summer half-marathon race, one of my female high school team members ran portions of the 13.1 mile course with a 48 year old woman. Betsy’s reaction? She was duly impressed and declared that was what she hoped to be capable of when she was 48 herself.

Ironically, though, we’re hardly talking about a backwater sport here. Central New York enjoys a very rich distance running tradition and a national reputation for excellence. The long list of state and national level Section III runners roll off the tongues of veteran coaches, from Baldwinsville’s Don Paige, ranked #1 in the World in 1980 for the 800 meter, to two-time high school 1500 meter state champion and subsequent Olympian Jen Rhines of Liverpool, to this year’s three-season state championship runner Tracey Brauksieck of Homer. Section III Cross-Country in 2001 boasted two state champions and thirteen state top-20 teams in the A-D classes. Of the eight Northeast Region female runners who qualified to run in the Footlocker National Scholastic Cross-Country Championship, three were from central New York schools. And as we move into another competitive running year, the Saquoit boys XC team is pre-season ranked #8 in the Northeastern United States.

But the potential Paiges, the Rhines, the Brauksieks, as well as all those below their abilities, are seldom banging on the school nurse’s door to sign up for a distance sport. So the coaches will go out searching for them, the overlooked, the ‘misplaced,’ potential runners. They’ll encourage, they’ll prod, they’ll cajole. They know there are a fair number of "special cats" out there, runners capable of unique things. If only they can be convinced…..

©Syracuse Post-Standard, September 21, 2002

(993 words)

©Christian Science Monitor, August 10, 2000

School’s The Place For Positive Passion

After teaching for almost twenty years, coaching for ten and raising my own children, I have developed at least one opinion about ‘kids these days.’ That opinion is not that we are expecting too much effort from young adults. It is, instead, that we are expecting too many efforts.

This past Fall, for instance, I had to warn my high school cross-country team members about attempting to excel scholastically and athletically while holding down a night-time/weekend job and squeezing in the requisite family/fun time. In the spring, I ‘negotiated’ with runners who wanted to slice their time-pie between track, non-school soccer leagues, clubs, class-trips and family vacations. My head was usually spinning after those conversations. I didn’t know how they were going to ‘just do it’.

Actually, I did. Too many of them were going to load the plate by reducing their involvement in each activity. After practice, homework was going to be wedged between a micro-wave supper and the evening’s club meeting or school function. Families sitting together and discussing their days over dinner would become an antiquated notion for these student athletes. On Saturdays, immediately following their track invitational event or cross-country race, parents were going to whisk them off to a school music festival or to a soccer tournament or to their part-time job. Too many of my athletes were destined to spend their seasons ricocheting from obligation to obligation, inadvertently developing a short attention span for endeavors. This year I was not surprised when a runner needed several days off because she had so overextended herself with activities she was, according to her mother, ‘on the verge of collapse.’ Instead, I was surprised it only happened once.

The problem is not that many students want to be everywhere and do everything. They’ve always wanted that. The problem seems to be us, the parents, teachers and coaches of involved young adults. We seem to have trouble these days saying ‘no’, or even understanding that sometimes ‘no’ is the correct response to a kid’s desire to join one more club or try just one more sport.

Our common culture, after all, heavily promotes the notion of ‘well-roundedness’. People who remain in a particular position or career very long are often perceived as unambitious, in a rut. ‘Growing’ is too frequently equated with changing interests or professions. The job market reinforces the notion by warning us to shy away from specialization and become ‘more flexible’ or risk trapping ourselves in a vanishing job field. Becoming proficient at something is considered a signal to move to other endeavors. Think but a moment of all the sports superstars who can’t be ‘just’ superstars but must also act or sing or play another sport.

Young adults, of course, should enjoy various sports, activities and interests as they grow. They benefit greatly from a variety of experiences. There is, however, an age and a limit beyond which young adults may pay a price for over-involvement. By continually bouncing from activity to activity, from event to event, they can too easily forfeit a chance for good old-fashioned passion.

Webster’s defines passion as extreme, compelling emotion, enthusiasm or fondness. The word derives from the Latin passus, which means to endure or suffer. Once the word is freed from it’s present association with sex, true passion seems in short supply. That’s unfortunate. There are many young adults today, both the over and under involved, who would benefit greatly from pursing reasonable ambitions with passion.

Passion teaches discipline. In healthy forms, passion encourages goal-setting, sacrifice and positive choices--practice instead of the mall, healthy nutrition instead of cravings and long-term personal rewards instead of the momentary thrills of drugs and alcohol.

Passion promotes personal excellence. Personal excellence is not reserved for the stars of our teams or classrooms; it is possible for all students, regardless of their ability levels. More than any particular scholastic grade or athletic achievement, the passionate pursuit of a productive goal is an invaluable experience for later success as an adult. Being exceptionally talented is not critical; being exceptionally committed is critical.

Passion creates links and strengthens a student’s sense of world and community. Passionate learners seek out the people who know what they want to know or can do what they want to do. They read; they talk to people; they think about the objects of their passion and in the process gain a sense of belonging somewhere and to something.

And finally, passion can provide a necessary refuge. My years as a coach have been punctuated by too many after-practice conversations with young athletes in secret distress:

‘My father says we have to move again. I’m so sick of having to move every two years.’

‘They don’t fight any more. They used to. Now they just don’t talk to each other.’

(980 words)

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A SEASON ON THE RUN

This was to have been the autumn of high hopes for our boys Varsity Cross-Country squad. My seniors remembered their early years--two winless seasons. Only last fall, with a few dual-meet victories, had they begun to display the team competitiveness needed to contend in a league typically dominated by eventual state champions and top-10 teams. This was our season to begin arriving, pay-back for the guys who had certainly paid their dues as underclassman.

As I sat in the coach’s locker room with my two best runners, I knew I was about to dash those hopes. The two had violated team rules for the third time that season, demonstrating once again an unwillingness or inability to follow team rules and procedures. Their behavior and attitudes had become a major team problem, and it could no longer be tolerated. Still, as I informed them of their dismissal, I felt for my other runners.

I do not recall exactly all I told the two. The requirement of personal discipline, the need to learn from mistakes, the link between self-sacrifice and excellence--all these were surely mentioned. One statement, though , stuck word-for-word in my mind. I was explaining(or attempting to explain) how the goals of the team take precedence over personal desires. From their expressions and rebuttals I sensed little of that message was reaching home. "Look," I finally said with some exasperation, "I want a team that works more than I want a team that wins."

How archaic of me, I thought later, that in this age of end-zone choreographs, in-your-face slam-jams and home-run-struts, I should be coaching as though TEAM was anything more than an antiquated notion, simply a vehicle for individual displays of talent. Why should I emphasize the rules of team behavior when professional athletes day after day model something very different and even high school coaches sometimes accord more lenient standards of behavior to their stars? Was I merely being naive in trying to build a program based on shared struggles and common glories rather than just the orchestration of individual egos? After all, the pundits claim running is only that, an ‘individual sport.’

There is no fairy-tale ending to this story. The following day, my former front-runners handed in their uniforms and for the remainder of the season we struggled competitively, losing in invitational meets to teams we had previously beaten, finishing far lower in the county and sectional championships than our optimistic August predictions.

But we learned a few things. A co-captain, frustrated to the point of quitting by the team dissension, made a choice to stick out the season. Within two meets, he became our new race leader and was ultimately voted Most Valuable Runner. Other guys stepped up too as we revised our season goals and then nearly obtained them all. By the last race in early November, it felt as though we had run two seasons--and if we hadn’t scored big victories in that second phase, we’d run it harder, tighter as a squad and with more honest enjoyment. The ‘New Unit,’ as I dubbed them, had redefined the notion of winning.

I felt good about the athletes that finished our season, but was bothered by those that didn’t. No one knows what lessons they have taken from their shortened seasons, but I do know it is difficult learning to function on a team by being excluded from that team. The irony is not lost on coaches, who must decide on rosters season after season while under pressures to produce winning teams. Those pressures make it easy to justify ‘weeding out’ unmotivated or ‘problem athletes’ to obtain a winning record. But if scholastic coaches believe(as they should) that participation in sports can provoke positive changes in a young athlete’s attitudes and behavior, then second and third chances are critical. Working harder with kids who haven’t yet learned the demands and values of group participation should be a civic as well as athletic goal for scholastic sports programs. Sure, we make our jobs easier if we only coach the coachable, but we probably do the school, and certainly the athlete, a long-term disservice. My sense of disappointment stemmed not from the season’s losses, but from the small group of runners I was unable, in the end, to discipline and motivate.

Several weeks after our last meet, I ran the Thanksgiving morning Turkey-Trot Race with my son. Several of my team members were there and among them one of the dismissed runners. I don’t blame him for eyeing me warily as I approached. To his credit, he chatted amiably and then offered positive plans and ideas for the fall of 1996. I told him I was looking forward to having him back the following year.

That season is a long way off, and even then he will have to prove his words the old fashioned way--with hard, selfless practice and preparation. But something tells me he will take advantage of this chance to improve and contribute to the team’s success.

I also think it’s going to be a very good year.

©Syracuse Post-Standard, December 15, 1995

(880 Words)

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Managing Teams With A ‘Big-Tent’ Philosophy

Jim Vermeulen

Congratulations. All your hard work at recruiting for the upcoming season has paid off. At the team’s pre-season meeting, you’re staring out at a school classroom packed with students. What you see is a sizeable number of athletes, a wide range of athletic talent and abilities, a breath of experience, and, probably, a distinct divergence of goals and aspirations. They all, however, share an eagerness to get going with the season, so the question is: now what do you do?

That depends. Scholastic coaches are typically contracted by their schools to run no-cut track or cross-country programs, but within that parameter coaches can make significant decisions about the kinds of programs they wish to create. Coaching is a balance of loyalties—loyalty to athletes and loyalty to the sport. Coaches can, however, knowingly tip that balance. The result in one direction is coaches who aim toward feel-good ‘participation’ teams. These teams often lack discipline, standards or rigor, and athlete success is haphazard. Tipped the other way, some coaches work to create elite programs geared toward state or national championships. While these teams usually garner positive publicity and generate strong local support, they often reach that level of excellence by winnowing the field, steadily sloughing off the less talented and less committed, reaffirming the pyramid nature of youth sports involvement in this country.   

If you’ve worked to expand the numbers of athletes in your program, your philosophy probably tips more toward inclusive teams and creating a “big-tent.” For its part, a big-tent philosophy of program management attempts to maintain that balance of loyalties while addressing two current social realities in sport, both summed up in the following statements:

1.    “72% of both males and females say they would rather play on a team with a losing record than sit on the bench for a winning team.”(Sports Done  Right)

2.    The percentage of children aged 6–11 years in the United States who were obese increased from 7% in 1980 to nearly 20% in 2008. Similarly, the percentage of adolescents aged 12–19 years who were obese increased from 5% to 18% over the same period. ”(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

The first statement, taken from a state of Maine study to improve its scholastic sports, suggests that kids sometimes have a better idea of the true value of sports than the adults who coach them. Obviously, every coach should want to win; the questions are how winning is defined and to what end a coach will go to win.

The second statement suggests that, in addition to other social factors, this country doesn’t use sports very effectively to promote fitness in the general population. Some scholastic coaches may simply believe: that’s not my job. The big-tent philosophy assumes it is.

A big-tent track or cross-country program is ‘big’ simply because it encourages productive participation by young adults that other programs might ‘cut.’ In that regard, it may be the most difficult coaching path to follow. The philosophy assumes that with a lot of hard work, core principles and realistic standards, athletes of varied talent can enjoy success together. It invokes a model where, to the greatest extent possible, effort is rewarded equally to achievement. In the big tent, winning is deliberately subjective. There is room in there for both the cross-country runner who finishes third at the Footlocker National Championship and the team member who works equally hard to maintain a cherished position at the front of the JV pack. Done correctly, both can consider themselves successful in that program. The big-tent philosophy believes that, for the vast majority of scholastic athletes, effort and commitment are the most valuable lessons derived from youth sports--and those lessons can be learned by anyone, regardless of talent. 

A big-tent program starts with a simple declaration by the coach that the rewards of athletic endeavor will be shared by as many student-athletes as possible. This may differ from what the AD, the parents or community members believe to be the purpose of the sport. Those differences can co-exist, however, because unlike colleagues in the rectangle sports, the yearly fates of Track and Cross-Country coaches are usually not as tightly wedded to win-loss records. There must be accountability, of course, but in a big-tent program, accountability for athlete improvement is paramount—and it applies not just to the upper echelon athletes, the ‘scorers,’ but to all athletes who are committed to showing up, working hard and competing fully.

You cannot, however, hold athletes responsible for improvement if you do not hold yourself responsible for coaching that improvement. Obviously, coaches need to have—or know how to arrange—effective training for all the athletes in their program. As Simmons and Freeman suggest, training must be:

§  Progressive

§  Event-Specific

§  Athlete-centered

The training must be progressive as either controlled, increasing work loads or in the sequential honing of event skills. The training should also be event-specific. Pole vaulters don’t train runway speed by running repeat 800’s and 5k cross-country runners don’t spend all their non-long run training at 10k pace.

Lastly, training works best in the big-tent when it is Athlete-Centered. That mode of coaching described by Simmons/Freeman differs sharply from the traditional Coach-Centered model. In the Coach-Centered model:

§  Communication tends to be one-way: coach-to-athlete

§  Controls are concentrated with coaches(“my way or the highway”)

§  Goals/expectations come from coach

In contrast, the Athlete-Centered model understands that young adults typically have a lot on their plate, track or cross-country being just one of several major activities that demand their attention. Acknowledgement of that reality is essential for success, so for the Athlete-Centered team:

•        The goal is a “dialogue,” with athlete input valuable and central to development

•        The athlete’s internal controls and discipline are fostered and promoted

•        Goals/expectations come from the athlete, with the coach serving as a ‘reality consultant’

It can be argued that there are only so many seats on the team bus and that there can only be three scorers in a track dual meet event. In the big tent, however, it’s not the job of the coach to make every athlete a varsity performer but instead to offer all athletes a role in the team’s success. All athletes are encouraged to be, as Bill Aris of Fayetteville-Manlius has described, “contributors” versus merely participants. This is no easy task. Every scholastic coach can identify team members who are willing to settle for less than the sport demands, who are satisfied with levels of undeveloped talent or who may even actively resist the training prescribed.  Those team members diminish the ‘value-added’ effects of others who work hard to be contributors. Coaches need to deal with such detractors through reasonable rules, standards and consistent team practices. There are, after all, basic bottom-lines in the big-tent. Effort is one of them.

A corollary to the basic requirement of effort is the need for sportsmanship. Good sportsmanship implies a mature perspective and a level of discipline--and since self-discipline is one of the basic selling points of scholastic sports, it only makes sense to establish positive sportsmanship as a standard and a requirement for participation. This is especially important in the big-tent where the self-discipline of its varied members is required to maximize coaching effectiveness. Time directed toward repeatedly controlling or correcting the behavior of athletes is time better spent coaching. We have all witnessed the boorish behavior of self-centered or undisciplined athletes. It is not the job of the scholastic coach to continually condone or rationalize such behavior. The job is to change it.

The ultimate aim of the big-tent program is, of course, to create successful athletes. What ‘successful’ means is always a debatable topic. My definition of the successful athlete is one who:

·       Is goal driven, whether goals involve performance, personal or training objectives

·       Makes disciplined time/activity choices in pursuit of those goals

·       Responds positively to challenges required to achieve goals

·       Learns from mistakes or set-backs

Lastly, let’s not forget about the importance of parents in a big-tent program. If you accept athlete diversity in your track or cross-country program, it means that same diversity will likely be found in the parents of those athletes. Some of them will know a lot about their young athlete’s sport; some will know next to nothing. Some, unfortunately, may view you as a babysitter and chose to be detached from their athlete’s involvement. At least initially, you have to meet parents on their own terms. Open and frequent communication about all aspects of training and competing is a deliberate strategy that allows parents their level of involvement while encouraging a better understanding of the sport’s values for their son or daughter. The I-don’t-talk-to-parents paradigm simply doesn’t work with a big-tent program. Conversations can, however, get interesting with such a diverse group. A coach may one day be rationalizing the training regimen of a state-level middle-distance runner to a pair of involved parents and the next day be explaining to an angry mother that the warm-up drill described to her inattentive daughter was “butt kicks” not “butt licks.”

Open lines of communication do create obvious benefits. When it comes to important basic information such as competition schedules or practice times, or when team issues arise that require rumor-control, redundancy is a good thing, and staying in touch with parents via newsletters, parent meetings and even weekly e-mails prevents far more problems than it creates. I have variously described the parents of our track/cross-country programs as athlete mentors, attitude-adjustment experts, supportive spectators, team managers and historians.  They are all of these things and more--if allowed and encouraged to be involved. Perhaps most importantly, they are the group that gets the attention of the AD or the school board should your program need support.

The oft-used term, “a commitment to excellence,” has multiple interpretations, and on many scholastic teams that directive has been used to exclude rather than include. On a team with a functional big-tent philosophy, commitment and excellence can be pursued by all team members, regardless of talent. The coach just has to do the work that makes it possible.

If track and cross-country coaches seek to broaden the student-base of their sports—and they do so in a manner that is productive and successful for all the athletes—they will never have trouble filling school rooms at pre-season meetings. They will field teams with both quality athletes and large numbers of accomplished team members. These will be teams where, as Oscar Jensen, the coaching dean of Central New York, once remarked succinctly, “It’s about the athletes.”

(1806 words)

References:

Take The Lead, Scott Simmons and Will Freeman, c. 2006

Sports Done Right^TM: A Call to Action on Behalf of Maine's Student-Athletes; University of Maine, 2005

“Childhood Obesity Facts”, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, http://www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/obesity/facts.htm,  Atlanta, Georgia

Author Biography:

Since 1986, Jim Vermeulen has coached 94 Modified and Varsity Cross-Country, Indoor Track and Track teams at West Genesee High School in Camillus, New York. Those teams have included: league champions; state top-20 XC squads; individual state and NY Federation champions; three national top-10 steeplechase athletes; three individual/relay All-Americans. Coach Vermeulen is currently working on a book chronicling the running year of scholastic athletes.

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Cross-Country Journal - 2012

Week 1 – Opening Week

Monday:

     8:00am. While Coach Delsole(“Del”) and I chatted about the season’s inaugural team practice, the runners meandered up in adolescent clumps to take seats on the grassy slope abutting the Camillus Middle School gym. What Del and I recognized immediately was that neither of us had uttered a single “who’s that” to any approaching team members. A good sign. The success of our well-attended voluntary summer team runs was again validated. With the group assembled, we moved inside to the cafeteria for paperwork and introductions via attendance. Team member Nicole sharpened pencils for their summer training questionnaires while I launched into some comments. “You will be judged,” was one of them. “Coach Delsole and I will judge you. Teammates will judge you, competitors too. It’s the nature of the sport. It’s life. Coach and I will know—if we don’t already--what you are capable of accomplishing as runners. That is what will be judged—how well you fulfill your potential.”

     I then asked who knew what a meritocracy was. Blank stares met the question until Nick bailed me out with a spot-on definition. We covered the respect-for-talent territory, with its attendant danger of ruffled feathers should freshmen eclipse seniors. Our teams have seldom dealt with that problem, but the potential always exists. As I passed out papers and the troops penciled their summer training achievements, Del openly admired the talent on both squads but added a warning that, depending on how we all worked together, both teams could be either really good or merely average.

     We had laid our cards on the table and talked long enough. Del’s famous(or infamous) repertoire of jokes, puns and double entendres would be parceled out later at the appropriate moments. Paperwork submitted, the runners emptied out onto the back school grounds to do what they had come to do: train.

Tuesday – Thursday:

     How easily these groups--who had already practiced 3-4 days a week together all summer--dispatched the jobs at hand.

     There was a 3000 meter time trial on Tuesday to check fitness levels and allow us to more effectively group runners for training. During that, a suspicion was confirmed. With Laura following her alternate training schedule--one that did not include a hard 3000 meter effort--Lindsay took over the lead chores. The next three runners across after Lindsay, however, were freshman: Bridget, Annie and Sara. Del’s nod in my direction as each crossed the line said it all. The same held true for the boys when freshman Kal finished first. Youth will likely be served this season for the West Genesee Wildcats.

     There was a Wednesday of solid aerobic work, a mixture of general conditioning run and fartlek that reacquainted team members with our trails and led to the discovery of a hornets’ nest the size of a basketball astride the inner loop of our back field trails. Certainly, that’s going to end badly—for the hornets.

     And there was a tempo run Thursday on the track. We wanted precision; we wanted the runners to hit dictated targets and for the newcomers to acquaint themselves with this most difficult of dances along the aerobic cliff. Tempo conducted properly is an acquired taste, maybe the most difficult training form for high schoolers to master--which is why some coaches don’t even bother trying until those younger runners mature to upperclassmen. Someone, however, forgot to deliver that suggestion to freshman Kal, who teamed with Ethan and clicked off laps with metronomic pace. Standing midfield, Del and I scanned it all—who was capable of staying ‘on the wagon’ of their group, who threw in the towel and fell back. Who ran with an asymmetrical arm-swing, who evidenced, even to the naked eye, pronounced heel-striking. All important information. So many runners believe they practice in anonymity, unaware of how much ‘data’ they present to any coach willing to observe and note. We note a lot.

Friday:

     The indomitable Maime Trotter once told Gilly Hopkins: “Nothing to make you happy like doing good on a tough job.” Great team races are, indeed, the grand goal of the season, but it’s the great team practices that make those days possible, and doing good on a tough job is what makes great practice days among the best moments of any season. Del and I didn’t have to tell them they were doing well on their 5x1000 intervals. It was early morning, but they were feeling it, pushing their intervals, staying strict on recovery times, pumping each other up on the start line of our picturesque back field loop.

     We didn’t need the watch numbers to know. Catie elected to move to a faster group; Lindsay moved up also toward the end of her workout because she wanted the challenge of a chase. The boys’ front group started out hammering and never stopped. As planned, they pulled on racing flats for the last two intervals and churned off the line, intent on compression. It was impressive stuff for early season, and though the ‘data’ later would reveal a tight four second #1-5 spread on their interval averages, we didn’t need the numbers to know it was a very good day. Gathering themselves up after going negative in their final interval, they exchanged hi-fives. Del and I just smiled. We didn’t need to tell them anything.

Week 2 – Time Trial

        The week seems to pick up speed; time accelerates toward school’s opening—much to the relief of most parents. Our early week practices are filled, simply, with the work to be done: the conditioning runs, the tempo paces, the hills, the spots of speed. No complaints from the athletes. Heads are bent to the tasks at hand, and we use up all our allotted practice time. A runner I thought lost to other pursuits this season suddenly reappears in week two, and one that ran every day of week one goes AWOL this week. Another one e-mails to apologize for her absence the past two weeks; this runner must change school districts due to family issues. Adding and sadly subtracting—nothing surprises me any more.

     The troops muscle through a hill circuit workout on Tuesday and return to the high school Wednesday morning to continue weight lifting and strength drills. Thursday they run the course at a conditioning pace, followed by more drills and some fartlek. Friday’s coming, and I remind them not to overdo the fair.

     One of the local objective hazards to safe training in upstate is the New York State Fair. Section III runners seeking walking-around-money get jobs there and stand on their feet for hours after—or prior to—practices, ensuring dead legs. Team members, of course, make annual fair pilgrimages in order to—among other things adolescent--test their gustatory toughness with the likes of blooming onions, fried dough and God knows what else can be rammed on a stick and deep fried(old trainers?). We can only counsel restraint and count the days till the curtain falls on the Great New York State Fair.

     Soon enough, Friday does arrive and that means the Blue-Gold Championship, our team course time trial and a first glimpse of runners at race-pace. We use our annual 5k trial on the home course to check race-readiness and readjust training groups. More importantly, however, the trial provides a preview/review of meet procedures for team members. Of course, that doesn’t stop them from hyping up a rivalry with shirts and team cheers. One alumnus, an eventual two-time All-American relay member in track, told me his only running regret at WG was never racing on a winning Blue-Gold team.

     Del and I arrive about 7:25am and begin set-up chores: haul out course equipment; set cones for the starting loop; put up tables and unload scoring equipment. It’s done by the time all the runners have assembled at 8:00am. We walk to the basketball court, and remind them of the essentials: manage your time so you arrive at the line on time for final preparations; warm up all your energy systems properly; have a good race plan and—most importantly--execute. As I instruct the non-racing ‘pit crew’ on their various timing and recording jobs, Del gathers the runners on the start-line for sprint-outs to get heart rates up. By 8:45am, they are ready to go, so with a small and enthusiastic crowd of parents gathered nearby, Del sounds the horn and they shoot out. The 2012 competitive season is under way.

     I bike into the back field to exhort the runners and shout out one/two mile splits while Del manages the finish. Our field has already burst into its annual presentation of goldenrod, a feast for the eyes unless you suffer the wrong allergy. Exiting the woods loop near the mile mark, Kal and Nate have opened a slight gap on Jack, Ethan and Mike—which is not the race plan. The outer and inner loops of the back field do nothing to close that gap, but as they plunge back into the woods on the reverse loop, Will is advancing through the following pack, picking off teammates at a steady pace, racing a huge chunk of time faster than his previous year’s trial. A 2011 mid-JV runner until Manhattan, Will had then won his Big Apple JV race and finished in the team’s top-7 during subsequent championships. He is already ahead of that schedule this season—another good sign—but his teammates are conceding nothing, and Will sees only the backsides of Kal, Nate, Jack, Ethan and Mike across the finish. Our team depth has begun to emerge.

     With Laura completing an alternate run and Lindsay on the precautionary sidelines with a sore hamstring, the newcomers and other girls’ veterans take center stage. They’ve run the summer miles; they’ve lifted weights, done the drills, then pushed hard in our pre-season team practices. Now is the first opportunity to bring all that together--and despite what we’ve seen and surmised, everything is yet to be proven and it’s still just possibilities and potential. “Hope had kept him going, but it was the doubt that gave him joy” Christopher Tilghman wrote of one of his short story characters. Watching the girls race unfold, I have to agree. Sometimes the not knowing is the most exciting part of coaching.

    Five kilometers later, however, we know a lot more. We know that newcomer Sara is the real deal. Pacing with the girls front group through a conservative first mile, she moved in front on the back field’s outer loop and took honors for the girls at the finish line. We know that sophomore Elise, close behind Sara, has everything it takes to become a major team competitor--and top sectional runner. We know that Alycia, running a minute and a half faster than her 2011 time, is bringing the senior leadership the team needs. And we know that Eva, with a  5^th place finish for the girls, is going to impress both teammates and competitors alike this fall.  The girls’ team is clearly a work in progress, but progress is not in short supply.

     Still, when they return from their twenty-minute post run and strides, there remains an admixture of relief, satisfaction and disappointment etched on various runner faces.  “Spend time with the Race Analysis I will e-mail you,” I tell them when we assemble in the school cafeteria. “Make a plan for improvement, then put this race--whether good or bad--in the box, close that box and move on.”  With all the aromas of brunch food wafting from the nearby tables(courtesy of our Friends of Wildcats parents), it’s not hard tell what really holds their attention.  Time for food….

Photo credits: Coach Vermeulen/Fred Leff

 Week 3 – ‘Moments of Doubt’

     It’s Labor Day—so they will labor. Circling back from weekend holiday events, all but a few converge on our summer Erie Canal practice site for perhaps the final time this season. To my thinking, they’re lucky. With the swirl of adjustments they’ll make to start school—new daily schedules, altered sleep patterns, the reintroduction of academic pressures—we decline to add a weekend invitational to the mix. This will be a training week. Racing can wait.

    With the group gathered at tables under the covered pavilion that’s home-base when at the canal, Del and I lay out the week ahead, and then briefly reflect back to Friday’s time trial. Amid the considerable positives, a few things are bothering us. Several of the Race Analysis responses  indicated runners disappointed with not responding well at key junctures of the time trial. We all know the situations: a competitor overtakes and passes you; a competitor uses a strategic surge and pulls away; your competitor simply holds a pace longer into a race than you think you can. These are the potential moments of doubt all runners sooner or later face, some more frequently than others. What do you do? How are you going to respond? More often as not, the response leads more to the character or attitude of the runner than to his or her physical abilities. We can train race responses. The will to respond comes from the runner. So it’s a good thing to have a runners irritated that they did not respond, that they allowed themselves to be passed or left behind. I talk to one of those after we complete core drills and prepare for the night’s tempo run. “Practice it in training,” I tell him. “When the moment comes to either push or fall back, make the decision to go. You can.”  Thinking of that runner and others, Del warns the entire group about the dangers of allowing negative thinking to creep into races, creating foregone conclusions. His solution is simply: “Don’t do that.” They then churn off down the canal tow path on their three or four mile assignments.

     Freed from the expectations of a Saturday race day, we slip into a comfortable hard-easy practice pattern. Tuesday, the mileage stays up, but the intensity drops with a variety of aerobic training. We end faster, though, with our ‘sticks’ drill where runners accelerate over a series of wooden sticks placed at increasing distances. Sticks are both prescriptive and diagnostic. Besides speed/turn-over development, it tends to bring form issues into high relief. For our freshman surprise, Sara, that means heel-striking. She tries to pendulum her feet down the increasingly spaced sticks and winds up looking like a majorette prancing out onto the football field for the half-time show. We all have a laugh about it, and I give her tips on changing form which she immediately adopts for a visible improvement—she’s a quick study. Following the drill, they’re off on a short cool-down as the Modified runners arrive for a late practice and bring the rain with them. We’ve timed it just right. The modies are not so lucky.

     “You can only do what you can do,” Garrison Keillor once insisted, “but you’re responsible for that much.” In a way, that’s the tone of the week—get at it and do what you can do, do what you’re responsible for. They nail a hill repeat workout on Wednesday, with some comparing a similar summer workout almost a month prior. Lindsay pushes herself relentlessly, lopping almost 15 seconds off her previous 1000 meter interval average and over a minute on her accumulated time. For Bridgett and Alycia, it’s a ridiculous 20 second improvement on intervals. On the boys’ side, all of our top runners have dropped 10 or more seconds. Del doesn’t have to ask while I’m smiling to myself and offering up low-fives to the tired runners.

     Following a Thursday at the high school for easy running, weights, drills and strides, we are back on the Camillus Middle School trails Friday for an advance to the mile distance in interval work. Following Wednesday/Thursday half school days, this is their first full dose of school, and that means waiting to see if the Sports Shuttle Buses will deliver all my runners on time and together. Glitches prevent that, but the two disparate groups are soon synchronized, warmed up and ready to go on our interval loop. The assignment is simple and relatively conservative: three miles, or approximately 5000 meters of work at 5k race pace in mile intervals. As groups form, Lou and I are quietly approaching several runners and talking moments of doubt. Specifically—practice the hard decision to, when necessary, go.

     The warmish, humid weather moderates when the sun disappears behind clouds. The groups sequentially step to the line and surge off, disappearing down-trail around a curve, racing toward the woods loop they will navigate before circling home along the outer loop of the back field. With the interval distance increased and the total recovery time reduced, we wonder how the runners will react. The boys’ front group is, in fact, hauling and all business, but a freshman foursome of Hunter, A.J., Dominic and Tom have also banded to push and pull each other through strong miles. They’ve been warned they will ‘pay their dues’ this first year, but it certainly looks like they don’t mind. “Are you sure this is a mile?” Del asks after listening to some of the interval times. “It’s a mile,” I assure him.

    And it is, after all, a matter of accumulations. They’ve heard me say that again and again. Accumulated miles of training, accumulated seasons. There’s no way to rush the process, and the ‘ah-ha’ moments of elevated distance running performance are few and far between. Bill Aris of F-M stated it succinctly when suggesting that, in his highly successful program, “the process is the goal.” So true. There is, in the end, the work. And if you expect to succeed at distance running, you’d better love the work.

     We’re seeing evidence of that. We’re seeing less doubt and more confidence. Work ably accomplished, the tired runners mill around the car, sipping water and logging the interval times we will use for analysis and future reference—another marker workout. They still have easy running and they still have core, but we already know this week’s ending on a high note. Del is a race guy who derives great pleasure from watching the runners he’s trained pop the big competition performances. But he stops as team members pace away on their cool-down run. “You know,” he asks, “how you say a great workout is sometimes as exciting as a great race?”

     “Yeah?” I answer, wondering where he’s going with this.

     “Well you’re right,” he says, smiling.

Week 3 – ‘Moments of Doubt’

     It’s Labor Day—so they will labor. Circling back from weekend holiday events, all but a few converge on our summer Erie Canal practice site for perhaps the final time this season. To my thinking, they’re lucky. With the swirl of adjustments they’ll make to start school—new daily schedules, altered sleep patterns, the reintroduction of academic pressures—we decline to add a weekend invitational to the mix. This will be a training week. Racing can wait.

    With the group gathered at tables under the covered pavilion that’s home-base when at the canal, Del and I lay out the week ahead, and then briefly reflect back to Friday’s time trial. Amid the considerable positives, a few things are bothering us. Several of the Race Analysis responses  indicated runners disappointed with not responding well at key junctures of the time trial. We all know the situations: a competitor overtakes and passes you; a competitor uses a strategic surge and pulls away; your competitor simply holds a pace longer into a race than you think you can. These are the potential moments of doubt all runners sooner or later face, some more frequently than others. What do you do? How are you going to respond? More often as not, the response leads more to the character or attitude of the runner than to his or her physical abilities. We can train race responses. The will to respond comes from the runner. So it’s a good thing to have a runners irritated that they did not respond, that they allowed themselves to be passed or left behind. I talk to one of those after we complete core drills and prepare for the night’s tempo run. “Practice it in training,” I tell him. “When the moment comes to either push or fall back, make the decision to go. You can.”  Thinking of that runner and others, Del warns the entire group about the dangers of allowing negative thinking to creep into races, creating foregone conclusions. His solution is simply: “Don’t do that.” They then churn off down the canal tow path on their three or four mile assignments.

     Freed from the expectations of a Saturday race day, we slip into a comfortable hard-easy practice pattern. Tuesday, the mileage stays up, but the intensity drops with a variety of aerobic training. We end faster, though, with our ‘sticks’ drill where runners accelerate over a series of wooden sticks placed at increasing distances. Sticks are both prescriptive and diagnostic. Besides speed/turn-over development, it tends to bring form issues into high relief. For our freshman surprise, Sara, that means heel-striking. She tries to pendulum her feet down the increasingly spaced sticks and winds up looking like a majorette prancing out onto the football field for the half-time show. We all have a laugh about it, and I give her tips on changing form which she immediately adopts for a visible improvement—she’s a quick study. Following the drill, they’re off on a short cool-down as the Modified runners arrive for a late practice and bring the rain with them. We’ve timed it just right. The modies are not so lucky.

     “You can only do what you can do,” Garrison Keillor once insisted, “but you’re responsible for that much.” In a way, that’s the tone of the week—get at it and do what you can do, do what you’re responsible for. They nail a hill repeat workout on Wednesday, with some comparing a similar summer workout almost a month prior. Lindsay pushes herself relentlessly, lopping almost 15 seconds off her previous 1000 meter interval average and over a minute on her accumulated time. For Bridgett and Alycia, it’s a ridiculous 20 second improvement on intervals. On the boys’ side, all of our top runners have dropped 10 or more seconds. Del doesn’t have to ask while I’m smiling to myself and offering up low-fives to the tired runners.

     Following a Thursday at the high school for easy running, weights, drills and strides, we are back on the Camillus Middle School trails Friday for an advance to the mile distance in interval work. Following Wednesday/Thursday half school days, this is their first full dose of school, and that means waiting to see if the Sports Shuttle Buses will deliver all my runners on time and together. Glitches prevent that, but the two disparate groups are soon synchronized, warmed up and ready to go on our interval loop. The assignment is simple and relatively conservative: three miles, or approximately 5000 meters of work at 5k race pace in mile intervals. As groups form, Lou and I are quietly approaching several runners and talking moments of doubt. Specifically—practice the hard decision to, when necessary, go.

     The warmish, humid weather moderates when the sun disappears behind clouds. The groups sequentially step to the line and surge off, disappearing down-trail around a curve, racing toward the woods loop they will navigate before circling home along the outer loop of the back field. With the interval distance increased and the total recovery time reduced, we wonder how the runners will react. The boys’ front group is, in fact, hauling and all business, but a freshman foursome of Hunter, A.J., Dominic and Tom have also banded to push and pull each other through strong miles. They’ve been warned they will ‘pay their dues’ this first year, but it certainly looks like they don’t mind. “Are you sure this is a mile?” Del asks after listening to some of the interval times. “It’s a mile,” I assure him.

    And it is, after all, a matter of accumulations. They’ve heard me say that again and again. Accumulated miles of training, accumulated seasons. There’s no way to rush the process, and the ‘ah-ha’ moments of elevated distance running performance are few and far between. Bill Aris of F-M stated it succinctly when suggesting that, in his highly successful program, “the process is the goal.” So true. There is, in the end, the work. And if you expect to succeed at distance running, you’d better love the work.

     We’re seeing evidence of that. We’re seeing less doubt and more confidence. Work ably accomplished, the tired runners mill around the car, sipping water and logging the interval times we will use for analysis and future reference—another marker workout. They still have easy running and they still have core, but we already know this week’s ending on a high note. Del is a race guy who derives great pleasure from watching the runners he’s trained pop the big competition performances. But he stops as team members pace away on their cool-down run. “You know,” he asks, “how you say a great workout is sometimes as exciting as a great race?”

     “Yeah?” I answer, wondering where he’s going with this.

     “Well you’re right,” he says, smiling.

Week 4 – Glass Half Full

The Beginning:

Monday, and the weather has turned cooler, offering hints of what’s coming. Let it happen, I say. Summer’s had its due; this is XC season.

Practice today is a medley of units. I talk from the tailgate during attendance, providing the outline for the week, explaining the differences between racing dual meets and invitationals. The vets have it down, but the newbies need reminding that not all races are created equal. Dual meets and league standings, I tell them, build race experience and tactics, please program supporters and, in the eyes of many, justify the sport. Invitationals are where individuals demonstrate big-meet excellence and where teams make their mark on a sectional or state level. Both will determine successful seasons.

What’s on the plate for the day? Well, there are uniforms to issue; there is planning to make the Wednesday dual meet run smoothly for both schools; there is the emergence of ‘foot blister issues’ with several runners;  there is busing that has to be changed for this Saturday’s invitational meet. At some point, actual coaching may occur.

“Folks,” I tell them, “today you are going to do some interrupted running.” Blank stares. “That’s another way of saying segmented tempo runs.” I then explain the simple concept: 25 minutes of tempo-pace running over trails with short recoveries between 5 minute bouts. The stronger/faster runners are given 8, 8 and 9 minutes bouts. It’s just another way of getting at the same thing, and we don’t need the precision of the track for this work. They need, in fact, to feel controlled over trails because we may be asking some of them to do exactly that during Wednesday’s dual meet.

          Del and I monitor the runners while we walk the Woods Loop, looking for overhanging branches to clip and inspecting the trail. The dry summer has eliminated a number of typically questionable sections. Albeit a little too compact under foot, the course is in the best shape we’ve seen for years. Times should be fast this season, something the athletes certainly won’t mind. The groups stride by as we walk and groom, offering opportunities for quick pointers about form or to merely inquire what percent of the work they’ve completed. We finish and return to the basketball court as the training groups pace in.

          ‘Shoes-Off’ foot-strengthening exercises follow on the playing field nearby. Team members drill and watch the modified runners cut a large circle around them on their whistle drill. This is a planned interlude between their tempo work and what’s next: hill rises. Several runners had been asking for them this past week. They get their wish. Del lines them up below the 120 meter rise while I wait on the upper end. I pull out my cheap Casio 30 fps camera and make quick movie modes of runners to check the form development we are working on. The theory is that hill sprints will enhance knee drive and transfer that into muscle memory. There’s the other side, however, where the inclines illuminate mechanical weaknesses.  As they power up and jog down, the camera records both.  

The Middle

No crisp autumnal weather for our dual meet opener. Summer has reasserted itself, and we order the runners into shade between their warm-up routines.

The boys toe the start line with a large crowd on hand by cross-country dual meet standards. As Del sends them off with the horn, I bike into the Back Field and watch the front group measure out the tempo pace prescribed for the day, hitting their marks at the one and two mile marks and running tightly grouped. I periodically radio the race progress back to Del and watch for any problems with the following runners. None, fortunately, develops, but I miss the finish which apparently provides an unofficial Wildcat record with a two second 1-5 runner compression.

With all the boys in, Del issues final instructions on the line for the girls’ runners, signals the backup timer, and raises the horn. The loud blast propels them off as I jump back on my bike and head into the field to monitor and report. They’ve circled the opening loop and gained the terrace above the softball field by the time I glance back. Exuberance has—at least initially—trumped the race plan; front-runner Laura is already ten to twenty meters ahead of the lead pack. She’ll settle down, I assure myself, and bounce down a back trail to set up in at Three Corners where I can watch the runners arc into the Woods Loop. Laura approaches, followed  by a group of Wildcats. As she passes the next four check points, my question to her is the same —“How’re you doing?”—but her answer assumes an unsurprising trajectory. A comfortable “O.K.” at Three Corners becomes “Alright” at the mile mark, followed by a more informative “It’s hard” entering the Inner Loop of the Back Field. At the two mile mark she simply declares “I feel awful.” There is no answer to that. She’s running strongly at a consistent pace—although faster than planned. But after all the rehab of the spring and summer and then the set-backs, she’s earned at least awful while proving once again that nothing of any value in distance running comes cheap. Nothing.

The End

We arrive, finally, at Saturday. Along the way, and amid all the preparations for our first invitational, I’ve dealt with a personality conflict of dangerous potential and then quietly questioned another runner’s intent for what appears to be, day after day,  ‘just showing up.’ In the back of my mind during that private conversation is the distinction Coach Aris draws between participating and contributing. Asked correctly, it’s always a fair question: why are you here? Sometimes young runners are not so sure and the dual loyalties of the coach—one to the athlete, one to the sport—are put to the test. This test, I sense, is going to end well.

Dawn finds us heading east to Vernon-Verona-Sherrill High School, needing extra time to wake and jog out the reconfigured course before mid-morning races. Off the bus at the site, we pick a team tent site, and athletes pull on extra layers. The cool weather has returned, and teams in the early races sport mid-season clothing. The girls team groups up and heads out for their warm-up and inspection of the course.

By 8:50am, they are in spikes and on the line for final preparations. Del directs the strides and sprint-outs. I leave with the five minute warning to take up position on the course. The new configuration allows multiple sightings of the runners and reflects the forward thinking of the VVS staff. For us, it’s a typical first-invitational effort. The new runners don’t quite know what to expect, and the vets are wondering how they’ll compare to other opening races. Twenty to twenty-five minutes later they know. As they gather outside the finish paddock, most are satisfied, some are not, and all are relieved. Baldwinsville runs an excellent team race to win handily. We finish second and several assumptions are validated. Of our top 8, four are freshman and two sophomores. Serendipity strikes as Cathryn, who ran 21^st for the team against Oswego, leaps up to the 7^th spot. Young and evolving—this team is going to be fun.

The poet John Ashbery once warned that “…seconds will call upon you…” The boys charge off in their Varsity II race at 10:10am, and by the time they pass me at the mile mark, their fate for the day has been largely determined. The seconds are piling up against them. Running against a strong and veteran Baldwinsville team, I had warned them at the line, “they will try to punch you in the face that first mile; they are going to take it out hard to see if you can stick with them.” After B-ville had placed their top 4 ahead of our #1, and while we grouped post-race and Del and I talked with various runners about their efforts, one offered the comment, “Coach, B-ville went out really hard in the first mile.” I sighed and told him he ran well.

And they had. With one of the top-5 racing sick and another off-form, others had stepped up and made efforts to compensate. They’d placed 4^th in the 58 team merge. The race had provided a good baseline from which the season can build. The girls, too, had taken measure of themselves and found reasons for optimism. We told them later that they had a lot of work to do, but they both had a lot to work with. The glass is half full

Week 5 – The Work

Practice

          Over the weekend, I play a mental game. I imagine the season is over, team and individual goals accomplished, the glass full. Then I analyze backwards for what we did to get there—how competition was managed, which athletes were brought along as planned, which athletes pleasantly surprised us, and then how we fought against lackluster seasons and talked our best talks to divert disappointment or complacency.  I conclude how important it was this season to pare down the element of chance but that chance, especially with young runners, is inevitable and makes its own demands. The rules must be fluid for working with young runners. Some need to be endlessly motivated, some need merely to be educated and directed. And a few, sometimes, finally need only to be left to the consequences of their determined choices. The stage erected for all that subtle drama is, of course, the training, the work. It’s all about the work then, isn’t it, I ask at the end of my mental game. Yup, I answer myself.

          So Monday they are working. Coach Delsole and I had set up a training itinerary for the week, but on further review it appeared that Friday was overloaded, so I’ve shifted a short drill to today and made it the centerpiece around which other work will be wrapped.  Following warm-ups, drills and a fartlek run, they perform our ‘shoes off’ strengthening drills on the school field, then group for the L.A.T.

“Ten minutes,” I tell them when asked. This could probably be called the short-and-sweet drill, only it’s not so sweet. It does, however, deliver a lot of bang for the buck, though we use it judiciously because of the anaerobic fatigue and byproducts that result. It’s a Skaneateles favorite, according to Del who previously coached there with Jack Reed. Thirty seconds ‘up’ at 1500/1600 meter-plus pace, then thirty seconds down as comfortable as possible. For some, this means an oxygen-gasping jog; for others, like previous state champion Bill Gabriel and his sidekick John Delallo, this meant little more than coming slightly off the gas pedal. The downs reveal as much of running character and resolve as the ups.

“The first thirty seconds is a down!” booms Del, holding his watch and whistle. Predictably, someone who is either over-enthusiastic or inattentive bolts on the first whistle and gets laughed back into place by the others. But then it’s all business. Up and down they go to Del’s whistle as I wander side to side, watching, cajoling and taking form shots to analyze later. This is the drill where a cold(we’ve had plenty of those) or an off-day is shoved into high relief and usually results in someone falling ‘off the wagon’ while silently praying down the number of ups. It’s also the drill where runners display hidden talents or determination. Lauren, today, stands out in that regard, leading her group and prompting anticipation of the added team depth when she parlays training efforts into race. Little do we know…

With the final whistle, they pull up, some slumping over, others with arms up for maximum oxygen retrieval. They dutifully grab the nearest cone used to mark out their L.A.T. oval and walk back to their team spot. The boys’ front wagon has stretched today but not broken. The front-runners for the girls had been spaced into several groups, but have run well. We’ll take this. Some put trainers back on while others sip water, then all set out on a general condition/restoration run. Day 1—a good one--is just about in the books.

A Meet

The team members board their respective buses, and we get off on time for an away dual meet against Auburn. With their home course under renovations, they’ve temporarily moved out of town to rural Everest Park, so we wend the upstate back roads to that site. In the mottle of fields and forests along the way, leaves are turning and birds are flocking in anticipation. The last color is draining from the field corn, and aside from hitting traffic through Skaneateles, it’s a relaxing fall preview.

 The race site is equally scenic: open fields and woods framed against the tilted topography of the Fingerlakes. A reeded pond reflects blue sky. Even the athletes are impressed. As we exit the bus, I tell them: “Hey, this is why they call it cross-country.”

But the work is at hand and a tight schedule leaves little time for idle admiring. We hustle the boys out onto a course inspection and warm up while Coach Delsole and I check with the Auburn coaches to ensure our order of races.

The boys line up for an earlier 4:45 start. They’ve completed their final sprint-outs and wait, impatient. With an eventual whistle, they’re off, shooting across an open field and quickly disappearing around a block of trees. Emerging momentarily from an initial back and forth section, they plunge out of sight down toward the lake while I walk to the pond with spectators and parents. I’ve already found the girls team and warned them their start time has been moved up. Nothing to do but wait for the boys’ front runners to charge back into sight and hope that sight includes plenty of Wildcat blue.

Kal and Nate emerge up the hill first. Jack and Auburn’s lead runner are battling, followed by that string of blue I’d hoped for. A steady stream of runners passes the pond to the cheers of the crowd and then disappears into the upper loop. Not long after the final competitors pass the pond, the front runners circle back and take aim on the finish. Kal surges past with Nate close behind. Jack and his Auburn rival are still locked in a close contest, and as they aim up the tilted finish, Jack nervously checks over his shoulder until deciding to just put down the hammer and go. He claims third. It’s an automatic win, but the rest of the runners don’t care about that and charge up into the finish chute exhausted, legs wobbling from the burn on that final rise.

The girls are already on the start line and scream their teammates home. Then it’s their turn. With the start whistle, Laura shoots off, not interested in any challenges, leaving those to teammates. She commands a sizable lead over the Auburn front-runner on returning from the lower loop, with Lindsay and Sara racing the third and fourth positions. Five more Wildcats follow. Little changes around the upper loop except the distance to the finish. Laura circles the pond a final time and powers up the rise to claim an important victory on a tough new course. After all the trials of her injury and rehab, I’m thinking just two words: welcome back. The progression is ahead of schedule; she will be heard from this fall. And the youth movement continues, with freshman Sara running a strong final loop for third place and only two seniors in the team top-10. But one of them is our fifth runner Lauren. The girls mill around the finish area with family and friends, then group for their post-run and strides so they can get to the Friends of Wildcats XC tent for snacks and drinks. It’s been a productive day.

Our ‘Invitational’

            On Friday, they arrive with their spikes, as instructed. They sit in a semi-circle under cloudy skies as I explain how the day’s training session will unfold: the warm-up, the tempo preparation, the interval route they will cover. It’s what we call Manhattan Miles because of the way the course approximates, in miniature, the historic Vandy circuit—flats to hills to flats. They appear relaxed, confident and ready for what is—since we have no Saturday meet scheduled--the real challenge of the week. “This is your invitational,” I tell them. “Bring your best.”  It’s show-time.

          Both Coach Delsole and I consider Manhattan Miles one of our favorites. From the start point atop the back field hill, we can watch them charge around the Outer Loop’s autumnal colors, then plunge up Dirt Hill, not to reappear before circling a figure eight of hills and descending the connector trail to complete the loop as we bark out times. This one’s on the clock, and the goals are both time and compression.

          They jog into the back field and, preparations complete, arrange themselves into training groups. Del and I make some ‘adjustments’ to the groups and so issue unspoken challenges to several runners. The boys’ front runners signal a team member who’s been steadily improving in a lower group:  “You’re with us today,” they tell him. The message is clear. With everyone in place, I send them off in thirty second intervals, each group instructed what to subtract from their final watch time. In my back pocket are results from the same workout run in previous seasons. I’m hoping they can approximate some of those times laid down by Federation Championship qualifiers but have set no targets other than to “run hard.”

          And they do. The boys are all business. A ten second compression for the first mile shrinks to seven seconds on the second, then six for the third effort. Will, ‘invited’ up front for the workout, logs the 6^th fastest average and is followed by Matt and Logan, both who have decided to make their presence felt in the team top-10. Everyone has been busting butt.

          In workouts, I always enjoy upward surprises, and today those come in the form of a small squad of girls who leap-frog their averages above the training group ahead of them. Bridgett, Allison, Megan and Madeline feed off a group synergy that leaves Del starring at the stopwatch and smiling. Lindsay walks over after her miles to make sure we know she’s gone fifteen seconds negative from first to last interval. “I’m just letting you know,” she says with a smug smile. Up front, Laura had lopped almost fifteen seconds off her second mile. “Too fast,” she complained. “No it’s not,” I countered, knowing the times in my back pocket. She hammered the third, looking more and more like last November’s version. The big work done, they all load water bottles and extra shoes in the back of my car and head out for an easy run. We’ll crunch the numbers and sort the averages later, but it’s obviously been a good day.  And they’re not finished. We meet them at the base of School Hill for sprints, short 8 second bursts for neuromuscular development. The sky clears while they churn up the hill and walk back down, jabbering and joking, already content with the day. Another short cool-down afterward brings them back into a full circle for leisurely stretches as a rainbow spreads its full arc to the east. A sign for the big competitive week ahead? We’re hoping….

Week 6 – Test-taking

Monday, Monday. We are at the track because, as I remind the troops, it’s been a month since their last controlled tempo run and because the week presents no other feasible opportunity. Plus, the weather’s cooperative: seasonable temperatures with little wind--a good day for a tempo run. But after finishing our meeting for goal-setting, warming them up and starting their twenty minute test, I’m thinking I’ve made a mistake. I’ve asked them to run without watches, to sense pace and effort levels internally, but even the better runners are pattering along with their suspect interpretations of tempo pace. Coach Delsole and I, standing on opposite sides of the track, simultaneously start barking out our displeasure. It’s a lethargic looking bunch, I conclude, until we check the watch and make some mental calculations. Almost all have improved significantly since their prior track tempo. Still, for many high school runners(or at least ours), Mondays don’t seem the day for tempo precision.

Tuesday on the home course is a day of relaxed running and falling leaves, but by Wednesday the place is a three-ringed circus. The parking lot is stuffed with cars and buses for our dual-meet races against Central Square, a modified football game and soccer practice pick-ups. I’ve already coordinated with the football coach about our opening loop, which runs dangerously close to his playing field. For the soccer traffic, I took care of that problem years ago. I re-routed a section of the course circling those playing fields. That eliminated athletes meandering across our trail and, on game days, soccer parents annoyed at being told their lawn chairs sat right in middle of our 5k course.

            At three, I race out of school and motor the Forester around the back trails, setting cones to direct runner traffic, scaring deer from the woods trail. The modified coaches erect the chute, I organize the score-table workers and we’re set to go. On schedule at four-thirty, Lou’s horn sends off the boys modified runners, followed twenty minutes later by their girls. I’m in the back field on my bike monitoring turns and runners, and it’s a good thing because a West Genesee girls pulls out near me in tears with knee problems. Immediately after, a Central Square girl halts, gasping with an asthma attack. After radioing in, I calm her enough to walk slowly back to the school area, where we meet her coach. By then, the varsity boys are completing their start-line drills, so I pedal over and offer a few words. Nothing much to tell them except to have their race plan firmly in mind and then execute. “And if Plan A doesn’t work, have a Plan B,” I say. “Let’s go.” With McQuaid only days away, we could attempt to dictate strategies and paces, but those complications could cost them more than the supposed benefits. Race smart, race controlled, I’ve said.  Coach Delsole and I have not penciled in the Thursday/Friday workouts. We’ll do what the teams tell us they need tomorrow. I leave them to Del on the start line. Front-runner Kal is out with Pink Eye, so there’s opportunity for others to step up.      

            “There are no dress rehearsals,” my brother-in-law used to say. By the time they thunder past me at the mile mark, the boys are boring ahead like there’s no tomorrow, with two in front of the Central Square front-runner and two in hot pursuit. A following string of Wildcats surround several of their opponents as they charge up the back field hill. What strikes me as they wrap around and enter the inner loop of the field is their composure. Almost all our top runners are under control and moving confidently. The only exception is Ethan, who’s bothered by a sore calf muscle but still battling. As they exit the field, I bike to the base of Dirt Hill, a blandly named feature of the course which typically elicits more emotion that its name. Eight hundred meters out from the finish, Dirt Hill is too late in the race for strategic recovery, too early for a final push. It’s not long, just in a demanding place for runners. Ours have learned to love it.

            “They’re at the hill,” I radio Lou as Nate and Mike, the day’s big surprise, approach. Jack and Will have closed on the Central Square #1, so I turn and bike up the connector trail, determined for once in my life to see a finish. I crest the hill just in time to watch those two push ahead into the third and fourth slots near the chute. A 1-4 finish without our lead runner is a good day’s work, and the athletes are rightfully excited with their times, two of which are course top-25 marks.

                The girls’ performance is similar. Lindsay leads a lonely charge out front, and they take the first five places with a now familiar shake-up in the finish order.  Today it’s Elise with a strong second place effort which lends additional evidence that their overall team strength continues to grow. Alycia, our senior leader, powers home in the fifth position and teeters down the finish chute. “Where are my girls?” she gasps, giving hugs all around. Still, there’s always something. Allie sits on the grass astride the chute, discouraged. “Both my feet went numb,” she explains woefully. We talk through several possibilities—posture, foot-strike patterns. Coach Delsole wanders over and listens to me for a moment before asking the question: “Are your spikes tied too tight?” It always pays to think of the obvious.

            Saturday. Show time. I can say this: I seldom board a team bus following a major meet fully satisfied. Understanding what happens is one thing—like how an athlete can, for no good reason, eat grapes before a race and suffer stomach cramps that ruin an effort; or how athletes can fritter away the preparation minutes removing from their race flats the spikes they were instructed to take out the night before; or how others, not believing what the coaches have told you multiple times about big-meet realities, instead run with a dual-meet strategy that leaves them bogged down far back in the pack. Hang around long enough and there’s not much we coaches encounter from young runners that we have not seen or heard before. Understanding and appreciating, however, are two different matters.

            Following some bus adventures, we arrive later than expected, which forces the girls JV runners into sped-up preparations. The others enjoy more time to investigate the course and soak up the atmosphere: masses of runners and spectators that some of the neophytes have yet to experience. It’s good preparation for those competing at Manhattan in two weeks.

            The girls’ JV racers manage to make their start and negotiate the various loops and turns and shoulder-to-shoulder crowds that is McQuaid. The venerable Bob Bradley, former McQuaid varsity coach, race director and now announcer, stands on a platform mid-field like an orchestra conductor. Right on time, the girl’s varsity takes the gun for their large-school seeded race. By the time the front runners loop back around past the mile mark, I’m happy with at least one development. For her first major race since January--and in a field of exceptionally strong front-runners--we’ve given Laura no instructions other than to run a smart, hard effort. And that’s exactly what she does, racing as hard as her training allows and finishing top-10. Others can be disappointed if they want; I’m not. She’s still ahead of schedule. We’ve lost one of our top-5, sitting out with knee soreness, but the others also run strong. Our story-of-the-day is Lindsay, who finishes 18^th for seeded schools with a monster PR. Later, she files her Race Analysis:

Race Strengths: I think I got a good start by getting out fast and holding a good pace the first mile, which helped me through the rest of the race. And even though you couldn’t see, I mentally tried to push myself harder in the second mile.

Race Weaknesses: I dropped back a little in the middle if the race.

Changes That Will Drive Improvements: Strides and hill sprints/rises for speed and turnover. Longer intervals for more race pace workouts.

            I want to congratulate the girls for good efforts, but even as they are finishing the boys varsity runners have taken their start line positions and begun final preparations. I monitor them while Del is gathering up the girls competitors. Because of our split duties, I’ll see few—if any--finishes today. The boys’ line swells with late arrivals and by the gun, our runners are crammed shoulder to shoulder. The gun empties the gates, and they charged across the middle field. As they will report later, a few get swallowed up in the masses but work their way back throughout the race. Others take the risk and move out hard enough to find their proper positions. We don’t score the top-5 I was hoping for, but the clock provides smiles. Kal and Nate break 16:00 and all top-5 runners work their way into our WG McQuaid top-20 list. For good measure, the boys, like the girls, run the second fastest Wildcat team time ever, and Kal clocks the fastest 9^th grade race of the entire meet.

By late afternoon, the final boys JV runners power home and another McQuaid is in the books.  We all gather at the team tent for snacks and are joined by a large contingent of alumni who’ve traveled here in support. It’s a fine statement of what the program has worked to become, and they have a lot of fun exchanging memories. After we’ve struck the tent and made the early evening trudge back to the buses, any disappointments begin to ebb. The might-have-been’s have had their time; now it’s just the work ahead—and that’s what’s satisfying about this sport. We always have goals to be modified, objectives and strategies to be reworked. No matter what, the runners can analyze, plan and move on. There are first steps to be taken, no matter you’re starting point. Our athletes know this. We do too. Outsiders who see mostly results and not process sometimes fail to appreciate the resurgent opportunities offered athletes to either build on what’s good, or improve on what’s not.   The door’s always open….

 Week 7 – Always The Work

Monday

“What do you think about front-loading the week?” Coach Delsole asks. With no Saturday invitational and a non-Divisional dual meet on Wednesday, it was, I thought, already loaded with training intended to build into the pumpkin month. “They could do an L.A.T. after the hill circuits, maybe eight minutes instead of ten.” That’s Dell’s way of suggesting. Hill circuits made tougher with L.A.T. for dessert—that’ll be a rough Monday for the runners to digest. But they’ve improved steadily in their ability to absorb the work, and for some of them, Wednesday will not entail racing. “Sure,” I agree.

            On the drive to work, the roadside foliage had presented a metaphor. The trees this fall are offering little dramatics, with no sudden bursts of broad-swatch colors that jolt the visual senses. Instead, just a slow, steady transformation to full color. Following solid but non-spectacular performances at McQuaid, both teams seem to be charting a similar trajectory. An improvement here, a step up there, additions out-numbering subtractions--building a season steadily week by week, experience by experience. It’s supposed to work that way, and the question is always the same—will it? We’ll know in November.

            “None of the secrets of success will work unless you do,” goes the saying. So they work. The thousand meter hill circuit, a muscular figure-8 marker workout route over alternating easy and tough terrain, also allows honing proper downhill technique, which we remind them to practice. Right off, we spot some runners whose hearts don’t seem into the work--a Monday slump perhaps. One of the top runners is falling off the wagon—and I don’t consider it an option. “That’s not where you belong,” I quietly bark at him after the second interval.  “That’s not where you can train. I want you up with the group.” He responds and ties for 3^rd fastest average of the day.

There are other good moments. Following a low-grade but persistent illness, Abby is strengthening, clipping off the intervals thirty seconds faster than the previous month and running the third fastest average for the girls. Race-readiness will develop next. And it’s easy to lose track of runners further back in the pack, but this day Andy stands out. He’s jogging between intervals to recover, shepherding his group to the line in time and lopping 14 seconds off his previous average on the workout. Impressive stuff.  The proof is in the pudding; the boys’ average 19 seconds faster on the circuits that they did in early September; the girls come in 21 seconds faster. Only three team members run slower averages. I have to hustle off early to serve on an educational panel discussion at LeMoyne College. Del has the L.A.T all to himself.          

Tuesday

            They’re in cross-country class today. Off the shuttle bus from the high school, I direct them into the large-group instruction room at the middle school and distribute results of Monday’s hill circuit workout. “Every workout tells a story,” I say, guiding them toward ‘the numbers’ for several runners. “Not to pick on anyone, but we’re family. It’s O.K. to critique each other’s performance in search of improvements.”

We look first at Lindsay’s good example of a ‘bookend effort.’ What I don’t mention is that she nearly threw up following the second interval, then doubled-down her efforts for the remaining three.

We briefly discuss Annie’s disciplined even-paced workout—though the question is whether she can push herself evenly at a faster pace.

Katie presents an interesting question:

I draw my own conclusion, allowing Katie to set the record straight if she’s misinterpreted. “I’m going to guess that Katie was moving along under good control those first three intervals and then realized she had a lot more in the tank that she thought she would. So she stepped on it those last two.”

And Matt’s work offer’s a special instance, one where I surmise that once you ‘fall off the wagon,’ running alone is tough—which happened to Matt. “There’s no one there to keep you psychologically sharp, so the negative messages can seep in,” I suggest.  “You need teammates around you. Did I get that right Matt?” He merely nods.

            Class dismissed, they separate into teams to discuss team goals, then head outside for warm-ups and drills, segmented general conditioning runs, strides and plans for the Wednesday dual meet. For me, tonight is another late evening, this time a meeting in Dewitt for Indoor Track representatives. Time flies.

Wednesday

Dual-meet race day. This one will not count in the divisional standings and simply adds another race to an already over-scheduled season. We could have kept runners in the meet and ‘assigned’ them paces, but as Nate correctly points out later, “It would have been hard not to race.”  So our other runners will get an opportunity to carry the scoring and make the morning announcements at school; front-runners stick to the training schedule. The decision works.

There are a few exceptions. Laura needs the race to achieve the 6-meet rule for sectionals. Senior Day has also brought their expected requests to race that last home meet. This year’s twelve seniors have contributed a total of 44 varsity seasons, and there’s no way I’m going to deny those requests. Before the varsity races, they will also be honored for their commitment and traverse a symbolic final chute comprised of high-fiving, cheering teammates.

Most of our boys and girls front-runners have completed a hard, speed-tinged fartlek workout by the time the Baldwinsville teams arrive. The modified boys and girls teams both win their contests, with the boys modies still undefeated on the season for duals. Coach Wojtaszek has done some research at my request. Their impressive invitational winning streak dates back to 2008.

As expected, the boys get handled by the strong Baldwinsville squad, but our competing guys deliver a lot of excellent times and efforts. We’ll take the ugly newspaper box score in exchange for rewards down the road. The girls losing score is closer, but the rationale—and the result--is the same. Both will have their chances against B-ville later in the season.

Friends of Wildcats Cross-Country has erected multiple tents and put out a big post-race spread in honor of the seniors and the teams. Darkness descends amid the aroma of chilly and other goodies. The gas lamps come out. No one wants to go home.

Thursday

If it’s Thursday, we are at the high school. There is a regeneration run to be completed, weights to be lifted, drills to be conducted. But I arrive to note that the JV soccer players are setting up on the grass infield. I should have checked the sports schedule--game today. That changes things. While they complete warm-up laps, I mentally re-adjust the afternoon. The 1500m pace drill will come first, though I’d rather it follow the neighborhood run. That will get us off the track. We can substitute our leg drills for those we normally do in the stands and finish the track drills on the grass up by the weight-room door. We’ll make it work.

Friday

The fallen leaves crunch underfoot as we walk the training trails. Today, it’s into the Back Field for Bingham 800’s. This workout comes from the Bingham High School cross-country team in Utah and is simple and straightforward: 5-6 x 800 meters at a chosen pace(typically 5k goal pace) with a 1:1 recovery. We’ve used it for MVO² enhancement, pace sense and as an effective marker workout to monitor progress. The fact that the Inner Loop of our course is 847 meters and with proximate enter/exit points makes for easier logistics. Throw in calm winds and rain-less skies, and you have the ingredients for a solid training day—assuming the athletes bring the mental mind-set for performing repeat 800’s over tough terrain.

            And they do.  Their mission—if they chose to accept it—is to find their 5k target on the pace chart, slide over to the 800 column and run that pace effectively through six 800’s. After the second interval, however, it becomes apparent that most aren’t interested in training that slow. The front group is rolling in 10-12 seconds faster. I’d shown Laura her average for Bingham’s at October’s end the year before—and she is about 13  seconds under those. But it isn’t just the front runners; some of the most impressive efforts are coming from our middle pack team members. Del and I station ourselves on the trail where we can monitor both the finishes and starts. The spirit of the work is contagious. We shout athletes up; they shout up each other. The boys’ front group is stuck like glue, separating out only on the last interval when Nate decides to finish harder. Their only regret is missing Jack, who’s home sick. Laura barrels across the finish on #6 and then, bent and gasping, declares it the best hard workout she’s had in a long time and expresses pride in her five second compression. Another runner, Hannah, had requested a move up in training groups before the workout, and she finishes eleven runners higher than her depth chart number would have predicted. With the last runners off the course, they mill around my car, taking water and changing to trainers for the remainder of the workout. When Del offers a group congratulations, they spontaneously applaud themselves.

            Days like these are invaluable, not just for the training effect, but for the forged sense of common struggle and common purpose. You can see the effect in the relaxed smiles, the casual gestures and the hand slaps. Where all this good work takes us is yet to be determined. But with both a dual meet against F-M and the Manhattan Invitational on the plate next week, the set-up is just about perfect.

Saturday

E-mail to Jack:

Jack,

You're down one very good workout that you needed. If you are well enough today, you should get in repeat 800's, either on the track or trails. If not, rest and get in a quality long run tomorrow. If you do run intervals today, tomorrow would be a good shake-out GC.

Coach V.

Immediate e-mail reply from mother:

Hi Coach,

Jack is out doing the workout at CMS right now. 

Have a good weekend

Week 8 – Critical Mass

Preparations

          It will all boil down to how well you perform in the big meets—how many times have our runners heard some variation of that? The answer is many, with the important distinction being that such a message passes through a variety of filters, each with his or her own name. Racer A understands the intent, puts the heart into the work and keys for the result. Runner B hears the words, which for one reason or another on race-day drown in a sea of qualifiers—my ankle, my head cold, my warm-up, my sick dog, my whatever. Runner C knows what you’re saying and just doesn’t buy it. Running is what he/she wants to make it on any given day—and that’s that. Runner D is simply mystified by how incredibly hard it is to be a full-potential runner compared to other sports that offer half-times, time outs and sidelines. We love our majority ‘A’ runners, but we coach them all.

            Monday brings a variety of news, some of it unpleasant. Laura has a muscle strain in the hip that will sideline her—time undetermined. Wednesday’s dual meet is definitely out. Manhattan is in jeopardy, but we have to wait and see. Two team members e-mail they will not be able to attend the Columbus Day practice due to ‘conflicts’ in plans. I e-mail back that their alternate plans will also conflict with their ability to race on Wednesday. One shows up.

            Prior to the workout, we talk about the week ahead, which should be an easy one for both teams. After all, it’s only defending state champs Fayetteville-Manlius on Wednesday and then relaxed Manhattan races on Saturday—right? Once they visualize their full plates, I offer the realization that they also walk the fitness tightrope from here on out: high fitness but high vulnerability. “Yes, you’re in great shape, but it’s also easier to get sick, so take extra precautions with sleep, nutrition, hydrations.”

            Segmented tempo runs on the back trails go well. The boys’ front group is tight. The girls front runners are more strung out, but each effective. Eva, returning from knee issues, runs comfortably and confidently. Mary is also running stronger, though she wanders off after the second interval and bends over, looking like she might lose her lunch. “You O.K.?” I ask when she returns. She shakes her head yes and answers, “I feel bad. When I get on the back loop, I feel like I’m going to throw up.”  I simply shake my head, and then she smiles wryly. “But other than that I’m good,” she says and walks back to her group.

            We finish with strides and core drills. The meets are a day closer.

Dual Meet

            What do you do with a dual meet against F-M? Well, the first thing you do is adjust goals and expectations. Tuesday, we ran a good practice of low-intensity volume and the boys were uniformly intrigued by the opportunity to measure up against F-M. Since none were being held out, they wanted to race rather than try to dial back. So race, I told them; we’ll use Thursday and Friday as necessary to prep for.

            Fayetteville-Manlius High School sits on a hill, and it welcomes all the weather that happens to pass through. What was passing through when we arrived was wind-driven rain. The modified racers caught some of it, but by the time our boys’ varsity toed the start line things had improved a tad. With the whistle, I watched them disappear down into the back reaches of the course, knowing we’d see little of the race but the final thousand meters. I chatted with Laura while waiting and wondering. When they returned, our boys had made a race of it, taking four of the top eight positions. And with two of our top guys running fifth and eleventh for us—off days each--it was cause for optimism. The girls were not so lucky. A long line of green Hornets was broken only by Lindsay in 7^th. Still, the solid efforts had been apparent, and on the dark ride home, thoughts ran forward.

Manhattan

            My cell phone dies just before the Lincoln Tunnel, but we arrive midtown ahead of schedule for our ‘walk’ up 5^th Avenue. “Stay together,” Coach Delsole reminds the runners as they gather on the sidewalk off the bus. “If we lose you, there’s too much paperwork involved.”  5^th Avenue via Rockefeller Center takes us up to 57^th and Niketown for a short stop and some overpriced gear purchases. By 2:00pm, we’re headed north to Van Cortlandt and the course preview that is especially important to the new runners.

            The relaxed Friday atmosphere at the course site always stands in stark contrast to what follows on Saturday. Our runners pile off the bus, soak up the atmosphere and head out onto the course. Laura stays behind, tests the sore muscle with a short jog on the flats and reports back. “Do you want to decide now or tomorrow?” I ask her. Tomorrow, she tells me—but we both suspect what the decision will be.

            The runners return. After strides, they gather for the traditional group photo, then load up. The ride to the hotel is a short one, and Coach Delsole and I are impressed with the ease of our day so far. That’s a karmic mistake. We arrive to find rooms and room keys arranged for only a third of the team. They mill around the lobby while the desk clerk scrambles and I do a slow burn, reminding myself that it is not the fault of the clerk. I arrange a meeting with the manager later, and after an hour everyone’s in a room.  Following a low-key and enjoyable team dinner at the hotel, the day ends without further incident. The room check comes at 10:00pm. Everyone is in.

            The first thing coaches do in the morning of a Manhattan race is look out the window. In almost two decades of Manhattans, I have been greeted some mornings by cold, driving rain but others by uncomfortable, energy-sapping heat. This one’s perfect: clear and cool, with almost no breeze. The weather variable has been removed from the Manhattan equation.

            We arrive at the site to the usual fanfare of buses, athletes and crowds. Once the bags are down and the team tent set in our usual area, the veterans bolt to the T-shirt concession where lines already rival the Porta-Johns. Several team members get started on equipping runner bibs with safety pins. One tacks up the day’s race roster while the first squad heads out on their warm-up. This moment, when special trip becomes familiar meet, offers my first sense of relief. Now it’s racing, why we’re here. The excitement of the contests ahead is dampened only by the inevitable decision not to race Laura. It’s not a hard decision really; weighing the pro’s and con’s creates a lop-sided consideration, with far more to lose than gain. She’ll be a cheerleader today.

            “Once we start the races,” I’ve told them. “You’re only going to see Coach Delsole and I at certain places.” Each squad has its captain whose responsibility is to get runners to the line in time for final preparations with Del. And they know where to meet me when they wobble out of the finish chute. Other than that, they are mostly on their own.

            Race by race, our team members charge off. One group strains to the finish even as another is charging from the start across the flats. Van Cortlandt is historic, but not necessarily for its spectator visuals. While mass starts with a city silhouetted in the background is stunning, once runners disappear onto the graveled cow path, only the quick glimpse of them over the bridge into the back loop—if you can hoof up there in time--breaks the long wait. The greatest struggles of the runners, the most intense personal battles with fatigue, self-doubt and competitors provide drama in that solitary back loop for only birds and squirrels. But that---and the intensity of pace--is exactly why Vandy is such a trial by fire.

            Many step up, running personal Vandy bests; a few falter. Unfortunately for us, several of those who falter are in the boys’ varsity race. The result is a poor team performance based on their potential. I’m not happy because I know how well the training has gone and I know the health of those runners--which leaves only the mental component. Someone once said, in effect, that fitness is 95% and the mental aspect only 5%, but since the 5% controls the other 95% mental is everything. Watching bad races also brings up coaching choices. Either wait and talk later or strike while the iron is hot and the experience alive in the mind of the runner. I speak frankly with the boys’ team while parents watch and later privately with one runner who underperformed. He has no immediate answer, so I’m hoping a later race analysis will provide one. And to the group at large after we board the bus for the long ride home, I say “from this point in the season, you will be racing mostly above the shoulders.” It’s another way of saying the same thing: make the 5% control your races, not sabotage them. We need everyone not only physically but mentally on the same page. We need that critical mass.

            The value of a lost opportunity may still be realized. Other meets, now more critical, lie ahead…..

Week 9 – Digging a Hole

One Workout

            The word can be confusing. On the one hand, coaches and trainers often explain “pain” to runners as the flashing red light which warns that you better stop or something really bad is going to happen. On the other, the T-shirt slogan declares that “pain” is temporary--mostly because it would just look weird as “Discomfort is temporary….” So we qualify. Pain that doesn’t go away quickly is that bad pain. The other pain is the price you pay many days to be a distance runner. Today I’m telling them about the latter. Today there will be that kind of pain.

            Our school hill circuit is nothing fancy, but it runs well as a workout whether bone dry or a sloppy mess. Dry is better only because a wet workout day creates a beaten path that leaves evidence for days, sometimes weeks. Three of the four ‘hills’ in it are more rises than hills, but they add up. Two up/down loops on what we call School Hill behind the main building then stretch out into the first 200 meter ‘flat’ where the objective is momentum and biomechanics. Then a short steep ‘up’ to a turn-around and another 150 meter flat across the school grounds ends at the base of the final hill, the steepest and longest, the leg-burner. A .45 mile circuit, according to Mike’s GPS watch.  Do that three times with an 80 meter walk/jog back to the start and you have a set. Put three of those sets together and you have the core of a hard training day—the kind of effort those T-shirts advertise.

            We talk before the work begins. I mull over Manhattan for them. As Coach Delsole has reminded me more than once, teenagers get over a bad race a lot faster than coaches. That’s generally a good thing, but it’s our job is to decide when to let that happen and when not. Today, I hold the boys varsity squad back from the warm-up run to talk to them directly. I am direct about how two of them dropped the ball at Manhattan and let the team down. “You guys are in a hole now,” I tell the team that started the season with aspirations of qualifying for November’s Federation Championship. “Your only chance to make Feds is to run strong at Marathon this Saturday. If you don’t, Feds is gone. And then if you do that, your only chance is to run at F-M in leagues. If you don’t, Feds is gone. If you do well against F-M, then you have to run as a top team at Sectionals. If you don’t, Feds is gone.” The mantra makes the point, and not wanting to waste any more time, I send them off on their warm up.

            When the opening run and drills are concluded, the runners congregate at the base of School Hill. The boys front-runners have created a large group or, as we call it, a big wagon. Fine by us. They understand our expectation that everyone stays ‘on the wagon’ with consistent efforts. This is a team without an established sectional or state-level front-runner, so pack-running and compression of times both in racing and in practices is critical. Mutual responsibility is what makes it work. Success requires everyone. They get that.

But the boys’ big wagon soon develops problems. They gun and gut the first set together, but in the second, two runners fall off the pace. And it’s not for lack of trying. The top runners are just pushing that hard. Of course, Coach Delsole and I aren’t making it any easier either. Several runners who either lose focus or aren’t practicing at their race positions hear it from us. It’s that kind of day. “Don’t let yourself be gapped on the flats!” Del bellows at runners several times as they hit the first reach. I command others to push harder to stay with their groups. We aren’t the kindliest of coaches on this day, but the moment—and the work—demands focus and effort. Up, down, up, down, across the flats, then pounding the last hill—they do it again and again and again, gasping and grimacing. The boy’s top runners hang tight.

All in all, it’s probably the hardest they’ve worked this season. By the final interval, Kal has decided to go. He leaves the others behind in the first flat and, legs churning, drives the final hill with his face taught and determined. Wobbly, he stands atop the hill as his teammates finish closely behind.  The girls’ front runners have been more separated. No wagon for them today. And Abby, too, has left her group behind in the final circuits. The reason? “I didn’t want to wait that long between intervals,” she explains.

Once the last groups power their final hill, they all set off on a long cool-down. Relaxed stretches replace core drills, and all I have to say to them is “good job today.” But it’s unnecessary. They already know that.

The Lead Up

            Mid-week slips by, autumn days of color and calm weather. The runners re-coup from Monday’s hard training with Tuesday general conditioning runs and light strides. Wednesday the intensity increases with tempo training, the back fields and woods loops providing a tapestry of trail-side attractions. It wouldn’t be hard to ‘sell’ the sport to non-runners with those visuals, but I’m not sure scenery is high on the list for our athletes exacting out paces on their prescribed routes.  Several who missed the Monday training complete an alternate hill workout. Laura runs soft loops, testing the hip muscle. Thursday at the high school for neighborhood runs and weights, with all its manicured stadium grass, seems drab by comparison but leads into a pre-race day with the fingers crossed about weather. It rains hard much of Friday, so I seize the opportunity and herd the team into the middle school to discuss our Marathon Invitational course and have them complete voting for team awards. We emerge to clearing skies. They head off on a relaxed run followed by strides and stretches and final instructions for Saturday. For this one, the hay’s in the barn.

The Meet

            There are multiple reasons we prefer to close our invitational season at Marathon. It is, of course, an opportunity for us to compete against Southern Tier teams outside our section. It’s also one of the grandest cross-country settings we encounter all year, and we also appreciate the tremendous organization and efficiency of the meet organized by Coach Todd James. Our athletes’ and teams’ efforts there have been mostly positive over the years, with opportunities to enter both the seeded and unseeded contests as well as the JV races. In that way, more of our athletes are thrust into scoring positions. They don’t seem to mind; some even profess an affinity for this tough, tilted strength course that can be downright brutal if wet and muddy.  

            The downside for me is that with multiple races, I am glued to the start line while Coach Delsole handles mid-race sites and the finish. Because of the course loops, however, I do see the runners in one race several times even as I am conducing line drills with the next squad.

            With the team tent erected and sidelined runners completing bib preparations, Del and I head out to our positions, leaving squad captains to deliver their groups to the start line on time. First up is the boy’s unseeded race, and I remind them following their team cheer that they are definitely in the hunt. Off quickly with the gun but cautious with the first mile that has suckered many a runner, they measure out strong races and place 2^nd behind Corning’s strong second squad.

While they are battling their way around the course, the seeded varsity crew arrives at the start line to begin final drills. They know what is on the line: a shot at #6 state-ranked Corning. More importantly, Marathon offers a chance to begin climbing out of the hole they dug with a mediocre team performance at Manhattan. Longer spikes are in to control the mushiness at several points on the course. As the start official shouts out the count-down minutes, I caution them one last time about controlling the first mile, remind them how good they can be and leave it at that. “Guns up,” I radio to Del, who wants an unofficial watch on the runners. With the crack of the starter’s pistol, they are off.

            Most coaches can count on one hand the important races when a plan perfectly concocted is then executed perfectly. The sport effectively seals off runners from coaching during the duration. We can’t pull them over mid-race to reinforce race strategy or mental attitude. Aside from some shouted instructions that many runners swear they never hear, we become spectators. As my former AD observed, “Once the gun goes off, they’re on their own.”

            On their own, however, the squad reacts well to the up-front power of the Corning team. When they circle back to the start line following an opening loop, everyone has positioned well, with the top-5 all inside the first fifteen runners. Will has gone out a little soft, but it’s certain he will work himself up in the middle mile--which he does. Mike and Jack are right there in the top group—a good sign. They disappear down the tilted topography. I won’t see them again until the final 1000 meters of the course, when much of the race will have been determined and only guts ‘n go remains….

            The perfect scenario would have presented all our runners elevating and the team scoring a surprising upset. More realistically, I was hoping they would challenge the course and register that team race which makes them believe: we’re on our way. That they accomplish. All five scorers place in the top-20 with a 1-5 thirty-second compression. Corning takes the prize but our second-place squad walks away with mounting confidence. All our squads except girls seeded varsity place first or second. For boys varsity, the rest of the season remains a tall order--and the clock is ticking--but this is what they’ve sacrificed for since June: a chance to be in the hunt.

Week 10 – The Hard-won Lessons

Monday

Jobs need to be completed before the day’s work can begin. Kal, Ethan, Laura, Lindsay and Meg line up before the modified teams in the middle school’s large group instruction room. We’ve interrupted their uniform returns, and stacks of pizza are cooling in boxes, so my runners speak only briefly but positively about making the transition from modified to varsity next fall. Then it’s outside for team pictures on the terrace section of our course--smiling faces lined against a backdrop of golden leaves.

Tempo’s on the docket, this day a cut-down version of 9, then 8 to 7 minutes segments of slightly increased paces with a short recovery between. With the warm-up and drills complete, Coach Delsole and I head into the backfields to monitor the runners and mull over the week ahead. The work goes well for the athlete, and with a stride session to finish up, I expect this to end in the ‘ordinary’ category until a parent arrives to register a complaint about something we’ve told her runner. It takes a lot of effort to explain that what her runner hears about being picked up on time from meets and what we actually said are two different things. Just another reminder of how anything can be interpreted in multiple ways.

Tuesday

The weather is lousy with driven rain, so I schedule some indoor time to take care of team business. With the aid of distributed maps, Nick volunteers to talk through the league championship course that we hope will remain firm and does a fine job. Then I pass out this year’s team evaluations and instruct that they leave names off, write what’s on their mind but provide useful information.  Unlike year’s past, this one has been simplified and based on our Race Analysis form. Three questions: 1)What did you like about the season; 2) What didn’t you like about the season; 3) What changes would drive improvements to the program? They bend to the task as Lou arrives and are finished in 10-15 minutes. We re-assemble outside where I distribute several college recruitment letters to junior and senior runners. Then, as the rain intensified, they are sent on their warm-up. This is the weather we’ve been fortunate to dodge most of the fall.

Wednesday

Meet Day. If you know your runners, you may have the results of the meet before the start gun sounds. Perceived attitude, body posture or sometimes messages from the home-front(“his dog died last night”) is all the information you need to predict a sub-par performance. Then you hope that #6 is ready to step up. Sometimes, however, the ‘read of the runner’ or the team has to wait a half mile—but seldom longer.

Our league championship course makes the in-race determination easier. By the time they charge around the opening loop of school fields and navigate the up/down rise just beyond the start line, the boys varsity runners are at the half mile. By then, the F-M competitors have done what they can do well and what I told our boys they would: taking it out hard enough to make a statement. Several of the lead Wildcats who grind by Coach Delsole and I are grimacing and refusing to look at us. They know they are not where they should be in the opening pack, and this looks to be a long day for both them and the team.

And it is. Despite the fact that four of our top-5 average fifty-two second improvements over previous PR’s on the course, they cannot recover from that gun-shy start and finish second, far behind the state’s #1 squad. My thoughts are mixed, but the biggest disappointment is in not properly preparing them for the mental demands of this race.  You can take a loss to a better team. Putting a mentally tentative squad on the line is both frustrating and inexcusable.

The girls’ varsity pushes hard against the wave of Hornets, and their finish pack earns them second place. Lead runner Laura had asked about racing, but her training is more important, and she remains on the sidelines preparing for sectionals. One of the most satisfying moments of the day comes in the boys JV race. Following a difficult summer of interrupted training and subsequent up/down performances this fall, Matt finally comes into his own with his new spikes on. Not waiting for anyone, he charges out from the start and takes control of the race, leading an enthusiast group of Wildcats as determined as we’d hoped for the varsity. Coach Aris and I are standing near a wooded section of the course just beyond the two mile mark. Matt comes barreling through, misses the leaf-covered turn and, headed off over an embankment, gets shouted back on course by me. Wheeling, he takes several steps through the underbrush to regain the trail, loses his footing and comes crashing down in front of both of us. Rolling over, he pops up with mud on his leg and an embarrassed grin.  “Well, at least he’s smiling,” I tell a smiling Coach Aris as Matt flies off down the trail.  That’s the only mishap as the JV’ers roll to a 24 point victory and several huge final-meet efforts by squad members. An F-M assistant good-naturedly ribs me after about “sand-bagging” the race, but team times fall pretty much in order. That’s just racing, I’m thinking. That is what’s fun to watch.

A gloomy, cloud-covered dusk has clamped down on the course by the time we finish our après-race snacks, courtesy of our ‘Friends’ supporters, and board the buses for the dark ride home.

Thursday

It’s always a strange day—the day after leagues. We shrink to ten runners per team, the allowable number for sectionals. The majority of the team members arrive for their ‘exit practice’ with an admixture of melancholy, satisfaction and, for some, relief. They’ve been at it, I remind them, since June, and I count the five months for dramatic effect.  They began in the dwindling days of spring, traversed all the moods of summer and advanced far into fall. It’s a long time for a scholastic runner, but if they’ve done it correctly and to the best of their ability, they have a right to any—or all—of those emotions.

We stick to the routine. This time, however, I do not analyze the league championship team results but instead pass out copies of the meet results that contain my addendum: last year’s performances for those that raced and a computation of the average improvements in times of girls and boys teams. Over ninety percent of the runners have individually demonstrated improvements, some dramatic. But there is a marked disparity between teams. The boys’ average improvement is significantly greater than the girls. I give them my simple reaction to that: why?

“I don’t have the answer,” I tell them, “but I want you to think about it, and I plan on finding out.” Warm-up complete, they group for a light run—the last for many—that’s followed by weights, drills and strides on the football field grass. The day has been unseasonably warm, almost summer-like. Some of those finished runners linger after, some hurry off. For a few moments, Coach Delsole and I meet with the remaining sectional squads to remind and re-focus.

Friday

Coach Delsole’s cell call reaches me in Chapel Hill, N.C. I’m down there making wedding arrangements for my son, and Del is running a favorite interval workout of both athletes and coaches: Manhattan miles. One reason for that is because our vantage point for the workout puts us atop a small hill starring out over colorful autumnal fields and forests. So I’m feeling a little gyped. The runners have done just fine, though, Del reports. The times sound solid, and I’m glad we completed the workout in front of the expected miserable weather next week. Productive practices may be hard to come by once the ‘Frankenstorm’ hits. We may even have to get creative with indoor work. They will take a rest day tomorrow and come back with a solid long run on Sunday while the weather holds. The disappointments have been shed; the determination is renewed; the next race lies ahead.

I’ve missed an e-mail analysis that came in Wednesday from Aakash, whose season has concluded:

Strengths: I stayed conservative and really pushed the middle and last mile! I had run with a pack today and pushed myself with them to stay on the wagon! I used the hills to my advantage and the back train-bed the second time to pick people off and get away and in front of the guys that I was pushing with the whole race! I knew when and where to pick up, and didn't get mentally down on myself, and pushed till I finished the race. 

Weaknesses: I may have gone out conservative for a bit too long in the race till I started pushing! And I really should have gone a bit faster the first mile, and not have conserved as much! 

Comments: I will be coming to practice tomorrow and finishing up my season with one last practice.  I will be taking the rest of the week off and start running again next Monday while going to the gym to stay strong and fit so that I'm ready for the indoor season! Thank you so much for the awesome season and helping me push to become better I've improved every race comparatively to last year by over a minute and 30 seconds, I really kicked some butt this year and I'm going to stay consistent during the off season and make something happen in indoor like it did this season of XC! You’re the best, Coach. Thanks for being there for me and supporting me so that I could reach my goals. I couldn't thank you enough!

            That’s a good enough reason for coaching……

Week 11 – Finish Lines?

Monday

We are hoping to steal a workout. The weather maps and forecasts indicate we will have just enough time before the first touches of Hurricane Sandy. Ours too, is to be a hybrid, combining elements of interval, hill and speed workouts under restless but safe skies. With that workout in the back pocket, I reason, Tuesday and Wednesday can play out as it must and our sectional competitors would still be fine.

That is the plan, but the plan begins to unravel in early afternoon when school evening activities are cancelled. I’m hoping against a domino effect of over-caution but am surprised when an athlete texts me about 2:15 that high school students are being sent home. I call the A.D. No answer. I call the high school main office. No answer. My school will be open with activities until 6:00pm, so I’m perplexed. Where are my runners?

The answer arrives with another text. An car accident has damaged a sub-station and knocked out electricity to the high school. They are home, and my stolen practice is over before it begins, so I in turn head home to e-mail suggested workouts to the runners and plan for the remainder of the week. By 5:30, when winds had begun slanting the trees and delivering heavy rains, disappointment over a lost workout is moot.

Tuesday

            We don’t dodge a bullet. Judging from the news reports, central New York dodges more of an artillery shell. We wake to sporadic rain and moderate winds. That’s it. The schools and businesses that peremptorily closed last night are wiping egg from their faces. The rest of us go to work.

            Our practice has been shifted to the high school in case of the heavy rain and wind still possible. We can complete a track workout and get into the weight room to lift. Down to twenty runners for the sectional race, the team does indeed feel small. A lot of the team’s personality is now enjoying a short transition before resuming training for winter sports. For those who remain, it’s time to do the work.

            The main task for the day is power running in the form of step-up 400’s. Another straightforward workout session, it involves three cones from the start line backward in ten meter intervals. Runners start at the first fly-zone area, run the 400 at the prescribed pace, ‘step up’ to the next cone with a few gulps of air and do it again twice for a set of three 400’s. A one lap recovery jog separates sets. “Just three sets at 5k or faster pace,” I instruct them. Will, a baseball guy, has never run them before and looks pensive. Ethan remembers the track day they completed five sets. “That was tough,” he admits. Laura pairs with Lindsay and the rest put together their wagons. It’s windy and wet, but all in all we’re a lot better than many other places in the Empire State. They toe the start line and set off.

            With each group on their own watch and aiming for negative splits across sets, Coach Delsole and I can watch and analyze—and bark out the occasional form instruction. Even with the team slimmed down to its best performers, I can almost a guarantee there will be variety of reactions to the work, as precise and regimented as it is. And sure enough, someone’s had a really bad day at school, an anchor she now drags around the track. Another is feeling punkish. Lack of sleep? Illness coming on? I hope neither. Still, most of them motor with purpose, their repeats passing with metronomic compression. They finish tired but not exhausted—what we were aiming for.

            Following a recovery run out in the neighborhoods, we share the weight room with baseball players logging some off-season strength training. It’s a dedicated bunch but also a reminder of how specialized many high school sports have become. Runners, of course, have the opportunity to compete year-round in our run sports--but at least they don’t subtract themselves from other sports to do so. There’s the rub. The final stop for the day is the school cafeteria, where we assemble for some paperwork. I distribute race plans for the athletes to complete. We want to know what they hope to accomplish at sectionals. More importantly, we want them to know what they want to accomplish. It’s a simple question format: what are your time, place or other goal and what strategies will you employ to reach them? Heads bend to the task and the athletes, for the first time all afternoon, are quiet.            

Wednesday

            For the rest of the week, we are following the medical credo: do no harm. How to pull that off is not always so clear. Drop the volume but keep the intensity some insist. Back off the intensity, others claim, and maintain volume lest you signal the body to begin shutting down. If you look hard enough, you can find conflicting advice from the ‘experts’ about how to prepare for major races. Those conflicts speak to the still-imperfect science of running. Elite teams typically settle the question by training through sectionals. This year again, we don’t enjoy that luxury.

            It’s a raw day—cool, damp, overcast. But the wind’s down and the rain’s relented—so we’ll take it. The runners wander in from the shuttle bus, drop their packs and begin to assemble just as ‘Batman’ arrives. Leave it to Nick. The car’s a nice touch, but I’m wondering what workout advantage he will enjoy in costume.

            “Increasing intensities,” I explain to them. They’ll run first at general conditioning pace, then some at tempo pace and finally finish fast with short hill sprints. It’s no surprise when Lindsay walks over with hand up in question mode to ask if we can run the tempo first. “Well, what’s your reasoning for that?” I ask her. “I don’t know,” she admits after a short pause, so I explain at length the reasoning behind progressing slow to fast following Tuesday’s hard work. “O.K., O.K,” she finally interrupts me, smiling. “You win.” Smiling right back, I tell her, “Lindsay, I didn’t know this was a contest.” The runners gather into their groups and set off into the back field to do their work.

            “I was hoping for one of those clear, crisp mid-autumn days,” I complain to Coach Delsole as we monitor the comings and goings of runners from our Three Corners base.  He merely shakes his head. Batman handles the runs pretty well, but he doesn’t appear particularly faster or stronger to me. Guess that idea’s out for Saturday.

Thursday

The boys have had enough. All season, Alex has cruised out in front of the group, always ‘winning the warm-up,’ looking for all the world like our #1. I’ve already got him pegged as a college 10,000 meter guy who will eventually run marathons. Over the course of the season, Alex has been unable to break into our top seven, but he owns the warm-ups—until today.

I’m bundled up with waterproof layers and in a desultory mood as they begin a preparatory mile run on the track. Right away, however, it’s clear something’s different. Around turn one, Logan is shooting out in front of Alex, followed closely by Kal, Jack and Nate. It doesn’t take long to figure this out, and by the time they’ve cruised around the half mile, surging in front, I’ve decided to join in. “Two to go!” I yell at the trio, fingers waving, “You can do this!” Others passing at more appropriate speeds smile and laugh. Alex plugs by, poker-faced.

Into the gun lap, they surge, and issue is settled. Alex is going down. Four hundred meters later, Logan bursts across the warm-up finish line, arms skyward. His conspirators follow and all exchange high fives. As Alex cruises in, pace unbroken, Logan walks over and offers a sportsman-like handshake and hug.

Alex good-naturedly shrugs his shoulders and smiles. I’m guessing he’s already planning a new streak come indoor.

Friday

            Another day of damp and drizzle. Sandy has been persistent as well as destructive. Nothing about the early day—a relentlessly thick blanket of clouds and intermittent rain--suggests the afternoon will be any different. And it isn’t. When the athletes arrive, we take time in the large group room of CMS. I return their Race Plans for review, then discuss the nuts-and-bolts of what’s likely to be a muddy slugfest at VVS on Saturday. Todd Bauer and his crew prepare a course as well as anyone in the state, but there are limits. The important points given the athletes are these: forget the September VVS invitational; this will be an entirely different course for its altered physical/mental demands; bring extra everything—layers, socks, hats, gloves. With a projected map, we talk our way through the course, remembering features, suggesting new strategies for the expected conditions. “That’s where you have to fight the negative thoughts,” Laura cautions about the back field loops leading to the two mile mark. She should know, having run a muddy VVS at the 2011 state championship. I flip up the latest state polls and suggest the possibilities of going after our state-ranked sectional competitors. “If the conditions are a challenge you gladly accept,” I tell them, “then those conditions become your advantage.” 

            They head out for a short run just as the cold rain returns--and then intensifies.

Saturday

“It’s a long way from June,” I mention to Coach Delsole as the bus barrels through a cold rain shower along the Thruway. We have our full complement of boys/girls sectional squads as well as other runners who, their seasons’ finished, will serve as support staff. Additional runners, as well as a host of parent supporters and well-wishers, will make the trek to V-V-V-S High School for our sectional championship races.

The sun breaks out when we arrive—and then as quickly disappears behind an ominous bank of clouds. That becomes the pattern for the day. We caution the runners on layers—better to run a little warm with top and tights than a little cold. But with conditions constantly changing, it’s tricky. The course itself, though, has been well managed, and in spite of the week’s weather is in reasonable shape. Time to lace up the spikes and race.

Following check-in and warm-ups, I leave the girls on the line with Coach Delsole and head out into the course, joining other coaches and spectators at strategic junctions. At least three dramas will unfold for the girls. This is Laura’s first race since early October, and the goal is simple: make states. No time goals, no position goals, just control the first mile, move as able the second, gut out the third. Lindsay also wants states and will have to run the perfect tactical race—and then some. And the girls’ team wants their best effort of the season to set the stage for 2013. Simple.

From my distant point, I see the runners shoot off the start line. Shortly, they arrive, with F-M packing the front ranks and Laura comfortable among those following. Lindsay, though, is too far back and will have work to do. Same for other team members. Once they pass, I join a race of spectators to the mile mark where Laura and Lindsay have both moved up, but one of our top runners is visibly struggling. I pick them up again at a mile and a half and then near the two mile mark. Laura has by then advanced into the top-7 and is racing for all she’s worth. Lindsay has overcome much of her early deficit but needs more if she’s to finish as a top-5 individual qualifier. “You’re #8!” I yell as she passes. “You have time!” She does, but not much.

I hustle to the final rise overlooking the track’s finish area and wait. Laura passes in 6^th and bound for another week of work and states. But Lindsay, despite an all-out effort and a personal record on the course, will fall two places short of qualification and wait another year. And the team, with it’s top-5 runner slowed by a sore knee, finishes 5^th but a credible 9^th in the 55 team sectional field.

There’s little time for conversation with the girls at the finish area. The boys are on the start line, prepping. Theirs is the final race of the day and the weather, if anything, has chilled, with clouds and blustery winds once again locking up the sky.  If the boys want to remain in the Federations conversation, they need a strong showing today against three state top-15 teams. I don’t have to tell them that. Instead, I simply remind them of how far they’ve come, what they can do, and wish them well. Then I head into out onto the course.

The months compress into minutes. The guys appreciate that this could be their last race of the season. For seniors, there’s an additional layer of finality. But in the end, it’s their race. Coach Delsole and I can want it for them, but only they can deliver. Kal and Nate take it out hard, perhaps a bit too hard, but this is the championship race. At the mile mark, our top-5 are close enough and far enough up. It’s just a matter of letting their individual races unfold as a team effort.

At the two mile mark, they are pushing through strong winds and snow pellets. The team is still running strong, but not in a position to challenge Baldwinsville or Liverpool. F-M powers in front of everyone. Will, who started more conservatively, has moved into our lead runner slot and has suddenly placed himself in contention for an individual states qualification. I hoof over to the rise to wait on his arrival from the final woods loop. He crests the rise ten meters and two places out of the fifth individual spot with five hundred meters left. Fast finishes are usually his strong suit, but his middle mile effort has taken its toll and he cannot mount the surge to track those two runners down. He crosses the line in 10th but, like Lindsay, as the 7^th individual finisher. Only a sophomore, he will get more chances. The team makes a run at it, but takes 4^th. They are, however, also 4^th overall in the 63 team merge. Does that build their Federations case? No one knows. It’s out of their hands now. Others will have to make their case.

In the raw cool air, Friends of Wildcats XC has set up an apre-race food spread which includes hot chili and soup. We linger, not feeling a rush to depart. Except for the V-V-S and Section III crews, the place has emptied. When I finally call the bus around, the athletes and supporters are ready to call it a day. After we clear our site and board the bus, and I ask the athletes to listen up as I offer results and congratulations. “Folks,” I tell them as we pull out, “except for our seniors and Laura, Wildcats Cross-Country 2013 starts tomorrow.”

Sunday

They are out on their own runs today. Laura has fought hard enough to earn another week of training and competing—our survive-and-move-on strategy. The boys’ top-7 have decided to stick with it and play the odds of a Federation Championship bid. For all of them, the practices continue and uncertainty becomes a primary motivator—the blessing and the burden of all runners. They will keep the work going into the chill of autumn, hoping for one more chance at that perfect effort, that perfect race….. 

Coach Jim Vermeulen, West Genesee Varsity Cross-Country

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The Salazar Effect: A lasting impact?

By Jim Vermeulen, guest columnist
February 28, 2013

LetsRun.com Editor’s Note: We received the following piece unsolicited from NY high school coach Jim Vermeulen after it was rejected by another website for being ‘too delicate.’ Considering we’ve never been afraid of upsetting potential advertisers, we immediately became interested. We read it and thought it was interesting and asked the author for a bit of clarification as to what his main point was. He responded:

My short essay is merely meant to pose a few questions in light of the excitement over the accomplishments of Salazar’s coaching arrangements and the affect of such arrangements on the development of scholastic distance running in this country. It’s not just the Oregon Project, of course, but the OP is creating the buzz currently. We ought to questions the trends, whether we are cheerleaders or skeptics. My central question is whether the trends toward greater scholastic runner visibility (via meet sites, Flotrack, Milesplit,etc) and the increased potential of scholastic runners opting out of school programs is ultimately positive for ALL of scholastic running? I believe that’s an open question, and I will, with all due respect, disagree that “the talent rises to the top….”  It does, given the right support and/or expertise, but we all know that there are very talented runners out there who, if they chose to no longer compete for their school, would certainly not have the finances to access quality coaches and to bankroll big meet travel. No knock on Mary Cain, but if most high school stars decided they could not compete for their home programs, their parents likely could not afford to hire a private coach and jet them to big meets about the country. My point is that Nike (and others) could, if they wanted, support aspiring programs and/or athletes in innovative ways, this in addition to financing the elite athletes. As I said, it’s a topic worth discussion.

Enjoy.

On the long drive home from the recent Millrose Games, I decided something for myself about Alberto Salazar and the Oregon Project he currently directs. I decided I am an Alberto Salazar fan—though a qualified one. Innovators such as Salazar do what innovators are prone to do. They push the envelope in searching for solutions, in this case an answer to the underbelly softness of American distance running in the 80’s and 90’s. Innovating usually means irritating those content with–or invested in–the status quo. Salazar and the Oregon Project have certainly raised eye-brows and ruffled feathers in the past decade, and American distance running is the better for it. So good for him, and good for Nike for plumping down money to build a hyperbaric house and for financing various methods of improving the training and competing of American distance runners. Sure, Nike is padding their bottom line, but runners benefit. And as the saying goes: “what isn’t tried, won’t work.” Of course there are those who do not agree. Salazar certainly has his detractors, but whether you applaud or criticize him and the Oregon Project, if we expect to advance the overall ‘health’ of scholastic running programs in this country, then loving or hating Salazar’s practices and achievements with young prodigies such as Mary Cain is not the central issue.

Many are agog at the emergence of [insert your adjective here] middle-distance runner Mary Cain. With Cain now withdrawn from her scholastic school programs, breaking national records at a dizzy rate, serving the focus of NY Times articles and being “advised” long distance by Coach Salazar, the running media is conducting its required love affair with this extraordinarily talented young lady. And a lot of scholastic coaches already speak of her in extraterrestrial terms, as though describing a runner no longer one of ‘us.’ This is how the star system works in the other ‘popular sports,’ and so scholastic running can pat itself on the back for having finally achieved that level. Good for us. I suppose we deserve it, though there is always that gypsy curse which goes something like “may you get what you want.”

Driving home, however, I wasn’t thinking much about another Mary Cain record or the supposed belief that a scholastic/collegiate superstar system will revitalize American distance running and improve the medal count at the next Olympics. I was thinking about other things. Using the quiet travel time, I was anticipating the fast approaching outdoor track season and whether Kristen (not her real name) would summon herself beyond recent disappointments and graduate with a season to remember, not another one to rationalize or forget. As the passing mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania framed my car windows, I was wondering whether Colleen (not her real name) could, with a slight shift in attitude, see herself as the superior runner she can be—and then become one. And I was thinking about Kyle (not his real name).

Kyle arrived at our district this past Fall, the latest stop along his dysfunctional foster care placement tour, the fourth or fifth (I’m not sure) district he’d known in the past three years. Coach Delsole and I didn’t need to have the full details of his background; we didn’t care about any of his labels or so-called special needs; we merely wanted to coach the guy who showed up every day with enthusiasm and desire, the one who, by season’s end, added ten feet to his shot put PR. Despite some rough patches, Kyle had, we’d come to believe, finally found a home for the remainder of his scholastic career. He deserved at least that much, and we were glad home would be us. But two days after his final meet of the season, he was gone, whisked abruptly away to yet another ‘home’ in yet another district following a disagreement with his foster parent, one that almost any other parent would have handled better. And so now I was thinking of where to send his Most Improved team award.

As the miles drifted by, I was, in other words, absorbed with what the majority of scholastic coaches tirelessly devote themselves to—trying to make our sport work for the vast spectrum of young adults we confront season after season, year after year, almost all of whom will never compete at Millrose. Their connection to Salazar, Rupp, Cain et. al. is at best tenuous, so the pertinent question, it seems to me, is this: can Salazar and all those others provide a positive ‘trickle-down’ effect for American scholastic distance running? I certainly hope so—and we should expect nothing less for all the attention and opportunity they enjoy.

But it is just as possible that the publicity gush about the latest high school prodigy will merely fuel stratification between the haves of the distance running world—those with access to elite coaching, programmatic and technological benefits–and the have-nots. American culture, we know, too often tips that way, erecting its modern versions of the medieval cathedrals that the rest of us are expected to stare up at and adore. Star worship, though, is typically a poor substitute for systemic innovation, support and change.

Here are my hopes: that Nike and others like them are willing to spread their wealth more widely and sponsor not just elite athletes and programs but some broad coaching initiatives that will foster more of the talent which resides out there in urban and rural districts alike. There are ways to do that, and it’s patently obvious that superior talent requires superior coaching and programing. I also hope the growing media coverage of running will take at least some occasions to swing the cameras away from the top of the heap and focus occasionally on ‘the others.’ The surging popularity of track and field allows them to take those chances. And I hope we all seize opportunities to build the base as well as the pinnacle of the scholastic running pedestal.

American distance running has recently taken some important steps toward mainstream popularity. There need to be more.

Biography: Jim Vermeulen is the head track and cross-country coach at West Genesee in Camillus, N.Y. His article, “Managing Teams With A Big-Tent Philosophy” appeared in the Fall 2012 edition of Track Coach. Comments? Email us and we’ll forward them to the author.

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Cross-Country Journal 2013– Week 1 (Published in www.ny/milesplit.com)   (Note: Week 7 is missing due to lost files) August 19, 2013(Monday): Day 1      It was, of course, really only day one for a few of those runners massed before Coach Delsole and I on this clear, comfortable upstate morning. The shouts of soccer players bent around the building that separates sports at our middle school training grounds. Everyone was excited, but most of the runners had been here all summer, assembling several nights each week in the coolness of evenings to run trails or head out on long runs through farm-land fit for Rockwell paintings. Those were the months of relaxed anticipation and comfortable expectations. Steady miles and school-less tomorrows—some on the team considered it a separate and very special cross-country season of its own.             And some, unfortunately, missed a lot of those miles for one reason or another. So now, fueled with a desire to power into our official team practices and prove their mettle, we had to protect them from themselves. If we didn’t, eager minds would lead unprepared bodies directly to injury. So I was standing before those runners, relaxed in the shade following their warm-up run, and explaining(again) the rational and requirements for those who would be placed in our Foundations Training Group. Runners who failed to complete at least 50% of their summer mileage targets, runners who never reported any mileage, runners coming off injury or those who joined the team late—those would form our ‘FTG’ for the first month of the season. Training mileage would be progressively monitored. High intensity training would be virtually eliminated. They would, in effect, complete their own mini-summers.             “This is not punishment,” I reminded them. “We just want to ensure that you develop fitness steadily and safely. We don’t want you hobbled on the sidelines in three or four weeks. Once we see you can train safely, you and Coach Delsole and I will talk about whether you are ready for racing. This is going to mean you will miss some early races, but we want you running well at the end of the season, not broken. Missing the mileage this summer does, however, mean that you will not have the season you could have had. That’s just the way it is, so remember that for next year. You will, however, have a safe season.”   Earlier, during attendance and introductions, I had quietly noted some MIA’s. We were not surprised by most of the no-shows. Those were the names without faces who had not attended the pre-season meeting in June, had not joined us for any summer runs, had not submitted summer mileage logs. They were gone before we started. A few others had been quietly removed from the roster when I received e-mails that began something like: Coach, thanks for the opportunity, but…. Calling cross-country a no-cut sport is a misnomer. We simply have a longer try-out period leading to self-selected cuts. It’s called summer. All the girls on the injury log, however, were already moving back toward full workouts. I had only to announce that Kal, a top runner for us as a 2012 freshman, would be out for the season. A recent bone scan had confirmed what was already suspected. He had suffered a non-running back injury late in spring and would be in a back-brace well into October. The boys’ team were offered their first significant challenge. Updates and introductory information finished, we arranged them in groups for a course run. The instructions were specific. “This is not a time-trial,” I told them, “Start under control at 70-75% effort. Build into the distance. You want to see what summer’s done for you.” Some didn’t listen to either me or their bodies and ran too hard. Some found summer hadn’t done enough for them because they hadn’t done enough that summer. But a sizable number looked pretty darned good. At the end of a moderate volume day, we had our starting point.    August 20, 2013(Tuesday): Mileage – 1             As the joke goes, a hot-air balloon enthusiast drifts off course over a Maine farmer standing in his one of his back fields. “Can you tell me where I am?” the ballooner shouts down. The crusty old farmer squints skyward. “You’re up in a balloon you damn fool,” he shouts back.              Only two days in, we didn’t know where we were as teams, but there was no need to ask because it really didn’t matter. Mileage mattered, and that was always a controllable commodity. Laura had reinforced the tone for the teams when we talked about her fall season following a summer team run. “I don’t want racing goals,” she had insisted. “I want training goals first.” Coach Delsole and I had said about the same to the runners in June. Don’t expect us to talk about what kind of teams you’re going to be this fall, we told them. During the summer, we’ll be talking about what kind of training we expect you to complete instead.             On the menu for the day was a training goal: a well-run segmented GC session. It was another lesson learned from finally paying attention. Take a 30-40 minute GC run that for some runners too easily degenerates into a talking jog session. Break that work into segments, with runners launching out on a 1.5-2 mile loop, then returning to a ‘base’ for 30-40 seconds before launching on another. Do that and the paces improve. We get to prescribe routes and check on runners after each segment. They wind up with more quality mileage.             The weather was perfect—cool, sunny, no bugs. From our Three Corners base in the back field, the groups surged out, returning to take a quick hit of water, re-group and then listen to Coach Delsole describe their next segment. The FTG group went three segments, everyone else four. They zipped them off like clockwork. We had only two athletes sitting out the practice. One was still waiting on a mandatory physical, feeling slightly chagrined—as he should have. The other had managed to flip off a boating tube that weekend and suffer a concussion which meant a week at least on the sidelines. That was a new one for my list.   August 21, 2013(Wednesday): The Long Run             “Hey guys,” Nate announced to his boys’ front group as they exited the canal tow path, “you know we just went through the first mile in 6:30.” Coach Delsole was smiling after hearing that. The morning’s team long run was off to a good start.             One February evening, while watching our athletes warm up for an indoor invitational at the Onondaga Community College track, Coach Delsole and I had come to two decisions. One was that we meet the cross-country team for only two days a week during summer instead of our previous four. We wanted to give back to athletes the opportunity to develop self-initiative and discipline, knowing full well that some would and some would not seize the golden ring of summer training. The other decision involved workouts. We thought about the two best to conduct as a group. One choice was easy: intervals. The other made me think back to a previous sectional steeplechase record-holder and national top-10 finisher. Kerry had trouble finding long run partners, and she also had no trouble explaining why when I asked. “I run them too fast,” she told me. But after years of gathering Monday reports about team members’ Sunday independent long runs--a staple of many programs--I concluded Kerry was simply running hers correctly. The long run is foundational. We needed to ensure the foundation, so we decided to arrange a weekly team long run, all the way through cross-country season if necessary. For those who showed on Thursday for our summer long runs, the results had been sensational. By the two mile mark, as team members approached my monitor spot, the running groups had already strung into discrete clumps along the early morning shade of Thompson Road. As each passed, busy with its particular topic of conversation, I reminded them to check their time and calculate approximate paces. I was also on the look-out. Coach Delsole and I had talked to several runners beforehand about challenging themselves to faster paces--and this would be the last chance to make adjustments. One runner, however, didn’t need any adjusting. Elisabeth had taken a huge step forward in hooking up with Nicole, and she was running at least thirty to fifty seconds faster per mile that she’d ever paced on a long run. When I let her know that, she just smiled and continued on her way to a potential runner ah-ha moment. Hiding in the next huge group, however, were Maria and Bridget. I drove up Warners Road a half mile, pulled the car over and waited on the runners’ side. Elisabeth and Nicole strode by, still running confidently. When the clump arrived a hundred meters back, there was no way to discretely present the directive. “Maria, Bridget, I want both of you to pick it up and join Elisabeth and Nicole. Get going.” By the time I’d returned to my car, they had pulled away from the group and shortened the gap by twenty meters. When I passed them, heading out to check other groups, the four were together, joined by Rachel. And just as quickly they split. Maria, Rachel and Bridget had found the new gear to their liking and pulled away on their own. They would run their fastest paces ever for a long run. Discoveries seemed the order of the day. By the time I had checked everyone through the three mile point and then driven up to join Coach Delsole at the VanAlstine Road cut-off for the Foundation Group runners, the boys front group was long gone, arcing off into the small town of Warners for their circle-back along the western tow path of the canal. “Nat was hauling,” Coach reported. Nate would finish the morning eight miler two and a half minutes ahead of the next runner, but the top seven would all come in at or under seven minutes a mile, a good start to the training season. Laura, running her own seven minute pace, had nothing to say to Coach when she passed except “I feel great.” Exciting efforts were not in short supply. Maria, Rachel and Lindsay all ran strong together, but Bridget had pushed a minute ahead of them in the final miles, surprising both us and herself.  After striders, I congratulated her and asked how it had felt to increase the pace after the two mile mark. She merely smiled. “It felt better,” she said.     August 22, 2013(Thursday): Mileage - 2      This was a moderate day. I brought my dog Harley to practice, and he was his usual bi-polar self, either leaning contently into my leg or racing through clumps of runners trying to make new friends. He amused most of the runners and annoyed only a few. Better him than Coach Delsole and I.      On the main agenda for the day was fartlek. The FTG group would go 8-10-8; the rest would run 10-12-10. The bookend numbers were minutes of GC running. The middle number was the total time spent ‘up,’ running at about a 5k pace. The jog time between ups was whatever the group needed and went untimed. The boys group, thanks to Mike’s GPS watch, came out at 5.25 miles. I thought there might be more, but the total was right in line with my estimate on the Running Log.             Coach Delsole and I walked the trails to monitor runners and take stock of maintenance needs. We were struck again by the difference in lead groups. The boys, led by the senior quintet of Nate, Mike R., Jack and Matt Z., had coalesced and almost fully developed a group identity. They pulled each other along, but also expected each other to either stay ‘on the wagon’ or get back on after a hard day. Years of shared seasons, summer run partnerships, Aim High Camps, senior-season urgencies--you cannot always put your finger on the causes or origins of such groups, but you know them when you see them, and they are always a pleasure to watch at work. As they continued to draw others into their circle of shared expectations, the team would simply get stronger and all the athletes would have more fun. A rising tide…..             The girls were definitely still a work in progress, characterized both by significant overall athletic potential and also disparate circles of friendships that at this point often do not overlap. The gregarious, count-me-in attitude of most of the boys is contrasted by the more reserved nature of girls’ team members. Slowed by the re-entry of previously injured key runners and the gradual emergence of some new potential front-runners, the team’s uncertainty is, ironically, intriguing. “Hope had kept him going, but it was the doubt that gave him joy,” Christopher Tilghman once wrote of a short story character. That’s an apt description of my attitude toward the girls’ team. But I seriously doubt they’ll be anything by season’s end but pretty good.  August 23, 2013(Friday, Cape Vincent): Lake Day             Following a rainy Thursday, I was up early Friday morning mowing the lawn at my Cape Vincent lake house. There was a grill to clean and lawn chairs to arrange, tables and the EZE-Up tent to erect. I was fishing inflatable rafts and other water toys from the shed when the team bus rumbled up and emptied out its forty runners and parent chaperones who had made the two hour trek up from Camillus. Two girls immediately made a mad dash for the bathroom. Lake Day was officially under way.             A year after my wife and I swapped monthly college tuition payments for mortgage payments on a summer house just south of Tibbets Point, I had started bringing team members up for a day at the end of our first practice week. The team run, the waterfront fun, the food and even the bus ride had all served to both reward the summer work and foster team comradery. That lasted four good years before the district grew concerned about liability. Lake Day promptly disappeared, leaving the upperclassman to merely tell stories of their once-enjoyed tradition. Through time, diligence and district cooperation, however, we were able this year to revive the tradition. It was worth the effort.      After team members settled in and completed a warm-up run, Coach Delsole checked the groups for their run and staggered their starts. “Earn your food,” I told them as they launched off. The day’s work load was reasonable: a mile of GC running, then a three-mile block of tempo, followed by another mile and a half of GC with some 200 meter cut-downs near the lake house before their cool-down. The flat-road course followed a large country block out and around a swamp, with the tempo zone ending along a local beach. With a light breeze and cool, clear skies, we had again conjured up that lake day magic.             Moods matched the weather, and the runners took strongly to the new miles in a country/lake environment. In past years, inexperienced team members had gravitated more toward a glorified GC pace, but this group pushed their tempo zone diligently, with newer members segmenting the distance into mile increments with a short thirty second rest between. The occasional car passed, driver necks always craned to inspect this mass of motoring teenagers. The boys front group, packed tightly through the first tempo mile, splintered as Nat and David pulled out ahead and refused to look back. Brittany, Maria and Rachel had found something in their strong long run effort Wednesday. They moved confidently as a group while Laura, coming from way behind with her staggered start, caught them by running negative mile splits as the road slanted down to the blue waters of Lake Ontario. Everyone responded well to the work. Coach Delsole and I greeted them as they finished their tempo zone on the beach road, then monitored their return to the house for cut-downs and a short cool-down followed by core drills. They would tack on some easy regeneration miles Saturday, and Sunday’s individual GC runs would polish off a solid opening week, but at that point it was time to swim, eat and relax. None of those required instructions.

 Cross-Country Journal – Week 2

August 26, 2013(Monday, Camillus):

            It’s  6:50am. Many other athletes are turning over. Ours are turning out, approaching the team meeting spot under gloomy skies and spits of rain. They’re bleary-eyed, sleepy, but there.

            With a 9am Freshman Orientation on the schedule, team members have opted to go early. We dispense with attendance. The workout records will show who’s showed. I have little to discuss except to briefly outline the day and remind the freshman and ‘ambassador’ workers to get the main work done and take off. I also explain again why I changed from a favorite interval session called Manhattan Miles to 5x800 surge intervals with a 200m float. It’s a concise, more race-specific workout. All can, by controlling effort levels, participate. It will also go fast. Coach Delsole announces a warm-up route, and they’re off while we drive down to the trails and wheel out 200m, leaving the 800m interval section on our near-perfect 1000m outer loop.

            We end their warm-ups at the workout start point and complete drills and strides. I quickly explain the essentials of putting together training groups that will run tight. Time is ticking. We need to get going.

            For coaches, a workout validates, reveals, suggests and warns—all at the same time. There is seldom that perfect workout where all runners are hitting on all cylinders. We simply have too many runners, with too many different lives, to expect statistical uniformity. Someone’s bound to have forgotten breakfast; someone’s bound to be coming down with something; and someone’s bound to go MIA for one reason or another. This morning Logan’s missing.  

            Most of the girls are quiet and content with their early morning efforts. Laura’s neither. Laura has a lot to say about her splits and her mental strategies, which are not working to her satisfaction. We talk the possibilities of imagery or positive self-talk. She describes the advice of one coach to focus on things she ‘sees’ on the trails: trees, flowers, grass. It sounds like a diversion strategy to me. Did you try it, I ask? She had. And did it work? “For about three seconds” is the answer, and I manage to suppress my laughter. I have a few articles she’ll want to read.

            The last runners bring themselves home. 7:59am--we’ve cut it pretty close for the freshman and the helpers who scramble off while the rest re-group. They have more work, but Connor’s pleased with himself. “I’ve started plenty of workouts at eight,” he declares with satisfaction, “but I don’t think I’ve every finished one that early.” 

August 27, 2013(Tuesday, Camillus):

Dense mist and choking humidity bear down like a heavy blanket. The troops slowly mass on the basketball court, a few wandering in even as the morning conversation begins. “Be on time,” I interrupt myself to tell everyone with a little edge, then move back into a description of the day’s work. That will be general conditioning running, but with a twist. They will record their total time while Mike tallies mileage on his GPS watch. Divide mileage by time and you get GC pace. How will it stack up? The back-door practice VDOTs will tell.

Coaches are familiar with Jack Daniels and the usefulness of his short-hand VDOT numbers to gauge race efforts and to control the practice paces of various training distances. We turn those around by generating interval or mile averages from workouts, then work backward through Daniels’ tables to find associated VDOT’s. Their validity as stand-alone numbers is questionable, but once an athlete generates a sequence of workout VDOT’s, you can see patterns that suggest increasing/stagnant fitness levels or incongruities such as training intervals conducted at a more effective level than long runs.  We’re not a controlled college team or the tightly cloistered Oregon Project. We need tools that are readily applicable to 60-80 athletes of all abilities. This one works.

            It will turn out to be a day of spot conferences held on the fly in and around the morning’s session. A question about why Logan missed the early Monday practice (didn’t re-set the alarm) leads to a quick lecture on “taking care of the small things.” I need to check on Eva and her knees. There is the matter of a girl on the sign-up roster who’d gone MIA all summer and through week 1 only to show on week 2.  The story is incomplete but involves special family circumstances, so I work out an entry strategy for her. Wrapped up in this or that ‘issue,’ Mike has to remind me that the runners need to complete their “30 seconds” hip stability drill before the main workout.

Preparations finally complete, they assembled at Four Corners. Lou announces the runners’ first segment, then says he will walk the inner loop with his clippers to ‘groom’ overhanging branches and sticker bushes from that section of the course as he monitors passing runners. But not before rearranging a few groups. Cathryn needs to match her potential and gets moved up. Will is kept a group down from the front, which is fine. We don’t need to rush him, and there’s a big enough front wagon anyway. Laura hooks up with him and Andy. A good trio. With a flurry, the runners leave on their first segment. Coach leaves on his grooming mission. Suddenly I’m alone. Everyone’s off and involved. We have absolutely no one this day on the injured list—no one. It’s a fingers crossed, knock-on-wood moment, one that doesn’t go unappreciated.

             They churn out the intervals in the high humidity. Some sweat like pigs. Some struggle with breathing.  I quickly counsel Delaney on rhythmic breaths to remain relaxed. A quick hit of water as they file back in, then instructions on the next segment—“around Ike Dixon loop backward, reverse the soccer fields, then the course finish”--and off they go again. The miles accumulate as we manage to lengthen the segments and shorten the pauses. A 1.35 mile becomes a 1.61, then a 1.64 and finally a 1.81. It seems an odd way to run GC, but it works. Most in the foundations group have their final interval shortened while some have it eliminated. Everyone eventually finishes on the basketball court. They take in more water, then wander onto the grass for strides. “Shoes off,” I remind them. “This is a shoes off drill.”

            The strides go smoothly. More spot conferences are held. With Jack about upper body sway(“drive the elbows back harder; drive them instead of your shoulders”). With Alicia who wants to know whether her feet continue to splay slightly on toe-off. The workouts and the strengthening/coordination drills have generated more hip stability, because she already shows improvement--that news is greeted with a smile. Lindsay is reaching for speed instead of generating it with turn-over. We talk briefly. There’s too much to analyze and discuss in one day, but every little discussion helps.

            They glide in on their last stride, then set off on a short cool-down. We are out of time. I meet briefly with several boys seniors to discuss a team situation. Then Coach and I talk with Lindsay, who is dissatisfied with her workouts because she doesn’t “feel fast.” They’ve been good, we tell her, considering the workout types we’ve focused on and knowing that Lindsay is sometimes her own harshest critic. What she’s really talking about, we all agree, is turn-over when tired.  I promise some drills and future workouts that will drive improvements. Runners file around us, heading home. For an ‘off day,’ it’s been busy.

August 28, 2013(Wednesday, Camillus)

            Aesthetics, however, only carry you so far. In the end, there’s simply no faking a long run. Teammates can’t grant you extra seconds during recovery periods. An entire group won’t slow the pace just so you can keep up. And it’s tough to forge shortcuts through the hills and farm fields of Camillus. So the day’s longer mileage and additional topography is a rude awakening for some team members. They struggle. The scenery refuses to come to their rescue.

August 29, 2013(Thursday, Syracuse):

            It’s time for tailgate talk, and as I begin to address the teams seated on the basketball court around my Forrester, a misty cloud suddenly rolls in, dropping the temperature and replacing the pale morning sun with a drab, damp overcast grey.

I suppose that is apropos to the subject at hand.  “Just a few notes on yesterday’s long run,” I began. I hit the positives—of which there were many—and then swung the conversation to a smaller percentage of runners who remain nameless. They seem, I explain, to approach those runs with trepidation--and some actually appear to change stride profiles, applying stiff-legged or short-reach shuffles to get through the longer miles. “This is foundational running folks,” I tell everyone. “Our long runs aren’t going to go away, so we all need to appreciate what that training is doing for us and approach them positively—as healthy challenges rather than trials to be endured.”

            There is no need to beat that drum any longer. The runners warm up, conduct drills and then group for their fartlek run. While they cruise the trails, Coach Delsole and I walked the Woods Loop with limb loppers and clear the course’s final section of overhanging branches and encroaching weeds. The boys’ front group hammers by on one of their ‘ups.’ I count only four. Fifty yards back, Logan labors, and we let him pass without comment. “I wish I knew,” I tell Coach, “what goes on inside his head when this happens.” But Coach Delsole has a more practical question: “I wonder how much sleep he got last night.” After they’ve finished, the side conversation goes like this: Logan, did you work yesterday? Yes, until 6. Did you have dinner? No. What time did you get to bed?About 11:30.What did you have for breakfast? A cup of yogurt. I walk away. Coach can finish that conversation because he’s the calm one of the two.

            At home later, I receive another athlete’s e-mail:

Coach V,

After giving it a great deal of thought, and with many conversations with my parents, I have decided to take a break from Cross Country for this season. I will be devoting more time to my school work as well as being involved with student council activities. Also, I will be participating in a fitness program. I hope to return for track in the spring. I hope you understand. Good luck to you and the team.

            I do understand. She has the courage and the maturity of her decision. “If it’s not worth doing,” Syracuse professor Michael Freedman used to say, “it’s worth not doing well.”

August 30, 2013(Friday, Syracuse):

The Blue-Gold Challenge

            “I think Laura and Will are going to hammer today,” Coach tells me as the teams warm up for the 9:00am start of our annual course time-trial. We enliven the event a bit by dividing into Blue and Gold teams. Hand-crafted uniforms and special group-cheers are always evident, but this day there’s also an ample amount of face paint. A small crowd of parents has assembled for the fun, but on the serious side, the winning team gets in line first for the post-race brunch organized by Friends of Wildcats XC. Will Run For Food—I haven’t seen that show up on a shirt yet.

            “Don’t be surprised,” I caution Coach, “if times are a little off last year’s.” With the initial focus on foundational runs, the high-intensity training needed to race effectively has been in short supply. In a pre-race meeting, I warned the troops to avoid going out too fast or gunning any pace in the heat of the moment that would push them into anaerobic racing. “You’re not trained for that yet, so if you do, it’s going to hurt.” Holding back and even pace racing are the orders of the day for everyone. Under sunshine and building temperatures, Coach assembles the teams on the start line, gives final instructions(no tripping or grabbing your ‘opponents’ in the back loops) and whistles them off.

            They’ve effectively schooled themselves. No one succumbs to the moment with a too-fast start. If anything, it’s a conservative bunch that passes me at the mile mark in the woods. I bark out splits to all but the final runners, then hustle to the two mile point located near the exit of our difficult inner loop trail. Across the field, I hear parents and non-competitors cheering runners along the perimeter trail of the field. Soon, Nate, David and Jack come barreling down the field hill. I wait out a gap, but Will soon circles down. He’s running under control and faster than I expected. Logan, though, is off the pace with Mike behind him. Not good. Our #1-7 compression time will suffer for it and fail to achieve the 40-45 second span I think they can accomplish at this point in the season.

            Predictably, the girls top 5 finishes with a larger spread. Laura, the outlier, is followed by Lindsay and then the more closely packed trio of Elise, Maria and Rachel. Delaney chops an impressive four minutes off her 2012 time to race sixth for the girls and Sarah, coming off a rehab summer of alternate training and mileage progressions, is a pleasant surprise in 7^th. By the time I pedal in from the back fields, most of the racers have crossed the finish. As they walk slowly back to their water, they’re a mixture of pleased and relieved, with some disappointment thrown in for good measure. The Race Analysis’ will come in this weekend, providing their impressions of the day. We have another baseline, with good data to consider. And Gold has turned back the Blue team. First dibs on the brunch food for them.

August 31, 2013(Saturday, Cape Vincent):

            Harley and I slip away from family at the lake house for a short run. He darts in and out the passing fields, happily conducting dog investigations, then circling quickly back at the approach of cars to tuck in beside me and match my turtle pace. I trudge along, grateful for the time as I mentally choreograph coming practices to advance what we’ve seen from the athletes so far and to begin addressing racing needs. The time trial has made it clear--to at least me--that we’ve sacrificed some things to achieve others. As the landscape slowly rolls by, there’s a chance to weigh the reality that neither team is anywhere close to what they will need to be in our tough league and our tougher section. There’s work ahead. But as the saying goes, good things don’t come cheap. And nothing about the potential ‘good’ of our teams deserves to come easy.

Cross-Country Journal  -- Week 3

September 2, 2013(Labor Day, Camillus):

            Driving Howlett Hill Road to our late afternoon Labor Day practice, I am straddling two weathers. To the south, sun and clouds. Turn the view north, though, and the vision is blocked by a big black ugly moil of storm enveloping Lake Ontario. But the call-off point for practice—with team e-mails and a group text message—is passed. We’re committed.

            Coach Delsole’s sitting in his car when I arrive. “That’s weird,” he says motioning upward. A low layer of clouds, almost touchable, is sliding the wrong way, south, like frightened birds escaping early. A heavy rain erupts, and we move under the school bridges to join some team members to wait. Thunder booms, and I set my watch. Now we’re on delay time. As minutes pass the rain relents, then stops while the team assembles.

            It’s not a bad time to reiterate the sports policy on thunder and lightning. Not that they need to be told. Athletes who would probably gab with friends through a tornado become hyper-vigilant about a distant clap of thunder when a break from training is in the offing. But we use the time to go over some team information and set out the practice week. I instruct them on the warm-up loops as the delay ticks down and then send them off.

            The runners reassemble astride the soccer field, at the southeast corner of our outer loop. “Let’s get it going,” I shout as they find trees or the shoulders of partners for their active stretches. The clouds to the north are still boiling and the weather map on the Droid doesn’t look promising, with storm cells moving east. I don’t need a Droid, though. A monstrous thunderhead looms westward, somewhere beyond Auburn.

            We’re halfway through sending groups out on their hill interval circuit when thunder rattles the sky. Done, Coach Delsole walks down-trail to direct the runners back to the school while several team members and I pile water bottles in my car and I drive them back. Expecting the worst, only a moderate rain falls, but the two delays have effectively nixed the workout. So, protected by the bridges of the building, we circle the runners and conduct core drills.

            Of course, the rain stops as soon as we begin core, our thunderhead arcing harmlessly north across the lake. I bark out the exercises while circulating. The athletes joke and jockey with a snow-day relief, but they do look much more polished with the exercises than on day 1. By the time we finish, the sky stretches clear and blue, a gorgeous late summer evening. As the runners walk off to waiting cars, Coach and I just looked at each other and shake our heads.

September 3, 2013(Tuesday, Camillus):

            I don’t pull any punches. “This will be one of your hardest workouts so far,” I tell the runners prior to their warm-up. Then we lengthen the warm-up.

            School-Hill Circuits is, in fact, a tough one, so it’s managed as to not dip too long into the high stress zone. Still, there’s an element of will-power workout to this one, and because it loops and circles for a half mile around the open school grounds, we see everything. That’s part of the plan.

            They were scheduled to run it Monday, but thunder delays snuffed that idea—and shifted the week’s progression of work. David ran a hill workout on his own Monday due to a conflict, so he’s conducting a fartlek run while his teammates labor. And I finding that two weeks of foundation training and knocking on wood didn’t totally work because we have several runners complaining of this problem or that. They’ve been quickly pulled from the workout pending a trainer’s exam. No sense compounding a problem or lengthening a recovery. They mope about, watching. They’d rather be training.

            Truth be told, I can be somewhat schizophrenic on quality-day workouts. There are high-fives after a good interval and pats on the back for observed effort. There are smiles and compliments when runners challenge themselves to run with a higher group or to go negative on a set of intervals. But I also pull a few aside and get in their face about the lack of whatever. “Find the race in the workout” has been the mantra, but some have not done so because they’re not looking inside deeply enough—or don’t want to. But they know by word or by experience that if you can’t show it on a quality day, you’re unlikely to unload the big one on race day. Still….

            Russell, though, has requested a move up to the front group for the first set. Why not, I’ve told Coach, his workouts have gone well; let’s see what the freshman can do. Russell does more than merely hold his own, powering home the first three intervals with several top runners. I catch him during the set recovery, and he says he’s ready to try the second set up front. Same result. My eyes are widening as he goes third set with the front group and finishes with the eighth best average. This is impressive. The only thing more impressive is watching Sean on all fours at the end of his final hill, spent after a monster workout, his best of the young season. 

            The intervals pile up and the images accumulate: Lindsay staring off into the back field, steeling herself for the next set; Connor congratulating himself with a quiet “yes” following a good interval; Maria and Elise wide-eyed following an on-the-spot ‘lecture’ about driving the flats more; Chris hammering the final hill of each circuit; Laura off, somewhere, throwing up before logging more intervals.

Gradually, the groups complete their targets and tiredly log times as they sip water and recover. Coach Delsole returns from the far side of the hill circuit with our boundary cones.  “I like that,” he says and points. The runners have indented a visible path on the grass, up and down their short hills, across their long reaches. It will disappear with a few days and some mowing, but for now they’ve painted proof of effort on their glazed-green practice canvas.

September 4, 2013(Wednesday, Camillus):

            They already know it’s a longer run, but this one’s been adjusted downward. “The first mile or so you will piddle along,” I tell them. “Start slow. When you feel refreshed, you’ll get back to normal pace. And the watches,” I add. “Forget them. You’re just getting in the run.”

            Sunny and mild--it’s another picture-perfect upstate afternoon; and if I didn’t envy them yesterday, today’s made for cruising the miles without a care in the world. In clumps they set off. At the end of Ike Dixon Road, a few miles up, they’ll split. Runners going longer head left toward the hamlet of Memphis; runners going shorter take the right fork and head down Sands Road. Eventually, tracing large circles, those clock and counter-clockwise groups will reunite on Gilly Lake Road for the reach home. I take the short route today while Coach Delsole motors off to monitor the long runners.

            Though an idyllic afternoon, some in my groups have retreated to the long-run shuffle. But I say nothing as they pass. The miles are the miles, and those say more than I need to. I ‘jump’ a few runners a half mile or mile to try and keep the front reasonably close to the last finishers, but by the last miles they’ve strung out considerably. Coach Delsole and I take time out from our monitor duties to have polite and separate conversations with the same concerned elderly lady. On her drive home from the store, she’s spotted runners out of our sight spread three abreast up rises that hide cars. It’s a clear violation of our road rules, rules that have been repeatedly revisited with the runners. So we thank her and plan the next ‘talk’ with team. It won’t be a friendly talk and may involve, for a few repeat offenders, boring alternatives to long runs on roads.  Runner safety doesn’t allow anything else.

            By the time I’ve ‘cleared the road’ of the final runners, Coach has the others circled and ready for core drills. “Seven push-ups” he starts……

September 5, 2013(Thursday, Camillus):

            4:32am. Sleep’s not working, so Harley and head out on a morning walk. Time to think. We are testing the limits of the Big-Tent philosophy this season. The goal, of course, is to accommodate as wide a range of athletic ability as possible. What you are forced to do in the end, however, is to triage your time and efforts with the various abilities levels. Coach Delsole and I can only be spread so thin each day. And our mandate has been spelled out concisely in the school’s Athletic Handbook and reinforced by the Athletic Director at the Fall Sports Parents’ meeting. As a varsity sport, one of our primary functions is to compete and win. Another function is to prepare athletes who are capable of succeeding on the next level—college—to do so. However, we are not just a varsity sport. We are a freshman sport, a JV sport and a varsity sport all rolled into one. Some ‘invisible’ freshman become varsity mainstays if properly developed. But what about the runners who, despite all attempts, so little growth or interest in improving? The answer is to find some manner for them to become contributors or…..I leave the thought hanging. Harley dutifully sniffs the bushes. He could care less.

            With their first full day of school, the runners arrive in two clumps. Those lucky enough to drive or hitch a ride are circled up by 3:00pm. Then we wait. The shuttle bus arrives at 3:20. That will likely be our schedule for the remainder of the season. I’ve taken attendance of the early arrivals and quickly fill in the remainder when the bus group arrives en mass. Jon declares the warm-up loops and they are off.

            The day is, almost to a runner, sluggish. They are still recovering, but Coach Delsole nails it correctly later as he speaks to the team following drills. “I know the Tuesday hill circuits were tough and then you had your long run yesterday--but some of you took today off.” It is true. Some of the slower runners had simply slopped along on their segmented GC. And that wasn’t the only disappointment.

     Following a hip injury that sidelined her all spring, I had put Cassie on progression workouts in early August, and she had doing well with them for a month. She’d run pain-free all those weeks, and with a successful low-level 8-10-8 fartlek two days ago, I was thinking she could run the GC pace for one or two segments. So I included her with a girls group. But as I was instructing some runners between the first and second segment, I saw her talking with Del and gesturing toward her hip. Being cautious, we pulled her from the workout immediately.  Pain-free rehab had gone on a long time, but it was obvious that something was not being properly addressed with her current drills.

September 6, 2013(Friday, Camillus):

            A late afternoon sunshine slants down through the hardening leaves of the Woods Loop trees.  The day is clear, crisp and cool, an autumn preview. We step aside as a group barrels by and disappears down-trail, to be followed shortly by others. “They’re running really well today,” Coach observes. The hard Tuesday hill session has finally been shaken out and a positive synergy grips most of the groups. “Yes they are,” I agree.

            By the time we crest School Hill and descend to the basketball court, most of the runners have returned and are watering up while they lounge in the sun and wait for teammates. They know there’s more. A number are quietly apprehensive about their first L.A.T. drill of the season and its need for speed. They have a right to be. L.A.T. is a tough way to end the day. “The ultimate goal,” I had told them earlier, “is an L.A.T. where we cannot tell the difference between your thirty second surges and your floats. We’ve never seen that happen, but we’ve seen something very close. So that’s always the goal.” There is, of course, a smaller group—400 and 800 meter track guys like Jack—who are licking their chops.

            It’s not even five but the shadows have begun lengthening eastward with the slow drop of the sun. As the modified runners circle on the basketball court for their drills, we call our teams up to pace around the coned, lopsided circle. “The first whistle is a down!” I boom from the approximate center, “A down!” I whistle and start the watch. No one bolts out this time. Anyone who did would have been laughed back into place. The rhythm is simple. Blast the thirty second ups to stay with the fastest member of your group, then hold as much of that momentum as possible while recovering in the downs. “Get ready!” I bark near the first up, then whistle and shout “Pick up!”

            Almost everything you need about your runners is revealed in this drill. Who’s got the TWT(turn-over when tired). Who’s not afraid to lead. Who tries to push with their shoulders instead of their hips. Who can stay on the wagon when the clock reads seven minutes and it’s mental decision time—and who can’t.  And who has the guts and the desire to push the floats. A few of our boys front-runners do because they are weaving through the others during floats, passing the less experienced or less conditioned with their wide-eyed when-will-it-be-over looks. We note the runners with ‘issues’ and call out instructions. Now’s the time to make corrections and practice improved form. Generally, though, we love what we see, runners who look like they are getting ready to race. They are not there yet, but they are getting close.

            I whistle them into their final surge. Some are just hanging on, but a lot have notched up, reaching inside for that little extra. Jack has sat behind Nate for most of the surges, letting him carry the load. This last one Jack flies by Nate. Coach Delsole just laughs

September 7, 2013(Saturday, Cape Vincent):

     Our teams are not racing this weekend, but the invitational results are pouring in with Bill Meylan of Tullyrunners.com pumping out the Speed Ratings. Yup, it’s cross-country season……

Cross-County Journal – Week 4

September 9, 2013(Monday, Camillus):

            Crystalline cloud-laced skies and cool temperatures greet the runners who start a busy week. I hand out—for the last time—the athletic policy sheets to about 12 who’ve failed to submit them. Tomorrow’s the deadline. After that, they sit from competitions until the documents are submitted.   School policy.   As Coach Delsole arrives, I outline the day’s work. On tap is something new: tempo around the Woods Loop.

            While they warm up, Coach Delsole and I discuss group changes. We decide to place Lindsay again as mother duck to her girls group. The boys front group remains, of course, the boys front group. Other names came up. Megan and Maggie are potential ‘movers’ with the potential to practice higher. They will join a faster group. Others are considered but left where they’ve trained. We will use meets this week for evaluations.

            At Three Corners we group them, issue final instructions and set them off in tightly packed groups. Once the last group exits, I blow the whistle to start the tempo. For the next twenty minutes, they surge corners and power the wooded circuit while Coach Delsole and I rotate through sections of the trail. We like what we see. Our busy week is underway.

September 10, 2013(Tuesday, Camillus):

Thunder, lightning and torrential rain sweep through the area during the morning, but the big show has moved on by afternoon, replaced by rising temperatures and humidity. The heat index warning arrives from the AD via e-mail, and I make practice adjustments.

When the teams arrive, we go over logistics for Wednesday’s dual meet at Oswego and provide a very condensed version of the standard hydration lecture, one the veterans know by heart. It doesn’t take the teams long to warm up on their warm-up, and when they return we move to the small back field of the school grounds where a natural bowl is shadowed by tall maples. They are only too happy to complete drills in the shade before their GC run. This day our GC segments will serve double duty, keeping the pace proper while providing opportunities to re-hydrate. Some of the runners who have read or listened to the weather report smartly brought two water bottles.

As they circle out into the heat and back, Coach Delsole and I discuss a variety of topics that invariably swing back to who’s training well, who’s struggling and whether certain neophytes have yet ‘figured out’ this sport of ours. Some have done so quickly, some are taking more time, and some—well, we’re not so sure what, exactly, they are actually thinking. At this point in the season, however, it is probably more imperative that they know exactly what we are thinking. And the critical we is the collective team philosophy, the one that expects a loyalty to the sport reflected in commitment and effort. Some struggling neophytes can surprise you, but because of time and experience, Coach and I can usually identify who of the newcomers may not be there at next year’s team pre-season meeting. “We may have a few one-year wonders,” I suggest to Coach as runners return for water. Then I correct myself. “Well, they might not exactly be wonders.”

“Yes they are,” he assures me. “They are here a one year and they wonder why.”

Practice over, I hit the road on a forty mile drive to Rome for an Outdoor Track sectional representatives meeting. Our sectional coordinators obviously like things done in advance. When the meeting breaks at nine, I head home along the thruway with a crescent moon sinking to the dark horizon. I shuffle in the door at ten, the end of a hot and tiring thirteen hour day. My wife did not check the message I left. “Where have you been?” she wants to know.

September 12, 2013(Wednesday, Camillus):

When I slip behind the wheel at 6:45am, the car thermometer already reads 80^o. That’s the low point of the day. All morning the temperature climbs. About eleven, the AD’s heat index warning comes in. By noon, Oswego has called to postpone our meet.  A half hour later, with the heat index at 98 and still rising, all afternoon athletics are cancelled. I text the runners to get some miles in later after the predicted storms roll through. Maybe things will have cooled by then. This is crazy.

            By seven, a broken front has moved through with scattered storms and temperatures have, in fact dropped. The evening feels normal—except we’ve lost another practice. An hour later, another loss arrives via e-mail:

Coach,
I am very sorry to say that I have to quit XC. This bothers me a lot because I am in no means a quitter. And I hate that I have to ,but my employer called me today and told me that because my availability is so poor he was going to cut me loose if I didn't choose... I need my job because I have truck payment that I can't make without it... I wanted to thank you for all the guidance, support and help you have given me throughout my three years of cross country and I hope that next year I will be able to continue... I also wanted to apologize for how soon this came upon me and you... I will return my jersey as soon as possible ... I just wanted to give you a heads up and that I am very sorry and it was so hard to make this decision, but it’s the route I have to take... I am sorry
                                     ~J

It’s a shame. J was liked for his level head and quirky sense of humor. He was a contributor in ways some might not have fully understood or appreciated.

September 12, 2013(Thursday, Oswego):

            We’re on the bus by 3:00pm and headed north. On the agenda is our postponed meet at Oswego, and I’m glad we could quickly re-schedule. It squeezes the team a little with the Chittenango Invitational on Saturday but better that than something wedged in down the road in October.

            With the whistle, the boys take charge immediately, running efficiently and tight. The top Oswego runner sticks with our front group, but goes down on a turn halfway, wrenching an ankle and pulling from the race. That leaves a long line of Wildcats to charge across the finish for a comfortable win. The girls follow suit. Laura’s on assignment and once past the mile mark, she pesters Lindsay and Maria mercilessly to monitor and maintain pace. “She was soooo annoying,” Lindsay tells me later with a wry smile. But Lindsay’s not feeling well either. She’s coming down with what’s been going around. The surprise of the day is Elisabeth. Two years ago, she was last on our depth chart. Today she finishes fifth. I just roll my eyes and return her tired but very satisfied smile.  Better late than never. You gotta love this stuff.

September 13, 2013(Friday, Camillus):

            They are sitting arced around the opened back of my Forester. Some are too lightly clad and shivering in the chill. “Guys,” I tell them. “Think back forty-eight hours. This is the real weather, so plan accordingly.”

The first order of business is to watch the warm-up. As a result, Lindsay and I come to the same conclusion. Sick, she’s pulled from the workout and, being the realist, I mentally subtract her from Saturday’s race. With Laura out for a college visit, others will have the chance to lead the team. Not my favorite invitational scenario, but it’s early in the season.

Coach Delsole takes the opportunity to deliver his ‘germ lecture’ after drills--and he gets pretty graphic, evoking images of infested stairwell handrails and water fountains less antiseptic than toilet bowls. I know he’s making the point, but judging from some squeamish reactions, it’s also great theater. I’m standing off to the side trying not to laugh.

            The day goes light, with some GC running and strides. Laura completes a mono-fartlek workout and is encouraged with the training to date. It’s the best she’s felt since her sophomore year, and we let her know we are very happy for her. The team finishes strides, and we discuss Saturday logistics. It will be an early start, with races in marginal weather. We send the athletes off, and I take a few minutes to watch the modies dart, weave and giggle around the school grounds on a timed run. They’re squirrels. I’m reminded—again—of that benefit to varsity coaching.

September 14, 2013(Saturday, Camillus):

As predicted, it’s an overcast, drab morning, with clouds occasionally spitting rain. Things could be worse. It could be pouring. Lindsay drags herself from bed long enough to e-mail that she won’t be on the team bus, which does not surprise me. But I leave too much to the last minute and drive halfway to the high school before I realize my wallet and cell phone are sitting back on the kitchen table. No turning back, though. And later I’ll realize I’ve left the the team tent ground cloth out of the equipment bag. I’m hoping the runners are better organized.

And they are. We load up the buses and are off at 7:00am, arriving at the meet sight with ample time. Coach Delsole picks a tent site and team members proceed to stand around listlessly in the gloom until he becomes the drill sergeant barking orders. The boys erect the tent while the girls suit up and leave on their warm-up and course preview. Most know the race course and pay closer attention to the few changes they’ll be thankful for later. Certainly no one complains about the new down-slope finish. With things under control, Coach and I chat with our colleagues and catch up on the latest news, keeping an eye on the clock and the course for the return of the girls.

            And anything does. By the time the start reaches me in the back field, it’s apparent our girls have taken it out too cautiously. Our front-runners have been swallowed by the opening pack. Nothing to do but shout them up and see what happens. When they circle the perimeter of the field and return for the first of two loops, some team runners have moved up slightly, but we are certainly not in contention with the top teams. Encouraging signs do present themselves, however. Elisabeth is again running top five today—and she will be needed. As our front-runners disappear down into spongy/mucky bottom trails, I’m already taking mental notes on other runners and specific training that should drive improvements.

            The runners climb from the bottoms, take a hair-pin turn midway down the long finish chute and return for their second loop in the back field. Mental maturity and faith are what mid-races are all about. Runners who have used team members for pace-sense in practices or dual meets either can’t use those crutches in large races or they simply ‘clump’ with those teammates as their proper race-places stretch out ahead of them. Our front-runners lost their race-places early and are slowly gaining some of that position back, but it’s apparent to me they will not finish where they belong. This is a good experience for all, however, we will have things to talk about. As we greet the tired racers out of the finish chute, Coach is suggesting a possible third place, but my intuition says otherwise. Fifth, we find out just prior to the boys race.

            Our races are a tale of two cities. Where the girls approached their opening tentatively, the boys immediately get down to business. Surging by me into the backfield loop, our ‘cats’ are filling the top-7, with Nate leading the charge. They circle down into the bottom trail, as I shout on our other runners and then wait. When the leaders return, we are still tight. I radio Coach Delsole that, for now, it’s looking good, with our other senior-surprise, Sean, running a strong fifth for our team. Freshman David is putting aside any doubts others might have as he surges along in the top 3. And Will, who’s been lurking comfortably in the front pack, pulls up to Jack as they loop out of the back field. The CNS front-runner is ahead, pushing third place. “We get him on the bottom trail,” Will tells Jack. And that’s exactly what they do, surging past their competitor and Nate. Emerging onto the main field, Will barrels down toward the finish in the lead, with Jack in pursuit. The team goes 1-2-4-5-11 for the short score, the win and a satisfying start to the invitational season. They hang around the finish with parents in a contented cluster until we shoe them toward the team tent for gear changes and the cool-down. The Friends of Wildcats Cross-Country group is waiting with post-race snacks. Coach Delsole offers a handshake and a smile. “Step one,” he says. 

September 15, 2013(Sunday, Cape Vincent):

Early morning. I’ve driven up north following the meet for a short weekend at our lake house. All the runners back in Camillus are probably rolling over, consciously intent on sleeping in. I’m outside, enjoying a leisurely sunrise.

David:

I felt I had a very mentally tough race. I ran right through a cold and I did positive self-talk so I would not fall off. Unfortunately, I gave up 3 places at the end. I know they are 5 inches bigger, but I felt like it should have been two places instead of three.

            I don’t have the heart to write our diminutive but speedy freshman that some of those guys are a lot more than five inches taller. And the two places he didn’t mind surrendering so much were to his teammates.

Cross-Country Journal – Week 5

September 16, 2013(Monday, Camillus):

            Just enough mushiness on the trails and dampness in the air prompts me to alter the workout. I’ve done that before often enough to irritate a few of the runners who don’t like plans changed. Some others have made a game of second-guessing my second-guessing. They’re the ones in the group who, as the change is announced, turn to a teammate with a smug smile and proclaim loud enough, “Told you.” We consider them the students-of-the-sport, runners paying attention to the rhymes and rhythms of season and weather.

            Coach Delsole is handling the comings and goings of groups at the start/finish down on the Outer Loop. I hike up School Hill with the walkie-talkie and plant myself atop the Narnia trail that courses through and up a small field separating our Ike Dixon Loop and the school grounds. I hate the name that the runners insist on applying to the place, but they’ve warn down my resistance. So be it—Narnia. 

            The opening circuit is for the runners to intuitively sense and adjust pace based on some clock and body feedback. I use my perch to note hill form. I radio Coach that Nate came up the hill looking like a waiter, with arms too low and elbows ineffectively locked. He relates the information with my instructions for correction, and the next time through there’s a world of difference. I am also less than happy with the way Maria and Elise have gone to the back of their mostly boys group and followed dutifully along. Too timid for my taste. Over the radio, Coach agrees and concocts an interesting solution. They’re given a 3-5 second lead-out and told that if more than six boys pass them, the circuit doesn’t count. Suddenly, more power and drive appear, and the number of passes never exceeds two. In between the labored breathing and the foot pounding of passing groups, my back field goes eerily quiet and almost autumnal. I appreciate the contrast, but they are out there working hard today. It’s money in the runners’ bank.

September 17, 2013(Tuesday, Camillus):

            On behalf of several runners, Laura successfully lobbies for a continuous GC instead of segments. She suggests 20-25 minutes. I agree but make it thirty with following drills and strides. One of our late August arrivals who has been balancing along the training tightrope due to very low summer miles completes the warm-up; but that’s his work for the day. It’s progress. Another late arrival with base mileage deficits is spied walking on the cool-down. Coach is steaming, and I don’t blame him. We are still perfecting a viable system for runners like that who seem overstressed from even the baseline workouts in our system. Putting them on rehab-type workouts is one solution, but where should we draw the line? It is the dilemma, I’m sure, that many coaches face as they attempt to keep their programs accessible to a wide range of talent while meeting the mandates of a varsity sport. We also have some girls weaving in and out of workouts, and I wonder, due to a lack of consistent training, if they will ultimately fashion productive, successful seasons. Time is passing.

            With no general conditioning segments to monitor, Coach Delsole and I set cones for tomorrow’s dual meet with Auburn while watching the passing groups and pondering the general health and strength of the team. Overall, our front runners are doing just fine, and some in the JV ranks are showing signs of making that internal decision to move up. Mid-season discovery time has arrived. The message we’ve related to a number of team members privately or as a group—the talent is in there, just tap it—seems to be resonating. On the girls side, we could be a very different team in a month.

September 18, 2013(Wednesday, Camillus):

            Today’s a winning day, but an awful one too. Before we even get to warm-ups for our dual meet, I have to send one of our runners home for a critical infraction of our Code of Conduct. Whether he will be allowed to return to the team this season will be the A.D.’s decision. Coach and I feel bad for him, but he’s broken both school and team policy. I pull the boys team aside to explain the situation and them get them started on their warm-up.

            There’s a meet to administer. The Auburn modified runners have already arrived, so we are assured of an on-time start. Coach Delsole gives them course preview information while I go over directions with the meet-scoring crew. This day, it consists of team members not competing. A crowd begins to build, and by the time Coach sounds the horn for the modified boys race, they’re two and three deep along the start. Both boys and girls squads are able to race home to cheering crowds and convincing wins.

            By the time I return from monitoring the modies in the back fields, the boys varsity squad is on the line, completing their final warm-up. We’ve already had the talk—compression—and reminded them of the primo conditions for racing. During stride-outs, I tell them to pick a new team cheer, something with lower decibels that conveys the right message about self-confidence. About 5:10, Coach blows the start horn, and I pedal again into the back field.

            Some races produce a fair share of drama, some don’t. By the time they speed by me at Three Corners, headed toward the Woods Loop, the race has shaped up about as it will end, with a batch of Wildcats surrounding Auburn’s talented front runner. Will is fighting a cold, but he manages to stay with Jack and Nate at they go 1-2-3 to seal the win. Our thirty-eight second compression is mediocre, but it’s an improvement, so we’ll take it.

            The girls are next. At the horn, Laura tears off. There will be no strategy race today. We’d talked the previous day, and I’d reminded her of the missing quality days due to college visits and how we both needed to know her race-fitness level. With no Saturday invitational, this would be the perfect day to determine that. The only drawback would be the lack of competitors or teammates to pace her. By the top of the opening loop of the rise, she is twenty meters ahead of Lindsay and another twenty on the WG lead pack. This will be a solo time trial.

            At Three Corners, I do what I frequently do the early going of races—I yell at the girls front pack trailing Lindsay to get moving, to trust their training and push the front mile harder.  But this is a game that will not be won in the mind so much as in constant demands to practice harder so that their perceived ‘full effort,’ whether it’s 85 or 90 percent of actual potential, is still faster. You shall race as you train, says the old adage.

            I bike to the Woods Loop exit. Laura shortly comes barreling out, under control and steady. Lindsay follows further back, and I knew the gap will steadily widen. Laura is in a pace zone nobody is matching. After most of the girls had gone by, I thrash through high weeds to the back field’s inner loop, hearing the cheers of spectators in the outdoor spectator area. Laura soon circles into the inner loop and comes driving by. Still precise, still under control. “Run this strong,” I tell her and thrash back to the other trail overlooking the two mile mark. A sporadic groups of runners veer into the Inner Loop, fighting mounting fatigue. The Wildcats among them are only too aware of the toughness of that section of our course. “It’s where we win races,” Coach Delsole has often told the runners.

            I wait for the others. Three minutes later, Lindsay, Elise and Maria descend the hill and push their way across the back field with me yelling and encouraging them to power early along the terrace. Lindsay is hurting but persevering. Elise and Maria overtake her on the terrace section and finish slightly ahead.  I bike to the finish, where Laura is all smiles and wants to know, “Did you hear what I said in the field?” I confess I had not, so she tells me. “I said I was running like a metronome.” A pretty fast metronome is all I can think. Laura, however, has already turned her attention to Lindsay, who is crying and holding a hip. “You’re fine,” Laura is insisting as she hugs Lindsay. “You’re O.K.” Laura is mother duck this day.

September 19, 2013(Thursday, Camillus):

The Wednesday dual meet results tell us there are few surprises on the boys side, but the puzzles pieces for the girls have shifted—again. Things are getting interesting, and images of the team have changed significantly from what we imagined in the weeks of July--not in the top positions, but in those important spots that come after and provide critical team depth. Alicia seems to have made a statement with her team sixth place, and Maggie continues to race and train near the top.

Megan also has moved up with two consecutive team top-10 finishes. On the workout depth chart, however, she’s still further down, but during the stride session she makes a humorous statement by bursting through the finish like a track runner reaching for the tape. “Way to go,” I tell her jokily. Over her shoulder she says, “Finally.” There’s an faint edge to her voice so I call her back and give her a quick shoulder hug. She walks away with arms raised and a “Yes.” Later, following practice, we have a more serious discussion, one that touches on the expectations and the responsibilities of potential. All in all, with a solid fartlek session and drills in the book, it’s been a good day.

September 20, 2013(Friday, Camillus):

            Other teams are prepping for Saturday invitationals. We’re hitting the roads instead, riding out summer on warm winds and sunshine, pacing the season by limiting 5k’s. Their Saturday will be sleep-ins and light, restorative miles.

            Megan gets her chance. I’ve shifted her to the girls’ front group.  Here group glides in neat single-file fashion up and over the rolls of Ike Dixon, heading out. It’s a gorgeous afternoon, warmer than necessary but clear. At the Gilly Lake intersection, the groups separate for their individual loops through the countryside, and I get first reports about their paces. They’re moving well for the opening stages. Megan is firmly ensconced in her lead group. So far, so good.

            Despite the great efforts by a number of team members, the run has again left some disappointed—and a few riding back in our cars with tight calf muscles or sore hips. These runs force history back into the faces of runners. Things left undone in the summer or mechanical issues left unsolved are almost always, on these runs, ‘returned to sender.’ I tell them just that as we assemble for core drills in the shade. None of the words, of course, are about this day, this week, even this season. They are aimed further afield--into next summer. Let’s hope they hit their intended mark.

September 21, 2013(Saturday, Baldwinsville):

            With one eye on the sky, I drive out to watch our modified runners compete in the Baldwinsville Invitational. On the start line, the girls are a giggly bundle of nervous energy. But the starter’s gun solves that problem. Carly and Rachel negotiate the twists and trails well, finishing third and fourth individually and pulling their team to a third place finish. Coach Wojtaszek brings his boys team to the line, and they put all their scorers in the top-20--including the 2-3 spots--to capture their fifth straight Baldwinsville title. I leave as storm clouds mass for arrival from the west, satisfied with the future of Wildcats XC.

Cross-Country Journal – Week 6

September 23, 2013(Monday, Camillus)

            What a day at my day job. Rush, rush with multiple concerns. I am only too happy to pull up to XC practice. The weather has turned cool and intermittently cloudy, with sunlight poking through at regular intervals—autumnal weather. The teams collect around the car as I chat with individual athletes about absences and injury updates. Laura has returned from a very positive college visit, but Will is hacking with a nasty cough that requires medication. Lauryn is forlorn. Her lower leg problem had flared up over the weekend and a trainer’s visit prior to practice has sidelined her--again. I am sorting out such issues when Coach Delsole arrives.

            With a quick reminder to the teams about taking care of “the little things” this busy and important week, Elise picks out the warm-up loops and the runners are off. Coach and I walk up the hill to watch and discuss individual runners. I have the sense of growing team strength and cohesiveness on the girls side as fitness improves and individuals make decisions to tap their talents. A subtle shift is on, one that would likely re-configure the mid-pack in the weeks ahead. We just want to encourage that process, but it will be satisfying to wittness.

            They return to the basketball court, completing drills in such a relaxed manner that Coach had to warn them to pick up the pace. Time would be tight today with a tempo run around the Woods Loop, an L.A.T. session and core drills. Preparations complete, the runners move off to Three Corners to form workout groups. It is move-up day for a few, but I am focused on Megan to see what she could do with tempo-intensity work in the girls front group. Right away, the vision of that group pushing as they did together on the long run simply falls apart. Maria and Elise immediately let Lindsay go. I am upset and am joined by Coach on the far side of the circuit. We both yell at them to cut the 80 meter ‘gift’ they immediately gave Lindsay. After lap 1 of 5, Lindsay never gains another meter on them. When they finish, I pulled both aside for a ‘talk.’ “Do you know what happened to the distance between you and Lindsay in laps 3, 4, 5?” I ask them point blank. What I get back are blank stares, so I tell them: “Nothing. Nothing happened. In fact, you closed the gap in the final lap. Now what does that tell you?” Maria decides she’d better have an answer to this one. “That we went out too slow,” she offers sheepishly. “Exactly,” I agree. “And why did you go out so slowly?” Maria offers that she is afraid of blowing up. My answer is this: “Have you ever gone out too fast and blown up?” She has to admit she has not. Turning toward both, I say, “So you have no proof whatsoever that that would happen, correct?” They both nod. “O.K,’ I tell them, and we make a plan for Wednesday’s dual meet. They’ll take it out harder, see what happens. “And if you blow up, then you can come back to me with an ‘I-told-you-so’, alright?” I am perfectly willing to take that risk.

September 24, 2013(Tuesday, Camillus):

            The practice session, in a reassuring manner, is non-descript. After a few minor group adjustments, we loop them out on their segments, three of them, which total an appropriate 5.5 miles. Sean Beney completes the warm-up and a 10 minute GC, feeling pretty good, but we don’t want to push the ankle he sprained on Monday. We end his day there. Sarah is back and comfortable on the segments, but I wonder if she will repeatedly face issues with more intense work or more volume. Cautiously optimistic right now.

            Strides finish up the day. Everyone is instructed to keep them relaxed, and I get the waiting lines in on the act, evaluating their teammates as they speed off. It’s a good way to inject a little ‘classroom’ about mechanics into the drill. They complete the short CD after and wander off. It is, after all, a comfortable day. Later I find the weekly NYS ranks on Armory.com. The boys come in at #9 in their class. The girls are absent from the list, but probably hidden off in that 20-30 zone. They need to train harder so they can compete harder. Simple.

September 25, 2013(Wednesday, Central Square):

            Meet day begins with an e-mail.

M,
You have missed the last week of practices/meets and currently have an attendance average under 50%. As you recall, we spoke in early September when you returned following a previous week of absences. I told you at that time we could only continue to have you on the team if you showed up regularly to practice consistently. As a runner with previous seasons on the team, you understand that requirement fully.

You have not, unfortunately, been able to maintain even basic attendance since then, so I have to remove you from our roster.

Please turn in your singlet through a team member. Best of luck with school this fall.

Coach Vermeulen

             The runners are aboard their buses when I pull into the high school. Coach Delsole arrives shortly and we hit the road on a brilliantly clear and warm early autumn afternoon. Destination: Central Square and our third league dual meet. This will be our toughest yet for both squads. The girls will face an improving Central Square squad while the boys are looking at a match-up of state top-20 teams. They will have their hands full, a point we have pressed home for the past two days.

            The Central Square coaches have scheduled Senior Day activities and thoughtfully include ours seniors, who are called forward and presented flowers to the applause of the gathered crowd. Afterward, those are quickly gathered as the boys finish preparations, then lean to the start line and speed off at the whistle. I head in the other direction with the radio, into the back fields loops and the one and two mile marks. We know this: C-Square recently knocked off CNS in a dual meet with a 1-2-3 finish for the automatic win; they won the V-V-S Invitational two weeks back; and they are ranked 18^th in the latest Class A state poll. We also know this: Sean’s sprained ankle seems better but he’s missed two days of practice; Will is still hacking with his respiratory ailment that requires medication, but he will give it a go for the team.

            The C-Square strategy is obvious and exactly what any coach would recommend. Their top three takes it out hard, hoping to shed WG runners and put themselves in a position to attempt another 1-2-3 finish. By the half mile mark, they’ve accomplished that with their threesome 10-15 meters ahead of the front pack. But there’s an interloper in their group. Nate, understanding the potential of the situation, has raced out with them. Jack, David, Will and Mike follow in the chase group.

            Up the rise, onto the abandoned railroad bed and then into the back field loop where I wait, they gradually sort out. Our chase group runners are slowly closing the gap, and Nate has made a decision to force the issue, pushing the lead group hard, harder perhaps than they want to run. It’s an interesting and courageous strategy. As they charge around the back field and through some side woods, I see the strategy developing as the C-Square threesome begins to string out. The runners churn down to the main field, circle around a rise and race back toward me and a long reverse the back loop. Nate has surrendered first place, but David, Will and Jack are nipping at the heels of the C-Square #3.  By the backside of that loop, they’ve effectively negated any chances of their competitor’s strategy. Now it’s a footrace for places and scores.

            Around the back loop and then popping out of a short woods trail, they gun toward a second section of railroad bed that will empty them onto the main field for final loops to the finish. The order, however, has changed--and it’s not what I’d expected. The C-Square runner emerges first from the woods, but hot on his heels is freshman David. Jack, Will and Nate follow, with Mike not far back. They are in control of the race at this point but still charging hard. I cheer our other runners on, then jog down toward the finish. The leaders have, by then, already veered into the finish loops, with David measuring up the C-Square front runner as they round a turn for the final rise and dash back down to the finish. Coach Delsole is trailside, monitoring the girls warm-up. “Take him,” he quietly directs David.

            The freshman complies, powering up the rise into the lead, turning at the trees and flying back down to the finish. Thirty meters out, he quickly glances back as if unsure he’s actually winning—which is exactly what he does by a slim second. Will loses a sprint finish to the C-Square #2 but we grab four of the next five spots to notch the win. Nate’s exhausted by his strategic pacing and David’s strolling around like he just walked the dog. It’s been a great race and a great win. My mind, however, moves immediately to the scant two recovery days before McQuaid.

            The final race of the day—the girls varsity—lines up as the sun sinks into the tree tops westward. Laura’s not the only runner with an assignment. We want our next three running tight, which means a faster start for Elise and Maria. It’s also an opportunity for others to solidify recent gains in the team depth chart, and I am anxious to see how the top-10 for us shakes out on this relatively flat course, one more in character with McQuaid than our home course.

September 26, 2013(Thursday,Camillus):

     The question for the day’s training is how much and how fast? As the XC crowd gathers, I pull aside our senior leaders and relate my question—what’s the best workout to drive recovery and still achieve moderate training effect? Anyone suggestions? Laura’s hand shoots right up. Her idea: GC to a moderate amount of fartlek ending with some more GC. Everyone nods in agreement—including me--so it’s a bout of GC, then six minutes of fartlek with ‘ups’ under one minute, then another bout of GC. We will add core drills to maintain the continuity of that training since Friday will go light.

September 27, 2013(Friday, Camillus):

     We return from our inspection to find almost all the runners  returned. They form around us. Coach Delsole steps to the middle of the circle with what’s next with our pre-race day. “O.K.,” he announces, “we are going to increase to the 12 minute L.A.T today, which should fire you up for tomorrow.” Some of the faces remain blank; some jaws drop. “Then we’ll add another set of core so we keep that going.” He’s doing it all with a straight face. I shoot a glance at Lindsay, who knows us well enough and is already shaking her head and smiling. Coach cracks his own smile, and relieved OMG’s murmur through the group.

     We go over race-day logistics one more time and send them home.

September 28, 2013(Saturday, Genesee Park, Rochester):

     The top boys and girls modies have joined us for this invitational, and they’re taking in the extended trip and the big-meet atmosphere as you might expect, slight intimidation mixing with a holiday-morning excitement. We tell them to go ahead and be nervous. Once the gun goes off, it’s just a race—a big one, but a race.

            While the runners set up and settle in, Coach Delsole and take a walk to check out some course markings and see who’s around. I stop to chat very briefly with the venerable Bob Bradley, former McQuaid coach and meet director. Now he’s the present announcer who is, as expected, very busy announcing. He wishes our teams well. There are some welcomed changes that make the modified course more visible to spectators, but the varsity loops are well-worn into tradition. The sun and temperatures have been doing their work. Mudfest memories aside, this is a day for fast times, as a course record later by Mickey Burke of Rush-Henrietta attests.

            Back at the team tent, the girls JV runners are midway into race preps, and the alumni have begun arriving. At some point in the long years of trips, McQuaid became an unofficial gathering of former runners who were either nearby or decided to make the journey to soak up the atmosphere again. As time allows over the course of the afternoon, I’ll chat with Justin about volunteer coaching, Anna about college life at Brockport, Alycia on running XC at Nazareth, Kelly and Emily, Tim about clearing out a home trail with his landscaping equipment, Zander and then Tom, who’s finishing at Cortland and for years has made it know he eventually wants my job. Fine by me. We talk strategies and transitions.

            Soon enough the girls JV are responding to their opening gun, and our race day is off and running. There will be no roster surprises today, no JV’s unloading a big race to leap into the varsity ranks. While it seems I’ve cut an astute roster line between the top-10 varsity runners and the JV’s there’s a more accurate reason. As our racers leap out from the mass starts and then labor home down their long finishes, many are running on fumes, and the physiology we feared after Wednesday’s hard dual meet is on full display. They labor. David goes top-20 in the boys seeded AA race and runs the fastest freshman time of the meet, but even he admits to just “toughing it out” during the final mile. Both boys and girls varsity squads place below hoped-for target finishes. Neither runs poorly by any means, but they race demonstrably tired, and we are once again confronting the ill-conceived and forced realities of scholastic cross-country over-racing. College coaches just shake their heads at this. Walking back from the results table later in the afternoon, Coach and I make some executive decisions about meets that will play out in the weeks ahead.

     By 5:10, the dust is settling from the boys JV race. Parents, alumni and athletes are gathering near the team tent, filling up on conversation and post-race snacks. Ryan is resting comfortably in the medical tent. Seems he was cut off in the bottoms during his JV race, veered too far left and head somehow met post. Wish I had that on video. I promise the paramedics we’ll fit him for a football helmet on Monday, and they assure me he is not concussed, just bruised and perhaps a little chagrinned. Another McQuaid moment.

Cross-Country Journal – Week 8

October 7, 2013(Monday, Camillus): 

          You could see it on the weather maps in the morning, a long border-to-border curtain being drawn eastward across the country, its deep green shade spoiled only by blotches of yellow where the really bad stuff was happening. Not far south of us, they were issuing tornado warnings.

          By mid-day, the deluge is on. Heavy rain lashes the playing fields outside of school and hollows became small wading pools. Modified sports get cancelled, and knowing how the rumor mills work, I call the AD to ensure no system-wide shut down of sports. “What, because of a little rain?” he chuckles. He’s an old lacrosse guy, one used to standing around in all kinds of weather. I text the team to remind them we’re on.

          It’s a good call because by practice time the rain has relented and I’m making a gentleman’s bet with Dan that we’ll see sunshine before they leave. Dan’s in the strange position of hoping clouds or rain.

The competition trails are a mushy mess, so we decide to stay off and preserve them for Wednesday’s home meet against Fayetteville-Manlius. That leaves the Ike Dixon loop, a challenging .56 circuit with one good hill and some interesting slants. The team assembles atop a small rise by the side of the woods and begins the day’s interval grunt work. After the first comes the question: how many?  “I don’t know,” I tell them, prompting some perplexed(and a few displeased) looks. But the honest truth is I don’t. We’re going to see what the soggy day—and the runners—bring on. There’s no clipboard for recording times, just the breaking weather and our desire to take advantage of a day that could just as easily have been a washout. As far as I’m concerned, these are serendipity miles.

The runners surge off in groups at thirty second intervals. They’re running part of the Woods Loop, then veering left onto the Ike Dixon Loop, climbing a steep hill and circling the periphery. Unlike our traditional Outer Loop circuit, this one affords a limited view of the back stretch and the opportunity to see runners jocky for position halfway around. Their strides are like fingerprints; we can identify almost every one of them simply with the practiced memories of how they move.

It’s obvious by the third interval that things are going well for the majority. One of the boys front group is away on a college visit, but the rest run tight and have no trouble returning to the start line following recoveries. The girls front group is spread out between two groups and Laura is not there, still nursing a foot bruise. “You’ll run further than twelve,” Coach announces dryly to the groups waiting on the next interval. A few eyes open wide, but the veterans just smile. Six solids ones are what we’re after, and they deliver those before recovery running and strides on the school fields. Several balk at core drills on the wet grounds, but I remind them of how dirty they are already. When the last push-ups are logged, and the athletes are milling around, I call Dan over to point out sunlight busting down through scattered clouds. He wants to wait a few more minutes and let things slide shut again, but a bet’s a bet.

October 8, 2013(Tuesday, Camillus):

We are not worried about managing a pre-race day. It’s back to Segmented GC--three longer loops--with some fast work on the playing fields to follow. The runners are by now old hands at this technique, and we’re still convinced of its validity. Three Corners quickly becomes a hub of comings and goings as the runners rack up segments, and the silences are interspersed with the noisy chatter of groups quickly grabbing a hit of water and then vanishing into the fields and woods. Some are already talking winter and indoor track. My mind can’t wander that far today. We have more immediate concerns. 

October 9, 2013(Wednesday, Camillus):

          On a gorgeous afternoon, we welcome the #1 ranked F-M boys and girls teams for our dual meet races that will both be, following exciting modified contests, exercises in anti-climax. I have already explained to the parents. The athletes, of course, have been schooled in the reasons for running their 5k race at tempo pace, and when I contacted Coach Aris with my intentions and reasons, his reply was succinct: my thoughts exactly. Neither of us want to bring still-recovering athletes to NYC for the Manhattan Invitational.

          In a nutshell, we run scholastic athletes too much, and they’re especially hobbled when we throw them into a hard Wednesday meet followed by an important Saturday invitational. This seasonal configuration is the result of an athletic mindset born in the rectangle sports where playing multiple games per week is perfectly normal—preferred in fact. Except for football. Football is physically demanding, hard on the body. Time is required for recuperation, and as a result someone smartly decided they should compete only once a week. So explain that, then, to the ligaments, the tissues and the mitochondria of my weary runners who require the same recuperation.  Anyone who takes the time to understand human physiology knows that two days is inadequate for recovery from a hard 5k. But we’re expected to pretend it is.

          So we run our tempos and F-M’s front-runners complete theirs. The meaningless scores are later phoned in to the newspaper. Funny thing, though, I have a small group of runners who, while running their disciplined 5k tempo, set seasonal PR’s for our course. And their comments are interestingly similar: coach, it didn’t even feel like a full tempo pace. Hmmmm….. I will quiz them later on reasons but will then comment most on the mental and physical merits of even-paced racing.

          Friends of Wildcats XC puts on a big seniors-adieu spread following the meet. Sunset fires the underbelly of clouds gathering in the west. Parents and athletes relax and chat as darkness takes over.

October 10, 2013(Thursday, Camillus):

     Except for Mike, we have no after-race fatigue to manage. Senior Mike broke ranks at the Wednesday meet because he couldn’t stand the thought of graduating without a sub-18:00 on our home course. He took care of that by fifteen seconds and then apologetically agreed near the finish chute that a courtesy heads-up to myself would have been appropriate. But he still couldn’t wipe the smile from his face. 

          The troops today warm up relaxed. Fartlek, some strides and some flat-land sprints are on the agenda—and a treat of sorts. For years we’ve fought the misimpressions of 8^th grade modified runners who fear that the move up to 5k as high school freshman will be a Mt. Marcy to Mt. Everest leap. We’ve held meetings with them. Our veterans have arranged talk-times and informally encouraged their potential future teammates. Still, the sight of varsity members bending to quality-day workouts or pounding through the seemingly intricate loops on our 5k race course each year gives graduating modies pause. The words form unspoken on their lips: that looks really hard.

          Serendipity strikes early. By the time the runners exit the Woods Loop and head around our Outer and Inner back field loops, it’s clear the boys front trio are not holding back. We hear the cheers of varsity runners egging them around the loops. When Tommy, Pat and Kyle descend the Inner Loop hill at the 2 mile mark, I glance at my watch. Their splits put them in our varsity top-15—and that the day after a hard race against F-M. On the girls side, front-runners Carly and Rachel are also pushing and proving a worthy match for our difficult circuit. When the course later clears of all the runners and we’ve hoofed back to the finish, we see a lot of tired smiles on the modies. I hand Coach Wojtaszek and Gangemi some recent course results for our varsity runners. As our teams prep for strides and sprints, their modified runners scan the varsity times to see where they would ‘fit in.’ Mission accomplished.

October 11, 2013(Friday, NYC):

          My fingers are crossed as we enter the hotel. One year, the reservations for us had been totally scrambled and we’d stood in the lobby for over an hour while management sorted out their errors; another year we’d even been moved to a different hotel due to a bogus claim of “over-booking.” All coaches traveling overnight to the Manhattan have their war stories. But this day, everything is set, and it’s a quick meeting to distribute room keys and send the athletes off. We hold a cozy catered dinner in the conference center, one that eliminates additional bus trip, and at ten o’clock Coach Delsole and I are knocking on doors, checking the athletes to bed. It occurs to me I’ve been doing this longer than any of them have been alive.

October 12, 2013(Saturday, NYC):

          Everything about the day—rising, breakfast, site set-up, races, pick-up—goes smoothly. But it’s not merely logistical success we’re looking for. A previous(and very successful) modified coach of ours used to remind his youthful charges, “It’s a business trip,” and that’s how our day must ultimately be judged. 

          The athletes get down to their business at 10:48am with the first boys JV race. Six JV races for us squeeze into the next hour and a half as the Manhattan mayhem ensues. Coach Delsole handles the start-line assignments while I manage finish-line groupings and quick post-talks before sending them back to the team tent for gear changes and cool-downs. The rapid-fire races leave little free time, but it’s gratifying to run across some old colleagues and enjoy a quick chat here and there.

          With the final JV race, we get a breather and walk back to the team tent to find a small army of parent supporters encircling the athletes. The varsity boys squad is well into the warm up for their 2:03pm “G” race and finish with drills that take them up and back in front of their friendly rival, Ithaca. It should be a tight contest between the two, but I worry about a strong Conestoga team from PA. Our tent area is busy and distracting, so I’m happy to see the boys lace up and head to the start line. I begin the long walk up to the bridge over Henry Hudson Parkway. It’ll be another sacrificed finish line so I can cheer on the runners early and late in the race.

          Soon enough, at my trailside perch, the walkie-talkie call comes in from Coach Delsole. They are thundering toward our small bridge crowd. The thundering allusion proves apt. A few minutes later, a solid phalanx of racers rush up to the bridge, kicking up a storm of dust. There are Wildcats in that swirl, but back further than I want. The line soon thins to the stragglers, so I walk back down the trail and spot up at the curve onto the main field. From there, it’s an exhaustingly long finish for the runners.

Powering down off their back loop, the lead runners flash by, and the sight of four Conestoga runners in the top 10 confirms my fears. This one’s over; the fight now is for second. Will and David shoot past in the top 15, followed by Nate and Jack, both in the top 30. But it’s a four-runners-and-a-cup-of -coffee moment as runners stream by, and I’m wishing I’ve missed our #5 in the rush. I haven’t.  An unexpected #5 comes flying by.

One off-day in a top five is all it takes, and though we hold on for second, I know the team cumulative time will suffer—and with it our position in the merge. That total team race when it counts has yet to happen.

The energy expended weaving through—and passing—slowing runners saps the strength of my runners. They’d been warned of the unique challenges Vandy presents runners--and the risk it demands: get out or get trapped—take your pick. In the end, some of our top runners picked wrong.  Lesson learned.

Hours later , we’ve made our northern escape from the Big Apple, driving past a brilliant sunrise, through  the dense Catskills and back into the mottled landscape of central New York. North of Binghamton, Laura appears from the back of the bus. Ostensibly in search of a warmer spot, she plunks down in the empty seat next to Coach Delsole and the chatter starts. There’s a relaxed relief to her voice, evidence that in spite of the nagging foot issue, she feels she mastered her race plan and ran a credible time. She did both. I’m across the aisle, attempting to doze because when the bus empties out at the high school, with athletes scooting to cars and their homes, I’ll aim my Forester northward, tacking another tiring hour and forty five minute to the day with a drive to the lake house to join my wife for some Sunday relaxation. But that’s my problem. Coach and Laura carry on over a range of topics as the charter rocks homeward through the dark upstate miles.

October 13, 2013(Sunday, Cape Vincent):  

          All morning, the runners’ Race Analysis’ arrive:

I think that my performance yesterday was unacceptable.  I started out the race poorly, I was far behind where I wanted to be and where I should have been, and by the time I decided to make something happen, it was too late.  I had a very good finish from the end of the woods to the finish line, but it wasn't enough to make up for the previous two miles of poor racing. Before the race, you told us about the need of a complete 7 man effort in order to win.  My performance was not up to the standards necessary to help the team to that level, and I know I could have and should have done better. Also, I know that I am capable of becoming that 5th man that we have been lacking and I will reach that goal.  I assure you that you will see a much different runner than you saw yesterday in me during this week, and for the rest of the season.  I completed a 7 mile long run today and I am ready to work hard and compete this week to prepare for Marathon and the rest of the season.  My performance goal is to break 17:30 in both Marathon and Leagues, and my personal goals are to make the sectional squad, help the team to federations, and make the federation squad.

    -Sean  

Sean,

I am confident you will deliver for the team. I know you consider yourself primarily a baseball guy. You should also consider yourself a runner guy because you've done everything asked of a Wildcats runner--and more. See you at practice Monday.

Coach V.

Cross-Country Journal – Week 9

October 14, 2013(Monday, Camillus)

            We are running an interval workout with hills, a demanding practice session that circles our Outer Loop, then climbs two hills near the school before dropping back down to our Three Corners field intersection. Mike’s GPS will confirm its mile distance, 1.04 to be exact. I have moved the start/finish lines of the circuit to include an additional short hill. Why not? The leg strengthening needs to continue. Same for the need to carry over strong while gathering and recovering.  There’s no shortage of carry-overs on this circuit.

            The athletes approach it from a spectrum of attitudes. There’s the healthy bravado of runners who like to be challenged, runners who don’t mind discomfort and, in fact, seek it because they know what discomfort means. There’s the other side too, those for whom a full-plate quality day is something to dread or survive. I wish those runners would heed American actress Tallulah Bankhead, who once wryly observed: “There’s always going to be pain in life. Suffering’s optional.”

            Will is firmly in the former camp, so much so with the clapping and encouraging that I pull him aside and recommend his feet do most of the talking. He does just that, joined by plenty of others. I jog up and stand atop the hill behind our school, watching them labor upward, then disappear down the backside only to circle around and head back up Tunnel Hill, their final vertical challenge before descending and surging the last meters to the finish cone. Some groups remain tight throughout; others splinter. Some charge in on the ability to summon up speed even though tired; other labor with long, counterproductive strides, betrayed by genes. All are satisfied with the completion, however, take hits of water and start off on the recovery jog that will bring them to the playing fields for Act II, the L.A.T. drill we’ve ‘shortened’ to 8 minutes. When they’ve finished that, we’ll circle them in the wet grass for Core Drills and then, as they wander off, declare it a solid day, a good start to the week.

October 15, 2013(Tuesday, Syracuse):

            Nothing about the workout is particularly noteworthy. There are days like these—and most of them are good--days when you’re just ‘getting the work done’ with the adrenalin dialed back and the miles accumulating like leaves. They run three segments of GC, and the total is exactly five miles.  The rest of the workout is beyond comment.

October 16, 2013(Wednesday, Camillus):

            The day will end with a whooping one-of-a-kind mistake, but everything about practice leading to that moment seems perfectly in sync. The runners warm up and head over to Three Corners for a tempo session on our Woods Loop, now a standard run. The weather has gradually improved, and the footing is solid for the team members. They work to hold those precise paces on the edge of the anaerobic zone as they accumulate laps. Most groups run tight, and their efforts look ‘comfortably hard,’ just what we are looking for. With time up, I blast the whistle, which reverberates through the woods. The runners slowly congregate at Three Corners and set out on a recovery that is followed by drills and core exercises. As we break and they wander off to rides home, we know the day’s gone well and the workout’s has been an appropriate set-up for Saturday’s invitational at Marathon. Coach and I talk through the Thursday/Friday practices because I will be in North Carolina for my son’s wedding and have to miss those days. But everything’s set; everything’s fine.

            Back home, I play the phone messages. One immediately grabs me, a colleague asking urgently why I’m not on the starting line at our League Championship.  There’s momentary panic, then the dreadful realization that I’ve fouled up big time, placing and arranging the championship a week later than actually scheduled. It’s been wrong on my schedule and web site all season, and neither myself nor anyone else has caught the error. But there’s no excuse. I immediately e-mail athletes, parents and the AD with my apologies. This whole mess is embarrassing on multiple levels, but more importantly it’s also a lost opportunity for some runners. They will have the Marathon invitational on Saturday, but no last championship and, for some, a chance to move up the team depth charts. So I will have to juggle the selection process for our Sectional squad. Like everyone else, I’ve made my share of coaching mistakes, but this one takes the cake.

October 17, 2013(Thursday, Chapel Hill, NC):

            I hold two long-distance phone calls with Coach Delsole, a short one in traffic leaving the Raleigh-Durham Airport and another later in the evening when we have time to talk. There’s fall-out, of course, from the leagues faux pax, but I let him know that’s my responsibility, not his. I’ll deal with it from a distance as best I can, and that will include apologies and plans.

The fartlek workout has gone well, and the runners are now angling toward strong efforts at the Marathon Invitational. With the weekly polls out, the boys have held on to their bubble-position regarding Federation selections, and a strong Marathon effort will be critical in keeping their chances alive. If there’s any silver lining to my league championship foul-up, it’s that they won’t be on their third tough 5k in eight days when they step to Saturday’s start lines. I never would have scheduled a brutal sequence like that in the first place.

October 18, 2013(Friday, Chapel Hill, NC):

            Coach Delsole calls early in the evening. He’s double-checked on the buses for Saturday’s invitational and reminded the athletes to inspect their racing flats, inserting longer spikes if necessary. The hills of Marathon can get mushy, so spike choices are both important and made to personal tastes. Some runners go longer with all their spikes; others just in front for toe-off leverage. Coach and I discuss the top-10 athletes who will likely, baring major surprises at Marathon, advance to sectionals. We can enter 7-10 athletes, and we’ve always chosen ten. The top-7 for both teams have been pretty much set by previous big-meet performances. They sit atop the Excel depth chart based on meet finishes. The next three will be chosen by both the chart and the coaches. Two additional athletes will be invited to serve as alternates who will train the two weeks into the Sectional Championship and compete if someone is sick or injured. Over the long course of the season—and from the October meets in particular—there’s little subjectivity to this method. Each athlete’s ‘body of work’ speaks for itself. They might cite unique disclaimers for a lower-than-desired ranking; they might expect special consideration for this or that reason. And I might even--despite a team rule against discussing roster decisions with any but athletes--receive the occasional parent e-mail requesting an exception(those I have to refuse, not only because of policy but because they always mean denying another athlete their just rewards). But the numbers stand.

            I wish Coach good luck with his large contingent and head off to my son’s wedding rehearsal dinner.

October 19, 2013(Saturday, Chapel Hill, NC):

            At 7:58am, Coach Delsole delivers a text that both the buses and athletes have arrived at the school. That’s always the first big relief on meet day. The next ‘stress-point’ is usually arriving at the site with ample time to warm up properly and ensure all the bib numbers are there. At Manhattan, I opened our packet to find bib numbers for West Chester-Henderson. Fortunately, I was able to find their team tent before the coach opened his packet and gulped.

            The races unfold as I’m taking a pre-wedding walk hundreds of miles away. In my absence, Coach Delsole is pinned to the start line for our six competing squads. He calls mid-race from the boys seeded varsity. They are running strong, with most of our scorers in the top-20 heading into the middle mile. That’s the one, if you’ve been suckered by the fast first mile, that kills you. Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of leaden legs being pushed through the final mile of that race, and we counsel our runners repeatedly to ‘stay smart’ in mile 1. That’s apparently what they’ve done. Shortly, Coach calls back again. “It looks pretty good,” he tells me as they surge into the final loop. And he’s right. They out-leg the field to take the race, with Will and David in the top-5 and our fifth in 21^st. The 42 second gap is still too large, but it will shrink at Sectionals.

               When the girls toe the line for their varsity seeded race, the goal is simple. Run the first mile smart, then push and take risks. They encounter a considerable foe in New Jersey’s Mount Saint Dominic Academy and place 2nd, with Laura the individual winner running in front from the gun. The girls JV squads tacks on a second first place finish, and all groups place no lower than 2nd. With strong boys/girl varsity efforts, they win the meet’s Coed Award.  

               According to Coach Delsole, the races go “like clockwork.” The athletes manage themselves extremely well. Squad captains deliver team members to their start-lines on time or early. They cheer each other; they cheer and congratulate competitors. Team members not racing handle the finish lines chores. Parents chip in. The demeanor of both the teams all day is positive and purposeful, so it’s appropriate they win the meet’s Sportsmanship Award. 

As is custom, Friends of Wildcats Cross-Country sets up their store of après-race snacks near the bus garage. As the site empties of teams and buses, the Wildcats one last time enjoy the splendid autumnal views, good food and their own company.

Cross-Country Journal  -- Week 10

October 21, 2013(Monday, Camillus):

            Though over half of the teams have finished their seasons, everyone arrives decked out in singlets. It’s picture day. We have a lot to accomplish. The first order of business is to get them lined up—and serious enough—for group photos. As proved in so many meets this year, things go smoothly with this group. After the required photos, they ham it up for the ‘unofficial’ shot. Next, it’s balloting for team awards. Rather than vote by e-mail, they spread out on the basketball court macadam, penciling in their choices. Lastly, those finished and beginning their transition to winter sports hand in uniforms and call it a day, wandering off in clumps. I know those groups contain admixtures of disappointment, relief and satisfaction with the completed season. These staggered endings for athletes are the nature of our no-cut running sports—everyone learns to live with them.

            The sectional squads head out on a warm-up while I talk with a few of the departing runners about plans for the cold months ahead. Coach Delsole leaves shortly after. Our winter coaches meeting has been scheduled for 4:00pm because most of those folks are free in the fall.  I’ve e-mailed that we are still very much ‘in season,’ but one of us has to attend.

            Warm-up and drills complete, the athletes head to the south corner of our Outer Loop. Today it’s grunt work—long hill repeats with a 1:1 recovery. This circuit is robust, a straight reach toward the Woods Loop before hitting a hard right into the side field and pushing up steep Narnia Hill. Then a quick drop down the back of School Hill before veering right back up Tunnel Hill and a long descent down the Connector Trail back to the start. Without Coach, I’m stuck at the start/finish, seeing little of the runners on the circuit until the clomp-clomp of trainers down the Connector Trail signals their return. They veer sharply at the bottom of the trail and push toward the finish cone. After interval #2, I notice spectacular mud steaks up and down both of Lindsay’s legs. She’s fallen on a corner but popped back up to finish a fast interval. What’s a little mud among teammates?

            The athletes are easier to monitor—there’s fewer of them—and they train with commensurate abilities.  As a result, they finish tight, with no strung out or overlapping groups, and the work goes quickly. Almost all have improved on their averages from this workout a month ago. For Lindsay, the improvement is dramatic despite her fall. The runners are completing their final interval when Coach returns. His meeting has gone as advertised—short and sweet.  A long recovery run ends at the base of the School Hill where the runners line up dutifully for 7 second hill sprints. They blast them off while I snap off a few photos to note form later. Finished, they head out on a short cool down while Coach and I both feel the chill in the air. There are weather changes ahead.

That evening, I receive a long-winded and mostly critical e-mail from the father of a runner. We’ve had previous polite disagreements about taking family vacations in-season. He presents a few god points that will be considered, but the condescending missive mostly contains made-up quotes, contradictions and a simple ignorance of current physiology knowledge and common practices with scholastic runners. I simply acknowledge its receipt and thus allow him the last word. That’s been my rule for several years now because I don’t have time for e-mail range wars. Any protracted policy disagreements belong in the AD’s office with the runner in question present.

October 22, 2013(Tuesday, Camillus):

This is an easy day. With smaller groups of only our higher level runners, we switch to a ‘normal’ continuous GC run, building in one quick break. Del and I walk the Inner Loop and Narnia Hill, checking the runners, the trail conditions and the status of our team members. The disgruntled parent becomes a topic and rekindles an old conversation about appropriate roles. In my ‘old days,’ I was actually not old-school, with a stout firewall erected between myself and parents. Instead, I often chatted casually with them about the running lives of their kids, and things were called as they were without defensiveness or lengthy rationalizations. Great efforts were great efforts. Slacking was slacking.

That’s changed. The reasons are varied, but I—probably like others--sense the shifting perception about what it means to be an athletic member of a varsity team, whether that be the athlete’s or the parent’s perception. For me, the bottom line has never changed. Since we are a no-cut sport, with the teams I coach adhering to a ‘big-tent’ operating philosophy, our base value is—and has to be--effort. The clock, over time, can objectively tell its tale, but it will not detect the athlete who, for whatever reasons, either believes 70% is 100% or who knows and is content with 70%. Effort is the measure of desire, and I suspect more athletes desire less because of the sacrifices involved. Sacrifice is not much valued these days. Running excellence is not only about what you are willing to give but about what you are willing to give up to fulfill your potential. Conjecture becomes reality when Coach and I determine through experience the potential of a particular athlete if the desire exists--and then it doesn’t. Back to the 70% and the athlete or parent who, over time and after all our best efforts, is still content with that. The effort runners are never, ever, the issue, whether they race up-front varsity or in the back of our JV pack. But there is no effective program for the 70 percenters which does not subtract limited time and attention from those with desire. Still, we’ll try again to fashion one next season or next year.

The runners periodically stride smoothly by on their loops. They probably think we’re discussing the weather.

October 22, 2013(Tuesday, Camillus):

Today--at least to me--we definitely feel smaller. A lot of the ‘personality’ of the team has handed in uniforms and gone their separate ways. A number will return for Indoor Track—but not all. The advice and lectures the team hears all late spring, summer and fall is so often predicated on the assumption of year-round runners—great things than can be accomplished if you have the time and the commitment. These first days of a shrunken team are always reminders that, for some, the harrier days of summer and fall are only a percentage, not part of a total. Other sports or activities will now occupy their time. Most who of those can return for Wildcats XC in 2014 will. And some others, for whom the months have been just a long, hard haul, will not. For them, XC might have been more work than expected—or desired. Or it might have been the discovery that their coaches hold not only a loyalty to athletes, but a strong loyalty to the sport itself and what it demands of runners. Maybe it’s neither of those; we seldom know for sure. But the air is sharp and cool, with snow possible at higher elevations tonight. The day wears a November mood. Stiff breezes shake out the last leaves from trees. Everything is paring down.

      Del and I walk into an opening between two section of woods and watch the runners powering by. The boys have again established a garrulous and focused front wagon. It will eventually splinter into several sub-groups, but the first four remain close. One of those—Sean—is still demonstrating a late-season surge, and it’s just when we need him, an encouraging sign for the team.

     With Laura in a faster quartet, the girls’ front group runs smaller. Lindsay, Elise, Maria—any are capable of leading, and the message to them is always the same: someone take charge and drive the pace. Sarah pushes herself to stay tight with teammates, though she’ll drop back further into the session.   We are warned by the pundits that tempo running is a tough training type to master as a young runner. I’ve always agreed it’s that as well as an acquired taste. Mental discipline factors in considerably—as well as body sense. For the inexperienced, tempo’s the middle of an on-off switch that doesn’t want to stay there. The veterans, not surprisingly, come to these sessions more equipped, and these runners are showing that, though not all.

            I count down the minutes, bellowing into the woods where the runners circle unseen. Whistle blasts halts the circuitous convoys and slowly runners emerge and congregate at Three Corners. It has gone well. They have confirmed the suspicion of some that the same route reversed can be a very different route—in this case more difficult. Will has ‘discovered’ a slight rise where he never noticed one before. But the accumulated laps are similar for most—or slightly more. 

            We send them off on recovery running and reconvene at the base of School Hill. The runners line up with Coach Delsole at the base of the moderate hill while I stand near the top. At his command, they blast upward until he loudly announces “time!” These few 7-second sprints fire up the fast-twitch muscles without greatly stressing that system. It also allows me to watch and quickly photograph runner form. The next day, I’ll show Sarah a photo of herself trying to hill sprint while heel-striking, a counter-productive ‘technique’ to say the least. We will talk root causes—lack of hip strength/flexibility—and make winter plans. Alycia, also, has been impressively quick on these drills. We can’t spirit her away from a favored spring sport, but she’s been convinced to run indoor track and will join Coach Delsole’s sprint squad.

            The runners tick off their hills, then head out on a short cool down.  Another good day.

October 24, 2013(Thursday, Camillus):

            A fartlek run is on the menu, a 10-10-10, which means about forty plus minutes of running, a goodly portion at GC pace and ten minutes around 5k. We give them license to pick the length of their fartlek ‘ups,’ but want a few fast 30-45 second intervals thrown in. Stay off Dirt Hill, don’t run the fast ups down the steeps, use all our training loops—we issue the standard directions. Off they go. Coach Delsole and I walk the Outer Loop as we monitor and consider next week’s work load leading into the Sectional Championship. Truth be told, we sneak in some talk about the Indoor Track season ahead and the possibilities there. Enjoying the back stretch of our Outer Loop, its green contrasting with the fall colors surrounding it, I can’t help but admire the work our building and grounds crew has accomplished with the trail. What was once a rough cut path wide enough for maybe three bodies is now a spacious thoroughfare you could drive a bus through. The combination of regular mowing and foot traffic has worn the rumpled field surface to a grassy smoothness. The workers have even cut a three foot beveled edge on each side to keep aggressive weeds and thistles from leaning over the trail edges. “This looks like a freakin’ fairway,” I tell Coach, who, also a golfer, acknowledges with a nod and a smile. I point to the edging. “And it even has a rough.” 

October 25, 2013(Friday, Camillus):

            Coach Delsole and I have told them to bring their spikes, though a few have forgotten or decided against them. Those will be the runners I later watch slipping around turns that remain a little greasy. We are finishing the week—a productive week free of race pressures—with a 3000 meter time trial. There were other possibilitie(and actually other training needs we could have met), but the idea is to keep the bodies attuned to racing efforts without the racing volume and stress. Well, there will actually be some stress. Coach and I will be at opposite ends of our 1000 meter Outer Loop, giving anyone who needs it an earful about pace and effort. And the slightly higher velocity of the trial—hopefully stored in mental/muscle memory—is intentional. We’ll surround that quick middle effort with ample pre and post mileage to make a good day of it.

            With spikes laced up, they continue their warm-up of tempo running, strides and sprints while I hoof over to the far side of the field and the top of the loop’s small hill. Coach radios the start as I near my spot, and it’s not long before the boys front group is approaching on lap one. Will, normally a ‘lurker’ in practices and meets, has decided to take the lead this day. David and Jack are the ones in danger of being gapped, and I give them a shout to close up. By lap two, they’ve done that and we have a top six within a few seconds. Eventually, they will finish with an 11.7 second 1-5 gap. Something around 20-25 at sectionals is what they need, so this is good reinforcement.

            The girls are without Laura, who is completing her college visits. Lindsay takes charge early, and the rest of the front runners pace off her. She powers the 2^nd lap and finishes strong, with Elise nipping at her heels and Maria only a few seconds further off. Those three are training as strong as they have all season. Today, it’s Sarah’s turn to fall a little off, something that does not surprise me, with the faster sustained speed of the trial distance. Sarah, though, is a worker, and we’ve already identified, with the help of our new and knowledgeable trainer, the hip flexibility and stability improvements that will lead to smoother run mechanics. Indoor Track will be the season for those goals.

            On my jog back to the start, the last of the runners churn by. Most of the runners have congregated at the finish by the time I arrive. They mill around, taking water, content with their work. They should be. It’s been a good day—and a productive week.

Cross-Country Journal – Week 11

October 28, 2013(Monday, Camillus)

            We have a gorgeous mid-autumn afternoon on our hands—sun, clouds, comfortable temperatures. Before Coach Delsole arrives, the runners relax while I get my ‘speech’ out of the way as we head into championship week. “I put my game face on Sunday,” I tell them, “and it’s not coming off. We need full focus and full efforts not just this Saturday, but all week.” We talk a little about the positive implications of big performances at sectionals, and I send them on their warm-up runs. Intervals are on the menu, hard circuits on our tough Inner Loop trail. It’s been a year since we’ve used this workout.

            The athletes complete their runs and drills, then jog over to our start point on the Outer Loop. Will’s already into cheerleading mode, and it’s a good day for that. They’ll need it. They run the reverse of our race course direction around the loop, which means a short hill right out of the gate, a mix of twists and turns, then a tiring rise late in the circuit leading to a downhill finish on a curve. Not your garden variety trail circuit.

            We’re small enough to line up four groups. At the west entrance to the Inner Loop, Coach Delsole sends them off in 30 second intervals, then we hoof over to the other entrance and the finish cone. As expected, the on the first interval our top boys come in tight, within three seconds. But it’s the first interval. They jog back to the start, take a hit of water, walk and jog to stay loose, then answer Coach’s call to the line. A second effort stretches the gap to seven seconds. On the third interval, it jumps to eleven, but that’s Will’s fault. He’s hammering out in front of the others. By the fourth, he’s established himself as the front outlier; the other’s rock in behind him, in a tight 3-4 second bunch. Not surprisingly, Jack chips away at Will’s gap in the final interval, but there’s no catching him this day. Our rabbit has pulled them to a good day.

            All they need now is some recovery running, a few hill sprints and a short cool down. We serve those up.

October 29, 2013(Tuesday, Camillus):

All morning, frost outlines the shadows of the school, slinking away with the sun’s movement. By afternoon, the air temperature has climbed, the frost retreated. We have another beauty of an afternoon.

The runners have arrived and lounge as we discuss remaining workouts and considerations for Sectionals. I discuss weather prospects and speculate that they may be dealing with muddy trails and racing in long spikes. Coach Delsole has his Droid working. He reads off the chances of rain: Wednesday—30%; Thursday—70%; Friday—60%; Saturday—50%.  Images of mud and struggling runners roll through my mind—we’ve run the Jamesville Beach course like that before. “Well, I guess you’d better check on those long spikes,” I tell them.

But for today, with some GC work under sunshine, it’s all good.

October 30, 2013(Wednesday, Camillus):

Today we conduct an exercise in consensus building.  I had told the runners on Tuesday that Wednesday’s first training bout—before the L.A.T. they’d also run—was not set, and if they had suggestions they should e-mail me. No e-mails.

But Jack has a suggestion for fast fartlek running, a 15-15-30-30-60-90-60-30-30-15-15 ladder I can barely keep straight in my head. As soon as he suggests it, there are rebuttals and protestations. Some want a traditional fartlek. Some want to have a fartlek cart blanche, with the ability to pick the times. Others just sit there. Coach Delsole’s sitting next to me and I sense his irritation with all this indecision and confusion. I ask Jack to explain why he’d go fast up front. He makes an honest attempt, but I catch some rolling eyes.

“So, you think this will replicate, somewhat, a bookend race that starts and finishes fast?” I suggest.  He seems relieved to have it explained and agrees. “Well, I’m not sure about those first 15 second segments,” I comment to the group. “I think I’d take those out.” There’s more discordant discussion and calls for favorites, as though shouting something often enough or loud enough creates consensus. Coach is fidgeting.

“Alright,” I finally announce, “how about this? Each group will run an 8-8-8 and decide how to set their ‘ups.’ But obviously all group members must be running exactly the same.”

That does the trick. With the problem solved and consensus achieved—sort of—they head off on the warm-up. I turn to Coach. “You don’t enjoy that much you?” I say, smiling. He merely frowns.  “Well, sometimes it’s fun to give them the decision-making power and see what happens.” 

The athletes disappear down School Hill into the back fields and within minutes, Coach Delsole and I are arguing. That’s not a bad thing because, with mutual trust and years of experiences to draw on, our arguments usually turn into problem-solving sessions. So it is today as we wait for the runners to. I’ve told him about another parent e-mail, again centered around missed practices due to family travel. This one’s less acerbic than last week’s but still, it stirs the embers. Coach favors a more hard-line approach to dealing with parents/athletes who don’t take our basic attendance requirements for what they are--requirements. I poise the counter-argument that benching or releasing those athletes creates firestorms and will hunker me in the AD’s office endlessly, explaining myself to him and parents. It’s all well and good that districts taut the need for athletic policies and standards, but when push comes to shove, it’s often the coach who’s hung out to dry for not being more ‘flexible.’ So we stand there, grappling with policies and scenarios when it dawns on us that we’re barking up the wrong tree. This is not about demanding attendance; it’s about expecting work to be accomplished. Why not focus more on that, we ask ourselves, and within minutes we have a consensus all our own--and plans for future seasons.

Following drills, the athletes group for their fartlek runs, and we check each one to ensure their plans make sense. It’s nice to see the girls top seven head out together. Coach and I again walk and monitor, taking the time to both flesh out thoughts on a re-configured program and to worry about the weather headed our way. It doesn’t look good.

October 31, 2013(Thursday, Camillus):

As predicted, we have wet, but I’ve seen worse. Actually, we are enjoying the interlude between two storm systems. The first wedge of bad weather doused the region late morning/early afternoon. Now it’s just clouds and intermittent showers. No big deal. But advancing from the west is a huge and violent storm system. It looks ominous. Connor, our clear skies cheerleader, strolls down from the locker room, points the finger skyward, shakes his head and considers a comment. In jest, I tell him to just shut up.

Thinking weather, I ask the troops: “What trail conditions do you expect on Saturday?” Despite some blank stares, it’s a reasonable enough question because for some aspects of teenager life(like weather), the future’s a pretty finite concept, extending outward—on a good day—mere hours. “Halloween’s been canceled in some mid-west cities,” I tell them. That get’s their attention. “The storm that did it is headed guess where.” From that point we discuss anticipated trail conditions, the gear needed, the spikes length that will make some difference.

Practice goes smoothly. Low intensity GC running is followed by strides. The training sequence for this meet has wound down. The hay’s in the barn. Goal #1 for Saturday is fresh legs.

  November 1, 2013(Friday, Camillus):

All day the wind blows hard. With the storm clouds safely north and west, however, the wind races across a clear sky. Another stroke of meteorological luck. You can virtually see the grass and grounds drying. Sectionals tomorrow might not be the muddy mess we’d predicted for the athletes. Then again….

            After school dismissal, I practice my winter/spring routine by rushing out--then rushing over--to the high school. Anticipating a rainy, windy day and a short workout, I’d switched the practice to our high school track. They could use the infield grass if they wanted to maintain surface continuity, but we wouldn’t be on the track long anyway.

            The athletes meet me in the hallway outside Cafeteria II. A quick glance and head count turns up all but two still in the locker room. “O.K. folks,” I begin and run through sectional logistics one last time—bus departure, gear, spikes, course considerations. Then we head out into the wind and sunshine. It’s remarkable; half the crew circles the track, comfortable in T-shirts and shorts for the first day of the turkey month. I take a few moments to check our storage areas under the bleachers for indoor track equipment and gear that we’ll be using in only matter of weeks.

            Following warm-up laps, they run through the pre-race routine of drills, tempo and some strides and sprints. I gather them a final time on the grass. “June 17^th,” I say and look around. Nothing for a moment, and then someone utters, “Oh yeah.”

            “Six months you’ve been at this,” I tell them. “That’s a long time. Your bodies are ready. Tomorrow’s about the mind and what your mind tells your body to do—because it will if you tell it to. Bring your best tomorrow. Dig deep, and if it happens to be your last race, make it one you’re always proud of.”

            They drift off. Lindsay stays behind. We go over her competition for an individual spot in states, and what it will take mentally and physically to accomplish that. I tell her one more time, in one more way, what both Coach Delsole and I have told her before—you have it in you; you can.

November 2, 20013(Saturday, Jamesville Beach):

            Gear, athletes and coaches are packed on the bus, ready to roll by 10:25am. Clouds and sun with probable  showers in the PM--the day’s a good-enough contrast to what it might have been. I’ll gladly take it.

            We arrive with ample time, unload and set up in the team tent area. The first race of the day, Boys Class C, has just hit the course. A friend with Leonetiming confirms what I thought. Most of the course has benefited greatly from the drying winds of Friday but ‘the bottoms’trail section down by the Butternut Creek in-flow to the reservoir is still mucky and slow. They’ll have to run that twice, so the course will race tougher than the one we encountered back in September. It’s a tough course to begin with, anything but flat and fast.

            Talk about drawing the short straw. Both squads will race late in the day, after things have been chewed up. The girls will face our defending national champion neighbors, F-M, and a strengthening Liverpool top-20 team. The boys have the daunting task of lining up against four other Class A state top-20 teams, with F-M and Liverpool ranked 1-2.  Besides the agenda of running team-strong against those two power programs, Coach Delsole and I have been perfectly blunt with our front-runners about the challenge of making states as individuals: the start will be fast and furious—and then it will stay fast. If you sit and wait, you are sunk. The same holds true for the girls. They know who’ll be out front.

            While the boys prepare, Coach and I take a few moments to watch parts of other races and chat with fellow coaches. I greet Oscar Jensen, former coach of Marcellus, a school district that ought to be embarrassed by their unprofessional and shabby treatment of this dean of Central New York coaching.  A few others who I’ve not seen since my leagues mess-up either commiserate or share been-there stories. It’s a good group of people I’ve have the pleasure of coaching against all these years.

            Hob-knobbing aside, we swing back into action amid the boys warm-up sequence and the appearance of blue skies. Coach Delsole heads to our start box while I make final preps with the boys at the team tent and then head them over. We’ve drawn start boxes 1-2, which means spectators and other athletes wandering in and across directional line along the start. I wind up playing traffic cop, shoo-ing them out of the way so the boys can complete strides and sprints without colliding. Five minutes prior to the gun, I head into the back field with the radio and wait for Coach’s call of the start.

            Within minutes, the opening stampede rushes by. Already, F-M has made it’s statement and strategy clear with Millar, Berge and Ryan up front. That never changes as anticipated F-M/Liverpool battle becomes a game of catch-up for the ‘pool’ runners. Our runners have done what’s necessary, but the pace is simply furious and unrelenting. With the exception of a lone Proctor runner, F-M and Liverpool own the top-10 throughout the race. Four of my five front-runners notch seasonal or all-time PR’s, but David comes closest with a 12^th place, followed by Will in 13^th. They distance all others convincingly for third place—and keep their third in the overall meet merge. F-M and Liverpool have demonstrating why they hold top state ranks. F-M takes the team title again, and Liverpool places four of its top five into the championship as individuals. It will be fun watching the section competition at states. As our guys gather near the finish, exhausted but pleased with all-out efforts, the sky opens and the rain pours down. I shoo them off to the team tent for dry clothes. “We would have won this in a couple of other sections,” Coach remarks wryly as we follow the runners back. “I know,” I answer, “but what are you going to do?”

            By the time the girls are on the line, the rain has relented, though darker clouds westward suggest only a reprieve. I am back playing traffic monitor so the girls can finish strides without collisions. After wishing them good luck, I head into the back field and am standing trailside there when Coach Delsole radioes the start. Within moments, another wave of F-M green approaches with Laura in the middle. That is expected; I’m scanning the phalanx of runners finding the rest of our front five back further than hoped. It’s an issue—or an mental inclination—that will have to be corrected during the track season. There will be no more XC starts for practicing.

            The field is fast, however, and everyone in the top 30 gets swept along. Coach and I alternately shout instructions to team members to make moves, to use terrain to their advantage. But we’re the sideline voices the runners never recall hearing. They’re on their own, making the race what they’ve decided it will be. They loop by me a second time, and I head back toward the finish at a trot, catching several of ours pumping up the final hill, then churning down the final incline amid the cheers of the close crowd. Laura places third, advancing to states, but Lindsay’s had a tough day, not the one she’d hoped for. Only Elise joins Laura in cracking the top-20, but Lindsay and Maria are top-25 and our freshman Alycia provides a strong #5 in 26^th. Except for Laura, they’ve all run seasonal PR’s, logged our best team cumulative time of the season and matched the boy’s 3^rd place sectional finish while placing 4^th in the total meet merge. That’s something to smile about. The rain returns as the girls return from their cool-down run, but it’s only a mild drizzle. Our parent support group has set up post-race treats near our team tent, and athletes mill around with parents and coaches, enjoying the moment. I put the boys on notice. From what I’ve seen, their season’s not over.

November 3, 2013(Sunday, Syracuse):

            Two e-mails come in Sunday. One is from Andy. He did not make the sectional team, but when an alternate opted out, Andy asked to take his place.

Coach V.

Thanks coach for letting me stick around. I can tell the difference of the team atmosphere from the kids who want to be there and give it all 100%. I think sticking around the 2 extra weeks helped me notice how good of a runner I can be…. I am already looking forward to next year even though it’s a semi rebuilding year, I think we can still come out strong and be state-ranked again. I don't know if you are taking suggestions but I really think the lifting helped last summer. Also possibly doing a morning workout 1-2 times a week at like 6 AM--possibly a lift, insanity core exercising, or even morning swims to help our endurance! See you at the banquet…

Andy

And Mike, one of our hardest working runners, did not earn a berth on the boys’ squad training in hopes of a Federation bid:

Coach,

I am fully willing to continue training with the team for the next couple of weeks to serve as an alternate for Feds if you want me to. I promise I will put everything I have into training regardless of whether or not I will be running in the race.  I just want to be with the team until the end.

Mike

I’ll save both for the next time someone wants to know why I coach.

Cross-Country Journal – Week 12

November 4, 2013(Monday, Camillus):

We go back to work, a smaller Wildcat unit surrounded by a gorgeous middle-autumn day. Aside from Laura, who’s states-qualified, the girls team will join us on Wednesday. Though they are an admitted long-shot for any Federation Championship consideration, you have play the long shots because it’s always about expectations—and unreasonable expectations are better than no expectations at all.

            Some Monday’s are stronger than others. The trails are slimy today, and no one brought spikes, so slippage takes its toll and interval times drop off, though just a bit and not enough to affect the value of the work. Coach D. mans the timing at the start/finish points of the intervals. I move around the hill section, taking shots of the runners’ climbing form, and then dashing back down to shoot finishes. I share a few stills with Laura, who astutely—and critically--notes her thigh angle at toe-off. We set some drill and flexibility priorities for the indoor season, and she lines up for the next interval.

            When that work’s complete, they log some recovery running and meet us at the base of the rise. Five of the 120 meter tilts today—and I add some incentive. They’ll run two of them fairly strong, then go negative on the last three. I’ll time the first runner, but I’ll also time the last. Both have to go negative or they do it over. Nobody grumbles, though. It sharpens the drill, and everyone meets expectations. We decide to leave core for Tuesday, and they finish with a cool down. The day ends calm, eerily so. Everything’s muted--the skies, the colors, the temperatures. You can sense the changes coming. Winter is waiting in the wings.

November 5, 2013(Tuesday, Camillus):

            Coach Delsole is MIA due to parent-teacher conferences, and flat, drab clouds have slid across a chilling sky. I show our small assemblage of runners the current team polls which has both teams ranked in the state top-25. They’re matter of fact about it, more intent on deciding the day’s work. That decision turns toward GC running with one short break, a variant of our segmented GC workouts. With warm-ups complete, they head out and I check the trails. The back school hill we use sparingly is a muck-mess at the bottom, and I try to visualize an alternate route we could construct. I walk the side field, imagining another trail if the local farmer decides next year not to lease and plant. The Woods Loop is carpeted with rusty fallen leaves, and in route to the Back Loop, a familiar alumni approaches along the woods path and stops to chat. Justin and I catch each other up, then I put out the possibility of him volunteer-coaching next fall if he’s determined enough to negotiate the current labyrinth of requirements. He promises to consider it and disappears down the path. By the time I return to the base of School Hill, the runners are assembled and waiting. They blast their hill sprints, then jog a short recovery back to the school field. The sky’s dimming, but Core Drills go quickly with our small, purposeful group. They’re walking off toward cars before five. By the time I’ve straightened the clipboard and geared down the back driveway, the sun has surrendered.

November 6, 2013(Wednesday, Camillus):

            I stand astride School Hill, waiting for the runners to complete their warm-up run. The back field has been drained of its summer colors, but lacing through that drab is the persistent green grass of the runner’s loops. There’s a metaphor in there I suppose.

Sun and light winds have done their job in drying the trails through the woods, so a tempo run is in order. The athletes break into two groups. Laura pairs with the boys, Lindsay with the girls. Following a 10/23 clockwise run, they turn it back counter-clockwise, their more preferred direction. Coach Delsole and I stand on the Ike Dixon field trail near the power-line crossing. We can usually watch runners cross the line on the southern woods trail, but now, with the leaves down, we can spy them through the trees as they course around the Back Field loop and swing through where we stand.

After a first loop, groups break and reform into smaller units. Laura winds up alone, following the boys group, and so does Lindsay after pushing the pace ahead of her teammates. Mike is on fire today. He’s charged out front with Nate, and they will hold that lead position throughout the run. I boom out the time count-down, and at twenty blast the whistle. Slowly, runners reassemble at Three Corners. Coach approaches Mike and says what we’re both thinking: “Whatever that was, Mike, bottle it for Feds.” That draws a smile. The boys banter amongst themselves; the girls, in contrast, looked relieved and mill around quietly. They all set off on a recovery run and then polish the day off with a solid LAT drill. Money in the bank….

November 7, 2013(Thursday, Camillus):

            It’s raw outside, just as predicted. I meet with the troops quickly, setting up the day and the rest of the week. Coach Delsole will hold Friday practice while I head to Queensbury with Laura for states. The runners have on extra layers. We’re about 8-10 degrees away from teeth-chatter weather.

            Following warm-ups, the runners agree they’d like an 8-8-8 fartlek with the choice of ups. The girls, with Lindsay and Laura, are going traditional. The boys stand in a tight circle on the basketball court, trying to do the math on their assemblage of varied up-times. It’s a hodge-podge of opinions and cross-arguments. “Guys,” I finally suggest, “why don’t you get started on your GC segment and figure in out then.” That strikes them as reasonable, and they set off. Coach D. and I head out on the Inner and Woods loops for monitoring.

            We talk the week ahead, assuming the best Federation Championship news for both girls and boys teams following states. The Federations selection processes for those teams differ. Boys selections are reasonably objective and generally fair. It’s a different story on the girls side, however, where politicking is the name of the game and ‘criteria’ are invented or discarded as needed to position teams. Each year, the procedures and rationales for selections seem to change. In those selection meetings, a solid resume and ranking doesn’t necessarily punch your ticket to Feds. Having sectional coordinators who enjoy good in-fighting is just as important.

Coach and I return to the base of School Hill and spot the two groups finishing their session across the now-deserted soccer fields. Soon, they are assembled in two lines, with me standing camera in hand atop the hill. Coach shouts starts and I take the opportunity to click away. Typically, hills force form, so if you’re seeing something awry with a runner powering a hill, it’s probably pronounced elsewhere and deserves attention. Alycia charges up the hill near the front, and it’s true that a picture’s worth a thousand words. I am channeling Jay Dicharry who, if he was standing there watching what I am photographing, would probably insist, ‘yup, you got a hip issue there.’ A promising runner, Alycia and I have something fundamentals to work on during Indoor, but it will be fun to accelerate her potential improvements.

November 8, 2013(Friday, Queensbury):

            I drive through 3-4 mini-snowstorms in route the Queensbury state championship site. Laura, our lone individual entry this year, is coming later with her mother and brother, so I get what writer Stuart Dybek called “the long thoughts.” Which is fine; time alone watching upstate landscapes pass can be very relaxing, even if some of them are enveloped in snow pellets and graupel. By arrival mid-afternoon, it’s just broken clouds and cold winds--not chilly but actually cold. After parking, I find a fellow coach who walks me in the right direction to our coordinators who’ve set up in the high school. One of them has very good news. The pre-rankings for Federation Championship at-large boys teams is finished and West Genesee is #2 on the list. It’s very encouraging because those team are not racing at states, so their positions will not change. I text Coach Delsole back in Camillus. Then I phone Jack, one of our seniors. He’s pretty excited, and I know word should spread fast. There will be some happy Wildcats this afternoon.

            Laura texts they are on their way, but it’s obvious she will not arrive before dark, so I take some time and walk the course with my camera, snapping shots at each new line of sight. The result, once downloaded to my laptop, is a pictorial tour of the course she’s never run. Hopefully, that plus a quick sneak peak in the morning before races start will do the trick. Truth be told, except for the end-hills at the far reach of the course, this one’s flat with predictable footing. Knowing where you are in the race is as important—if not more so—than knowing features. And since they’ve nicely marked both the kilometers and the miles, Laura should be alright.

            The boys squad, meanwhile, has hammered a shorter trial race back home, making their own unseen statement. That stage is set.

November 9, 2013(Saturday, Queensbury): 

            No, she’s not. She’s worn the game-face prior to the gun--as always--then she’s run feeling sick and weak, with expected results. She’ll spend the next two days either in bed or at the doctors, but then return the following day for a workout in a snowstorm. And if qualifying for Federations running sick is any measure(her fifth Feds), this is not the day it seems.

            On the ride home, I talk to our sectional coordinator to verify the West Genesee boy’s qualification for Federations. There are arrangements to be made, but it will be pleasant work.  The season goes on….

I’m early to this holiday practice, so I sit and think. We’ll be down one athlete today with Laura out sick, a doctor’s appointment the only thing on her schedule. The rest of the girls team, without their Federations long shot selection, have begun a short transition into winter sports. Some teams jump right on that indoor opening date; others stretch out the XC season. We go the middle route, though the base-building period extends well into December, whether as XC or Indoor practices.

The boys’ team arrives about 2:25pm and takes off for their warm up run. An interval workout is on the schedule, 5x800 around the Outer Loop for slightly less volume than normal. The trail is in reasonable shape, with only one sloppy corner positioned into the jog zone of the 1000 meter circuit. The last thing we need now is a twisted ankle or knee.

The runners get at it with a Monday’s sluggish determination. Some are still shaking out from the Sunday run—and it shows. There’s power to the strides, but not as much zip. Some of that has to do with the footing.

Patterns. They are what the coaching eye—if attentive--should pick up. Bad days are bad days, but a string of so-called bad days is a pattern and suggests something else. In this case Matt has slide back toward the end of the pack in workouts since sectionals. The quiet after-practice queries—is everything O.K.?—have not provided answers and the question with these conscientious runners is always this: how much prying is appropriate? Usually, there are multiple layers to reasons for poor practice/race performances, and you’re not always going to get at the bottom layer—or guess correctly. And sometimes runners have a right to their own reasons and the consequences attending tem.

I ask the Matt over following another practice where he’s lagged behind. We have eight guys practicing by choice and only seven can compete. “You know Mike’s been training better than you these past weeks,” I tell Matt, and give him time to respond. He doesn’t need the time. “I know,” he admits quickly, “I was going to talk to you about that.”

So we talk and it’s a mutual agreement that Mike deserves the nod for Feds. “But I’m expecting you to go and serve as alternate,” I tell Matt.” If you’re needed, I know you’ll be there for us.” Which is true; he’s a team player all the way.

 The decision is fair; the race roster is set. I call Mike over, and he’s very excited but graciously constrained. He’s a team player too.

November 12, 2013(Tuesday, Camillus):

This is an overlap day. Our two eighth-grade modified runners have enjoyed superlative fall cross-country seasons, seasons that have led them to selective classification and the varsity indoor track team. They are part of a boisterous group of hopeful athletes massed in the high school cafeteria, listening to Coach Delsole and I explain the basics of that indoor season ahead. Midway through the meeting, with the paperwork complete, our federations XC runners leave for their run just as the snow outside intensifies. It’s great mood weather for indoor track--all that swirling stuff outside the large plate-glass windows—but not so hot when thinking of a XC championship.

We wrap up the meeting, answer a few personal inquiries about this or that, then head out to the track. The timing is perfect; the squad is just returning from its GC run, and we meet at the head of the home stretch. Sean is grinning out from glasses half-filled with the white stuff. No, he assures me, no snowballs were involved. Mentally, I flash back many years to a local team that used a snowy training run before Feds to target local cars from behind a house. Following complaints, the coach did some investigating and the team was pulled from the championship. Sad way to end a season.

But our runners are merely ending this day in winter fashion, with snow-prints left behind as proof of track-work. They hustle inside and, while the girls varsity basketball team fills the other two-thirds of the gym with practice noise, finish off with core drills.  

I drive home in heavy snow.

November 13, 2013(Wednesday, Camillus):

Running trails that a few days before shown green now resemble white ribbons coursing through browning fields. Snow on warm ground creates a mish-mash wherever bare soil is involved. Mike goes down on the warm-up, which leads to warnings for their fartlek run and a change of the LAT to sprint drills. That makes them happy and off they go.

The ‘ups’ today are controlled more by topography than time. The rules: nothing too fast around slippery corners or down hills; use the grass loops as often as possible; keep the feet up through the woods. Again, the last thing we need is a turned ankle or hips bruised from falls. I count victory when they returned unscathed, with only minor mud-markings up and down the legs.

Coach Delsole is off today, penciled in for parent-teacher conferences at his school. That’s fine. We’re small and routine drives the day effectively. This is an interesting crew. I’ve coached top-20 teams before, and all levered their fortunes with three—sometimes more—superior, front-running type athletes. This is an eclectic blue-collar group. Three of the top five won’t even be year-round runners for us; two count other sports as their primary pursuit. And one of our top runners sat out the season with injury. It’s a testament to their commitment and tenacity that they’ve driven themselves this far.

They tick off their snow strides as the night moon rises, then walk back contentedly from their final sprint, standing around in a loose circle and soaking up the last sunlight. Will, our astute observer, points out a distant jet etching a contrail high above in the northern sky. “What’s that?” Laura wants to know. “You don’t know what a contrail is?” Will asks. “I’ve never seen them,” Laura insists, which Will has trouble believing. Undeterred, he launches into an explanation of jet engine heat applied to moisture-rich upper atmospheric levels. Laura doesn’t necessarily appreciate the lecture. “Well thank you Mr. Science,” she says sarcastically. Will merely nods. “You’re welcome,” he says with a smug smile.

November 14, 2013(Thursday, Camillus):

            Right on cue, warmer weather rescues the day. The runners sport fewer layers and the light breeze has lost its bite of the past few days. Of course, fluctuations are what November is all about. “I’d like three weeks of this to start the indoor season,” I tell Coach. I’m an eager skier, but these kinds of late-fall days are just too nice.

            After the runners have warmed up and headed out for a GC run on the trails, Coach and I complete our last ‘walk’ of the season. Any more practices out here and they will be on indoor’s dime, something I hope to accomplish this November/December if the weather holds. There’s precious little grass around the high school where indoor teams train, and I’d like to ease the surface transition for the athletes.

We hear them moving through the nearby fields  with the occasional laugh or shout. With the leaves down, sound travels. The traffic along Genesee Street a half mile away is still unseen but now it’s heard distinctly. An occasional gunshot reverberates from fields across Ike Dixon Road. Someone’s readying for the hunting season, and as the runners let us know later, it’s a little unnerving.

Yesterday’s snow has vanished from the school field where they re-group for strides. If the forecast holds, weather on the Bowdoin Park course Saturday should be just about perfect, news we’re only too happy to share with the runners once they’ve finished the work and cooled down. Nobody complains about that news.

November 15, 2013(Friday, Bowdoin Park)

            Half the month has already flown by. With the holiday season approaching and Indoor Track start-up, the rest of the days will accelerate. This day, though, assumes a casual pace. Plenty of bus time. The athletes assemble in the lower parking lot following several class periods and bundle into our small bus for the drive down to Bowdoin Park. They don’t--as is typical—need entertaining. I get track paperwork done while the upstate miles slid by. We make the park in plenty of time for Laura to give her teammates a tour of the course. I have to keep reminding myself that none of the guys have ever competed here before. I want to convince myself that’s an advantage, but still I ask Laura to talk them through the body-sense of coming off that hill with so much race left. I remind them of the long finish reach back around the start line and the mental strength it requires. They’ll understand soon enough.

            There’s no need to over-talk or hype this thing. As far as tomorrow’s race is concerned, the hay’s in the barn—and more pressure lays on other teams. These guys just need to go out there and have fun racing hard. After the course preview, we enjoy a casual dinner at our team favorite, the Coyote Grill. At one point, the waitresses and servers assemble to sing happy birthday to an elderly woman and her group. My runners decide to join in, and they don’t miss a note.

November 16, 2013(New York):

A full moon maps the last miles home from this year’s Federation Championship. Our small team bus barrels northward, but it has an empty seat. Nate went home from Bowdoin Park with his parents, his sprained ankle elevated and iced. Only a quarter mile out from the start, he rolled it amidst runner jostling. A gamer, he finished the race, but the team had no answer for his loss. Will and David had made the initial fast push to establish themselves where they needed to be, up in the initial surge of runners so they could use the momentum of that group to pull them to their best speed ratings of the season. The others, Nate included, got swallowed up in the mid-pack mayhem. “This is Feds,” I’d warned them earlier. “There will be a lot of runners battling close, and almost all of them will be very good.” None of our guys, however, had run the course before and were finding out the hard way what this championship demanded. With Nate effectively out of the race, we needed others to step up, but they were mentally and physically trapped too far back.  Our 2-3 runner gap was huge, insurmountable. Will and David would post medal finishes, and David would clock the best 9^th grade time of the meet, but the others placed well back. Walking back from the finish, I thought about attrition. The team had lost a top runner in Kal before the season even began. It had lost another top-5 runner to a code of conduct violation in September. Still they’d made Feds, but Nate’s in-race injury was just too much. The worst thing about these kinds of seasons are the what-ifs. I felt especially bad for Nate because he wanted this XC race—his last—so badly. And following her tough state championship day, Laura improved to a top-20 finish. The sustained speed, though, was still not there, a simple reflection of compromised training. As we walked back to the bus, she issued an animated and objective post-race assessment of her current running weaknesses and training needs. “I’m thinking of ending my season now,” she told me, “so I can train really well for indoor.

“You know that’s your choice,” was my reply. We talked about indoor goals and the means to those goals, and it’s all do-able.

So as the lights of Syracuse emerge over a hilltop, we put in the last travel miles—and the last minutes-- of the season. Despite my best efforts, this winter we lose Will to basketball and another runner to a work conflict. The rest, though, will take a short break, then resume their base-training amid the dwindling sunlight of approaching winter. Most already have their indoor goals in mind. Another door swings open…..

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