Coach’s Blog

Yes the coverage stunk for the 2008 Olympics.  I was expecting so much more.  After watching every heat of every race at the Olympic Trials, I was horribly let down by the NBC coverage for the Olympics. It looked so promising when we found out every single detail of Michael Phelps’ life.  I assumed that we would be getting the same coverage for Track & Field.  Oh, how could I be so naive.

But still, I don’t know how ‘normal’ people do it.  How do they expect you to go from experiencing something as amazing and emotional as the OLYMPICS to simply experiencing a normal day to day life?  Lucky for me, I lead anything but a normal existence.  On some level, I experience the Olympics every year.  The current crop of seniors will always help me satisfy my “Olympic” fix.   They’re people who are in their final season of a four year cumulation - its now or never.  Seniors are guaranteed to realize that college is finite.  The end (and the subsequent real world) is upon them.  This phase of their athletic career coming to a close and they will do anything and everything to make this year the best one ever.  

But they need help.  They can’t do it alone.  They need teammates to help them accomplish all their goals, both personal and team.  It’s amazing how so little of our individual sport is actually individual. Historically, those XC and Track & Field programs that have boasted the best team performances have been those whose underclassmen have realized the finality of each season well before their senior year.  

You may be a freshmen and have 12 seasons of competing in front of you, but this is the ONLY shot for the 2008-2009 teams.  Next year will be your only sophomore year and so on.  Right about now, many freshmen and sophomores are looking at me cross-eyed.  Somehow their denial is so strong they have managed to convince themselves that college will last forever.  They have no sense of an end or urgency to make it something special.  Coaches and seniors can talk about all this until they’re blue in the face, but the fact of the matter is, some people will never realize the impermanent nature of their college years until it hits them in the face like a 2×4.  And that is why there are some programs that continue to succeed while others struggle.  Developing a tradition where freshmen and sophomores are invested in the ‘current’ success of the team (and their personal success) is a difficult undertaking.  

Ultimately, I see developing the team focus as simply building good teammates.  A little bit of empathy goes a long way.  It is rare that I’ll be able to get a freshmen realizing “that they only get one chance at their freshmen year…make it count.”  However, you can accomplish the same outcome by having them ‘do it for the seniors.’  They may not yet see how their apathy is negatively affecting their performance because, to them, they have forever to catch up on training.  However, loyalty is a powerful emotion and most first-years would run through a brick wall if their seniors asked them to. Playing the Honor Card early in an athletes career can help keep the training up until their mind catches up and realizes that they really want/need to be doing all this.     

I have to believe that its an innate problem and, therefore, don’t have any judgement against any freshmen for their outlook.  Very few 18-30 year-olds ever think about saving for retirement.  Why?  Because it is a lifetime away.  Something to be thought about when they actually grow up…definitely not now.  Yet every finance book will tell you that someone who saves $10 a month starting at 18 will always be wealthier than his counterpart that saves $100 a month starting at 30.  If you put the work in early, then you won’t have to play catch up later.  

I learned this lesson the hard way.  Yes, I too succumbed to the same perils of the freshmen year - the invulnerability of being 18.  Personally, I didn’t see the inside of the weight room until my junior year of college and as a 110Her that could be a bit detrimental.  I thought I was good enough without it, I was an immature, arrogant 18-year-old.  Fast forward two years and from my junior year on, I did everything in my power to ensure that I was the best athlete I could be.  I improved at a rate that I couldn’t fathom and eventually I only had one person left to beat, Chris Cobbs.  Yes, I still remember his name.  I only raced him twice in my life - Indoor Nationals ‘01 and Outdoor Nationals ‘01.  We never spoke, but I have the utmost respect for the man.

To this day, I feel that I had the abilities to be beside him at both championships; however, he was always a couple clicks in front of me.  And it was a direct result of my 1st two years in college.  I put myself in a hole that could not be overcome.  I just needed one more year of training to be right with him or ahead of him.  Regrettably, I had that year and I let it slip past.  I had the opportunity to train for a race against Chris Cobbs three years before I even knew he existed.  I failed to maximize my freshmen and sophomore years and I have the runner-up trophy to prove it.  It’s a good reminder to me to always maximize the present, to not put off living my life.  

If you have a goal…go get it…now…don’t wait.

It’s called kinesiotaping.  It’s been around for ages, but it seems to have just found its way into mainstream professional sports.  If you’ve been watching the Olympics, then you’ve probably seen a number kinesiotaped athletes.  It has a number of uses that range from helping circulation and lymph flow to regulating body temperature.  Ultimately, most athletes use it to prevent overuse or over-contraction of muscles as well as provide increased joint stability.  

2x Gold medalist Kerry Walsh with kinesiotaped shoulder.

It is designed to work ‘with’ the muscles and joints where as the typical athletic taping provides a stiff, rigid support to joints.  Studies have shown that the stability provided by traditional ankle taping is negligible after only 5+ minutes of use.  Odd, that doesn’t stop every football team in America from taping every single ankle on the team before every practice.  On the other hand, kinesiotaping provides no limit to ROM; however, there is no research available to either support or negate the proponents of this technique.     

It’s amazing how something that has been around for 25+ years can still be so underutilized and unresearched.  It’s more sad than anything else.  I can’t help but feel that kinesiotaping is simply another revolution by Eastern medicine that has been steadily ignored by stubborn Western practitioners. I find that odd in this case because kinesiotaping is far less ‘touchy-feely’ than massage and muscular therapy and it has no where near the spiritual foundation of acupuncture.  Needless to say, I’ve had countless athletes find great success in both of these domains when Western medicine alone failed them.

Sadly, kinesiotaping is not a realistic option for the average college athlete. So don’t go running off to your AT demanding the latest taping revolutions. Not only does it require a certification course, but the tape itself sells for about $15 per roll.  The tape has a higher tensile strength than traditional athletic tape, but that is a bit pricey for even the wealthiest of athletic departments.  Especially when it’s effects are temporary at best with highly active athletes.  You’ll notice that Kerry Walsh was rarely able to finish an entire match with her taping still in place.  It is better suited for throwers or jumpers who only need to be in action for one big effort.  

All that being said, as a senior in college, my athletic trainer put together a crude version of kinesiotaping to help alleviate a nagging knee injury.  At the time we called it ‘medical duct tape,’ but it did the trick.  Results of kinesiotaping are mixed (like everything involving sports and humans).  Some people swear by it while others have tried it with no benefit.  

Regardless, it isn’t some sort of voodoo that has athletes clutching at straws.  It’s principles are rooted in anatomy, kinesiology, and physiology.  Simply looking at it logically with an open mind, one has to say that it has potential.  I wonder if the media coverage of the Beijing Games will be enough to bring it all the way into America’s medical repertoire?

No I don’t mean the bible.  I mean Purdy’s computerized estimations for what one PR should translate to in other events. It was first published back in 1996 and I’ve seen many coaches use it extensively.  If coaching is a marriage between science and art then this book is heavily weighted to the science side.  I rarely use this book, but have consulted it to reconfirm some splits and rest intervals.  I’ve also used it to help athletes fight through a plateau.  Some athletes find confidence in the ’science’ of the book and will attack a race with more vigor if the book says that they can run a specific time.  

All in all, It is one of the most enjoyable books to waste some time looking at.  It gives us plenty to debate about as we try to decide what an All American 200m runner could run in the marathon.  It is always fun to witness a 10k runner going toe to toe with a 400m man deciding whose PR’s are tougher.  

Now that Usain has put together an incredible double in Beijing, we can start wasting some time and let the debates begin.  Could he break MJ’s 400m WR if he wanted to?  I can’t even begin to express how many times I’ve heard cross country runners talking about what Jeremy Wariner or MJ should be able to run in the 800m.  This is the same conversation.  The ‘book’ doesn’t even go to a 19.30.  Continuing out the numbers, a 19.30 should be approximately 1800 points.  That would put Usain at a 43.91 in the 400m and a 1:41.89 in the 800m. Odd that he’s closer to the 800m WR than he is the 400m WR.  Oh, he should also be able to run a 12:51 in the 5k.  Here’s what MJ himself had to say about Bolts potential of setting a new 400m WR.  

Could he do it? 12:51 in the 5k?

I should say that I am not among those people who believe that Bolt would have run a lot faster if he ‘ran’ through the line in the 100m finals.  Yes, he would have gone faster, but I have heard people throwing around sub9.6 times and that is just silly.  Granted, I’m working with my naked eye, but I never saw Bolt’s hips turn away from the finish line.  He has one of the most efficient strides I have ever seen.  For all you young sprinters out there, watch any of his 200m prelim races.  He’s juxtaposed next to Crawford almost every time.  When Crawford ‘lets up’ he decelerates like crazy.  When Bolt ‘lets up’ his legs cycle through like he’s peddling a bike in high gear.  He doesn’t decelerate much.  The quick tap, tap, tap of his top speed is impressive.

I would love to see some film of Guy Drut (1970’s HHer, pronounce Gee Drew) or Dayron Robles running the open 100m or 200m.  They obviously don’t have Bolt’s top end speed, but strides that are as efficient as Usain’s are usually reserved for the most technically savvy hurdlers.  

I believe that, at best, the 100m WR would be a 9.64 or 9.65.  Not to say that he couldn’t possibly run faster in future years, but not in that race.  I really want to see the breakdown for that 100m final.  Show me his speed in 5m and 10m increments.  Show me that he actually decelerated over the final 10m and I’ll start to talk about some faster WR’s.  It doesn’t look like he starts to slow up until the final 2m.

On a completely unrelated topic, my heart goes out to Lolo Jones.  As a hurdler myself, I can’t think of anything worse than what happened to her.  Her ability to save that race and finish was very impressive, but may have made the experience even worse.  There is something about hitting a hurdle and falling that makes you feel like there was not much you could have done.  But to save yourself and then see the field run by you like that; I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.  So to see it happen to someone whom I admire greatly is nothing short of a tragedy.

"Make them think you're weak when you're strong."

Back in the States.  About 24 hours now.  I am almost at a loss for what to write about.  So many little stories, but none that seem totally blog-worthy.  There were a few lessons learned for the first time while others were simply reaffirmed.  A few of the big ones were…

1) Do not mess with a Jumbo.  They may not look as hardcore as you think, but it will mess you up.  No one who knows their stuff messes with a Jumbo. (not from personal experience of course)  

2) Don’t blame sprinters…it’s genetic.  (realized after watching three cheetah brothers lounge in the shade without a care in the world)

3) Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to walk away from it.  I’ve done some of my best workout writing and technique problem solving out of the office this summer in Alaska and Kenya.  

In order to run that fast you have to live the rest of your life a bit slower. It averages the whole thing out.

Ultimately, one of the strangest feelings happened after I returned and landed in JFK yesterday.  It was great to be back in States.  More so, it was great to be home.  Living out of my pack all summer is great, but at heart, I am truly a home-body who loves a good routine.  I started missing the track and I can’t wait to get my hands on the XC course next week, but I digress.  

So we landed in JFK with one final leg left to travel up to Boston.  As I’m walking through the terminal, what would be the first thing that I see, but none other than Manny Ramirez loping out of the dugout in a Dodger uniform.  

First thought: Oh lord, we flew through a rip in the space/time continuum and landed in a parallel universe.  I’m now in the Bizarro United States.  Up is down. Left is right.  I bet the Tampa Rays are even in first place in the AL East and Brett Favre is on the Jets.   

Second thought: Wait a second, Manny is still “loping: out of the dugout with his uniform unbuttoned.  This can’t be a bizarro universe otherwise Manny would already be standing in left field with a crew cut.  We’re all safe.  What? The Rays are in 1st place and Favre is a Jet.  Well, that’s not bad.  

Final thought: I wonder what school I would be coaching at in the bizarro world?  Or would I even be a coach?  It would have really stunk to a job that I would have had to shave every morning for.  See some of you in the next few days.  Even more of you at the Alumni Run.  To the rest of you…I’ll see you when I see you.

Well, the backpack didn’t rest too long in the corner this time around.  Kenya ‘08 kicks off tomorrow morning at 10:00AM. Now it’s time to go for the lions and tigers portion of lions, tigers, and bears.  The Kenya pack is a paltry 45lbs.  Feels quaint after the Alaska pack.  The excitement will start with a 1 hour flight to JFK in NY.  Follow that up with a 7 hour flight to Heathrow and a 8.5 hour flight to Nairobi.  Should be an exciting way to spend a day.

I don’t know if Kenya will be able to meet the same level of views that Alaska gave me, but it has some elements that Alaska did not.  First off, I’ll be seeing my fiance for the first time all summer.  She has finally finished her research and we will be able to enjoy the Kenya experience for the next 2 weeks.  

Secondly, the Great Migration will be driving its way right through Kenya while we’re there. Approximately 1.5 million wildebeest and 300,000 zebra and other antelopes gather up their young and trek from Tanzania into northern Kenya.  How amazing is that?  1.5 million wildebeest.  I don’t even know if I can imagine that.  

Basically it is the equivalent of every single resident of Philadelphia deciding to pick up and walk to Montreal at the same time.  Can you imagine sitting on a rooftop in Albany, NY and witnessing all of Philadelphia walking by on their way north?

See you all in a couple weeks.  Hopefully Philly will still be populated when I return.

Grizzly that decided to walk past us on Day 2.

You know in the movies, when the hero (possibly down on his luck) is walking through the casino and looks down to see a coin on the ground.  He picks it up and decides to use it in the slot machine he’s standing next to…BAM…Jackpot.  I now know exactly how that guy feels although I wasn’t really down on my luck.  

This week we couldn’t have messed this trip up if we tried.  It felt like there was someone guiding everything for us.  Grizzlies, caribou, moose, dall sheep - they all found their way across our path and in grand fashion. Mt. McKinley, which is typically covered by clouds for 27 days each month, decided to come out on the one day that we headed out to Wonder Lake.  It rained every single day that we were there and it is currently the coldest summer in recorded Alaska history.  Still it was the best backpacking trip of my young life.  

"This should be a good place to set up camp"

I won’t be able to do the trip justice by trying to talk about it in words, but I hope that the pictures that we took will be able to help.  First, it may help to understand exactly what Denali is like.  

It is 20% bigger than Massachusetts with one road running east to west through it.  They divide it up into smaller back country units that are larger than most counties.  Then they limit the amount of occupants to each unit - typically four to six people.  

Just imagine that you have your own county of some of the most beautiful and unaltered land available.  A place where the wildlife is more curious of humans than they are afraid or aggressive.  Unlike Yellowstone, where wildlife has learned that humans are almost always carrying food with them, the animals of Denali see their human counterparts as no more than another part of the wilderness.   

Good place to stop for lunch.

It definitely feels good to be back in Medford though.  I was probably the only person in all of Denali who packed a pole vaulting book to read in the down time. Ten hour plane rides make excellent times for workout planning.  

On that note, I couldn’t be more excited for the upcoming XC and track seasons.  The combination of getting away on vacation with the workout planning has put us in a great place to kick off another campaign.  

Every year we fight to make a small step forward.  If we do that every year then all our small steps make up some big leaps. It always seems like it may be difficult to build on the previous year’s great seasons, but it should be exciting to see how it all plays out.

2008 led the team to an XC nationals berth, indoor DIII title, NESCAC runner-up as well as a landslide of PR’s and school records.  The guys stepped up at every big meet last year and competed with an absence of fear that we always strive for.  Ultimately, that is the only thing that we can control.  We could bring the same great competitiveness and, in the end, the points may not shake out the same.  But then, that’s why we still have to run the meets every Saturday.  And why I’ll never stop loving this job.  It never shakes out like we think it will.

Thank you to Chris Kantos ‘08 and Peter Goransson ‘07 for all the blog help.  I definitely understood computers so much better about 6 years ago.  It is amazing how fast you can start to feel old and out-dated when it comes to computers.  I imagine that this site could make drastic changes from time to time as it fights to find it’s way back to equilibrium and functionality.  It has already seen 4 modifications in it’s short life so far.  Hopefully - coachblog4.0 meets your standards in full.  

With so much to happen in the next 4 weeks I apologize if posts are sporadic at best.  After Monday, I will be completely incommunicado for my entire trip to Alaska.  No cell phones, no emails, no TV, no internet…a little slice of heaven.  

To the team: Please keep up with your logging.  I look forward to catching up when I return.  You’ve put in a great summer so far and I can’t wait to read about all that you’ve done.  Remember, every day you can either take a step forward, backward, or stand still.  I’ll be out for one week.  Hopefully, you’ll all be seven steps closer to your goals.   

To the alumni: Keep up the running or start to get back in shape.  We have about 6 weeks until Alumni Run 2008. Remember - you have to earn your burgers and dogs with either a great 5k or a sizable donation to the team.    

To prospective future Jumbos: I apologize for my absence from the office…but not too much.  It is hard to feel too sorry about a hiking trip in Alaska and a relaxing trip to Kenya.  That being said, since becoming a coach, I’ve been working to reestablish the balance between running and life that I had as an athlete. Just as with training, sometimes you need to step away in order to come back with a even stronger performance. We’ll have plenty of time to catch up on my return.  

To all my other readers who don’t fit into these categories: Hello Marion.  Hello Mrs. Engelking.  That’s probably it.

Yesterday was a nice step in the right direction for the sport of track and field.  For the first time, the accountability for keeping our sport clean moved beyond the athlete’s level.  The life ban placed on Coach Trevor Graham is a great move towards reestablishing some sort of trust between fan and sport.  Sadly it will take much more than this to develop that trust into any sort of worthwhile relationship.

Among those athletes that have fallen under Coach Graham’s tutelage are Tim Montgomery (banned, in jail), Marion Jones (banned, in jail), CJ Hunter (frequent BALCO shopper), Justin Gatlin (banned), Shawn Crawford (2008 Olympian, huh?), and others.  Let’s stop and think about that for a second - COACH?!?!  

How much skill does it take as a coach to juice up your athletes?  Do you really feel accomplished when they PR or win races?  What did you do?  Nothing.  I don’t have anything against businessmen, but this could be what happens when you hire a coach who’s degree is in business management.  I don’t even think about telling people how to run their businesses and my consultant friends don’t ever try to tell me what workouts we should run.  When you get sick, you go to a doctor.  When your car breaks down, you go to a mechanic.  When you die, you go to a mortician.  When you want to run a PR, you go to a coach, not a businessman.   

Sure they still ran some workouts (probably some really amazing workouts), but how can he or they look at themselves in the mirror?  This may sound weird, but I’m just too selfish to even fathom using or condoning the use of PEDs.  Being able to look at myself in the mirror is worth far more than any medal or WR could ever give me.  I have to simply hope that the guilt of using PEDs is simply eating up every cheater to the point of insanity.    

I was definitely one of the people who felt that the relay teammates on all of Marion Jones’ medalling teams deserved to have their golds repossessed.  It is critical that teammates and coaches be forced to take some accountability for monitoring each other.  Sure, you may have been clean, but your relay team, the entrant, wasn’t.  

How horrible is it that I can’t sit back and simply enjoy the amazing performances of Dara Torres at this year’s swimming trials.  A 41-year-old sets the world record and qualifies for yet another Olympic team.  She is truly one of the best ever…if she’s clean.  I want to believe she did it clean more than anything.  I really do.  

On one hand she’s given birth, taken six years off, had knee and shoulder surgery (less than a year ago), and she’s 41.  On the other hand, she’s volunteered for the most strenuous testing ever undergone by USADA and the IOC.  I feel so torn.

I feel myself believing again.  But you better not hurt us again, Dara.  Please, I don’t know if we could take it again.  We’ve been hurt so many times.  We’ve had our heart stomped on and our faith destroyed time and time again.  It’s getting harder each time to let you in.   

Well, it seems like I am the only person on the planet that is hesitating at this trip.  Everyone else seems to be on the same page.  I guess that sometimes an idea can seem too good to be true.  That must have been it.  I couldn’t actually come up with a reason not to go and that was throwing up a red flag.  I thought I must have been missing something.  Thanks especially to Marion for basically ordering me to go.  (even after her first google search for info on Denali resulted in the story of two girls getting lost in the park for 4 days)

My walks in the Fells with Luka have been a bit tougher recently as I’ve added a 35lb pack to the morning romp.  Maybe in the long run it will help Luka.  He no longer assumes that I’m leaving him when I pack up my backpack - now he thinks he’s getting a 2 hour walk.      

Every one of you is all too right.  It just seems like too great of an opportunity to turn down.  I won’t lie.  I still have a little nervousness around my return trip leading directly into a flight to Kenya.  I believe it was about a month ago that I was talking about how much 16 hours on a plane was going to be miserable.  I’m the idiot who decided to tack another 10 hours onto that.  I guess I’ll have fun sleeping in airports in Anchoridge, Minneapolis, Boston, New York, London, Nairobi, and Lamu.  I feel like I’m living in an Indiana Jones movie and the red line bouncing around the screen is me.  

“First our intrepid hero must forage for the ancient artifact at the base of Mt McKinley.  Then he has to save the imprisoned damsel in Kenya.  Following that he returns to historic Medford to battle for the ever-elusive berth to Nationals.”

Enter Hero (stage left):

Now that I think about it - I guess I’m the one tagging along on my friend’s trip.  He’s probably the hero.  I’m probably…Marcus Brody.  Damn. 

Elsa: It’s perfectly obvious where the pages are. He’s given them to Marcus Brody. 
Professor Henry Jones: Marcus? You didn’t drag poor Marcus along did you? He’s not up to the challenge. 
Walter Donovan: He sticks out like a sore thumb. We’ll find him. 
Indiana Jones: The hell you will. He’s got a two day head start on you, which is more than he needs. Brody’s got friends in every town and village from here to the Sudan, he speaks a dozen languages, knows every local custom, he’ll blend in, disappear, you’ll never see him again. With any luck, he’s got the grail already. 
[Cut to middle of fair in the Middle East, Marcus Brody wearing bright suit and white hat, sticking out like sore thumb] 
Marcus Brody: Uhhh, does anyone here speak English? 

So I spoke with a really close friend from college last night.  To make a long story short, he’s leaving for a hiking trip in Alaska in a week.  

Should I go?  

It’s an interesting question with a few different angles.  In isolation, I can’t think of a better way of spending a week than hiking out into the Alaskan wilderness with nothing but a compass and a topo map.  No trails, no camp sites, just you, your pack, and your faith that the bears won’t eat you.  That being said, am I being selfish?  I’ve had a nice 10 day trip to the Olympic Trials…already a great summer.  I’m leaving in August for a couple weeks in Kenya during the Great Migration…one of the better summers of my life.  Add in a week long hiking trip in Alaska…best ever?  Is it almost too much?  

I just can’t escape two of my favorite things to ramble about in team meetings - balance and regrets.  I harp on ‘balance of life’ so much, but I am not always the best role model for leading a balanced life.  I live and breathe XC/Track for most of the year which makes me seem like a rather large hypocrite when I talk about needing more than running in your life.  Maybe this is one way to balance out my life. 

And then we have regrets - my absolute favorite subject.  Life is about limiting regrets.  It is the regrets that keep us up at night.  I feel that people more often regret things that they haven’t done.  More so than mistakes they’ve actually made.  I don’t want this to be a regret that haunts me for the rest of my life.  I don’t know if I will ever have the opportunity to just pick up shop and fly to Alaska on a whim.  There aren’t many people that ever have that chance.  For me to think it will present itself twice is a bit naive.

I just don’t know.  It seems too good to be true.  There has to be a catch to all this.  I would like nothing more than simply packing up and heading to Alaska, but I can’t get past this odd feeling in my gut.  Something has me second guessing the decision.  Am I getting old?  Am I losing my spontaneity?  Or am I just hungry?  

Any thoughts?  

But before you weigh in, just do a google image search for ‘denali national park’  then let me know what you think.