More Stamps for the Passport

It’s been a bit since my last blog post and there are so many things to tell. Training has gone exceptionally well since my MRI. The news that I was just suffering from a bone bruise was one of the greatest reliefs. Since then I’ve had few issues transitioning back into 100 mile weeks and workouts. Having running back in my life after four months of injury has felt like a loved one coming back from the dead. I feel reborn. That’s not to say I haven’t had any obstacles in the past few weeks. The first was when a little spider bit my foot and it swelled up so much that I could barely fit my foot in the shoe. After a prescription for antibiotics and two days off the swelling disappeared but I had an allergic reaction to the antibiotic and I had a vicious rash all over my body and had to avoid the sun and train on a treadmill. Readers, be careful with antibiotics. I’ll never touch clindamycin again in my life. I seriously looked like a mutant from X-Men who wandered off Professor X’s Xavier Institute and roamed the streets looking for pity from humans.

I write to you now from beautiful downtown Colorado Springs. I moved here two weeks ago and have been living at the US Olympic Training Center here in the Springs. I was approved for housing at the USOTC with my top ten ranking in the 10,000 meters from 2010. My journey here has been an interesting one. One of my guilty pleasures is reading the letsrun.com message boards and I just can’t get enough of the track gossip. One day in May I went on to the boards and read a thread titled “Renato Canova to work with Americans.” I believe it’s not a stretch to say Canova is a modern day Arthur Lydiard. Canova has coached athletes in Europe and Africa the past few decades and has had unparalleled success. Moses Mosop, Silas Kiplagat, Saif Saaeed Shaheen, and Wilson Kiprop are just a few of the athletes coached by Canova who are among the world’s best distance runners. At first glance of the letsrun thread I thought surely someone was trolling. But to my astonishment there was a link to americandistanceproject.com where I was guided to the contact information of Coach Scott Simmons who is working with Canova in the coaching process for the American athletes as well as providing a tremendous job in facilitating the whole process. After a few email exchanges with Simmons I was on a flight to Colorado where I met Canova, Simmons and the other athletes highly motivated to work with two great coaches. After discussing training philosophy, critiquing my biomechanics and hearing Canova’s life story I was completely on board. Before I met Canova I didn’t picture myself running 26.2 miles until 2013 or 2014 but hearing his confidence he had in me if I’m guided by his training I nodded my head in agreement that I’ll be on the starting line in Houston for the 2012 Olympic Trials Marathon with my heart and mind set on running another marathon through the streets of London next summer. My training has already developed tremendously under Canova’s principles with a focus on quality while still recording high volume training. A strong example of this could be the progression of pace during a long run. In preparation for the trials I’m travelling to Iten, Kenya to give my best effort in hanging on in training with some of Canova’s athletes. I cannot express how excited I am to be getting my ass kicked daily running through the Rift Valley. I imagine it will be like my friend Sam Evans getting whooped by me in Madden but still learning from a Madden legend. I’ll return from Kenya sixteen days before the trials allowing plenty of time for the jet lag to fade.

Two days after the trials I’ll be boarding a plane headed to Buenos Aires. My little sister is currently studying abroad for her junior year in Santiago, Chile. Her university’s Christmas vacation is followed by summer vacation and she’ll be on break from December to March where she plans to travel throughout break. She’ll meet me at the Buenos Aires airport and we’ll travel together through Argentina, Uruguay and all the way up to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where I’ll fly out back to Colorado. After running 26.2 miles and the countless 100 mile plus weeks leading up to the marathon having a three week break from training and just wandering through South America with la hermanita will produce some lifelong lasting memories.

Here is the last week’s training:

7/25 AM: 11 Miles at moderate pace. 12 x 80m hill repeats after run.

PM: 6.5 after easy lifting.

7/26 AM: 9 at moderate pace on Air Force Academy’s trails.

PM: 8 at moderate pace.

7/27  AM: 6.5 around Prospect Lake

PM: 7 Miles easy. Suppose to workout on track but left quad very tight.

7/28   AM: 10 Miles and strides. Massage later that afternoon. Quad better.

PM: 6.5 Miles after easy lifting.

7/29  AM: 6 Mile tempo in 29:17 on dirt roads east of town. One big hill but had 30m net downhill. 11 Miles total.

PM: 6 Miles on treadmill finishing hard.

7/30 AM: 9 Miles on Santa Fe trails starting from Woodman at moderate pace.

PM: 8 Miles on roads around USOTC

7/31 AM: 17.5 Progressive long run in 1:39. Very satisfied with that as feel fitness is returning quick.

116 Miles total.

Work.

I spent Memorial Day weekend plus a few more days in the great big state of Texas. The purpose of the trip was to reunite with some of my best friends from Arkansas. It was two and a half years ago when I left Fayetteville and drove to Albuquerque to start graduate school  but it seemed like nothing had changed in our friendships and the whole weekend felt just like old times. Instead of detailing the trip to the new Dallas In-n-Out, swimming in a creek, or shooting shotguns aimlessly into the Texas countryside I’d like to speak of someone who I believe is the definition of hard work and living life to the fullest. This man I speak of is BAMF Kenny Cormier.

I met Kenny in December in 2004 at the Footlocker Cross Country banquet dinner the night before the high school national championship cross country race. Kenny and I were both regional winners two weeks earlier but the clear favorite was Andrew Bumbalough for breaking Alan Webb’s South regional course record and having had the experience of running the year before. All I had really heard about Kenny leading up to the race was from one article published on dyestat detailing some of Kenny’s summer training where he ran 120 miles a week in the Arizona sun along the Mexican border. Six and a half years later of what I see as hard training and lots of miles I’ve yet to hit 120 miles in one week. Even more impressive is the fact that these miles were run under the sweltering desert heat in a corner of the country where few animals can hack the unforgiving conditions. Having spent two summers in Albuquerque I learned how ruthless the sun can be some days but the sun shines even stronger in Douglas. After sitting next to Kenny that night at dinner and hear his summer training I remember walking to my room to sleep and feeling underprepared compared to Kenny. The next day Kenny proved that he had trained the hardest and wanted the win the most out of the forty runners by clinching the national title.

The next year Kenny and I were teammates and roommates at the University of Arkansas and I was able to see Kenny’s ability to train everyday. Up a hill behind the football stadium lies a two mile figure eight trail where the guys and girls team train four or five days a week. Those who aren’t familiar with the Arkansas training philosophy may struggle believing the pace run on easy days. On a good day in between workouts I would do a ten mile run anywhere between 56 and 58 minutes. Kenny on the other hand never ran slower than 55. Because of the figure eight style trail you could often see the other runners at some other point during the loop and it was always quite the sight to see the young stallion freshman hanging on to or even leading Alistair Cragg on what they believed to be a recovery day as they ran 52 minutes for ten miles or 42 minutes for 8 miles after lifting weights. One day stands out particularly well though when I think of Kenny as the runner. The quick long run was an important staple in Coach McDonnell’s training and every Saturday morning the team met early for a run of 12 to 14.5 miles. If you ran under 1:23 for the 14.5 mile loop you knew you were pretty fit. I remember this Saturday finishing the run, banging on the stop sign that marked the end of the finish line, giving Coach Mac a high five as he recorded my time and walking up to the team van to grab a Gatorade. Kenny was sitting on the bumper of the van drinking his Gatorade when I asked him what he ran. He exhaustedly told me he ran 1:15 and finished nearly two minutes ahead of anyone else. I don’t know of any Razorback even the legends like Ruben Reina, Cragg, Dan Lincoln, or anyone else running that quick. Yes, that is 5:10 pace for 14.5 miles. I remember looking at him and thinking in the back of my mind that one day this guy would be an Olympic marathoner.

Kenny hasn’t made his debut in the marathon and it looks like it may never happen. Shortly after that long run I was diagnosed with mono and then Kenny was diagnosed a month later. I know what you’re thinking but there was no kissing between us that spread the mono. Kenny took a month off running to shake the mono out of his system by resting. With an extreme desire to get back his fitness Kenny went straight into running over 100 miles a week and his mono relapsed. Doctors told him to take six months off any aerobic exercise to let the body completely recover otherwise the mono may turn into chronic fatigue syndrome.

The time off gave Kenny some much needed mental rest from the stress athletics often brings and it was during this time when Kenny decided he would follow the dream he always had of joining the Marines. I saw Kenny two weeks after he returned from his second tour in Afghanistan. Kenny has steadily moved up in rank and is one of the top snipers in his company. Myself being a civilian I don’t know much about the training and lifestyle of the Marines but knowing Kenny I know he puts his heart and soul at being the best Marine he can be as he courageously serves the United States.

What should inspire us all that we can see in Kenny is his ability to give his best effort in whatever life task there is. Find what you love and enjoy and pour all your energy into it and you can become legendary like my good friend Ken.

Murphy’s Law isn’t always true

I journeyed back to Boston in search for a doctor in my insurance coverage zone that would give me a referral for an MRI. Back home I saw a pediatrician since I was born until I went to college where doctors always took decent care of the athletes in the training room. Once I finished my eligibility I was left with no primary care doctor because I was no longer of age. This wasn’t too much of a problem at all until my fall in February which set off a search for a new doctor and specifically one that would give me a referral for an MRI. Conveniently, my new primary care doctor is located right across the hall from the pediatrician I grew up with in Waltham. I was nervous he would be reluctant to give me a referral but he expressed no concern and I walked out of his office with a pamphlet to call to schedule my new appointment. The begging and pleading I assumed I would do once in his office for the referral was never needed.

Two days later I was sitting in the waiting room listening for my name to be called on judgement day. The US Weekly and other celebrity gossip magazines did not obtain my interest and I closed my eyes trying to be calm as I waited for my named to be called. Finally, I was taken back into a room by a nurse and a doctor came in and injected a dye into my knee that would improve the clarity of the scan. The nurse rolled a wheelchair beside the table I lay on but the doctor insisted I try to walk and let the dye settle in. I hobbled to another waiting room where I was given a sheet with over 100 choices of satellite radio stations to listen to while I was in the coffin like tube while the tissues in my body were photographed with the music coming from the headphones giving some peace from the loud noises from the coils changing during the scan. Earlier that day I had listened to some Curtis Mayfield and I knew some soul music would get me through the 25 minute scan. I closed my eyes for 25 minutes and felt the rhythms of Bobby Womack and some other legedendary 60s and 70s mellow tunes. The nurse then spoke through the microphone that I was done and ejected me out.

I sat in the waiting room again patiently waiting for the visions the doctor had seen from the photographs of the MRI. I was positive I had a torn meniscus. All the symptoms added up and many of the trainers at UNM were starting to agree with me that it wasn’t a problem with the IT Band. I waited for him to approve my hypothesis and detail how I would be needing surgery and explain the recovery (a 12 week recovery which I was not looking forward to). Suddenly the doctor appeared from the shadows of his office and looking at me casually declared, “You have a bone bruise.”

My mind raced. Wait, what? Just a bone bruise. No way! How have I not been able to run for over three months because of a bone bruise? To settle my disbelief I was taken into his office and saw the damage. My meniscus was completely intact. My iliotibial band sound. And the outside of my knee looking like Mike Tyson had just knocked it out. The doctor went on to explain how I might need some more rest and apply more ice to the wound. No surgery was needed. This was not a fatal blow to my running career and I would live to run and race another mile.

I laughed at myself as I walked through the clinic’s hallways and out the door. This whole time I spent on icing, massaging, acupuncture, and foam rolling was all directed at the Iliotibial Band hoping to cure the tendonitis in my knee was virtually pointless as it was not needed. I stepped outside into the Massachusetts May mist and smiled. This injury break was over and it was time to go back to work.

Hasta luego, Albuquerque.

I spent the past day attempting the impossible task of fitting all my belongings into three duffel bags for my trip back to Boston. I’m returning to the greatest city on earth to focus on finally shaking this injury. Why go home to get healthy? Well, I think this injury may not be related to the IT Band but rather a tear in my lateral meniscus and my insurance won’t let me get an MRI out of state so I booked a ticket home. This Obamacare really hasn’t done much for me and this country really needs universal health care. It’s funny that even when you’re insured you’re still not covered. I could rant about this forever but I won’t. Instead I want to reflect on the great two and half years I’ve spent in Land of Enchantment state.

I’m sitting here in my favorite coffee shop in town known as Winnings having just finished their breakfast burrito drowned in green and red chile and thinking about all the beautiful places and people I’ve met here. Albuquerque was really a great place for myself as it has incredible weather year round, amazing trails, topnotch training facilities, and a fascinating culture. I’m grateful for the lessons my professors taught me here during my master’s program, my teammates for being amazing athletes to live and train with, and Joe Franklin for recruiting me here and letting me be a student-athlete for the Lobos. Most importantly I must thank Coach Art Acevedo. Art who retired as  the trainer for the Albuquerque Police Department cadets in January is just a volunteer coach  but works with the cross country and 5k and 10k guys. I started working with Art in February of 2010 coming off injury and after an embarrassing finish to my final collegiate cross country season. When the fire within me was just as big of a Bic lighter and I was doubting I would be running after that spring Art doused gasoline and lighter fluid onto that flame and created a bonfire inside me that even injured is still burning strong.

So now I return back home with my doctors appointments all scheduled and more eager than ever to start training again. Once healthy I’m not positive on where I’ll go and I’m analyzing the results of different training groups hoping their athletes will guide me in my decision. I know someday sooner than later I’ll be back in the Sandia Mountains doing a long run or doing a tempo along the Rio Grande, and eating a burrito with red and green chile followed by biscochitos, but stay beautiful until then Albuquerque.

Shirts vs. Skins

One of the hottest topics on the world famous letsrun message boards has been on the dominating story in Massachusetts track right now. No, the talk is not about a new state record, not about the results from MSTCA State Relays (big congrats to Newton North with the surprise win), nor about any particular meet result but rather what happened at a particular practice.

My high school teammate and good friend Tom Davis was let go from his Westwood distance coaching job at the beginning of this month for letting one of his athletes do a track workout with no shirt. Did he have profanity written on his chest? No. An inappropriate tattoo? No. Nipple rings? Not the I know of. The issue is that some of the girl athletes felt a slight level of discomfort seeing their male teammates running shirtless and had complained in the past. Knowing that Tom’s athletes ran a 7:57 4 x 800 this winter season and were one of the strongest XC teams in the state I find it unlikely that this female athlete felt uncomfortable at the sight of an obese shirtless male with bouncing man boobs. But high school is a weird age for social development and sometimes these young stars can have awkward moments when dealing with the opposite sex even if they are also their teammates. I remember at high school practices it was an unwritten rule for male athletes that you always wore shorts over your tights to not have anything below the waist pointing at anyone. Once in college that idea seemed so silly and it was always a great laugh when one of the new freshman would come to practice wearing shorts over his tights on a cold day.

But what bothers me more than the idea of the athletes not being allowed to run shirtless is how the situation was handled. The athletic director, Karl Fogel, drove up to Tom in his golf cart and confronted Tom with an angry attitude in front of the whole team and then proceeded to fire Tom on the track. I don’t know if I have any worse pet peeve than someone on a power trip and this is exactly how Fogel seems.

I know there has been a lot of criticism of Tom on letsrun as well as on our high school coach’s blog nnhsxc.blogspot.com but I felt a need to blog about my support for Tom and his team as he has brought them to tremendous heights in his two years at Westwood. There are very few individuals who have motivated me as much as Tom has. At the 2001 XC All-State Meet I met Tom for the first time as he was still attending Newton South before transferring a year later. I had just finished 13th and didn’t really know what to think but was pretty happy. I thought the season was over before Tom told me about some race sponsored by Footlocker. A few days later my Dad and I were on the road to the Bronx where I won the freshman race at the Footlocker Northeast Regional Meet. When Tom transferred to North he was always telling me how I can be doing so much better and really broadened my perspective of the running world. I know Tom did this for his athletes at Westwood and it is a deep shame they will be without him unless by some miracle from the track gods Tom can get his job back. Keep your heads up Westwood Wolverines. I hope you can win the outdoor 4 x 800 All-State title and do a shirtless cool down.

http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/daily-take/201105/no-shirt-no-service-high-school-coach-jobless-after-his-boys-track-team-goes-

Taos, NM

I spent the week of spring break up in beautiful northern New Mexico in the town of Taos. An old work buddy of my Dad is trying to sell his house up there after his mother in law past away over a year ago. With the rough economy they’ve had very little interest and this amazing house continues to sit on the market unoccupied. My Dad and sister flew into town and we crashed up there for a week enjoying the scenery and the slow paced lifestyle.

I’m still struggling with this IT Band injury and am quite far from full training but I did have the chance to enjoy some beautiful training locations for some easy five and six mile runs. One positive about this injury is that running at an easy and cautious pace really allows for me to take in some of the scenery more and have quite a bit more stops to sit and enjoy the view. Many people when they talk about wanting to train at altitude think of towns like Boulder, Flagstaff  and for some Albuquerque. While all of these places are fantastic training venues there are numerous other locations that are unfortunately overlooked. Taos is one of the places. Many forget runners like Frank Shorter and Steve Prefontaine training there. Whether running through the hills of the endless trails in Kit Carson National Forest, along the Rio Grande Gorge, or on the numerous country dirt roads Taos never fails at giving a runner some peace and serenity while at the same time supplying pain on the challenging terrain at an altitude of 7,000 feet. There is a relatively flat trail that goes out for 9 miles along the Rio Grande Gorge. Running along the river is amazing but one must be on the look for some rocky parts on the trail and more importantly fresh mountain lion tracks. I went out for three miles and then turned around for the most gorgeous out and back run I’ve ever been on.

What I also must mention about Taos is the restaurant Taos Pizza Out Back. As a Bostonian who has lived in the South and the Southwest if there is one thing I miss about home it’s pizza that doesn’t taste like cardboard. Taos Pizza Out Back has the best pizza I’ve had outside of Boston, NYC or Providence (I would mention Chicago but if you have to eat it with a fork and knife it doesn’t count as pizza). When the pizza first arrived at our table I thought I was having a mirage as I didn’t know pizza like this existed in the Southwest. Possibly the best part about Taos Pizza Out Back is how many of the vegetable are grown in the backyard of the restaurant, hence the name Taos Pizza Out Back. The place very well may be the healthiest delicious pizza I’ve had.

New Year. Same Injury.

Two years straight the moderate winter of Albuquerque has done more than slightly chilled my bones. During the coldest weeks of both years the ice has made my racing and training come to a stop. On the second of January 2010 during a run in the foothills with Lee and former Lobo Nick Arguelles my left leg slipped and although I was able to keep my balance and stay on my feet there was something awkward about that one slip and I would be out for the next month with a strained groin. The injury was both physically and mentally devastating as after a highly disappointing final collegiate cross country season I was determined the finish my career strong with a great last semester of track racing. Thankfully, I was able to stay confident despite that month off and rely on my strong base I had built that fall and during the break between cross country and indoor track. Each race I ran that winter coming back from injury marked improvement from the last as I placed a disappointing 5th place at the indoor conference meet, won my first collegiate race in a pr of 13:47, and then went on to finish 4th at NCAA’s in another pr of 13:43.

A little bit more than a full year later on the 1st of February my roommate Sean Stam, our neighbor and teammate Alex Willis, and I set off for a run to the campus golf course on the day after the coldest night in Albuquerque in more than twenty years. Alex who is from Leadville, Colorado at an altitude of 10,000 feet thought nothing of the icy streets and may have even mistaken the weather outside for what could be an April morning in Leadville set the pace as we left the apartment complex and ran on the deserted street. About a half mile into our run I slipped and my left foot skidded into a curb. I tripped and my right leg went to the outside and I did a belly flop onto the pavement landing in the shape of a lowercase h. I shouted some curses at the ice and jumped back onto my feet and continued on with our run thinking nothing of it. The next day I woke up, drank some coffee, and headed down to the indoor track to do one last easy workout in preparation for USAXC. After jogging I attempted doing some strides and something did not feel right at all. I stood up and stretched my groin and hobbled a few more strides. A couple people saw me in agony and asked if I was alright. Trying to act tough but really just being stupid I gritted my teeth and finished the workout. The next morning I got out the door for an easy 8 miles two days before the race. I made it a half mile out and something was not right. The day before the USA cross country championships I did nothing but rest in the hotel room thinking that resting would be the perfect medicine in healing and that the next day I would be able to make it through 12k. The day of the race I woke up feeling confident and didn’t think much at all about my fall the other day. I warmed up with my training partner Jeremy Johnson and another competitor from New Mexico, Ben Fletcher. Everything seemed normal as any other race as the pre-race jitters began to kick in. I tied up my spikes and began my first stride when I was instantly hit with that same pain. I scratched my head pondering if I should even race but figured I had been training for the past 6 months for this race and was finally here so I had to go for it. Once the gun went off despite all the adrenaline of running in a pack with some of America’s greatest runners the pain never went away and I stepped off the course at 4k.

After a couple of days off and distraught about the weekend I set my sights on the USA indoor champs which would be held in Albuquerque and that I had qualified for at a  Boston University Mini Meet the day after Christmas when I had been home. I bought some Sore No More, which is an excellent natural pain relieving cream. The next week I began to get back into my normal training routine and was excited for the 3k in a few weeks. My legs felt great until on an easy 5 miler around the golf course when something didn’t feel right in my knee. I jogged the rest of the run and went home hoping the pain would go away. The next day I woke up feeling as if a truck had run over my lower body and I was barely able to jog to the track for a workout and knew something was seriously wrong as I couldn’t do any strides. After that day I was out of training at all for a full two weeks because of severe inflammation of the IT Band especially around the outside of the top of my knee and had to watch the USA champs from the stands dreaming of being healthy and what could have been.

With icing, massage, heating, elevation, foam rolling, and even acupuncture I am finally healing and slowly building back into the training. Today I was able to run 6 miles around the half mile path of Johnson fields. The small loop is a place I have acquired hate for because of the thousands of loops I have done in my two years in Albuquerque, but running there today and the past couple of days really has been beautiful and reminds me to never take a run for granted.

Most underrated today?

Anyone that hasn’t listened to Lupe Fiasco’s new album yet is really missing out. Forget Kanye and Jay-Z’s latest music. This is Hip Hop.

Forget Christina Aguilera. This is how you sing “The Star-Spangled Banner”

Mike Mahon is a living legend in Massachusetts. Having gone to over a thousand cross country meets in the state there are few who know the sport better. What is so remarkable is how he travels to most of the meets he attends. Mahon bikes to numerous meets in Eastern and Central Mass throughout the cross country season and always has a binder filled with his predictions for the meets as well as data from various meets around the state. His predictions are quite often incredible. I remember in 2002 after the All-State Cross Country Meet my sophomore year walking away from the finish chute a bit disappointed with my seventh place finish and then Mahon coming up to me and showing me his prediction list for the top ten finishers. Sure enough I was there at number seven and he had nailed most of the other top ten. His generosity must also be noted as Mahon’s money he earns from collecting cans throughout the year no matter the weather is always put forward to sponsor a cross country banquet every year. Mike Mahon is also a fan of the Framingham softball league. His performance of the national anthem is incredible.

El Che Vive

The spirit of revolution is in the air throughout the world but especially in the Arab world. Many nations have been inspired by the overthrow of the authoritative government in Tunisia. The Egyptian people now have begun the struggle to overthrow Murbarak, the dictator who has been supported by the US, UK and Israel because of his support on the blockage of aid to reaching the people of Gaza. What strikes me about the revolutionary action occurring in Egypt is the ambition of the people taking to the streets fighting for change in contrast to many revolutions being brought on by left-wing revolutionary armies. What has been occurring is truly trying to bring “power to the people.” This is crucial as freedom is something that most people take for granted all too often. To quote Martin Luther King Jr. :”Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” Once Murbarak can be brought down and democracy is achieved in Egypt a leader who can truly represent the people and not the interests of the neo-imperialism and capitalism of other nations is needed. Other protests are occurring in Yemen and Sudan and many other nations such as Syria are watching with a keen interest. We can only hope that soon we will all be as inspired as those in Tunisia and Egypt to end oppression. Viva la revolucion!