"Hey, buddy, do you need a lift?"

As I have relayed in an earlier post, this past fall I was on a running streak that, for me, was pretty epic. Between August 1 and December 15 I logged over 400 miles, averaging around 40 miles a week. My goal was two-fold: I wanted to log the most miles in a single year since I started recording my mileage in 2000 and I wanted to run the Tuscobia Ultra. But on a frigid Saturday morning during a 15-mile run (on December 15) I strained my hamstring enough to hobble me and make running the Tuscobia undoable. Despite the injury I still limped myself over the 1,300 mile threshhold for 2012. But since then the streak has ended, I've put on some weight and as I near the end of January I'm just hoping to cross the 50-mile mark for the month. Part of it is the injury, part of it is life-interrupting and part of it is...well, yeah, laziness.

This past week I ran on 3.5 on a morning that was -27 below with the wind chill but didn't run again until this morning. By comparison it was a balmy -9 below this morning but no wind. I decided to just do a quick 4 and felt pretty good. Part of recovery is rest and while I'm not logging the miles lately as fiercely as I was back in October and November, this morning I ran pretty much without noticing any leg pain whatsoever. And then my bubble was popped. I could hear a vehicle coming from behind me and slowing. I figured it was someone I knew who was going to drive by and wish me some encouragement. But it was someone I didn't know who rolled down his window and asked, "Hey, buddy, do you need a lift?" The first thing I thought was, "Do I look like I do? I mean, I'm in my wind suit on a Saturday morning on a quick four-mile jaunt. Does it look like I'm in distress? Or - God forbid - am I moving so slow it looks like I'm just a guy out for a brisk walk?" All these thoughts passed through my brain in milliseconds. What I spoke out was, "No, thanks. I'm good."



Not me but I've looked like this guy before

 I know he was just being neighborly. He was offering assistance to someone who looked to be in need but the comment and the gesture worked together to deflate my already depressed ego. Thanks, buddy. Maybe I deserve it. I've been at this running-thing long enough to know that you have good runs and bad ones, good weeks and crappy weeks, good seasons and other seasons. The main thing is to keep going, let go of the bad runs and put the shoes on tomorrow (or, for me, Monday morning) and get back out there. Even a bad day of running is preferable over being unable to run at all. Besides, the "bad runs" (and really, though I was slow today it was a beautiful morning to be out) make you appreciate the good ones all the more when they do come again. And they will come again.

Remembering my Zucchini Running Club days

While we are shuffling through this streak of Arctic air that has settled upon our area – and, indeed, all across the Midwest – by necessity I am spending more time indoors than out. While I have forbidden my son, Charlie, from taking his two-mile morning walk, I, on the other hand, have continued to run just not so long nor so far. Yesterday, when it was -27 below with the windchill, I did 3.5 miles. As I took a deep breath and ran out the door, I roused myself to the task with this thought: "I'm the guy with Running the Antarctica Marathon on my 'bucket-list' so what's my excuse for staying indoors?" Afterward when I came in the back in and looked at my reflection in the window of the basement door it appeared that I was working on my ZZ Top-look such was the frost beard that had accumulated during that 30 minute run. This morning was a tad warmer – only -25 below – but I chose to busy myself with some other task than running (yes, I wimped out.) Tomorrow when the mercury reaches above zero I'll be back out there but even when I do I'll still be thinking of warmer days and better runs.

This post is something of a reverie, a remembrance of another time when I was a lot sleeker and faster than I am today.

Jillian would have a fit

When I was in high school back in the waning years of the twentieth century, I went out for Cross Country simply because I believed it would make me a better wrestler. What I found, however, was a sport I fell in love with. Wrestling is a long season and for those like myself who were always having to cut weight, it became marathon-like in its length. The night before a match, I fasted just to ensure I would make weigh-in. But the night before a CC race, a few buddies and I would walk over to the donut shop down the street from our high school and “carbo-load” as we referred to it. Eating pastries may not be a conventional pre-race activity but for those of us wrestlers running cross country it was nigh onto mandatory. As October wore on we all knew the lean months were coming fast.

Coach Tom today

I was only average running-wise. As I recall, my best race ever was 17:35 for 3 miles (a 5:51 pace or 18:10 5K equivalent). I usually was vying for those coveted final slots on the seven-man Varsity team. But by my senior year my real strength was comic relief. Coach Sisulak was a very good coach but he was a math teacher and he fit the part - lean and nerdy-looking in his dark-rimmed glasses. While I never had a class with him, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he actually did carry a slide-ruler in his left-hand shirt pocket. He wasn't a gregarious, “atta-boy” kind of coach. He was more serious and sober-minded but we wanted to run for him (actually, we wanted to win for him.) So, I made it one of my goals to get him to crack a smile or, better yet, laugh now and then. It was challenging (and yet a few of my teammates and I were successful from time to time.)

Now this is cool...

Anyone who has ever been on a Cross Country team anywhere in America knows this: when it comes to fall sports, football rules. Even if your team sucks with an 0-8 record, come year book time several pages of the annual will be taken up by the football team. However, the guys and girls Cross Country teams may merit only one page each. Your CC team may be conference champs and qualify for the State meet perennially, but it is only Cross Country (or so, I presume, the year book committee people must feel.) Going into our junior season, a few of the guys and myself set to change all that. Coach S was a quirky guy who, when he spoke, liked to laud the virtue of zucchini. He grew a lot of it. And that's how the Zucchini Running Club got its start. We embraced that vegetable as our real mascot (as opposed to the Lancer who was the official one), had t-shirts made up and even buttons that we wore proudly. We put up placards all over school with nonsensical sayings like, “The Zucchini is coming” or “Beware the Zucchini”. It was an ad hoc advertizing campaign whose sole purpose was to raise awareness that our school of 2000 students actually had a Cross Country team (and record-wise were a whole lot better than our grid iron locker room fellows). I don't recall if it was that year or our senior year but at the Homecoming game after the band did their thing, we did ours. Five members of our squad – our ace, John, the Mitchell brothers, Dan-O and myself - ran “Indian”-style around the track carrying a very large, very long zucchini. It was – or so I'd like to believe – a real crowd-pleaser. Vindication came our senior year when in the Statesman we were granted two pages under the auspices of the Zucchini Running Club (not LaFollette Cross Country). (The Madison LaFollette running teams of today probably don't have any problem with visibility given how successful that program has become.)

Our girls' squad was coached by Coach Heime (well, Jim Stevens was his name but for some reason all the girls called him by the Spanish-equivalent of his Christian name.) Jim was a devout follower of Christ who prayed with his girls regularly – not just before a race like I pray with my kids but frequently before practice was over. When we would travel to races we would ride the bus together, however, Coaches S & S would not allow our squads to mingle with each other. For one meet, the boys would have the back of the bus and for the next the girls would. And it was a code they strictly enforced. The season that my girlfriend was on the team, I made it my endeavor to sneak back to sit with her even if it meant crawling under the seats. It was all in good fun and I knew I would eventually be caught but the challenge lay in seeing how many miles would pass before Coach Sisulak discovered that the seating arrangement had been altered.

I looked nothing like this guy back then

I have this distinct memory: Following our return from a Saturday meet, five of us ran to the guys' shower, threw off our shirts, socks and shoes, got ourselves wet, grabbed a towel and wrapped it around our shorts so that it appeared that we had nothing on but our birthday suits. While Coach Stevens and the girls' team were still on the bus having a post-race talk, we ran out into the parking lot and said – in unison, mind you,

Rooty-toot-toot

Rooty-toot-toot

We are the boys from the Institute

We do not smoke

We do not chew

And we don't go out with the girls who do – YU-HOO!

And at that moment, to their great chagrin, we whipped off our towels. Yeah, somehow I can't even imagine a scene like that playing out even at our local elementary school today. But that's the kind of team we were – silly, nonconventional and yes, a tad nerdy. But those three seasons of LaFollette Cross Country left their mark on me indelibly. In fact, I love the sport so much that a few years ago when they were taking applications for the position of head coach at our local high school, I applied for it. I have been blessed to coach both our boys' and girls' teams for Chetek-Weyerhaeuser High School for the past five seasons now. Back in high school days, I began my association with CC as a means to an end, to help me on my quest to become a state championship wrestler. In retrospect, that white race line I began to follow back in the fall of 1977 led me on a serendipitous detour to a far greater prize. And I have Coach Sisulak and my fellow members of the Zucchini Running Club to thank for that.

Somehow knowing that this race is out there makes me want to run this some day

50K for 50

This past Saturday, on a cool and overcast day, I ran the Chippewa Moraine 50K, an out-and-back ultra run (mostly) on the Ice Age Trail. It wasn’t my first ultra (By definition, an ultra-marathon is anything longer than a marathon which is 26.2 miles. Typically it refers to either a 50K [31 miles], a 50 or 100 mile race – yes, there are 100-milers and more than you would guess.) My baptism of snow and ice came at the hands of the Tuscobia Ultra on a cold December day in 2009. But that race was run on a former railroad bed flat as a…well, rail, whereas this one would be run on a single track trail featuring not only lots of ups and downs but uncountable rocks and tree roots hungrily waiting for an errant runner’s foot. Given that this was my first long race in three years my main goal was just to finish before the cut-off time of 9 hours and cross the line before dark.

Before...

How do you train for an ultra? Well, I’ve only done two so I’m hardly the guy to clue you in on that one. What I’ve picked up from others with far more experience than I at these kinds of things is to be lean, svelte and be not only an avid marathoner but a cyclist and a Birkie veteran to boot. At the peak of your training it also helps to log a lot of hill work and put in some two-a-days (10 in the morning, 10 at night.) I am none of that and I didn’t do any of that. I trained as I would for any marathon (I’ve done 8 of those): I slowly increased my weekly long run from 8 to 16 miles over the course of five weeks with my field trip to Uganda thrown in as a convenient breather. If I had more time, I would have logged an “18” and a couple of “20s” but I ran out of calendar and had to line up this past Saturday knowing I was going to need to run twice as far as I usually did. Plus, all my training miles I had logged were road ones and with the exception of short jaunts on Rattlesnake Hill and Plummer Lake Roads the lion’s share of my race that day would be on trail. All this to say that I probably wasn’t the best prepared for the Chippewa 50K. But I was feeling good and thus far having one of my best running years since I began logging miles in 2000 so in honor of my upcoming 50th birthday (May 4) I figured...what the heck.



I'd be the guy just to the left of this pic



The race began at the Chippewa Moraine Interpretive Center, that bastion of knowledge concerning all things the Ice Age that sits atop Highway M east of New Auburn. Our family has been coming to this place literally for years to either check out the unique displays in the center, to hike, to hunt, to snowshoe by moonlight and daylight and to watch our daughter, Christine, compete in the Cross Country races that used to be held on part of the same course I ran that day. As I mentioned, it was cool – especially for late April – but given my propensity to copiously sweat the weather was in my favor. There were, according to the results list, 159 other individuals running as well and as is my habit, I put myself at the back of that small pack. After all there is far greater psychological impact of passing someone as opposed to being passed. Besides, I had all day, right?



About 4 miles in

 After a number of reminders and suggestions, the race director said the magic words: “On your mark. Get set. Go.” And we were off running briefly atop the hill only to take that deep plunge off the back side. My one thought going down was, “Great. I'm gonna have to walk, run or climb up that thing on the home stretch.” But that was a little under 31 miles away and there was no time to worry about that. After perhaps a quarter mile jaunt, the whole back of the pack began to walk. We had reached our first incline. It wasn't much of an incline really and looking directly to our left we could see the starting line at the top of the hill but the ultra (for guys like me) is all about pacing. So, until we reached the “peak” of that little hill, I walked only to pick it up again on the back side. This is essentially how my race would go for the rest of the way – quickly walking the inclines and trotting the down hills and staying steady on the flats (and there weren't many of those.)



North Shattuck Lake

In my trek to be a Thru Hiker on the Ice Age Trail, I have already walked the length of the course we ran on Saturday. I had done it in brief, shorter bursts, however, – perhaps no more than five miles in a single hike with plenty of time to sit down and enjoy the view if the whimsy struck me. But on Saturday there wasn’t really time to do that. It wasn’t that I was “hauling the mail”, moving at the speed of…well…you know “fast.” The trail simply required too much attention as I ran the gauntlet of crags, rocks, roots and soft spots. And when the front runners (which were really almost everyone in front of me) came at me from the other direction on their return journey that, too, required me to yield to the far faster racers. And frankly, due to the cool April we have experienced up in these parts, the buds are just beginning to fire in the woods so that it looks more like late winter with a touch of green around the edge. In other words, the scenery was nothing really to write home about.

Okay, mine's a little smaller

On my way to the turn around, I ran in the general vicinity of some more normal looking runners – a bit more rounder around the middle and the backside, far more grayer around the temples. I felt good, relaxed and reasonably strong. I got a lot of ribbing for the size of my CamelBak I wore – a mini-backpack of sorts that contains a compartment for a litre size rubber bladder of water as well as several other items (on Saturday I stored a lightweight jacket in another compartment in case it began to rain). “Whaddya got in there? Your vacuum cleaner?” “Can I ride inside your pack?” “Are you training for a self-supportive marathon or something?” and on it went. “Nah,” I came to reply, “I just sweat a lot.” (What do they care what size my hydration system is anyway?) Besides, I had trained with the thing on my back and so I rarely even noticed it.



Really the only "wild" life I saw all day

 At the half way point, there was a fully manned aid station with the small cooler I had sent on ahead full of Gatorade, water, apples, bananas and several other sundries. I refilled my bottles with fresh Gatorade, made sure my CamelBak had plenty of water for the return trip, drank about a half a small bottle of orange juice, ate a salted nut roll, several slices of apple, and a handful of potato chips (to replace some of the salt I undoubtedly had lost.) I got out my small bottle of Vaseline to rub under both arms to keep any rashes from breaking out and then saddled up the horse. Perhaps within 10 minutes I was on my way home. But early on I began to feel the first real tinges of fatigue. It’s more a mental-thing than anything else. You begin to second-think this crazy idea to run (in this case) 31 miles and have to focus more intently on the task at hand. I did come across a small group of horseback riders out on the Chippewa County horse trail that runs briefly with the IAT and when one of them asked me, “What’s the run for?” I simply replied, “For a $60 T-shirt, of course.” That got a laugh. About the 18-mile mark a real nice man caught up with me and for a good part of the rest of the race we ran either together or within shouting distance of each other.

By the time I reached the 26-mile mark (somewhere around 6-hours plus), I had a good sense that I was going to make it in less than 9 but the miles were coming slower now. Usually when I run the marathon, it’s my calves that take a beating but due to all the down hills I was running it was my quads that were crying for relief as well as my arches. Perhaps the hardest bit of the race (for me) was between the 26 and 27 mile mark. That “27” mile marker seemed like forever to reach and I had to keep repeating my favorite running mantra – “I’m still here” (see Reaching the 10,000 mile mark baby-stepping it). I whispered that a lot.




This is what the second half of the race looked like -running in the woods alone



With less than a mile to go I had two fears: 1) that once out of the trees I would be in full view of those on top of the hill; i.e., anytime I chose to walk people would notice and 2) that last huge uber hill we had run down at the beginning of the race. I know if this were a movie I would push myself to the brink and gut out the last half mile to the finish. But…this is was not a movie. There was a little incline just below the hill and yes, I walked up it. And when it came to that 70 yard mountain, I walked up that, too. Frankly, I was just about spent. Linda and Charlie were on top to cheer me on and once there, I took a breath and then ran the last 25 yards around the crest of the hill and across the finish line. Done. I had finished my second ultra in personal record time: 8:15:34, over 45 minutes faster than the Tuscobia Ultra back in 2009.

One of the race-guys who had been at the turn around clapped for me, “50K for 50. Way to go.” “Thanks,” is about all I could get out. “Wanna beer?” the race director asked me. Although I have only had one sip of ale my whole life at that moment I almost said yes. Somehow the thought of cold suds sounded good (even though I really don’t know what that tastes like). “Nah,” I replied. “I’m good.” And after making myself a sandwich sat down. My racing day was over.

Yesterday and today I have hobbled around like the Tin Man looking for his oil can. Lots of people have seen my status update and have patted me on the back either virtually or in person. And just like every other long race I have yet run, I don’t really feel anything except the discomfort of an overdose of lactic acid. The sense of satisfaction of a goal completed will come later when I get my legs back and start dreaming about my next long race. With any luck that’ll be later this summer.



Until next time...







Slow Muzungo Running

Our small team from Chetek arrived in Uganda late Friday night and given that the Hopeland YWAM campus is located about 80km from Kampala, we didn't get to bed until nearly 2 a.m. Saturday morning. After 27 hours of flight and lay-over time, we were pretty much done-in. While I am a early-morning runner by habit and inclination, I didn't roll out of bed until 9 a.m. that day and by that time the sun was already high over this equatorial country. If I was going to get my run in, then, it would mean waiting until early evening before I did so.

The source of the Nile

Around 6 p.m. that evening while the sun was sinking in the western sky, I set off on my first run in Africa. Hopeland is a beautiful campus located about 20km outside of Jinja Town, whose claim to fame is that it is the headwaters of the Nile and, more recently, the adopted home of Katie Davis author of the bestselling book, Kisses from Katie. But other than the main highway, all of the roads that connect Hopeland with the rest of that area are hard red, dirt ones that probably turn into red gumbo during the rainy season. Fortunately for me the rains are late and so the road is firm.

On the day we left for Africa – Wednesday – I had gone out for my usual early morning run dressed in tights, long sleeve shirt, winter hat and gloves. The snow banks were high after the big snow that fell the week before. Now 72 hours later I have stepped into August-like heat with zero opportunity to acclimatize. Donning shorts and a cut-off running shirt I'm already hot before I leave the campus.

Hopeland's main gate

I head out the main gate and head north mentally reminding myself to run on the right hand side of the road given that Uganda was colonized by the British and so oncoming traffic will be opposite of how it is in the States. It's early evening and everyone seems to be going somewhere – workers walking home from the sugarcane fields that literally surround us or students coming home from school. The air is thick and so I'm running at a slow pace but I am the only white guy out there causing every head to turn as I maneuver around pedestrians and, at one point, a small caravan of cows being driven home. A big truck comes barreling down the road stirring up a large cloud of red dust that settles on me like a mauve mist.

I “good evening” most people I pass and they return the compliment watching this strange “muzungo” (white person) make his slow but steady way to Kakira, the small village about 2km away from Hopeland. The bodas, Uganda's infamous taxis, scream by me carrying their passengers home. When I hit the outskirts of Kakira I take a water break, walk a bit and then head back. No sense overdoing it on my first day here. When I finally made it back to Central House, our home for the 10 days we stayed in Uganda, the cold shower (the only temperature our shower provided) felt refreshingly good. I had to scrub really hard to get the red dirt off my lower calves and ankles that clung to me tenaciously.

Over the next week or so I logged four more runs and all of them in the early morning. Whenever we would leave the campus for a ministry appointment I would pay attention to the unmarked roads so that by the third day I had a sense where a few of them led. I would leave before sunrise but due to our nearness to the equator within minutes I was no longer running in the dark. Every morning, even if it was only 6:30 a.m., it felt like it was 80 degrees out already so that those first few runs I did a fair amount of walking as well. One day, upon my return, for the first time since I was a kid I threw up, whether it was from the heat or a reaction to the anti-malaria pill I would take before my run. But by the following Saturday, I set out on a pace I figured I could sustain, headed east toward the highway and then hugging the far left of the shoulder (I got buzzed by a banana truck one morning) I set out for the main entrance to the Kakira Sugarworks that lay about 5km away. As usual I was “good-morning-ing” most people I passed and getting the stares I was growing accustomed to. When I reached the road that led to the Sugarworks I had the sense it would emerge somewhere around Kakira and the road I had run on the Saturday before. I was a little nervous when I reached the gate but the guards very good-naturedly raised the bar for me and pointed me in the general direction. My hunch proved correct, I eventually found the lane that connected the Sugarworks with the village and soon found myself running there. I got a little turned around but then I saw a landmark I had noticed the day before on an early morning walk to Kakira – a dumpster that the day before had contained a cow contently grazing in it. Once I saw this, I knew I had gone one street to the west too far, corrected my course and then I was back on track, heading south toward the sugarcane fields and Hopeland that lay beyond them. It was a solid albeit slow run but my best one in Africa. If given another week perhaps I could have fully acclimated to the muggy, equatorial temperature but each morning upon my return to Central House I knew a nice, cold shower would greet me. It was something worth coming home to. If I ever get back that way – and I hope that I shall – my plan is to run to the top of the hills that stand above Hopeland where a government school is located, catch my breath and then run all the way down again. Now that will be a work-out to crow about.

"Africa!"

I'm back now, back to running tights and long shirts, March being a month of transition. But my Asics have been permanently stained terra cotta as have my socks, a tangible reminder of my runs in the red dirt of Uganda.

Crossing the Century Mark for 2012

Today, on a bitterly cold morning, I went over the 100-mile mark for the first time this year. It took me 23 runs to get there (I began logging mileage for this year on January 3) but on a farm road southwest of town I crossed the century-mark. It's not like I haven't done that before. I've been recording mileage since 2000 and sometime in the next few months the odometer on my little engine should turn over the 10,000 mile mark. But last year was such a frustrating year running-wise that I have been intent on getting back on track this year. In 2011, it took me until April 9 to reach the century mark (compared to February 16 in 2010). So getting to 100 (actually 104.4) this early is a good indicator that I've hit a new groove.

Me on the Tuscobia Trail in '09

One of the odd things that is on my “bucket list” is to run every public road in Barron County. I don't know what mileage-wise that amounts to (although according to Wikipedia the county has a total area of 890 square miles.) Whether I am able to do that depends a lot on my continued fitness and whether the good people of Refuge continue to retain me long enough for me to accomplish this. At the present time I've got the entire southeastern corner of the county completed and parts of the northeastern corner as well. To those who may ask, “Why?” I reply, “Because.” But really the idea is inspired by the story found in Genesis 13. After Abram (later Abraham) and Lot separate, Yahweh makes a promise to his junior partner to give the land to him as an inheritance. In response, Abram is commanded to make a faith-walk as a promissory note: “Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you” (13:17, NIV.) Several years ago that verse got inside of me and I've made it my intent to run the length and breadth of this land ever since, if only to say there is not a road in our county where a disciple of Jesus has not run. Admittedly, I've got a long way to go.

Mine is something like this

But this morning, in anticipation of crossing the century-mark for the year, I decided to run these miles out on some roads I had not run before. The temperature on the sign at the former Nelson Realty read 1 above at 7:20 a.m. when I left town. The sign at Sterling Bank read 2 above. But a strong head wind from the north bringing in bitterly cold arctic air most certainly made the air temperature somewhere below zero. I drove out on County I heading toward Dallas. When I got to 20^th Street, I turned right and parked the van. After putting my sports belt on containing a bottle of water and a bottle of Gatorade Rain (even on a cold morning like this, I knew I was going to sweat a lot and experience has taught me that it's important to refuel) I threw on my balaclava. This little item is essentially a large sock that covers your whole head and that you can adjust as to what parts of your face you want covered according to weather conditions. On frigidly cold mornings it's a “must use” piece of equipment. I also wore my Saucony gloves that come with an overlay that turn them into mittens and protecting me from frostbite (back in 2008 on a cold, winter morning I got frostbite on my thumb and it hurt like billyo for over a week.) Once geared up, I took off directly into the teeth of that arctic air coming right out of Saskatchewan.

I was running in Amish country not because I saw any out and about (in fact, I was the only human being out on 20^th Street [and 7^th, 18^th and 5^th as well] this morning.) No, it was the frozen horse apples that were copiously strewn intermittently along 20^th Street that gave it away. This neck of the woods in Barron County lying just west of the Red Cedar River is made up of a lot of “rollers”, hills that rise and fall like a roller coaster in the kiddie section of an amusement park. Nothing overly steep but none that do not take some effort to get up. Add in a stiff wind punching you in the face and you got challenge.

Like me except more hair

I'm not a gazelle. I'm not even a broken-down gazelle. I'm more like an overfed Shetland pony (in fact, I ran past an Amish farm on Highway D who had two grazing in the field next to the road; they did not even afford me the respect of a glance) who just clips along at a steady pace. “Slower than molasses in wintertime” I think is how the old saying goes. But I just plodded along taking scheduled breaks for either water or Gatorade along the way. It was a real blessing when I finally reached 18^th Street because that meant that from therein out, that cold wind would be at my back. 18^th Street has a couple good dips in it and as difficult as the climbs were I repeated the oft-spoken running mantra that, “What goes up must come down” as I made my way up them. On 5^th Avenue I ran past a farm I suddenly recognized – it was Kurt & Marilyn's old place, a couple who used to be a part of our fellowship back in the 90s. They lived up here for about a season or two and discovered that they much preferred the weather in Arizona, where they had moved from, from the kind that we are used to and eventually moved back there. I remembered her name right away but it took me until almost 20^th Street before his name came loose from foggy bottom.

Once back on 20^th Street, with the exception of one fairly large hill that I had run down before on my way out, I knew it would be all downhill to the van and with the wind at my back I was half-wishing for a sail. My short legs were moving pretty steadily and I was feeling fairly strong but then a guy in a truck pulled up alongside of me and asked if I was alright. I know he was just being neighborly and had I been dealing with a cramp or something I would have been so grateful for him asking. Maybe he was just checking or maybe my pace looked more like a guy who's really cold and just trying to get back to his van. In any case, I thanked him for his concern and waved him on. A few minutes later I was back at the van. I had recorded 10.8 miles.

As I stated earlier, I'm just really glad that I feel at long last back on track. In 2011 life-interrupted a lot so that I only recorded 421 miles the entire year. Since 2000, an average year for me is more in the area of 575 (although a few years I did record over a 1,000 road miles.) I was inconsistent and I gained about 10 pounds. I'm not making a lot of headway on my weight (my metabolism is way too slow to control it simply by exercise) but with the exception of one day, I have been consistent in my work-out schedule (I run four days a week.) A few weeks ago, on an even colder morning than today, I ran 6.5 miles around 4:30 a.m. Our fellowship was driving up to Lac Coutre Oreilles Reservation to spend a day in the cold cutting wood and so if I was going to get a run in it had to be then before we took off at 6 a.m. Part of the course ran by the Chetek River where hundreds of geese winter. As I ran by them in the pre-dawn dark, one began to honk, and then another and within a hundred paces or more a whole chorus of honkers were going at it. When I told that to one of the guys later he looked at me and said, “Jeff, that's how geese laugh.” Hm, really? Well, I'm glad they enjoyed a good laugh at my expense. A goose's life can be challenging enough.

If it's red its been run

When I got to our building late morning, I got my Barron County map out. It's tradition for me now that following running an “uncharted” road that I indicate on this map with a red marker that it has now been officially ran (by me, that is). Today I was able to color in four roads. I've already got my sights set on a section immediately west of where I ran this morning. Hopefully next Saturday morning I'll get to mark that map again, cold or no cold, wind or no wind. After all, another item on my bucket list is running the Antarctica Marathon so I figure running on a day like today is just giving me a small taste of the harsh conditions I will face should I ever be so fortunate to run there. 

Great finishes

Four years ago, Chetek (now Chetek-Weyerhaueser) High School hired me as their boys and girls Cross Country coach. I wouldn't call it my dream job – after all, pastoring the fellowship known as The Refuge is probably the best job a guy like me could ever work at – but I really love and relish the opportunity to coach the sport of Cross Country. It is such a metaphor of life – everybody who wants to and is able to runs; some run the course faster than others and many run it slower but all run and strive to cross the finish line. Most of the kids who run for me aren't consciously running against who ever else is also in the race. They are running against the clock, against themselves,  to beat their personal best and record another PR (“personal record”). As far as I'm concerned, the only way you lose the race is, barring injury, is dropping out, not finishing what you started. And in four seasons, that's only happened once.

 Like every other CC team, every year we have a motto or a theme for that particular season. In 2011, our theme was:

Jane (Bib # 123) broke "18" for the very first time

It wasn't really creative. It's actually standard runningspeak but it's so true on the course, on the track and in life. A lot of people burst out of the box or the blocks looking like the predestined champion who will be crowned at the race's end only to bonk or fade into the pack somewhere before the end. Anybody can start a race. Really, even those who are overweight and out-of-shape can get a little head of steam and look stellar in the first 300 meters or so. But its how they run the remaining 4.7km that ultimately will decide how they are judged. So, this past season I did a lot of preaching to my team on “finishing strong”, on going the distance and crossing the line with a strong kick. Whether or not that helped my runners is something you'll have to ask them about but at the Sectional meet in Barron last October they were rewarded for their hard work and effort when over half of my kids recorded PRs and some of them crossed time barriers they had never crossed before.

In this blog entry, I've gathered a few video clips of some great finishes because, as I've already chanted, it's not how you start it's how you finish that matters. This first one is a clip from Chariots of Fire, the 1981 Academy Award winning picture that dramatized the efforts of two of the members of Great Britain's track team in the 1924 Olympics, Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams. I don't know if the race depicted was an actual event or simply a scene concocted to illustrate the heart of Liddell, “the Flying Scot”, but either way it's inspiring to watch:

Mr. Mussabini is right: when you fall down you must get up and finish the race (cool sound track or not).

The next one is the amazing finish of Billy Mills in the 10,000 meter run in the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. With 300 meters to go it appears that Australian runner Ron Clarke pushes Mills out in the third lane making Mills' attempt to win gold even more difficult (however, in a recent interview run in March 2012 edition of Runner's World Mills says that this was a blessing in disguise because the track was firmer on the outside lanes and made it easier for him to accelerate.) Undeterred and undaunted that last 100 is one of the greatest feats in running history made even more dramatic by the announcer screaming in disbelief, “LOOK AT MILLS! LOOK AT MILLS!”

When you run your heart out, even if they don't crown you with the winner's laurel at the race's end, everyone notices.

The beginning of the 3200m race at the Bloomer Regionals

Our son, Ed, has been running since, well...as long as I can remember. He had a solid high school running career but in his pursuit of his goal of making it to the Cross Country finals in Wisconsin Rapids he came up short. It was a tough winter for him last year. A dream had died and while he ran steadily through the cold, winter months his fire was spent. But in the spring of the year when the southerly winds began to blow he felt fresh wind in his sails and as the 2011 track season began he set his sights in qualifying for the State Meet in LaCrosse. We had a cold spring and in April more than a handful of practices, as well as some meets, were canceled due to snow and ugly weather. But with the coming of May Ed began to hit his stride. In every successive meet he set one PR after another. His 1600m times dropped from 5:05 to 5:02 to 4:56 to 4:53; his 3200m followed suit from 11:13 to 10:55 to 10:53. He was running with poise and confidence and at the Northwestern Invite, the night he finally cracked the “5 minute” barrier, at long last he caught “the rabbit” he had chased for over a year – Hetke from Ladysmith.

400 meters to go

At the Bloomer Regionals, on a warm, overcast night, he ran well in the mile finishing 4:57 but missed qualifying for Sectionals by one position. That just left him the two mile for the chance to qualify where only the top 4 would advance to the next level of competition. As he lined up at the starting line, both he and we his parents standing in the bleachers were cognizant of the fact that this was possibly the last race of his high school career.


After one lap he was running in 10th place. Although his racing strategy is never to charge off the line I was surprised at how far back he was especially given the pace of the front runner, John Vodacek from Bloomer. But as the race progressed he steadily moved up so that by the end of the first mile he was running 5th. There was a significant gap, however, between he and the 4th place kid, Kirkhoven from Stanley-Boyd. But with two laps to go Ed had closed the gap and for 800m these two dogged it out, neck and neck, elbow to elbow, each trying to gas the other. I had never seen Ed run with such poise and determination. Hetke, the kid who had bested Ed in every race his junior year, was running a distant 6th and on his last lap actually was more interested in this duel than his own. In the last 100 meters, the Stanley-Boyd runner inched ahead and crossed the line ahead of Ed by 6 or 7 steps. Even though he recorded a personal best of 10:48:37, he came in 5th. Once again a State qualifying dream evaporated in the mugginess of that spring night. But I will always cherish the memory of that last 800meters when my son ran with fire in his heart and his legs. He had given all that he had which is also about finishing strong.

Truthfully, this blog entry is really just an excuse so I can post the following video. What makes it even more special is that its true. University of Minnesota runner Heather Dorniden, now running professionally, was expected to win this qualifying heat for the 600m finals in the 2008 Big Ten Championship Meet. With a lap to go she and another one of her competitors got tripped up and she fell flat upon the track in the University Fieldhouse. What happened next is the stuff of legend. She not only got up, but she accelerated, caught the fourth place runner, caught the third place runner and went on to catch her teammate at the line to win the heat. Again, when we fall down we must get back up and do what we can. She did that and more.

Despite the fall she wins the race

I saw an interview she gave last summer. She described the memory of that race as "magical." "I was just trying to catch the last runner and score some points for the team and then when I heard the announcer say, 'Watch out for Heather Dorniden!' and then I thought to myself, 'Yes, watch out for me, watch out for me...' and well, things ended as they did." It's simply an amazing race that sap that I am makes me weep every time I watch it again. It wasn't bio-mechanics and fitness that got her across that line. It was heart, "guts" as Mr. Mussabini would say, sheer will over body. 


I will never run as fast as Liddell, Mills, Dorniden and Ed. I'm really just a domestic Clydesdale (and an overweight one at that) but watching these clips and reliving the memory of Ed's last high school race inspire me to redouble my efforts to "...run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever" (1 Corinthians 9:24-25, NIV). And ultimately it's that crown that I want to be eager to win.