This book is dedicated to my grandparents, Leo and Judy Schmidt, and to my best friend, Erik Mickelson, all of whom supported me through the rough times.
We have a storied program here at Eisenhower High School or Ike for short. Our coach “Mister” Phil English is one of the best-known high school running coaches in the nation. Three years ago we had an All-American in Robbie Barany and a team that placed 9th at Nike Team Nationals (NTN). Since then however we’ve struggled to match our school’s impressive legacy, doing poorly at Regionals two years ago when I was a sophomore. Last year we were ranked 4th in the state but missed out on State because numbers 1-3 were from the Greater Spokane League (GSL), the other league in our region and home of the two other traditionally great distance schools Mead and Ferris. But this book isn’t about that. It’s about this year. We have a group that could be good but it’s going to be up to us to become more. It’s late spring ’07 and track season is now over. The cross country or xc training season is just about to start. This is where our story begins because this is............ OUR YEAR.
Ivan Alfaro, 11: He’s the deaf kid on the team but that hasn’t stopped him from being another one of the guys. Easily the best story on the team he’s one of the hardest working guys on the roster and it’s looking like it might pay off with a scoring varsity spot.
Spencer Cardon, 11: He had a good track season and we’re hoping for a breakout season from the mild mannered, home schooled junior.
Ryan Chapman, 11: After a decent track season this junior needs to step up to keep pace with the fast improving “32 Crew” or kids who ran the 3200 this spring and excel at longer distances if he wants to make any room in the crowded varsity group.
Cody Johnson, 11: This junior improved a lot this spring but needs to start practicing harder if he wants to have a chance at the varsity roster.
Wyatt “Sunshine” Marchand, 12: This senior stepped up and made huge strides in this past year but needs to make that last step to the next level to help out the top end team members.
Andy Romfo, 11: He’s a kid who’s true strength is long endurance runs and he seems to shine more in practice than in races. He just needs to get a little competitive fire in himself and he’ll be awesome.
Bryan Simison, 10: After a solid XC season, last year’s “super frosh” did well in track, specializing in the 3200 before a disappointing regional race that has left him hungry to do well this summer and fall.
Blake Thomas, 12: One of the Thomas twins, Blake is the smarter more calculating twin and a versatile runner. He’ll have to work hard to make some space in the 4-7 varsity group spots.
Derrick Thomas, 12: The other Thomas twin has a little more speed but also a little less endurance than Blake. Aside from that he finds himself in the same boat as his twin as far as his position on the team is concerned.
Cody VanDeBrake, 12: Cody is the fastest guy on the team with a 1:56 800 and our undisputed leader. After making State in the 800 meter run this spring, Cody is looking to work hard and join the ranks of other top distance runners in state during his final high school XC season.
“Mister” Phil English: One of the best running coaches alive. Mister was a great runner in Ireland, winning the School Boys mile during his senior year of high school before attending Washington State University on an athletic scholarship. Every person on the roster is thankful to have the Irishman as a coach.
Brandon “H” Hauver: This will be the first year of coaching high school cross country for “H”. He’s relatively new to the program but did coach distance at Ike during track this spring.
Ray & Annette Menzia: The Menzias are long time coaches with the patience of the world. They’re primarily JV coaches but have worked with most of the roster at one time or another through rehabbing or progression through the program.
Aleah Mickelson: Aleah is a former state champion in cross country and track at Eisenhower. She works almost exclusively with the girls team.
Eric Mickelson: He’s my best friend and Aleah’s husband. He was also a state champion in high school winning the 800 his junior and senior years out of Newport High School. He’s a volunteer coach that usually trains with us in the mornings and a man I trained with extensively early this spring coming back from injury.
Robert Price: Former high school state champion in both cross country and track under Mister at the old Carrol High School in the 80’s. He was then an All-American in the Steeplechase in his senior track season at Washington State University. Following that he had a battle with cancer which he has recovered from and is still a fairly good distance runner.
And finally there’s me, Andrew Robert Jay Giese or "Ogre", as I’m better known to everyone on the team. I had a good sophomore cross country season, where during my first year on the team I finished the year as the team’s number four runner. That success followed me into the track season where I started running the 3200 meters and ended up making Regionals at the end of the year. Shortly following the season my parents pulled me from the sport but a tumultuous summer of personal problems found me living with my grandparents and back in the sport in early August. I was on track to start the XC season when I suffered smashed ligaments in the top of my right hamstring. After rehabbing from that I had a stress fracture in my left shin caused by trying to come back too fast. That injury proved to be nagging until I had orthotics ordered in late winter. By the time I was in good enough health to run it was 3 weeks into the track season. But I really can’t complain because by the end of the season I had a new Personal Record and am looking to be our number 3 runner this fall.
Today was our first day of summer practice and the day started full of hope as all the varsity regulars with the exception of Derrick, one of the twins, were present. We started the practice with a little pep talk about our summer training schedule which is going to include numerous two-a-days for the varsity group and a overview of the daily mileage for each day of practice. As for the practice we had the Washington loop, which is an 8-mile loop on road. We were told to do the workout at a conversational pace that was held in the group for about the first 3 ½ miles when Joey Barela, a just-graduated member from last year’s team, Bryan and me sped away from the group with Joey dropping about a quarter mile later. Bryan and I pushed a good pace and finished well ahead of the rest of the team. It felt like this dynamic between him and me might be something to watch develop as the season goes on because today it just seemed natural with the pace kind of just coming to us. It certainly seems to bode well for the team.
There hasn’t been any definition within the varsity group yet with the exception of where we finished the workout but I expect that to become set rather quickly. Then again pretty much 90% of the team are guys that do track and cross-country exclusively. And of the guys on the team that fit that description only a couple aren’t in position to grab a varsity spot yet. And Cody Johnson could change that if he can prove that he has what it take to work hard and prove that he can make something of the potential that he showed this spring. I have a hunch that we’ll have a good indication when we have our first hard workout and get a chance to see if he backs out at the end with JV required distance or pushes through and does the varsity required distance.
After one day all I have to say is, how hard are we willing to go, how deep are we going to be willing to push, how much pain are we willing to put ourselves through, and finally do we want this, and is it enough to do all that stated before and more?
Today is the 2nd day of summer practice and we have a gaggle of new recruits. The guys varsity workout is a 7 mile road loop that includes a half mile long hill. It was that hill that seemed to divide the group today as Cody, Bryan, Blake, Ryan, Andy, and myself pulled away and crested it well ahead of rest of the team. While Bryan and I just kept running after the hill Cody made a move that very well may define his role as captain of the team when he turned around, went back down the hill a ways and ran with the team members that were further back. I think that looking to later times in the year this will be the date that stands out as the moment where Cody Joe VanDeBrake stood up and made this group his team. The day he proved that he isn’t just going to lead the team by being the fastest guy on the team but by being there side by side, by setting a precedent of working hard and more importantly by taking the accountability that comes with being a team captain. Only good things can come from this and all the credit can go to him. All I have to say now that we have a leader is, is everyone else ready to step up and follow Cody’s example?
Today was the third day of practice and the first where the group was truly allowed to push the pace. It was going to be a day where we got to see who was ready to, in the words if the great Christopher “Big Black” Boykins, “do work”. We had the Cowiche Canyon Trail run which is 4.5 miles through an old railroad path and then any distance that we can go on the road following it. We had to go out in 40 minutes and return in 35 for a 10 mile run and right from the start Cody VanDeBrake showed his speed, leaving the group at the 1.5-mile mark and setting a fast pace throughout the run. Bryan, our number two guy right now eventually caught up to him after a couple miles and stayed with him until the turnaround point. By the time we reached the halfway point Cody was running in front with Bryan, I was about 150 meters back, then Ryan was with Andy another 100 or so meters back and the rest of the team well behind. On the way back it took less than a half-mile for the five of us to pass the rest of guys group with Cody setting a blistering pace back through the canyon and there was nothing the rest of us could do to catch him. Following him, Bryan and I continued our dynamic of working together, helping each other to push the pace when one of us got a little tired and let up a bit. Now don’t get me wrong, the rest of the team is still out there working and putting on the mileage, there were just a couple of us that decided to step out today but credit still has to go out to the rest of the guys because every guy that has showed up has completed the varsity workout which is the first time I’ve seen that since joining the team two years ago. However in the same breath if we want to be a really good team the core varsity group can’t be hanging back with the true JV runners. They have to step up and run with the team leaders so that we can learn how to run hard together.
Today was our day of school and everyone was happy to be done but one team member showed that this was his day to work hard and show what he can do. We had a 10 mile run that included the West Valley loop, an 8 mile road run that includes the fore-mentioned daunting hill on 66th, and 3 laps at Carroll which is the sight of the old and gone private school that Mister had a dynasty at during the 80’s. Nobody was quite willing to push the pace today after a long run yesterday with the exception of Ivan who would run ahead, slow down, get caught, then take off again. This pacing allowed a group to form up front of Andy, Ryan, Bryan and myself along with Ivan at times. Cody picked up where he left off on Tuesday powering up 66th before heading back down to work with the bulk of the team. This undoubtedly is making him popular and a people’s champion of a captain while giving everyone someone to look up to. The story of the day however was Armando Robles who is better known as “Kicker”. This is his 3rd summer of training with the team and today is the first time he’s run with the leaders after reaching the lead group at about the 6.5-mile mark. That and the fact that he had run with the second pack made today quite possibly the best workout he had ever had so kudos to him and hopefully he’ll be able to keep working hard so that he can improve and eventually make varsity. I gave everyone who I thought would impact varsity a profile so here’s yours:
Armando “Kicker” Robles, 10: This sophomore had been around the program for what seems like forever but has yet to prove himself. Now he’s eager to do just that and prove his worth on the team. He’ll still remain a dark horse until he can prove his work ethic though.
Today marks the end of the first week of summer practice and after one week the summer looks full of promise but only with caution. I say this because I can see a group that can do the work but has yet to show it wants to do more.
We had the Washington loop at an easy pace and we had a couple of JV kids take out the pace while the varsity group held back knowing that we had 8 miles and not a 400 meter sprint. Kicker continued his excellence in practice sticking with the varsity group for the second day in a row, which is really starting to turn a few people’s heads at the pleasant surprise at the effort being given by the sophomore. Ivan probably had the best workout on the team as he pressed ahead of the team with me and easily cruised over the 8 mile run in a steady pace. I think after looking at myspace this evening that his motivation for going as fast as he did was to beat me. Oh well anything used for motivation can’t be that bad of a thing.
Today proved to be the day when we saw who really wants to do the varsity work. Obviously everyone on the team wants to be on the varsity squad but only about half the team showed today that they were willing to do the varsity workload. We had a lap workout at Carroll, our traditional in season workout grounds and the varsity group had 9 laps at .85 miles apiece plus the run to the park for about 9.5 miles while JV only had 5 laps for about 6.5 miles so that made room for the difference in who really wanted to do the work. This was vastly different from last week where we had one-way runs that every guy did. Plus it was a fartlek workout, which is a run where we have sections of steady running mixed with about 4 150-meter strides in every lap and it created quite a gap even within the varsity group. Bryan and Cody ran in front with Coach Hauver or “H” as we all know him. Behind those two were Andy, Wyatt, Ryan and Craig. After one of my best weeks of practice ever last week I lagged behind paying for a 32 oz. Gatorade about half-an-hour before practice which left me with a painful stitch in my side for a good deal of the workout and caused me to lag at the back of the varsity group, only running ahead of Kicker. Kicker is still surprising me this week choosing to do the longest Carroll workout he’s ever completed and showing some true grit and toughness in the process. We’ll see how well he handles a straight long run tomorrow when we run the canyon and see if he is willing to push through and do a good paced 10 miler including the blazing pace that we often have to set after the turnaround point.
Today we had what has easily been the longest run of the season or at least for Bryan, Andy and myself. We had the Cowiche canyon run and the upper varsity guys had to run 45 minutes out while the lower varsity group had a 40 minute run out along with however long it take us to run back. At the start I jetted out in an effort to erase yesterday’s paltry effort taking the group out and leading everyone for the first two and a half miles before being overtaken by Joey, Bryan, Andy, Derrick and H. From there Bryan and Andy ran away from the group going quite a ways out never being caught for the rest of the duration of the run. H stopped at the 3-mile mark to wait for the rest of the team and scorned me about being consistent in my pacing. Fired up by this I caught Derrick and Joey within the next mile and charged out of the canyon and onto the road going farther than I ever have during my time with the team but still barely had a look at Andy and Bryan who were about a half mile in front of me at the turnaround mark. Nobody else on the team was within a mile of the distance I ran. On the way back I held a cautious pace unaware of where Bryan and Andy were and afraid that I had gone too far and that lead to the two gaining about 600 meters on me during the run back. At the end of the day mileage totals for Bryan, Andy and myself were surprisingly high with me at 12 miles and Bryan and Romfo at 13. After that kind of mileage H told the 3 of us to take something off of tomorrow’s workout to account for today’s high totals.
Today we had, simply put, hills. We started out with a run to 66th and did that. Following a short mile or so run along the rich street called Scenic Drive we ran 4 short repeats of 56th Ave, a short concentrated quarter mile of a hill. Ryan was feeling good and he easily distanced the rest of the team by about 5 to 600 meters and cruised by. Cody was tired from his full time job and lagged early on before deciding to bear down and catch up to all, but the top kids already had 1 repeat of the hill in when he arrived. I’m battling little bit of shin splints so I was stuck at the base doing lunges up about a 75-meter section of sidewalk. Being down at the base I didn’t realize that everyone had taken off at the top of the hill. After a few minutes I set off in a mad dash along the road we usually use going off the road we use going off the hill and luckily barely caught the team going to a park that I didn’t realize we were going to. After we got to the park we had a couple easy laps and some 300-meter strides. After that we all headed back to Ike. Most of us are beat up and tired so H said that tomorrow’s run on the Yakama Indian Reservation is going to be reduced in length from 10 miles to 8.
Today we had a run at the Indian Reservation right outside of town. The Reservation is a long relatively flat stretch of road that we do out and back runs on and the runs can last from 6 miles at the easiest for the girls to 12 miles for the top distance guys. The run was an easy 8 miler of 4 out and 4 back at a steady/conversational pace depending on how you were feeling. Cody and Timothy Cummings, the younger brother of Charles, a great runner who graduated my freshman year, set the early pace until Eric, Ivan, myself and H respectively caught up to them. At the turnaround point I was up with H, Cody and Ivan. Those three took off and I wasn’t in any position to push things so I hung back with Eric. Right after the turnaround point Derrick caught up with us. With about 2 miles to go I started to push the pace with Derrick but gave up on it with about a mile left and lost contact with Derrick. I hung tough with a good but not so fast pace until the finish. Andy, Wyatt, Bryan, Spencer and Chelsea, Cody’s sister who runs for WSU, took the day easy and finished a few minutes back. We have X’s and O’s tomorrow so we’ll see who’s ready to finish the week strong.
Well this is my first piece of writing since 3 weeks ago when I chose to take some time off because of chronic pain in my right shin. The determining factor in my decision was waking up after a Monday practice during which all I did was ride a stationary bike unable to bear any weight on my right leg. I was scared out of my wits and fearful of my senior season being just like my last where I was hurt from the last week of August through mid-March. I went to practice Tuesday night on my bike and by the time I reached the school, a mere 20-minute ride away, my leg was once again throbbing with a fierce intensity and I had made my decision. I spoke with Mister about it and we both agreed that taking a few weeks off was the only sensible decision I had. It was a hard choice to make but alas as with many things in life the hardest choice was the only one I had.
So I started what will go down as possibly the most painful 4 days of my life as I sat stagnant in my room barely getting up at all as my legs throbbed relentlessly and I laid there on my bed utterly destroyed, mentally and physically, eating way too much, playing video games non-stop, and icing my legs to seemingly no avail in attempts to cease the throbbing in my legs that regularly had my eyes tearing in pain. Then after my 4-day binge of gluttony and constant video games I realized I had to do something so I talked with my grandparents and decided to get a gym membership to give myself a chance to escape the pain as working out has powers that escape even the best drugs when it comes to helping a person feel better and naturally calm. Plus it helped tremendously with my feeling of depression brought on by my bi-polar.
The working out combined with a chiropractor I was going to worked wonders over the next two weeks as my legs felt better and better all the time. I even ran for about three quarters of a mile with my best friend and mentor, Erik, a day after I spent 3 hours at a slip-and-slide on this hill we have at a nearby park where I must’ve raced up the hill 20 to 25 times without any pain, and the only time I felt pain that day was after standing on that steep hill for like 20 minutes but that didn’t freak me out as I knew I was still a little hurt. I was doing more walking around and standing everyday. Then this past Monday I got my first hint that there was something more wrong when my leg felt dull, barely registering as pain feeling for about 30 minutes at a restaurant but I discounted it as I felt fine doing a 20 minute walk home. I had promised through myspace that I would show up at practice for the first time in over 2 weeks Wednesday. Before riding up I did my first really hard leg workout on a 30-minute stationary bike ride at a steady heart rate of 171 beats per minute shocking even myself in the effort. Following that trip to the gym I decided to bike up to the team’s practice just so I could be around the guys because they’re almost literally like my family, especially after moving in with my grandparents following my running away from home last August, but more on that a little later.
So I showed up and was just happy to be there. Then when I heard their workout I decided to follow the team throughout the run. As it started, I just stayed at the back of the front pack as they ran a first steep hill then down and on to a long trail we have in town called the Greenway. Once on the Greenway I decided to stay back as the pack thinned out, offering the water I had to the runners who were lagging a little in the hot weather of the evening. One of the runners towards the back was former Ike star and one of my best friends from the team, Chelsea VanDeBrake who is currently going to Washington State University but still trains with the guys team during the summer. As the team reached the 6.5 mile point Chels said that that was where she was going to turn back and asked if I could stay with her so that she wouldn’t be alone on the way back and in turn more safe. On the way back we had a chance to just talk and catch up along with trying our best at describing our warm up songs with each other which to say the least was not American Idol worthy. I find it almost funny, being around Chelsea because she’s the girl that I’m closest to or at least was closest too but find more than anything to be like an older sister that I look up to and admire than the way guys usually think of girls as. Anyway once Chelsea and I got back to the parking lot where she had parked her brother’s truck we waited for the rest of the team to come back through and get some water on the way. After almost 20 minutes the leaders, Cody, Bryan, and H finally showed up. About 5 minutes later Blake and Andy showed up, letting us know that Ryan was pretty much dead in the water at least a couple miles back. So we made the decision that I’d go back and take Ryan some water and try to help him make it back. Then I set off to find Ryan and found him 2 miles back and tried to urge him on but after making it maybe 800 meters in 5 minutes I made a choice that may define my summer, knowing that I had a bone scan for a stress fracture the next day, I decided that since I was feeling good and didn’t want to see my friend struggle along anymore I told him to get on my bike as I jogged the next mile and a half on cement which was a decision that would come into question the next day. I felt fine doing it, which to me in my mind made it ok plus I thought that there was no way with how good I was feeling that I had a stress fracture. After getting back to the park where Romfo would pick him up at, along with the water jug, I left Ryan and biked home and went to bed eager to get medically cleared the next day. Knowing what I know now I shouldn’t have been so eager.
I went into the local hospital Thursday morning to get injected with a radioactive fluid that sticks to calcium which would reveal a stress fracture if it was there. I went home for a couple hours filled with anxiety as the fluid circulated throughout my body. I went back to the hospital optimistic and hopeful but alas that feeling would not last as the camera almost immediately showed a burning white spot on my shin and fulfilled my deepest fear. There was a stress fracture there. Clear as day. A blind man would’ve seen it. And it crushed me. “Don’t worry.” The nurse there told me, “It looks like a stress fracture to me but the doctor has to read it and make his analysis.” It was probably the saddest attempt at comforting a person that I’ve ever in my life had to bare witness to. She would’ve been better off telling me that Santa Claus is real because it would’ve been ten times more believable than what she had just told me. So I went home crushed, in tears. I had to go my doctor’s office two hours later to get the “official” doctors analysis and it turned out that I don’t have a stress fracture. I have two, one in my right shin and one that I didn’t have a clue about in my left calf. Completely and utterly defeated once again. I just stayed home on my bed the rest of the day staring in disbelief at the ceiling wondering how this could happen to me and why. I just wanted to be good for my senior season but it seemed that was taken from me. I went to the team’s practice the next day to let them know how bad my leg was. I didn’t know that Mister was coming and I received an almost complementary ass chewing for running while Ryan used my bike. But looking back at it, I don’t regret it. Not one bit. I showed that I want to be the best teammate that I can which has been my downfall in past years. And this just happens to be the start of that. Anyways after riding to practice I rode home on my bike seemingly just in time for my legs to start throbbing compulsively. I spent Friday night and most of Saturday downtrodden and reminded of my sacrificing my family by my injury; I think now is the right time for me to layout my story so that you know where my pain comes from.
You see the true story starts 4 years ago when I was diagnosed with bi-polar, after years of just thinking that I had one of the hardest times controlling my anger of anyone I had ever been around or seen. I had to go to a children’s mental hospital for a week over the spring break of my 8th grade year. Then for 3 years of absolute hell my stepmother brought out the worst in my disorder yelling at me nearly everyday and when I did get mad she would get in my face and provoke me until I literally lost it and just snapped. Then towards the end of school last year about mid-June, I had a series of events that all but destroyed my relationship with my dad and stepmother. On a Thursday after school I got home and knocked at the door for a couple minutes before I hopped our back fence and let myself in the backdoor. After using the restroom my stepmother called for me upstairs and when I got there she got into my face, punched me in the stomach and told me to get out of the house until my dad got home at quarter to midnight. I went to a couple houses of my friends before ending up at my friend Craig Johnston's house. He let me stay at his home until it was time for me to go home and even took me to see graduation. Then the following day after school my stepmother was ordering me around our backyard yelling at me and that she would punch me again if she wanted to. I felt a deep sense of anger and spite and ran out of the house and ran to the house of my closest friend, Ryan. He was home but had to leave shortly so I ran about two and a half miles to Craig’s house. After a couple hours I called Mister for guidance because I was at my end. I couldn’t do it anymore and that’s what Mister told me to say in a call to my dad. It didn’t seem to phase him as he ordered me home and told me he would deal with me then. But I wouldn’t go home unless he was there because I knew he wouldn’t let a fight happen between my stepmother and me. What I got instead was worse. When I got home, just as my dad was getting home, I had little clue as to what was going to happen. He let me in and I quickly went to my room downstairs to go to bed. Not even five minutes had transpired before my stepmother yanked me out of my bed for what would be the ass chewing of all ass chewings as I was forced to sit on my hands not saying a word as my stepmother and dad took turns yelling in my face from 12:30 until 3 when I was finally allowed into my room to go to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I was completely broken. The next morning when I was awoken at 5 to start doing a massive list of chores, I was broken but fiercely defiant; it was my last survivalist system. It climaxed at about 10 when I made a defiant remark before going downstairs telling her that I would rather run away than be around her anymore. My stepmother chased after me and literally kicked my butt at the base and followed me into my room where she shoved me into a wall. She proceeded to call the police to have me placed in CRC, a secured runaway center provided by the police while she went to the Tri-Cities because in her word’s “If I’m not staying here neither are you.” My dad went along with it and would’ve left me there for a week so that I could be put into a hafaway house if it wasn’t for finals the following Monday at school. About two weeks later my dad and stepmother paraded me and my brother in front of my grandparents to say everything bad we ever told them about my dad and stepmother was a lie so that we could go up to their lot in Moses Lake, about a 3-hour drive away, with them. During the 11 days I was with them, every night I spoke of leaving home and moving in with them and everyday the idea grew in size and power. I had never been good enough for my dad. I had always been good enough for them. My dad pulled me from running and forced me to apply for every job I could, signed me up for YV Tech, the local program that gets juniors and seniors ready for tech careers and tried to force the dream of a college scholarship through running out of my head. My grandparents supported me, encouraged me to run and that dream in particular. It was no wonder the week and a half I was home was so rocky. I had my goal in sight. Knew what I wanted to do but I felt a loyalty to my father still. But it was all but dead once they found out what my discussions with my grandparents where about. They told me it would never happen. That I wasn’t going anywhere. I find it weird looking back really, yell at a kid who wishes he wasn’t there almost driving in his point. Then 10 days after I had gotten back home I was breaking, I couldn’t take the yelling, the insults, the fact that I hadn’t seen or heard from a friend in a month and a half. I had been in constant arguments then told I was going to pull all the weeds in our massive yards, gardens, tree lines, and dog run, and that I wouldn’t be able to eat or have some water until I “earned” it. So I just ran for my grandparent’s house. Faster than I ever had, have or probably ever run. Just like running away from a world, from a bad life, for a life that was better. I didn’t see my dad for 5 days after that until I had an appointment with my psychiatrist. Once there I knew there was an ultimatum that he had to make, an unspoken one. Me or my stepmother. But he passed that onto me telling me that I made my choice and I was going to have to deal with it in what he thought was the wrong environment to be raised in. But he failed to remember a couple things. First I was all but raised only 17 months away from being an adult. And secondly I, not my environment would determine how I did in school and in life. Yet still my decision eggs me on today. But it was more than anything the last thing he ever told me about running. He told me that I’d never be anything more through my running. And that’s been a guilt trip during the last year as I’ve been hurt for 8 of the last 11 months dealing with 3 stress fractures, a pulled bone sheath, and smashed ligaments. Twice this winter I absolutely broke down, the pain of injuries multiplied infinitely by the guilt trip of that moment because he was right but at the same time he was so wrong because he would never understand my passion, and my will to push through anything just for one shot at success.
That story weighed on me yesterday and made me question everything that has happened. This just seemed to make the pain in my legs worse and worse until I called my best friend Erik for some advice and he convinced me that I could come back. I’ve worked hard for everything almost like a prizefighter but far less glamorous. I realize that the animal that I feel like when I get angry can be used to come back again. I usually am scared of my anger but for only the second time in my short life it is in my corner for now. The animal that can do anything it wants finally has a healthy target again, a bull’s-eye to aim at, a focus that is clear as day. So that’s what’s left for me right now. After spending the last 7 hours at my computer writing this it comes down to this. Simply put but with so much more complexity, it’s time to become the animal again.
The last 2 weeks have been full of Everstique Peaks and back down to Grand Canyon lows. 3 weeks ago I put my head down and swore that I would run within the next 2 weeks and now I don’t know if I’ll be running by summer's end. The day after writing the last chapter I began the hardest non-practice 2 weeks of training I have put in, in a long, long time. I began the next day by going hard on a stationary bike for intervals of 5 minutes hard, 5 easy for an hour and a half to build back up the endurance in my legs. I did that Sunday through Wednesday before I decided that I was ready to go out on a true bike ride and did 20 miles on Thursday and Friday before talking to Mister and setting a date to start at least jogging a week later. The next morning I did a 30-mile bike ride with my best friend Eric before taking the next 2 days off. Then on Tuesday I started back up with a bang, pedaling my way through 45 miles over the almost 4 hour ride. I continued working hard through the week, riding 20,30,35, and 30 miles over the next 4 days. The best moment of my summer came Friday night though when I ran 3 miles with the team following a long bike ride and Mister told me to jog for 20 minutes on Saturday and to take Sunday off before coming back to practice on Monday. I never went. My legs had been aching for the last week but I thought that I was just putting in a lot hours but I didn’t think I was doing any damage. A visit to my doctor Monday morning changed that. He told me that I needed to take at least 2 more weeks off and more than likely more because of all the work that I did biking and jogging just those 3 miles. I was crushed, still am a week later. Following that, I decided that I’d just stay away from the team until I’m healthy and I still plan on that. Because staying in town didn’t seem too appealing to me I decided on Tuesday to go to my family’s trailer lot on a golf course next to the Potholes, a lake about 90 miles northeast of Yakima. I figured I go and swim and enjoy myself golfing a bunch with my grandpa and uncle. Little did I know that I’d hurt my self doing each during my first 24 hours there. Tuesday night I hurt the stress fracture in my left calf diving into the pool. But that stress fracture wasn’t very bad to begin with, I mean it was a fracture but it was nowhere close to being as badly hurt as my right shin. But that stress fracture wouldn’t have to wait long to get reaggravated as I felt like I literally ripped the bone open the next morning playing golf. WOW, did that one hurt. I mean I couldn’t even begin to describe the pain and all I could do was sit there in my grandpa’s golf cart and cry because of the physical pain and the deep fear that I’ve lost my senior season. Your senior season is supposed to be the year where you hop out and show everyone that you are good and you can compete but instead it’s looking like a repeat of last season where it was just one thing after another. I haven’t been able to do anything since that morning. I made just one jogging step on Thursday and I thought I was going to cry from the pain. This is probably the lowest I’ve fallen this summer. I was able to get up twice and come back with a fighting spirit. I’m getting weary. How many times do I have to try and take back my senior season? How much more pain do I have to endure? I mean I have found religion this summer and even with this newfound faith this is hard to handle. All I ever wanted to do is work my ass off and now I’m even denied that. I’m supposed to remain idle and heal, but I can’t get a scholarship from the couch where I’m sitting now. What happened to good things coming to people who work hard for them? I’ve been hurt and unable to run for 9 months out of the last year. Now granted that those 3 months have included some of the best times in running I’ve ever had including going to Cispus, the best place in the world, doing well at Regionals along with a couple less in a massive Gap-to-Gap and getting a second place medal in the considerably smaller Clear Lake 5 miler where I ducked the best local runner in Manuh Santos while finishing behind Cody. But alas it was also at that race where I damaged my legs by not using any foot flexion for about a mile and a half in the middle of the race. But truth be told, id trade all of that in for a chance to be good during my senior season because right now I need something to pick me up because I don’t know if I can do this alone again.
Wow, I can’t believe the week I just had. About a week and a half ago I heard that the youth group from my church was going on a mission trip to Tacoma, a large spread out city about 180 miles away. I was sick of being stuck at home and it seemed like a chance to get to know the kids in the youth group and in Eric’s words,”This guy named Jesus”. So I decided to go and looking back, it was the best choice I have ever made. However I did have one small piece of business on Monday before I left. I had an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon, who cleared me to start running along with other cross training (swimming, biking, etc.). Following that I had a trip to the lying doctor, you know the one who says, “This is going to hurt me a lot more than it’s going to hurt you…” right before snapping your leg with a sound reminiscent of a horror flick.
Well anyway, I was set to go on a trip with a bunch of people I didn’t know and a couple others who I knew their names but little more and I’ll let you meet them much the way I did.
I started by going to my church, First Presbyterian, where the group met before heading out. We all met in a property of the church right next to the main building. My first acquaintance was a sophomore from the East Valley suburb named Tanner. He had on an Oregon basketball shirt so I knew he liked sports but didn’t catch much more than that. As everyone on the trip got to the church the guys congregated in the basement and the girls did the same on the first level. We did basic introductions where I got the names of the guys down. There was in no particular order, Tyler the youth pastor, Tanner, Loren, Tyler, Phillip, Austin, Jeff, Schep, and myself. We then gathered outside where I met Brittany, she was searching frantically for something that I can’t quite recall. All I remember is that she was just a little, little crazy, in the good kind of way. After a couple group photos we all climbed into the vehicles we’d be riding up to Tacoma in. In the church van I got a chance to know three of the other guys on the trip. Phillip I had known from school, he’s a confessed computer gaming junky. Loren was with him in the back seat. He would come to drive me nuts with his favorite two sayings, “I’m a banana” and “My spoon is too big” ugghhhhhhhh, I’m getting annoyed just having those phrases running through my head. The last guy in the van with us was Tyler. We almost, keyword almost had too much fun at his expense. It started when Loren said, “Hey Tyler. How do you confuse a retard?” Tyler replied, “How?” and Loren said, “purple” then Tyler sat there confused for like 10 minutes. Now mind you this had been a running joke for the last two years. The girls in the row ahead of us had to spoil our fun by explaining the joke to him, but hey it took the kid over 2 years to figure out a retard joke so, “purple” hehehe. Then the rest of the way to Tacoma I had fun with him by continually shaking up his orange Fanta soda pop until the top and bottom parts were bulging and the can was absolutely rock solid and hard.
Once we got into Tacoma we found our home for the next six days, Urban Grace Church. That was good and all until we heard that we’d be staying on the third floor in a building with no elevators. Ohhhh the joy those stairs would bring. By the end of the week I mentioned that doing all those stairs was like field day in P.E. and Loren said that he hated that day. Strange, I love field day. Okay, back on subject. We had a dinner of spaghetti, then some time to chill before doing some evening worship where we sang a few songs of praise. Once that was done we played a game called sardines where a couple people go off and hide and the rest of the people try to fid them. The catch is once you find the people who are hiding, you hide with them until there is only one person or group looking for them. Being our first night at the church, it was our first chance to check out all the little nooks and crannies of the, if you include the basement, four story church. After searching for over an hour and no one finding the two who were hiding, Tyler, our youth pastor called out “base” meaning everyone had to come back down to the chapel. Turns out Tanner, the kid I met first and Kelly a happy-go-lucky cheerleader from my rival high school were in a locked bathroom stall in one of the church’s like 10 bathrooms, standing on a toilet. After we gathered back at the chapel, Tyler Van Horn (but I’ll refer to him as Tyler VH for short), our youth pastor gave us a choice of going to bed or going down stairs to the basement to play games.
I would’ve gone to bed but the lesson from the older Tyler got me thinking about my dad and how I shouldn’t be here, I wasn’t supposed to have the life that I have. I was supposed to be back in Yakima. I was supposed to have a full time job this summer. I was supposed to be in training to become a firefighter instead of chasing my dream. So I went upstairs and gabbed my mp3 player. Then I went down to the basement and did some little exercises with some Linkin Park blasting in my headphones. I just needed to get that energy out, plus I got a good ab workout done in the process. Hey we’re trying to accentuate the positive here, well not really because I did sit-ups until my stomach felt like it was host to a blazing fire, and then did as many more as I physically could muster, which ended up being in the neighborhood of 120 twisting ones but don’t ask me to do that again because I was feeling it that night. Speaking of sleeping on the first night we were there, let me say that only the lucky ones got very much sleep because us guys were sleeping in a room that had hard, and I mean hard wooden floors.
The next morning we all woke with the general census that sleeping, if you can call it that on that hard floor, stank to high heaven so Tyler VH got permission for the guys to sleep in the room adjoining to the girl's, which actually had carpet and a little padding. Following breakfast we got a short bible lesson from a local pastor named Paul. He then took us on a little tour of the area around where we were staying. We finished the tour with a trip to the Black Water Café. It’s run a by a woman who tries to encourage socialism in her café more than any other coffee place I’ve been to. She put one long continual bench along one wall so that it feels awkward if you’re sitting a ways away from another person on the bench. She also has like 3 chess sets lying around so that is one of the prominent social activities in the café. Oh how much money I would spend there this week.
After we got done at Black Water, Tyler VH had the whole group split off into small groups of 3 members each and I was with both Tylers so I apologize in advance if this gets confusing at all. Once we were in our small groups I felt I needed to tell my story of running away to the Tylers but especially Tyler VH because I knew that as I explored my religion he would need to understand the demons I battled. It took me probably 45 minutes to tell the full story with full explanations to them but I felt so much better once it was out to them. The younger Tyler was kinda blown over by the story but Tyler VH reminded me that even though I consider my problems to be so big, other people have ones that are just as big in their lives. Then we discussed whether or not God makes bad things happen and whether or not all sins are equal or not. It was one of the deepest and coolest conversations I’ve ever had in my life. It was just cool to compare my views on life to what the Bible has to say about how life should be.
After all the small groups were done we had a small lunch before breaking off into two groups, the guys and the girls, and set about deciding what we’d need to get from Fred Meyer to help out with a kids camp that we’d be helping with the next day. The guys group decided that we’d focus in on doing games to keep the kids active and that we’d get some water balloons for a launcher that we’d make out of a couple funnels and surgical tubing. Not being familiar with Tacoma, it took us what seemed like forever to find Fred Meyer. But once we got into the store it was a different story with everyone being given small specific tasks. We ran through the store and gathered everything with military precision and we weren’t in the store much more than 15 minutes. The only thing we couldn’t find there was the surgical tubing. But a quick trip to a hunting store satisfied that need and we were good-to-go.
We then went back to the church were we had some chill time before dinner. It was then that I had some time to chill with Jeff. He was the youngest of the guy group leaders and a redhead who seemed to be at home being awkward. I talked him into being my partner in hiding for sardines later Tuesday night. He was game until I showed him a place I thought would be cool, a ledge about 6 inches wide. It was when he saw this that he backed out and I had to talk Austin, a kid who’ve I known about for the last couple years, having a couple classes with his sister, and I know his dad because of how good of runner he is, into teaming with me later that night.
After I had that worked out we had dinner. That was followed by evening worship where I told my runaway story to the whole group because it related to how I found religion. It was basically the runaway plus how I needed some more reason in my life and I found it in the Presbyterian Church that I’m now a member of. When I got done Tyler VH led everyone in praying for me and my cause, but as each person that prayed aloud for me spoke I thought of how they must have something in their lives that people around them could pray about for them. It was unique in the effect and after that I felt almost like I have something worthy of praying for because we all have our demons and even though mine are a little farther out there that doesn’t make them better because is there such a thing as a better problem/demon in our lives?
Anyway, now that we were done with the powerful stuff it was time for sardines and when me and Austin got to our spot we realized one huge mistake, there was a window right above it and you could see anything on top of it so we went with a plan B that I had covered earlier in the day while doing a little “detective work”. I had moved a piano in a room that was flooded with light from street lights outside forward about a foot from the wall and we hid there undiscovered for a half hour sitting there mostly silently, laughing when Tanner looked in the original spot because Austin had told him about it. What you get for trying to cheat I guess. Tanner would be spoiled again when he was with Tyler VH and Schep, another one of our group leaders. Tyler found us but got Schep on his side and went about losing Tanner before coming back. The next person to find us was Rosie, the daughter of our church’s pastor. Once Rosie was behind the piano, Tyler started calling kids saying, “There are 5 of us here. Can you find us?” before hanging up. After Rosie was in the room though the room started to smell of BO so anyone walking around could literally smell us in the room. Eventually the room filled up and the only loser was, alas, Tanner. Just call it god having a little fun, because after all we were in a building dedicated to him.
The next morning we woke to go help out at a kid’s camp, which would be our first piece of community service while we were there. When we got there the lead counselor greeted us. He then broke us off by which age group we wanted to work with. I chose to work with the 9-10 year old group, which was reading when we went into their classroom. It was in that classroom that I met a little girl that I will never forget. Her name was Sadee and that girl had an attitude. I first got an introduction to her standing by the door at the end of their quiet time right before we took a walk to the school where they were fed lunch. As I was standing by the door she just started pushing me against a wall, laughing as she was doing so. Then on the walk to the school for lunch, she was hanging on the back of my shirt, occasionally choking me. Right before we went into the school cafeteria she told me that her parents call her “the devil”, then had her sister confirm it. My jaw practically hit the floor. On a church mission trip and I get stuck working with a girl that gets called the devil, awkwaaaaaaaaaaard! After eating her lunch she took my arm and, in much the same manner that you’d pick up a heavy yard bag, pulled me off the stage where I was eating.
Once Sadee had me outside she dragged me down to the football field where I seriously thought she was going to hurt someone but much to my relief nothing did. But it was out there on that football field where, I felt like for the first time on the trip I did some service. There were two kids getting mad at each other and I got them to separate and then talked with each one about how sports was for fun and enjoyment. I told them that it’s when you put competition ahead of enjoyment and other things in your life then you’ve lost already. And it’s a lesson I wish that I had learned years ago, don’t get me wrong, when I get into a race I’m an absolute animal and when I’m in season running is the number one thing on my mind, but I’m working on it just as I hope those kids learn to.
Once that was done I went over and helped run a little game of wiffleball. Then I went to the cafeteria kitchen to help with filling up water balloons for the key attraction. Once we were done with the first load it was time to test out the launcher we had made the day before. We would be shooting up over a fence down into a football field and even though we got a few good shots out of it, it was a big flop. So we started just throwing the water balloons down into the field, only thing was that the method was making our water balloon supply dwindle and the smaller kids were getting sad because they couldn’t keep running to the water balloons we were throwing. Then Tyler VH came up with an ingenious idea, he told all the kids to lie down and we’d throw a barrage of like 8 balloons at the group. And that pretty much ended our day at the kid’s camp.
After getting back and having dinner it was time for showers at the local YMCA. I swear if I live to be a 100 I will remember going there because once the guys were in the open shower area most of them busted out into the chorus of “potter puppet pals” which was hilarious. I think I saw an old man take the fastest shower in recorded history, walking in looking at us and walking out. But hey it’s not for us to judge him about judging us and our singing right?
After we were done spooking the old guy, the group went to the local rec center to play some basketball in a little tournament that they have each week. It was there that my leg flared up and kinda ruined my night. I was just shooting around a little and my leg just started to throb like crazy. It sucked and it had me scared. I had missed so much time that just the thought of having to miss more had me in knots. I just sat outside the main gym thinking about running and how badly I wanted it then my thoughts drifted to my dad. After a couple hours I packed into the van and remained silent during the ride back to the church. Once we were at the church I went up to the guys’ room rather than evening worship and just walked around with but one query on my mind. It was the ultimatum placed on me in part by my dad and me. He told me that I left because of what I wanted and to an extent that was true. He also told me that I’d better know what I was doing and I do. Thing is, I felt like if I don’t accomplish my goal of getting a scholarship, which is my dream, I did all I’ve done for nothing. I thought that until I had a talk with Tyler VH at about 1 in the morning that changed my life. We just talked about how there’s nothing good that comes of worry and how no matter what we tend to think at times we are never alone. Tyler said it was a trick of the devil because we always have people around us and that we always need to keep that in mind. He also said that we can’t pre-determine everything in our lives because God has his ways and we need to be open to that. It would be different coming from anyone else but this is a guy who gave up his job as a teacher and made a leap of faith to become the youth pastor at our church. Then he told me a phrase that he had said earlier in the night but this time it hit. He told me that I can either believe in religion or I can live it. Which basically is, in common words a words versus actions conflict but in front of God with your faith. After that talk I slept better than I have since running away. It was because I was at peace, no worries, no grudges, no plans, just God's plan for me.
The next morning I woke up refreshed and ready for our adventures. The two things on the agenda were going to victory outreach, and then putting on a dinner for the homeless. At victory outreach we met a man by the name of Issaquah Washington, who spoke for an hour of how he used to be homeless but now he runs a program to help people who are in the same spot he used to be. At the end of his speech when he was answering questions he gave us a token of wisdom that gave me some direction for my life after high school and college. He said to help the world in your way. That got the ball turning in my head but it didn’t come to something realistic until we had some time to think during the period between the speech and helping out with the homeless dinner. Tyler VH gave us an assignment to think about what we had learned over the past few days and it was during that 20 minutes that it all came together. My passion is health and fitness, so I came up with the idea of combining that love with the love of God and do what the YMCA set out to do but has gotten away from a little bit. I was pumped, heck still am, because I know my calling. After we gathered together to discuss what we had come up with, Austin, Allie, another one of the girls on the trip, and myself all recounted our talks with Tyler VH the night before and Schep asked him if he slept at all. It was funny but I think he might’ve had a cheat sheet from God that night because he deeply touched 3 lives in that one evening.
Once we were done talking it was time to go shopping for food for the homeless dinner. Attacking a local Albertson's in much the same way we did Fred Meyer’s two days earlier we were in and out in like 20 minutes. Once we got back to the church where the dinner was we started working away and I had the best job I could’ve asked for, cooking grilled cheese on a huge burner. It was fast and furious work, but it was fun. After I got done cooking enough grilled cheese to feed an army, I went out and sat down to eat. I just sat there eating and smiled each time a person dug into one of the sandwiches. It just felt good. Once I was done I got a chance to get to know another one of the girls on the trip. I just started playing foosball with a girl on the trip named Rosie. We had been playing for a couple minutes until she saw how competitive I am and was a little annoyed with it and walked away. I followed her to the table where she helped me to understand how that it’s not bad to be competitive but I can overpower a person and become rude in doing so. She said that she knew every person has their faults; you just need to work on them to become better off for it.
About the time we were winding down our conversation it was time to go. So we headed back to the church where we had about 20 minutes to just chill before dinner. Then I got a chance to do what I had been waiting all day to do, call my friend Shawna. Thing was she was just sitting down to eat. Then when she called me back I was sitting down to eat. Isn’t it funny how you can base your entire day around wanting to do something but it seems like when you get around to doing it, something always seems to come up? Oh well, eventually I got to talk with her and it was just good to talk to someone I had known before the trip. So all and all it had probably been one of the best days (including the 1 AM talk with Tyler) that I’ve ever had.
From there the rest of the trip just seemed like a blur. The next day we helped with a clothing drive before going to this thing called club Friday where some stuff happened that we’ll keep off the record for your protection. Then Saturday I took a couple swims in the freezing cold Puget Sound and had a little battle of hypothermia to go with it. That night we went to a charismatic church where they prayed loudly out loud, and spoke of God and Jesus as though they were buddies. It made me know that I was in the right church with the solemn intimacy of Presbyterianism. Then this morning we helped with a homeless breakfast where I served coffee to over a 150 people in need. But I don’t care about the numbers or the statistics of what we did because I was just doing what I had been guided to do and happened to have a blast in the process. And now that it’s done I will put it literally: I left with God in my head and a Bible in my bag and came home with God in my heart and a Bible in my pocket.
Today was my first day back after nine weeks of being out because of my stress fractures. My first reward for coming back though, was a complementary glutious maximus chewing from Mister for not being around the team for the duration of being hurt. I understand his point but at the same time being around the team last year while I was hurt just got me burnt out and I didn’t want that to happen again. I know in doing so its gonna take me longer to get back into shape but I would rather run refreshed and take another week or two to get back into shape than try to stick around because I was out for over 2 months so I think I made the right choice but at the same time I know that I’m going to need to show him that I’m still as dedicated and hard working as ever because without him I’m going to struggle to get a scholarship. Anyway in terms of the workout, I just had 20 minutes of easy running on grass, nothing massive or fast yet. The varsity squad is leaving for Cispus camp tomorrow morning so Mister told me no more than right about 20 minutes on grass until he approves of otherwise so we’ll see how the rest of this week goes.
Today I ran what is considered to be one of the hardest 3-mile courses in the Pacific Northwest in a park that we use to put on the Sunfair race every fall. I did the course in just a steady pace always holding back a little bit as I ran. Ivan didn’t go to Cispus but I wasn’t gonna waste my body to stay with him, but I did man handle the rest of the group with relative ease. Don’t get me wrong, I was feeling it afterward, but hey after 9 weeks out I’ll take it. I didn’t truly feel the run until I had to do terraces on a hill that’s maybe 50 yards at a lil better than a 45-degree grade. I had to do 10 of them but after just 3 I was feeling quite weak. I was a little frustrated I’ll admit. I mean I used to be able to do these in my sleep sprinting like a mad man each time without even breaking a sweat. Buuuuuuut, that was then and this is now and my goal now is to run pain free each day and hope to race at Fort Steilcoom, probably my favorite course I’ve ever ran, 4 weeks from now.
That pretty much sums up how my calves felt this morning, and this afternoon, and tonight. You get the picture. The thing that makes that bad is the fact that when my calves are tender, they tighten up which lets me feel my stress fracture in my right shin. But I’m not worried because I can feel tightness in both shins so I know that my herpes fracture, so nicknamed because of how it flares up from time to time, is not hurt any worse. Now as far as what I did today I’m happy with the 25 minutes I did get in. It wasn’t just 25 minutes easy either. Ten of it was steady, 10 of it was the ever-erratic Ivan-steady, and 5 was up-tempo. It was a little more than I had permission from Mister to do and when he goes over this I’m probably gonna get chewed on a little. Oh, sometimes I feel like I’m writing a confessional for him to read. In the words of Shawna, my friend from Davis, hakuna matata, no worries. I’ll just go a little easier tomorrow.
That describes what the weather at practice was like today. The rest of the JV squad was tired from yesterday’s workout so today was a short but high intensity day. With the thermometer reading a hair over 97 degrees we started out with some easy stretching and ten minutes steady. But I wanted to get all I could out of the workout so I went with Ivan and his lack of cadence, which basically means the rhythm of your stride, which was actually kinda nice at times because I could catch my breath in the heat when he slowed down for a few seconds. Despite the periodic lapses in pace we both pushed a little harder than we probably should have and we paid the price for it. After the first set both of us were suffering from a little bit of heat exhaustion. But when we were told that we had to do another shorter set of five minutes steady we both gritted our teeth and went out and did the absolute best we could and even though we were drained we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Today we had 12 minutes of running. Twelve? Twelve? Come on now. I know that we’re with the JV squad and that the rest of the guys have time trials tomorrow but this was crazy. We started out at a park only a couple minutes jog away. Mr. Menzia told us to do an easy six-minute jog around the park during which I had all the guys stick together because we were told to go easy and anyone could’ve taken out the pace. When a couple freshmen tried I cut them off and made them stick with the group. After a short session of stretching and a couple drills, we had to do another mammoth six... minute... run... I knew that Josh Guilland, a fellow senior who just came out this week could go faster than the rest of team so I talked him into going faster and getting what we could out of the run. Once we were done with that we had 6 150-meter sprints. Again Josh and I decided to kill it and go all out because we have 24 hours to rest before time trials tomorrow morning. I’m not going to get to do time trials but I’ll get in an easy run while the rest of the team is doing that.
Today the rest of the team had time trials. I had the pleasure of standing on the side of the course and watching. Yeah, I got to do a couple warm up laps with the team but that’s like just taking the wrapper off a candy bar. You do it before eating the delicious treat, only this time it was like watching other people eat it instead of me. I mean I’m happy to be running and everything but I wish I could do more. I don’t know, maybe I have the wrong mentality or something because I like to run, but I live to race. I guess that’s the best way I can put it because hakuna matata just isn’t cutting it today.
Today was awesome! Tonight is a little bit different but we’ll get to that later. We had a workout of 5 repeats of 8 minutes fast. When I heard the workout I set a goal of leading the workout wire to wire. I knew that early on it wouldn’t be a problem but I wondered how I would do as the workout progressed. But I had to put that thought in the back of my head. I just started out the first set and put the pedal to the medal and didn’t hardly let up. Over the next couple sets I just had to relax as much as I could while keeping up a good enough pace to dominate the group. Then before the fourth set I almost convinced Mrs. Menzia that the next set was the last and I almost had her fooled until Mr. Menzia corrected her. I would’ve still done five sets because even as the Menzias were discussing I felt bad and I knew that I’d do the required 5 sets because I need to get as much work in as I can right now. In the fourth set I had the closest thing to a challenge that I got during the practice when Bobby Pena, a senior runner who just, just, came out, was running like 10 meters behind me and I slowed a little to ask him if he just wanted to run with me and work together so we both got more out of the workout but he didn’t want to so I just kinda took off and pushed myself a little faster so that I could ooze as much out of the workout as I could. I was ready to start the 5th and final set when the varsity squad and Mister showed up. I knew that this was my shot to prove myself to Mister and I held absolutely nothing back on that last set so that I could show Mister that I was willing to work as hard as I could to get back onto the varsity squad. He was just marginally happy with it, but heck, after the way he was last week I’ll take it.
Now before I go on, I’ll take a moment to tell you that up to this point the book has been called “Our Year” and I’ve changed it to “My Year”. And with that change I’m going to start giving you glimpses into my personal life so that you have a complete view, or at least my complete view of the story.
Well anyhow, there’s this girl named Shawna that I really kinda like but I don’t know how she feels and it feels awkward at times when I’m on the phone with her. I don’t know. Maybe I can’t take a hint. Maybe I’m putting things in my head. Only one thing is for sure, I don’t know.
Today, I wasn’t feeling like taking any chances. I had a 20 minute run during which my legs started to feel a little tender. After killing it yesterday I wasn’t in any position to gamble with my health. All I missed were a few 300-meter strides and I didn’t think it made much sense to risk my season for them. I know that its just soreness and that I should be fine but that’s not where my worries are laying tonight. I found out the answer to my question from last night. But it came in compound form. She has a boyfriend that I didn’t know about so that kind of soured things and after not answering a couple phone calls tonight she left me a voice message that kinda made me feel like trash. Man, I just felt like I was led on a little bit and that really sucks to have happen, especially to a guy who has never had a girl.
That’s what I’m asking myself today after I ran for about an hour, playing picaboo with my endurance pretty much the whole time. I started out running on cement to a park near our school. It was my first time of running on cement since my little aiding of Ryan about 6 weeks back. Once actually to the park we had 3 sets of 10 minutes a little above steady but to tell the truth, Spencer and me just kinda cruised at an easy pace. But I wasn’t complaining. I was and still am feeling a little worn out. Only thing is even though I wasn’t feeling all there I still feel a little bad about dogging the workout a little because I know that if I want to be good I’ve got to bust my butt everyday.
Thing was, I couldn’t get that message from Shawna out of my head, and that distracted me even through the first day of school. It made me question myself and the kind of person that I am. Oh yeah, on that first day of school thing, today was my first day as a senior. I thought this was supposed to be a big deal but it’s not really to me. It’s another year of schooling. I have five left including this one and going to college. I mean I still try hard and get good grades and all, but it’s my job right now and to be honest I just do it so that I can run. And to get a job after I graduate from college but that’s kinda secondary right now.
My endurance! After an absolutely apathetic, now breathe, workout yesterday I felt rested and ready to work today. After getting to practice late because of a check-up at my psychiatrist’s office I ran hard to the park where the rest of the JV team was practicing at. We were supposed to do 5 by 10 minute figure 8’s around the park. I had missed the first set so I started out the second eager to make up for lost time by going easy for the first loop to learn the course before setting the hardest pace I could up the hills before using the highest recovery speed I had around the base of the next short hill. After 2 sets of that the Menzias cut the workout one set short and the last set we did was only five minutes long. Right before we started I told the group that the set should be fast and even though it wasn’t followed I practiced what I had just preached, going hard and fast as I could for 5 minutes to squeeze just a little bit more out of the workout. I was happy with what I had done when the set was finished but was left wanting more. Oh well, better wanting more than wishing I had done less.
Oh yeah, a note on the thing with me and my friend Shawna. we were able to talk things out between the two of us which was a sigh of relief because I don’t like to have the thought of someone being upset with me weighing on my mind.
Okay, here’s the situation: The team has a trip to Malibu in three weeks and the roster is still up in the air. So Mister came up with a way to decide the roster. We have 20 spots available so he said that the 10 guys and 9 girls that were training with the respective varsity squads would be going and that the guy to get eleventh place at time trials tomorrow will make the roster. Right after he announced that I asked Mister if I was going to be racing for my spot on the Cali roster he kinda stunned me by telling me that I would. I was shocked, I’ve barely been running for two weeks and my legs have been tender fairly often, but hey when he says it’s time to race, then, it’s time to race. That kind of set my mood for the rest of the day as I went from relaxed to serious. I would be racing Kicker and Cody Johnson for my spot. At the park where we had an easy 20-minute workout Kicker was trying to get into my head, speeding up and slowing down, before telling me how he was testing me. Uh, underclassmen, I know why he was doing that because I used to do the same thing with people I was nervous about racing. Oh well, let's let tomorrow be the judge of this because I’ll be battling my body more than anyone out there.
Today was my biggest test yet since coming back from injury. It was Time Trials and the spot on the Malibu roster on the line. We had our uniforms that we got yesterday on and we were all formally introduced to the crowd of parents and friends. We have a unique time trial format in that we are broken up by 20-second intervals going from slowest to fastest so that there’s a smaller range of time between the first and last person finishing. We’d be doing four and a half laps around a local park for a total distance of 3.4 miles. Kicker was placed 20 seconds ahead of me, so I knew that all I would have to do was catch Kicker and I could punch my ticket to Malibu. And I learned from Cody’s mom that Kicker liked to start out fast and tended to fade towards the end. That piece of advice actually really helped because it allowed me to relax and take my time in catching up to him. After the second of the 4.5 laps I had him in close proximity and just cruised by him. From there it was just a matter of holding on to a decent pace. Unfortunately I was all but spent but did somehow manage to finish well ahead of Kicker and Cody Johnson. I felt dead but I guess I should be happy about it because I’ve only been running for two weeks or something like that but I wasn’t so easily pleased. I know I can do better but I need some more training because I was supposed to be our number three this year and I won’t even think about giving up until I achieve just that. A betting man should never put a bet against me because I want this so badly and I will go to any, and I mean any lengths to get it.
Today I got the news that I’m on the roster for The Pepperdine Invite in Malibu three weeks from now. But that’s not the focus right now. That would go to the workout I have to do everyday. And today I was at a park with the girls’ team because the guys' team had repeats on a long road hill and Mister is keeping me off long runs on cement. We had 4 sets of 12-minute doglegs, which are runs up and around the top of a hill. It usually wouldn’t be that hard but I made the mistake of eating an hour before practice, which is just long enough to make you sick but still long enough so that you don’t “lose it”. But hey I got through it and still gave it a good shot. Given that I still struggled mightily and was actually amazed by how good the girls team did. I mean Ann, the girls team captain, kept me honest with my pacing when I slacked a little. So props to you guys, sorry girls, because you did awesome today. I wish I could end on that but both Kicker and Cody Johnson are mad that I get to go on the trip and they don’t. And I don’t know how to act around them because there was an argument to be made for any of us because I missed a ton of time this summer and didn’t go to the camps that were guidelines for going on the trip but at the same time Mister questions their work ethics so I’m kinda stuck for now.
That sums up today pretty well. Today I did my first morning practice run where we had 45 minutes easy. That usually wouldn’t have been too bad but I’ve barely been running for two weeks and the most cumulative time I’ve had on any day so far was about 75 minutes, and that was just yesterday. Thing is I know that I have to do everything laid out before me if I want to be good and earn things like the trip to California. And I’ll probably hold myself to a higher standard than the coaches over the next few weeks because I feel like I have to show Kicker and Cody that I earned going on the trip. I know that I shouldn’t feel like that but I do. Oh well. The thing I should’ve been worried about today was the workout. Today was my first day back with the varsity squad and we were at the Indian reservation and had 6 miles out and back. I was just hoping to do the entire workout. Things seemed bad when the first couple miles were rough and nobody else seemed to have any trouble and Cody and Ivan even took off. I didn’t even find my cadence or stride rhythm until about four and a half miles into the run but by that time Timmy, Craig and Derrick were fading pretty badly. Then at about mile 5 Ryan faded and never caught back up. I felt overjoyed when I was able to stay with Bryan and H until the turnaround point where Price, another one of our coaches, had water waiting for us. Waiting there was Cody, Bryan, Ivan, and Sunshine. Andy followed suite shortly after. After the turnaround point the six of us who made it set out as a group and stayed pretty well together until about 4 miles left where Cody, Ivan, and Bryan took off. That left me with Sunshine and Andy. Then with three miles left where we were all supposed step up the pace, those two left me in the dust because I was doing the best I could to keep running for the last couple miles. But hey I eventually finished and when I sat back after practice and added up the day’s mileage it came out to 17 miles which is a lot for me when I’m in shape.
Today was a recovery day, or at least by Eisenhower Cross Country standards. We started out this morning with a 45 minute run that should’ve been easy, key word, should’ve, but it wasn’t. After yesterday’s twelve miler no running seems pleasant. Then this afternoon I thought we’d have an easy workout. It turns out that easy is a very flexible word. We went to Franklin, a park about a mile away. It’s the park where we host our big meet every year so we ran the course once at an “easy” pace. Well it was easy for some of the guys like Cody and Bryan but it gave me fits. After that we had 8 backward jogs up the middle terrace, which is a single, maybe 75-80 meter long terrace that’s at about a 60-degree grade. That took fooooorrrrrreeeevvveerrrrr. Once that was done H had us run the cross-country course one after the other, trying to keep an even distance between the person in front and behind you. Wyatt was right in front of me and I had a hard time keeping my cadence which made things exceedingly annoying for Ryan who was right behind me. Eventually we got through it and headed back to Ike. On the way back H asked all of the guys, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how tired and sore are you?” The answers ranged from 8 to 60 (courtesy of Cody ?). I don’t know if I can speak for the rest of the guys but plainly put, I’m hurtin right now.
Tonight I’m actually writing this piece from my hotel room in Tacoma where I’ll race in my first cross country race in close to two years and I’m not even a little nervous, just anxious to go out and race. After all the pain and injury this summer this “start” to the season doesn’t mean as much to me as what I’ve gone through because “this” year of cross country started 13 ½ months ago when I ran away and regained a chance to compete in the sport again. I mean I still want to go and have a good race and I’m still going to leave it all on the course but this is just another plot within the bigger plot of my high school running career. There’s not a lot of pressure yet. That will come when I step up into the role I was supposed to have from the outset of summer. The thing that does make this matter is that I’m finally back into my life, the one where I go out and bust ass everyday for some crazed Irishman that I know as Mister. But, hey, I gotta go to bed now and get some sleep for tomorrow, hopefully I’ll win because I’m in the slowest race and that should help my confidence. Guess it’s time to get back to work.
I really wish I could take back today’s race and redo it. Mister put a misprint on the schedule and I completely blew my warm-up. I had like six 100-meter strides before the race. It didn’t really matter though because the field was positively awful. It was a two-mile race and it was pretty much over by the end of mile one. It made things too easy for me because I never left my comfort zone, ran a crap time, and then showed no class when I high-stepped at the finish. It was dumb and demonstrated no sportsmanship. I mean it was my first race in a long time and I had won but I beat a group of slow JV runners (there were 2 JV races and I was in the slower one). After the butt chewings I received for that I guarantee (that I won't do that again). Live and learn right? Oh well the rest of the team ran well with Cody winning the individual title and the team won by over 20 points. Here’s the snippet from the local paper on it.
BELLARMINE PREP INVITATIONAL: At Tacoma, Cody VanDeBrake's individual victory led Eisenhower's boys to an easy win in the ninth annual meet, which drew a field of 21 teams.
VanDeBrake covered the two-mile course in 9 minutes, 55 seconds for a five-second win. Brian Simison, Ryan Chapman, Derrick Thomas and Blake Thomas all cracked the top 20 for the sixth-ranked Cadets.
Ike finished ninth in the girls meet.
BOYS Team scores: Eisenhower 49, Sehome 70, Skyline 147, Southridge 169, Gonzaga Prep 195, Blanchet 204, Aloha, Ore. 249, Curtis 271, Marysville 274, Bellarmine Prep 286.
Eisenhower results: 1, Cody VanDeBrake 9:55; 10, Brian Simison 10:16; 12, Ryan Chapman 10:23; 14, Derrick Thomas 10:28; 16, Blake Thomas 10:30; 26, Craig Johnston 10:47; 42, Andy Romfo 10:56.
Today was a big letdown. I felt good during morning practice and was looking forward to tomorrow’s race. That was until my right knee started to ache. I started out just feeling really weak during our warm-up then the pain just started to slowly build. We were supposed to do two sets of 20 minutes steady but I couldn’t even get through the first. It didn’t help that H didn’t have his car there so I had to walk a block away to a nearby phone to call my grandpa for a ride back to our school’s stadium where we meet everyday for practice. I knew I had to go down to the trainer but I had to watch video of Saturday’s race first and to say the least it was painful. I had form that was as bad as I have ever seen of myself, which is saying a lot, but the worst bit was watching my idiot celebration, which made me feel terrible. Following that I went to our school’s athletic trainer. I thought that he could help me but the injury had him positively baffled because in the area of my knee where I’m feeling some muscular pains, there aren’t any muscles, just a bunch of connective tissue. Mister told me not to worry though because it was probably just a tweak and to just give it a little time to heal. That might seem like comforting news to some but I think that I have missed my fair share of time over the last thirteen months.
Today I had to make the decision to sit out of today’s meet after I woke up with soreness in my knee. It’s not that I think it’s bad or anything, I just think that an off day will serve me better than if I had chosen to race. I didn’t even bother to travel with the team because I just wanted to rest my legs for a day. I just hope that my teammates don’t feel like I’m abandoning the team, even temporarily. Oh well, I’ll show up to practice and bust ass tomorrow and show them that I’m still willing to work hard for both myself and the team.
Today I got the worst kind of treatment I could get from Mister, the silent one. After an ass chewing to start the morning I really didn’t speak with him the rest of the day despite being in his classroom on numerous occasions. He was mad at me for pulling myself out of yesterday’s meet but, I don’t think anyone can really blame me because, hey after all the time I’ve missed over the last year due to injury I didn’t think I was in any kind of position to barter with my body for a terrific output yesterday. That nagged on me for the rest of the day until practice where he spoke to me for the second time, telling me to do a rehab workout on the airdyne stationary bike which I thought would mean a relatively easy day. That changed though when he brought out heart rate monitors for me and Bryan, who hurt his foot during yesterday’s race. He ordered us to bike for 90 minutes with our heart rates at or above 180 beats per minute. This proved to make Bryan’s and my day a lot harder. I mean I tried to keep my heart rate at 180, but it was like running 400s over and over again. In the end I got through the workout though (with some breaks I’ll admit) and did manage to keep my heart rate at about 155 most of the time. I guess I should get a little used to this because I bet that I’ll have the same thing tomorrow.
Today I had to get medically cleared for the second time in four weeks by my orthopedic surgeon. This time it turns out I had a fold in the plica of my right knee. That basically means that the flesh casing around my knee had a fold in it that was rubbing over a nerve. It isn’t anything serious and technically doesn’t do any damage, so that’s good. Now I just have to be worried about doing good in tomorrow’s race because Mister said that California is still not completely finalized and tomorrow’s finishing order will play a big factor in his decision. But I’m not worried because Cody Johnson was in my ear from the get-go of practice about how he’s going to beat me tomorrow and take my spot on the Cali roster. I have to tell you, I have talked up an opponent and I have seen others do it and I have never seen the person with the mouth go on to have a good race. I think this is because the person that builds themselves up has to work harder and do more than they should because now instead of focusing on one person, you have to account for two and you waste energy in doing that. Yea and Nay
Today was a little good and a little bad. I was rusty from running only once in the last week and paid for it. The gameplan was for me to get up to the top five early so that I wouldn’t be bottlenecked off and I did that. Then I wanted to hang onto about third or fourth at the mile and I did that. At about the one mile mark I wanted to move up and challenge near the base of the first big hill and again I did that. Then the plan for the rest of the race was to hang on and use my arms and the downhills to win and I did the first two but the win didn’t fall my way plus I totally fell apart in the last mile and ran a pedestrian 17:40 on the 5k course. There’s a catch to this story though, I found out that the kid who beat me was another school’s number two varsity runner. But I’m still upset with myself for never challenging him. I mean he had a huge 120 meter lead early on but I just never felt like I had the endurance to challenge him, which is really disappointing. I know I haven’t been running for very long but I felt like I got taken out behind the woodshed today by the course. I just feel like I need another few weeks of hard training before I reach a decent level of success. You know, even though a lot of people think that I’m stubborn about being so hard on myself, I’m that way for a reason. I just never want to highly celebrate false victories. Plus when you hold a high standard that’s hard to achieve, it makes achieving a whole lot sweeter. Wow, you know, something just hit me. Two years ago at this course Blake slowed down so that we could finish together but I sandbagged and out kicked him. This seemed like karma: I shouldn’t have won two years ago but I did and this year I should have won but didn’t. Oh well enough with me now because the rest of the team did awesome. Even with Blake and Craig booted to the Community Race for missing morning practice on Thursday (sorry I forgot to mention that earlier) the team did really good. In the race of number five, six, and seven runners Wyatt got first, Andy got third, and Ivan got fifth. If you had put me and Tim in there, I would’ve been fourth and Tim would’ve been seventh. Things went even better in the two, three and four race where Bryan won, Ryan got second and Derrick got third. Cody VanDeBrake capped off the day with a fourth place finish in the race of each team’s number one runner. The day ended with us having the fastest number 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 runners and the fourth fastest lid there in Cody and we won the team title by a huge 92-point margin, scoring 83 points. The next closest school was Liberty with 175 points. Thing is, today’s race doesn’t matter now because we have a week of training to go through before next week’s Pepperdine Invite and hopefully Craig and Blake make it to morning practice on Monday.
| Times and Team Placing | ||
| 1. | Cody VanDeBrake | 15:55 |
| 2. | Bryan Simison | 16:25 |
| 3. | Ryan Chapman | 16:49 |
| 4. | Derrick Thomas | 16:56 |
| 5. | Wyatt Marchand | 17:18 |
| 6. | Andy Romfo | 17:32 |
| 7. | Andrew Schmidt | 17:39 |
| 8. | Ivan Alfaro | 17:41 |
| 9. | Tim Cummings | 17:49 |
| 10. | Cody Johnson | 18:05 |
Today was long, hard and brutal. Morning practice wasn’t hard but I tried to be a little more serious than normal so that I could get a little more out of it. Looking back I probably should’ve saved myself because we had mile repeats this afternoon. Now let me make this clear, I hate, no, loathe, speed work. I would rather do a twenty mile run than mile repeats or even worse 800s. We had to do six of them and I was hurting from the start. It didn’t help that I ran a pedestrian 5:46 first repeat and I was telling myself that I could do a lot better. I was wrong. I ran a 5:56 mile the next and really started to doubt and dog myself. I mean I was able to suck it up a little bit but still ran the next three at about six minutes flat apiece which I really tried to shrug off while doing the mile repeats but between them it showed in my body language which is how Mister caught on to it. I haven’t run but once in the last week and I paid for pulling myself out of running because it realistically put me two weeks behind because I lost a week of running and now I need another week to catch back up to where I was but, hey, hindsight’s 20/20 right?
Today was long. Today was hard. Today I did awesome. That pretty well describes today. It started with morning practice at six o’clock this morning where we had 45 minutes steady. You know, last year morning practice used to be kind of a joke but this year with H running with us it has actually been doing something for us. It’s been showing especially during practices like the one we had this afternoon. We were on the reservation for fourteen miles and I was worried that I would struggle after my pathetic workout yesterday but instead I was bound and determined. Ivan did his normal bit of going out ahead of the group but we don’t bother to chase him down anymore because he’s pretty much gonna do his own thing. I felt good and ran up with H in the second small group until Derrick passed us at about mile four. I was a little worried that H would take off with him because running with him was really helping with my cadence. He did take off though at mile 5 when he got irritated with my rather constant peeks over my shoulder. I shouldn’t have been worried because I was doing a lot better than the last time I ran the rez two weeks ago. I reached the turnaround point well ahead of everybody short of H, Derrick and Ivan. After a quick water break I cruised the last seven at a slightly fast pace while just trying to relax and it actually flew by. I could see H and Derrick off in the distance and Ivan about 50-75 meters in front of me but I was just focused on the end of each long stretch so I didn’t really notice anyone else until Bryan passed me with about 1200 meters left. Then Ryan cruised by with about a half mile to go. But other than those two no one even came close to passing me. I think the reason that today felt so much easier (if you can call it that) was my mentality. Yesterday I dogged myself and got tight and pretty much self-destructed. Today I was happy and stayed relaxed the entire run and just tried to enjoy myself a little because if I don’t ever enjoy myself then I don’t know why I’m out here because it’s surely not for the tan lines.
Ehhhhh, the California trip was fun, but I’m happy that it’s over. The trip began four days ago, on Thursday morning in our school’s stadium parking lot. From there we had a two and a half hour drive to Seattle. In Seattle H got lost. Lucky for him he found the parking garage and somehow made it onto the plane just as the team was boarding. Then after the flight down to Burbank in north L.A., H got into a fender bender on Interstate 101, which is basically the road that connects L.A. to most of it’s suburbs. Somehow though, H got to our hotel in Calabasas before the vans driven by Mister and the one I was in with the twin’s dad James. By the time Mister pulled into the hotel it was four o’clock and we had been on the road since seven that morning. But after that the day got significantly better. We checked into our hotel and then set off to Malibu for a run on the beach. That run was awesome. The beach was nice, the water was warm and the weather was just right. It was like a Hollywood beach done right. We had a 45-minute run and we were pretty much wading the entire time. We then had free rein to go out and get dinner. I went to a place called Sharky’s, which wouldn’t have been a big deal except that Joe Rogan, the host of fear factor popped up and ate there too so that was kinda cool. Friday morning I woke up a little early to grab some food from our hotel’s “continental breakfast” which was really just continental coffee. That put a ding into my budget for the trip but a trip to the mall dented it even worse. We were at the mall for a few hours and I had gotten a shirt at footlocker. After getting the shirt I went out to where our vans were. About the time I got there though I realized that I was missing my envelope that had my money for Saturday’s food and spending money for the trip. I retraced my steps to footlocker, which is the last place that I had my money, but it wasn’t to be found. I would have to stretch my money after that but I made it through the trip. Once we were done at the mall, we went to the hotel, changed and went out for a tour of Pepperdine University, which would be followed by an easy practice. The campus was gorgeous and bountiful with plant life and greenery everywhere and to add to the effect, the University was on a hill overlooking Malibu and it’s beaches. It was amazing, that is until we started our little practice and it started to rain. I’m not a little wimp or anything but it was cold, I was lucky to have my skintight Nike shirt on which kept me a little warm but I felt bad for everyone else because they were frozen to the bone. Once our little practice was done we went to the hotel to get ready for dinner. I wasn’t thinking about much on the way to dinner but as we were driving out something just started to eat away at me. It wouldn’t have been a big deal if I knew what was bothering me but I couldn’t figure it out. I was just depressed and I didn’t say much over dinner.
Today was all about trying to pick myself up and get ready to race tomorrow. I was pretty down on myself Saturday and still am about the race but I really want to come back with an intelligent, smart race instead of with a blind, dumb and suicidal adrenaline burst to open the race. After Saturday that’s all I want to do and I feel ready to do exactly that after spending today’s hour and a half run focusing entirely on my form and I made a major tweak to my arm action, relaxing my shoulders to lower them and make my arm action which I’ll try to put into use at tomorrow’s race. We’ll just have to wait and see but after watching race footage from Saturday, I’m not going to go out too fast or give up and stop racing.
Today was long and actually started at exactly midnight this morning. The reason for that was that I forgot to take my sleeping medicine until I felt especially restless at about 1 AM but I didn’t fall asleep until about 2. Then my day just got better when I woke up at 6:30 with 4 ½ hours of sleep, a sore throat and swollen tonsils. I felt, heck still feel like crap but nothing, and I mean nothing, was going to keep me out of the race today. I somehow made it through my morning classes. My economics teacher even made a comment while talking about time management and how I did a poor job of it last night. But I caught a break when I was able to catch an hour of sleep on the bus ride to Richland, one of the Tri-Cities, a group of 3 towns that also include Pasco and Kennewick that have a combined population somewhere between 100 and 120 thousand people. Anyway, on to the race. I felt tired so I knew that I couldn’t go out fast and that actually played out really well because I wasn’t able to go out too fast which has been the bane of my problems this year. I was able to just go out, relax and move up slowly and easily. Mister didn’t want me within 30 meters of the lead at the mile and that’s almost exactly the border I was at, just going steady and easy about 15 meters behind Ivan and 30 meters back of the leader. Just after the mile mark there is this gargantuan downhill that’s a sloping 300 meters of free energy and pain. It just so happens that downhills are one of my strengths and that’s where I made up room on the kid who was in the lead and got stride in stride with Ivan. I sat on his pace for about ¾ of a mile before moving to the lead just short of the 2 mile mark and set the pace from there just putting a meter on Ivan here and there, making him play to my race plan instead of letting him get comfortable by going stride for stride with me. That two-three meter gap I repeatedly put made all the difference and actually let me pick where I truly wanted to move and kick instead of Ivan having any say. And even though it was a JV race the tactics were something that I needed to work on. The time wasn’t much good though because I was still 40 seconds behind Craig, our Varsity’s number seven. That actually makes me mad at myself because I raced to beat Ivan instead of looking ahead to making a move on varsity. I know that I’m not at 100% but I feel like the 40 seconds I need to catch up to Craig is like a wall in my face. I guess I’m gonna need to pull out my climbing gear huh?
| Times and Team Placing | ||
| 1. | Cody VanDeBrake | 15:59 |
| 2. | Derrick Thomas | 16:07 |
| 3. | Bryan Simison | 16:10 |
| 4. | Ryan Chapman | 16:33 |
| 5. | Blake Thomas | 16:40 |
| 6. | Wyatt Marchand | 16:41 |
| 7. | Craig Johnston | 16:53 |
| 8. | Andrew Schmidt | 17:33 |
| 9. | Ivan Alfaro | 17:34 |
| 10. | Andy Romfo | 17:40 |
| 11. | Cody Johnson | 18:02 |
| 12. | Tim Cummings | 18:17 |
Today I should’ve been happy about yesterday but after getting unexplainably angry last night I have a feeling seeping into my consciousness that I just can’t shake. Last Friday’s bout of depression combined with last night’s anger has me scared about my bi-polar. I just couldn’t shake it today, even during our 12 mile run on the Reservation. I felt a little tired but I got through it. On a lighter note, Sunshine made history on the run today. He really had to go number 2 so bad and he had been literally waddling around for about 600 meters when he suddenly just squatted down, pulled his pants and did his business. It was probably one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
Today was quite simply the day to refocus and get geared up for the Sunfair Invitational which we host each year. We drove down to the park and did some stretching and drills. While we were doing that a photographer from our local paper, the Yakima Herald-Republic was at practice to take pictures of Ivan for an article in tomorrow’s sports section. After the stretching we spent almost 30 minutes doing formwork. We had arm actions, uphills walking with over-speed arms and then downhills just working on tucking our chins. Following that we did the course in groups with each group having different points of emphasis. For example the guys Varsity group that I was in worked on striding out of a corner fast while the JV’s did sprints off the top of the terraces. Today just seemed better than yesterday. I was calm, focused, and collected. Just ready to run on Saturday because if I can’t shake this cold I’m gonna need more than the new spikes I got today.
That’s the only way I can describe how I feel and felt about my race today. I spent the last three days building my race up in my mind and it kind of played into how I ran today. Even this morning things just seemed to pile up in my mind. I mean I watched Tim win his race and then Andy his and I just felt so much pressure in my head to win. Even during my warm-up I felt like I had to win. And oh yeah, I was and still am feeling sick and congested. Then I started my race way too fast. Mister was yelling at me to ease up after 150 meters, which I must say is a record for me. That yelling didn’t really sink in though because I was about 5th after 400 meters and going around a corner. About at that point I had a string of snot probably 3 feet long when I saw 3 girls from the nearby Wapato High cheering and I remember thinking, “You got mad game Ogre, mad game.” But aside from that my focus was on my form, which was far and wide the best in the field. I probably should’ve been thinking about being a little more patient though because at the one-mile mark I was third. That would’ve been fine except for the fact that I actually wanted to be another 15-20 meters back and a little more rested. Then I used my form almost too much when I took the lead less then a quarter mile later on this medium size downhill. I was with the number eight kid from Gig Harbor which is the number two team in the state. He was clearly faster then me because he would catch and pass me on every flat portion, only for me to return the favor on each of the numerous hills and downhills. That was until with about 1200 meters left my cold just caught up with me and I couldn’t breathe, and my form fell apart. Heck, the kid from Gig put 25 seconds on me and this guy from Cedarcrest caught me. I was really upset when I got done. H got on me about how I should have stayed back some more and powered by everyone during the latter stages of the race, but I told him that I was sick and my chest was really starting to hurt. H, I never wish more that I had listened to you because I could’ve run the same time or faster than that kid from Gig and I’d be on Varsity if I had. I feel like if I wasn’t sick though I could’ve kept that pace and won my race. And I was pretty generally happy but as the day wore on I went from feeling my race was good, to feeling my race was decent, to feeling my race was bad. I feel kinda bad because my grandparents just want to support me but I’ll never be completely happy with a race I’ve run. It’s just in my genetics. It drives coaches and my grandparents crazy, but I’ll always focus on what I could’ve done better. It makes me what I am as an athlete and who I am as an athlete and a person. Now as far as the team is concerned they did great. Every guy ran a good race and nobody bombed. Everyone but Cody VanDeBrake got in the top 3 in their flights which is the cool scoring format of our meet where every team has their number seven runner race against every other team’s number seven runner and true for the rest of the team 6 though 1. But I have to give Cody his props because he was sick but he hung tough and still ran a good race. The team finished with 25 points and got 3rd to the number one and two teams in the state so I think that we’ll move up in the state rankings. Just in time for religion week too! (catch the sarcasm?)
| Times and Team placing | ||
| 1. | Cody VanDeBrake | 16:15 |
| 2. | Bryan Simison | 16:24 |
| 3. | Ryan Chapman | 16:27 |
| 4. | Derrick Thomas | 16:32 |
| 5. | Blake Thomas | 16:49 |
| 6. | Wyatt Marchand | 16:56 |
| 7. | Andy Romfo | 17:10 |
| 8. | Craig Johnston | 17:13 |
| 9. | Andrew Schmidt | 17:20 |
| 10. | Ivan Alfaro | 17:36 |
That’s all I can say after today’s workouts. I had a morning practice that was almost too good. By that I mean I felt good and went rather fast for the duration of the 50-minute run. But that could’ve bit me in the keester today if I faltered during mile repeats. And considering that we had seven this afternoon that very well could have happened. I started out the first very aware of my morning load but still ran a comfortable 5:50 with Craig sitting on my hip before blowing by me near the finish. He did the same thing during the next mile repeat where we ran a 5:49 mile. After that repeat I took a moment to tell Craig that I can’t carry the pace for both of us or I would be wiped out by the time we hit four repeats. That wasn’t an issue during the next one though because I left him in the dust with a 5:45 mile that put me 4th in order of finish on the team. It was during that repeat that I realized my strategy of leaching off the pace set by Cody, Bryan, and Ryan until I couldn’t anymore and carried as good of a pace as I could through the finish. I used that strategy for the next two mile repeats to run back to back 5:40’s. After the fifth one was finished Bryan yelled at me because he thought that the way I was running was idiotic and wrong. I thought that it was kinda rude but he was proven right to a degree when my legs died a little on the next mile repeat when I ran 5:47. The last.
That pretty well sums up how I feel tonight. For the second straight night I haven’t been able to eat for at least 90 minutes after practice ended. That probably can be attributed in large part to how hard I ran morning practice for the second day in a row. Then tonight we had the mother of all workouts that we do, the Ridge. It’s this trail that is two miles of good uphill running that is precluded by a fifteen minute run and we had another fifteen minutes out on top of these series of hills before making the same journey back. It doesn’t sound like much but it kills and today I was nearly ko’ed less then 600 meters into the uphill section. I have no idea what it was; I just didn’t have it today. I don’t know if I destroyed my legs yesterday or that I’ve been going too hard in both morning workouts this week. That doesn’t matter though. All that matters is that somehow I managed to eventually catch up to the guys and finish the workout and in the end that’s all that matters right now; just getting in, doing work, and finishing workouts even if it destroys me.
Tonight I feel like the animal in a cage again. It’s probably more my own doing than anyone else’s though. I’m putting so much pressure on myself to catch up to everyone else and make something more of my senior season than it is now because I’m not going to go down the way Zach did last spring. I can do more than I am now and I’m doing it regardless of what it costs. I need to get better. I need to reach at least the scoring squad. And that’s just if I want a chance at any good schools for scholarship. I know that I could just walk on at a school but then I will have failed at what was a large part of the reason I left my old life to chase this crazy dream that has become me. That’s why I’ve been going so hard in morning practice and today it cost me during my afternoon workout. We had four sets of fifteen-minute short doglegs, which is about a 250 meter long section of hill that we did probably forty-plus reps of the stretch and I thought I was doing okay until after I finished the third set. I thought I would because I got an inhaler from a doctor I went to see this morning who diagnosed me with stress induced asthma. It seemed to be helping until after the third set when I got light-headed and my vision went blurry. I tried to pull it together and run the last set but it was just ragged. But the thing that happened during that set that defined my mood is when Bryan yelled “Morning practice champion!” at me. It frustrated me and really got under my skin because all I’ve done for the last month is bust my ass and do all I can to get good. But every time I think I’ve made any deal of progress, this wall I’m climbing just seems to get taller and it’s getting to me. I’m starting to feel like I’m just turning my legs in water. And whenever someone says something to detract from what I’m trying so hard to do, it feels like they’re shaking my cage and I feel like lashing out but I can’t. And that cage is the one of my anger and frustration. So a fair warning and plea to you guys, please don’t rattle my cage.
I wrote this as a blog last night on myspace about Wendy:
Today something hit me really hard. There is this girl who I thought I didn't have feelings for anymore just seemed to climb back into my head and ate at me more and more. It just started when she talked about not having a HC date and I found myself kinda wishing I had aked her instead of Evelyn. Then while I was at the dance and I saw Blake & Ann, and Derrick & Emily and the idea ate away at me a little more and now I can't get her out of my head. I mean I don't know what levels we connect on but I just wish that later on this year at least for one day or night she would let down her guard so that we could see what is there. She seems naive to my life but maybe she could come to understand and maybe there could be a connection but I don't really know and all I do know is that I need that wall of her’s to go down for a little while to find out.
Today was easily one of the most frustrating days I’ve had while still being able to run. We had four sets of five 400-meter dashes with 30 seconds rest between each 400 repeat and five minutes of rest between each set. Mister said that the first set was to be at mile pace which for me is about 69 to 70 seconds which translates to about a 4:35 to a 4:40 mile. Then I started and I was running 67’s and 68’s throughout the first set. It was hard, obviously, but it wasn't that hard. Then I started the second set and through three I was running 68’s and 69’s but then it happened on the fourth repeat. My vision started to go blurry and my head started to pound and I ran a sluggish 72. The next repeat was even worse. My head was pounding and during the last 1500 meters my eyes were dropping and I felt like I was gonna drop. When I got done H told me to stop feeling sorry for myself and Mister yelled at me but there wasn’t anything I could do. What is going to happen if I just pass out and drop during one of these workouts? Is that going to happen before they take me seriously? Oh well, right now I need to go get ready for Homecoming with Evelyn but something kinda hit me right after practice. Wendy, one of the girls on the team who I pursued for like two years, complained about how she didn’t have a homecoming date. That got me to thinking about how if I didn’t ask Evelyn, Wendy would’ve been the girl that I asked but the only thing is that I don’t know if we could like connect on any level because of how drastically differently our lives have been shaped. I mean she’s had the protected world with married parents and I’ve come from a broken family that I ran away from and because of that I wear my feelings on my sleeves. Oh I swear girls are a mystery that I will never, as long as I live understand.
Wow these past few days have me in an emotional roller coaster ride. On Monday I tried to go without my inhaler for mile repeats but after the first I felt my head pounding and it just got worse as I did the next two. A feeling of frustration and despair set over me and I sat down and took my spikes off and put my flats back on. Cody and Mister both got on my back but it didn’t faze me. I know that to most of you who read this having a bad workout is no big deal. But for me, it’s different. I’m playing catch-up in the middle of a mediocre senior season where I was supposed to be good and running number two or three, yet here I am battling kids I could’ve run circles around last spring for the last Varsity spot. Add to that that I’m battling what my dad told me every time I go to run, “you’ll never be much better anyway”. Combine in the ultimatum that I feel that I have to get a scholarship or a lot of what I’ve gone through in the last 14 months will have been for selfishness. Because when I left, part of it was because of running and how big it is in my life plus the fact that I wanted/still want to get a scholarship in it. Now I feel like if I don’t do good in every practice I’m not closing on those goals.
That’s how I feel now but it wasn’t how I felt right after my race. I started my warm-up feeling loose, but my veins were pumping with adrenaline. I had Mister stretch me out and he commented on how I was as loose as he has ever seen me. After I had that “pleasure” I did my warm up separate from the rest of the JV squad so that I could focus in on what I needed as far as stretching and drills while listening to Yellowcard’s “Way Away” to get me pumped. I liked doing my warm-up that way better than as a team because I was able to zone out. It seemed to help even as early as doing strides because for once I was just calm on the outside even as my heart was pumping like crazy with adrenaline. Mister did something special for all the seniors before their races giving all us an introduction in front of all the spectators at the starting line which was kinda cool because it was to be my last Cross Country race as a high schooler in Yakima. Some Walla Walla kids did some exaggerated hamming up for the crowd but I wasn’t feeling that. I just did a simple jog out and wave before settling into my starting stance. Price gave the instructions and I toed the line. Then we had that second between “Runners set!” and the gun. I thought my heart was going to burst but the only reason I bring up that moment is because that’s the best part of race day because everything leads up to that moment and you have this adrenaline rush and everything is running through your head then suddenly the gun goes off and it’s like a light goes off in your head and you’re just in the moment. And I was in the moment at the start of the race because after some idiot runner from Davis took the lead 100 meters into the race, me and Craig (Yes computer, I know it’s improper grammar but so what?) seized the lead and were controlling the race by the time we hit 300 meters. We both knew that we needed a relaxed pace early on and probably shouldn’t be leading so early in the race but the rest of the field was practically taking a Sunday jog. We came through the mile mark together in the lead and it was kinda weird because we had the same game plan early on and we both knew that the if one of us took out the pace we’d pay for it later. Apparently a kid from Kamiakan mistook this relaxed pace for weakness as he caught up to us and tried to talk us up about how the race was fun and how he was good. Craig did me the honor of promptly picking up the pace and shutting the little smart aleck up. Showing just how smart he was the “duemass” tried to stick with Craig while I just chilled on his coattails about 5 meters back knowing that with Craig a small gap wasn’t something to break cadence over. My patience was rewarded when the kid fell back off the pace and I caught back up to Craig, all this in about 400 meters. From there it was simply my strategy versus Craig’s and it was a battle of two pretty simple ones too, with me trying to outpace Craig and dominate the hills while he tried to hang on and use his speed on the downhills. Craig’s plan won out as he held tight to my every move and when we were side by side with 500 meters to go and pretty much all downhill the rest of the way I knew that more than likely, I was toast. I mean I didn’t give up and hung on for 300 meters but in the last 200 it was all Craig and when I crossed the finish line I was crushed, disappointed, but above all else frustrated. I just blew my best shot at making Varsity and I didn’t even try to hide my anger, which was probably a bad thing. Throwing spikes and cussing in a manor that would make a sailor blush doesn’t make very good impressions on people. Ivan made the biggest mistake of catching my ire when he mocked my punching the ground and I pushed him onto his side while he was sitting and glared him down. After that I went home for my camera and when I came back I got a dose of what I had done on the course that shocked me a bit. I had run 16:50, which is faster than Wyatt had run at Sunfair and I was in position for a highly improbable scenario: If my time beat Timmy’s, Gherman’s and Wyatt’s I would be in position to jump up since Derrick sat out. Then I watched the Varsity race trying not to think about it as I had to get some photographs for my photography class but as soon as the race was done I couldn’t help myself and ran over to the times and saw that Wyatt had run 16:54 so now I just hope that Mister goes strictly by times but we’ll have to wait and see.
| Times and team placing: | |||
| 1. | Cody Van De Brake | 16:06 | (varsity) |
| 2. | Bryan Simison | 16:23 | (varsity) |
| 3. | Ryan Chapman | 16:36 | (varsity) |
| 4. | Craig Johnston | 16:47 | (jv) |
| 5. | Blake Thomas | 16:49 | (varsity) |
| 6. | Andrew Schmidt | 16:50 | (jv) |
| 7. | Wyatt Marchand | 16:54 | (varsity) |
| 8. | Andy Romfo | 16:58 | (jv) |
| 9. | Tim Cummings | 17:20 | (varsity) |
| 10. | Cody Johnson | 17:23 | (jv) |
| 11. | Ivan Alfaro | 17:25 |
Today’s workout called for a 12 mile run which to most teams would be crazy, but we’re used to it. It wasn’t quite as hard as it seems because we started out at an easy pace and were just going along easy when Mister pulled up to us in his truck at about the 2 mile mark for a good old fashioned a** chewing. He called out the team about not running very competitively or well yesterday. Kamiakin is ranked 10th in the 3A division and we would have barely beaten them 27 to 29 if the meet had been scored. Then he called out the lack of leadership on the team because Craig was back running just a little ways in front of the girls. That was his last shot at us before we began running again and fueled by Mister’s challenge, the pace was hard and nobody really said a word until we got to the turnaround point where Mister was waiting with water. We had a brief meet analysis before cruising back in groups with Derrick, Ryan and me feeling good and running in front followed by Cody, Andy and Bryan about 2 minutes back and the rest of the team about another 1000 meters behind them. After practice was over something hit me as I was talking with Evelyn. I think I’m starting to feel a little bit of a connection with her. It’s kinda weird because I went to homecoming with her because she was just fun and easy to talk too plus there wasn’t any tension of feelings but now are starting to creep into the friendship or at least on my end. This is awkward because I watch a girl that I wanted for a long time and tend to want something there in Wendy but then a friend just pops up and grabs something. Man I’m always confused when it comes to girls and this is just adding to it.
Suicide! That’s what you call it and that’s exactly what we had today. I wasn’t exactly excited because it’s been 2 weeks since I’ve had a good anaerobic or speed workout. But I knew after talking with Mister yesterday afternoon that this could play a huge part in his decision so I knew that today was going to need to be a good day of practice or I can kiss my varsity chance good-bye. Anyway today we got to practice and found out that we had five sets of 400 meter repeats with 30 second rests on the race pace sets and 40 seconds of rest during the sets that were sub/faster than race pace. I sta