Every flower needs certain basics things to reach full bloom. Good soil helps. Rain at times. Perhaps some tending. Lacking these things, the plant struggles to fulfill its destiny.
Likewise with endurance athletes. The ‘base’ of endurance training we all seek to build is the ‘good soil’ of our performance. Some build that base in the winter. Others turn to the summer months in hopes of blooming during the fall.
Such was the case during eight years of scholastic and collegiate distance running. The first summer following freshman year in high school, our excellent coach Rich Born encouraged the cross country team to put in some summer miles. “Build a base,” he encouraged us. He set up a program rewarding kids who ran 500 and 1000 miles. But I never did it. Never even ran 50 official training miles over the summer months. I didn’t have the gumption. Others did.
I thought of this because on my way into work this morning there was a ban of tanned and fit high school kids running together on one of the main streets. I glanced to see if my former neighbor kid was running with them, but didn’t have time to pick him out because traffic around me was heavy.
Training logistics
It would have been nice to have a band of teammates to run with like that when I was in high school. Logistically, however, it was impossible back in the day. The school I attended those first two years of high school was geographically the largest district in the state. The towns that fed Kaneland high school out in the cornfields included Elburn, where I lived, and Sugar Grove, Maple Park, Kaneville and Virgil. We still had less than 750 students in the entire high school.
Getting together to train with teammates was impossible. It was twelve miles to Sugar Grove. Thirteen miles out to Maple Park and Virgil. That meant it was impractical for many of us to get together and run. None of us had cars in those days. For that matter, I wasn’t old enough to drive.
So Coach Born laid it out clear and simple. “You’re going to have to do this on your own,” he told us. “And June is when you have to get started. July is the toughest though. You have to be disciplined to go out and train in the heat. That’s how you build a base.”
Laggard
I didn’t get off to a good start in June. In fact, I ran only once the first couple weeks. II had stopped running altogether right after spring track ended. It did not feel good to start up again. I ran and walked two miles, then went back home and had lemonade. It had taken me fourteen minutes to complete the two miles. I got a sideache.
Still, I got some sort of mileage in every day, mostly on my three-speed Huffy bike. My paper route was probably four to five miles long when it was all said and done. I’d get up at 5:30, pedal hard for the route and be done by 6:15 am. So I was getting some aerobic training every day, seven days a week. Then I’d shoot some baskets some day, or play a couple hours of pickup baseball with my brothers.
Baseball
In the afternoon, we’d have baseball practice. My coach during that summer of 1971 was a man named Trent Richards. He was in his early 20s at the time, a recent graduate of Illinois State University. Richards was also a track and cross country coach for a high school fifteen miles away in St. Charles. I did not know that at the time. But our paths would cross two years later in the world of cross country.
He’s see me at baseball practice and ask, “Did you run today?” Every day I’d answer the same way. “No.”
Then we’d get on with baseball practice. I was a pitcher, one of the most active and aerobic positions in the game. So there was plenty of exercise there.
July heat
Then July came. I figured I’d better try to get some sort of mileage going. Coach Born sent a little note of encouragement if I recall. There was no Internet of course. Even phone calls were expensive if they were deemed long distance. There was one area code in the Chicago area back then, but the phone company had lots of rules about what qualified as extra expense on calls. So it wasn’t practical for Coach to call all 30 kids on the team and check how our training was going.
It turned out to be a hot summer. Mornings would come and go. I’d avoid running every day, preferring to lay on the cool living room floor with my head between two giant stereo speakers listening to the All Things Must Pass album by George Harrison.
Turning point
But one cool July day I worked up the gumption to go running. I’d planned out a route that went south of Elburn, turned right toward the high school, turned right again up a country road and turned right back into Elburn again. I could only estimate that it was five miles.
The first two miles went well. I was actually clipping along thinking “This isn’t so bad…” when suddenly the bushes near a farm house erupted with the shapes of three dogs running right at me. Barking like crazy.
The road had turned to dirt at that point too. As the dogs tore after me on the road, they kicked up dust and barked like mad. I run as fast as I could, but the dogs got ahead of me and snarled and barked some more. I walked toward them with my hands out in case they charged. Not really knowing what else to do, I proceeded that way as the dogs backed away.
Then two more dogs came tearing out on the road. At that point, I was traumatized. The new dogs were even more fierce looking than the first three. One was black with bright white teeth. Some sort of German shepherd mix, possibly the spawn of Beezelbub.
The other was one of those low growling hounds that looked like it would do anything to anyone at the drop of the hat. I had not thought of that dog until the scene in the movie Django Unchained when the plantation owner unleashes dogs on a slave and tears him to pieces.
And true to form, the farm owner stood at the far end of his driveway watching me try to move through is pack of angry dogs. I yelled “Hey!” to get his attention and he did not move. Not a finger. It’s hard to tell what the man was thinking at the time. Or was he thinking at all? I’d take a step or two and the dogs would commence barking again. But not once did he call them in.
Great and not so great escapes
I moved to the far side of the road in hopes that move would quell the canine territoriality going on. It worked to some degree. I was able to move up the road a few yards at a time. One by one the dogs backed off and returned to the farmyard. Only the smallest dog kept on. I allowed myself a short laugh as the little critter barked and scuffed up dust.
Then I was free of that pack of farm dogs at last. My nerves were on edge the rest of the run. The next few farms had dogs but they barked from their own yards rather than running out on the road.
Dog bites
Finally I turned toward home and realized how stressed I was by the incident. Getting bitten would have been more traumatic. Later during my college running years one of our teammates would get attacked by a large farm dog. It chomped on his thigh, puncturing his leg in multiple places. Blood ran down his leg like a horror movie, yet he ran the entire way back to campus. That had happened because we’d left him behind during a group run.
And I thought all this as those high school kids ran by this morning. How good it is that they can train together. How good it is there are leash laws now in our cities and counties. And how good it is that the sport of running, for all its changes, is still a great joy in all the right ways.
So the inspiration I hoped to provide in a roundabout way is that it’s June, and it’s summer. Revel in the heat. Enjoy the company of your training buddies. Know that what you’re doing is building strength for July, August and beyond.
June know it’s worth it.
There are many ways to be unhappy. A lost love. An anxious mind. The list goes on forever it seems.
I did a sketch of what Old School runners looked like in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
I’ve covered something close to 100,000 miles during 40+ years of running and riding on the roads of America. That time of the road has allowed me to see a few things that others never witness. During a pause during a long run, I’ve waited on a corner only to find a Volkswagen flying through the air in my direction. It landed on the curb where I had been standing next to an older man that I pulled out of the way. We tumbled onto some wide steps where he lay dazed and I lay amazed at the sight of a vehicle on its side with wheels still spinning above me. Then he got up and crawled into a car whose driver had called his name. Then he rode off without saying a word of thanks, or anything.
Let’s face it: Nearly everyone speeds on roads of all kinds. When speeding becomes a habit, it is also true that people are loathsome toward the idea that they might have to slow down or actually separate hazards as they are encountered on the road. The more common reaction is to simply speed up even more in an attempt to bypass whatever person, object or other vehicles might be in their perceived path. And more often than not, the driver approaching from the other direction has the same idea. That means two speeding cars have now arrived at the exact point on the road where the cyclists or runners they hoped to avoid are now in critical peril of being knocked off their bike or into the ditch.
The presumption on the part of the Rush and Rage drivers seems to be that the roads are suited for one thing and one person’s priority. When someone yells “Get off the road!” they mean “Get off MY road.”
The treatment of everyday runners was not all that good at the time either. I’ve lived through people throwing things out the window while hollering obscenities. running (or jogging) was in its infancy as a popular sport.
ease past this queue,” their quiet protest seemed to say. “You had better be a much better swimmer than all of us.”
Which explains why I took the longer route back to the car during the day to walk. That afforded a closer view of the bright white and lily blossoms were in bloom. I stopped to take some photos of those too, thinking of course about the work of Claude Monet, one of the leading Impressionist painters.
Every summer something comes along to make life more interesting on the bike, the run or in the pool. I even had a sense yesterday things were not quite right in the universe with me. There are days when the bike feels like a blunt instrument in my hands.
When I looked up, the truck was right there in the parking lane with the guy sitting in the driver’s seat. I avoided colliding with the rear bumper and gave the wheel a shunt to the side of the truck. That sent me skidding across the handlebars a bit, which are wrapped in grippy tape. That explains the stripedy rash on my arm. And not much else was hurt. No dinged knees. No bang of the head. Nothing much happened.
It’s funny how we human beings, though highly evolved in areas of intelligence and self-awareness in comparison with other living things, still resort to comparisons with animals to generate ideas about the merit of individuals or teams. We name our organizations after LIONS and TIGERS and BEARS to symbolize some set of virtues with which are supposed to be inspiring.
That reminded me of that 
So my simple plan is this. I need something manageable to accomplish change. It comes down to replacing about 30% of the foods I eat that are carbo or sugar heavy. The few sodas I drink? They have to go. I lived 20 years without them, and let them back in the door a few years back. Big Mistake. They are fat bombs, those sugary drinks.
The bloom of fitness is a near miraculous feeling. After waking countless mornings fatigued from training, a dawn arrives where one rises rested even after a hard workout. The brain comes alive. The body feels ready to do that next thing. Whatever that is.
The next day Sue and I rode in an event called the Udder Century. Our entries were gifted to us by friends that had signed up months ago only to move to Beaverton, Oregon where our friend Anne de Traglia has started a new job for the Nike corporation.
But there are times when I’m at an aerodynamic disadvantage because Sue typically rides in full Aero Tuck position and I’m left to slum it on her back wheel. I reason that’s the tradeoff in riding with her. She doesn’t want me to pull anyway. That doesn’t help her become a stronger rider for Ironman. So I slum it in the draft. And even then it’s hard to keep up sometimes.
Then came Monday Morning after the previous evening’s encounter with the movie Slumdog Millionaire. I’d seen it before, but forgotten how it worked. You likely know the plot. Two low-caste Indian kids with a terrifically tough childhoods wend their way through a long series of experiences bordering on death. These prepare the one kid to answer questions that lead him to win a million dollars.
There so much ignorance and denial. We’re almost drowning in it. Up to our necks in it even when it isn’t our shit we’re dealing with. And sometimes, out of sheer desperation or motivation, we must dive all the way and hold the picture of our desires aloft. That may be Jesus or our favorite Hollywood star. Whatever keeps you from sinking all the way into the shit, keep your arm up and your fingers pinched tightly together. And raise yourself above that shit however you can.
