Finding The Pace at a New Distance

For the likely small group of folks that will end up at this page, I appreciate your taking a moment to consider my thoughts. As often happens to people as they reach a different stage of life, waking up one day disoriented by the current state of affairs has been my experience for most of the last two years. If there are a small number of eyes that will see this page, there’s an even smaller number who will have any concern for the minutia that created that sensation so I we’ll just move along to the hopeful reason I’ve decided to revive an archaic medium and post on my dormant blog. It’s time to learn how to run again.

In the largest portion of the last 20 years I worked as a head cross country and/or lead distance event track & field coach, mostly in the NCAA Division III level. It was a life I greatly enjoyed and the rhythm of a college or high school competition season was the sundial that oriented my annual calendar. For the sake of brevity, all that is necessary to state here is, my leaving that world was not my choice and I fought to stay with all I had left in a very tired soul. Nothing illegal or otherwise immoral happened. One day, I answered a phone call and was informed I did not have a job. No situation is ever as simple as the likely millions of others who have experienced that type of scenario would confirm. This isn’t a tragedy, it’s merely a harsh reality that crushed a part of me that I’m not sure will ever fully recover.

Life moves on. Things evolve. Your place in the world changes. You are, for how ever long you are. Then you are not.

Except, that’s not true for me. I will always be.

Coach.

A group of really kind people that care deeply about my alma mater put me in their hall of fame for being a coach. (You can read about that elsewhere on this site) The relationships and experiences required to accomplish the kinds things that qualify a person for that type of honor impact you for your entire life. A phone call cannot change that about life.

For a solid year I stumbled around, disoriented with no practice times on my schedule. No recruiting calls. No conference or national honor rolls to sift through on long Saturday night bus rides or over Sunday morning coffee. Pockets devoid of receipts for travel expenses. A job where no one knew what a shoe being “super” means. Over 12 months of realizing I lived in a niche world for almost two decades that no longer had a place for me.

Then it happened that an old friend and former colleague reached out about a job opportunity for which I may be qualified. 20 days later I had a new job making significantly more than I ever had in my life. It is very much not a coaching position. The work is good and meaningful and it does help student athletes.

Within a few months after that a few former college runners I’d worked with asked about marathon training and I’ve set out working with them to improve their experience in that endeavor…We message several times a week…A former coaching colleague new to being a high school AD reached out to see if I could help her very overworked cross country coach with their growing program…I was back at cross country practice as if it was my freshman year all over again.

So what then…when you continue existing after something very powerful in your life goes away? Well for me I do what I’ve always done since I found running 25 years ago, I went for a run.

I’m training, now. For a 33 mile fundraiser run you can learn more about in my social media accounts.

This is life in a new stage. I’m still a bit disoriented but I’m figuring out how to dream while also being present-tense. So there is learning the tactics of a new race, a new pacing, a new venue. There is strength in learning to hope again. My new hope is I can encourage you, a coach in your corner of sorts.

I did not start running to win a conference title. I did not start coaching to win an NCAA title. But I’m unwilling to forgo my naïve belief that the best path to achieve those goals is focusing on the quality of the path itself. The work is purifying and holy. It’s worth every step if motives are right. Holding on to that thought, I’m running again to see what’s possible, as George Sheehan once said, on the other side of sweat.

What Running Makes of Me

"There is no substitute for finding out one's own self, for the personal revelation, for knowing first hand...When I run that happens. The body and the spirit become one. Running becomes prayer and applause for me and my Creator. When I run, I am filled with confidence and the faith that word contains. I can face unanswerable questions, certain that there are answers."

George Sheehan, This Running Life

There is a bend in the West Mississippi River Road just southeast of Downtown Minneapolis. When you head south, the path plunges down over 100 feet of vertical elevation over the course of a third of a mile. The road and accompanying recreational trails pass under the iconic arches of the I-35W bridge that provide motorists passage over the river gorge. As you run along this section of the "Grand Rounds Parkway", it feels like crossing into a new time and space. Though it is over a mile from the origin point of most of my runs, this unintended gateway is truly where my running begins.

The hill provides a dramatic divide between a bustling downtown metropolis and what feels like a separate part of the world. When my legs reach the bottom of the hill, my stride evens out in stark contrast to the choppy steps a long downhill necessitates. With a few final adjusted breaths, my aerobic system, muscles, and frame unite and I'm simply running. Momentarily, after another quarter or half a mile, running begins its work. By the two mile point, before a gradual uphill section rises to meet one of my favorite bridge crossings in the Twin Cities, running has revealed what's truly on my mind.

By the top of the Franklin Avenue Hill, my running has become the truth. All of the things I am at the top of the hill are a reality. The stretch of the achilles, gastrocnemius, and soleus are real. The onset of lactic acid accumulation initiated by my pace is a true or false test of physical exertion. The most pressing issues in my soul and mind have come to the front and I am the sum total of my physical, spiritual and emotional parts.

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Over the years I've paged through a few of history's renowned theologians, philosophers, and thinkers. Kierkegaard, James, Nietzsche, the Greeks, the Romans. reformers, scholastics, romantics, theosophists. Nihilists, positivists, fascists, communists, and republicans. Generals, poets, pastors, professors, farmers, and naturalists. Criminals, heroes, and the editorialists in the local mullet wrapper tribune.

Too much. My mind is only capable of so much inquiry before the questions disable any return on investment. The time required for digestion requires to much space in actual time, of which all thinkers recognize we have so little. Though I continue to seek, the place I've been given to find is while the minutes and miles pass during my time on the run.

There is a point during every run where I am fully all of the parts of my being. I am more than my patellar tendonitis or problems at work or how to potty train my toddler but those things are a part of my experience. And experience tells me the run will come to completion in fine form. Without always knowing it the run has been a prayer to my creator and a celebration of all the things within my current experience. 

As Dr. Sheenan is quoted above, during my run I am a fully discovered self. According to my beliefs and convictions, I see it as a place where an eternal, holy and wise God communicates himself to me. Of course, I recognize that is a statement of inherent faith.

But regardless of spiritually, there remain few things more real than what running has made of me. Every day I head out for a run there will be a moment of honest clarity where the truth is known if only for that moment at the top of hill on the Mississippi River Gorge.