Tag Archives: running

People of Influence

December 16, 2010 By in Racing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Tonight, as I stepped out into a damp, chilly SC night for my evening shake-out run, I somehow ended up thinking about my old coaches. I think maybe because I got home late from work, it’s dark out, and how as a young runner I was always putting off training runs until the last possible (and most inconvenient for everyone else) minute. I guess it got me thinking about external sources of motivation, which led me to the coaches I’ve run for over the years.

I remember Glen Gilderman, or “The Gilda” as we used to refer to him in high school. When I first showed up to my high school as a sophomore, my admissions person, an awesome lady by the name of Karen Snyder, recommended I go out for cross-country. I was hesitant, since I didn’t really run per se at the time, but she recommended it as a good way to meet people and make friends before the school year started in a few weeks. I showed up to my first practice, sans real running shoes, and had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I was hooked. I made friends that day who remain my friends today. Coach Gilderman was an inspired thinker, and aggressive to boot. I remember our first “mental training session,” which involved all of us lying on the ground as he talked us through a run visualization. I recall quite well that each session had to do with focus, and picking out first a tree, then a branch, then a leaf, and then most minute details of the leaf. Then, I’d usually fall asleep during the progressive muscle relaxation exercises, but it was great stuff. Coach Gilda had some legendary workouts, from hill continuations (thought you were done at the crest did you?) to twice-a-day tempo intervals during the pre-season team camp-out. He coached us to two appearances at State before leaving my high school to begin coaching in the newly-minted girls’ high school hockey teams, and he was sorely missed. He identified my weak mental game early on, and always encouraged me to believe in myself and my abilities. It was the first time a coach had ever talked to me about a mental approach to sport, and it left a lasting impression.

Then there was Lowell Harnell. Lowell was from Twig, MN, which he referred to (as I recall) as The Motherland. Garry Bjorklund is from Twig, and if you don’t know who that is, I can’t do nothin’ for ya. Anyway, Lowell spent time as Gilda’s assistant CC coach, and the middle distance coach for track, which is where I got to know him. He identified a good fit for me, very early on, in the form of the 800, which is a miserable distance if I have ever known one. Lowell was not long out of college, a founding member of GAT (Girls Are Trouble), and a perpetual source of dry humor. He lived just a few blocks away, so we’d occasionally run together in the summer break, and I often caught rides after practice with him. A few times, he tried to find some jobs for me helping out with his construction projects, but quickly realized I was worthless when it came to practical skills, and that was that. Lowell ran every workout with us, and demanded nothing less than our best every race. He had a glowering look about him that could cut right through your excuses and BS like a hot knife through butter. Then, after he called you out, he’d crack a joke and then it was back to business. Lowell broke his GAT pact not long after I graduated, got married, and I think both he and the Gilda are now coaching and teaching at the same school.

Mary Moline and Scott Johnson briefly cracked my code my senior track season, and coaxed me to a conference championship in the 800m, as well as a State qualification. They put me through the paces; in once early season dual, I found myself in the 800, the 1600, the 3200, the 4 x 400, and the shot put and discus. Most meets I tripled with at least an 800, the 300 hurdles, and anchor leg on the 4 x 400. But racing like that, as well as some pretty neat track sessions stolen right out from under UMD’s nose, got me where I needed to be. This summer, Scott happened to peruse the results of Grandma’s, saw my name and my time and immediately called to congratulate me. I owe him a mountain bike ride next time I’m back in town…

In college, it was Coach Mark Stanforth, “Coachese.” Coachese was a Trials qualifier and Chicago Marathon champ back in the day, and his approach to training was as legendary as his moustache. Coachese understood the unique demands placed on his athletes at the fine institution we competed for, and never tried to jam us into a training mold built off a normal school’s distance program. I don’t know what he saw in me, but for some reason he picked me up as a walk-on frosh, and he had my back until the day I graduated. I showed up with a PR of 4:40-something in the mile and 2:01 in the 800, which would barely have gotten me onto a DIII team, and my freshman year results were hardly spectacular. he placed me with The Scabs, as we came to refer to ourselves. We saw ourselves as the hangers-on, the back-of-the-packers, the lowiest of the low. Coachese saw something else in the group – athletes who maybe with a little bit of time, consistency, and a few pair of shoes, would turn into competitors. I don’t know how he managed it at our school, but he always managed to find creative ways to exceed his authorized roster, and I can honestly say I don’t know if would have made it through my higher learning experience if it wasn’t for track. The friends I made as a Scab are the guys who stood beside me in my wedding (performed the ceremony in one specific instance), and the guys whom I’ve stood by for the past eleven years. And occasionally, one of us Scabs would claw or way on to the varsity roster after enduring simply awful tempo runs on the Santa Fe Trail, or sweet Lord, thousands down at Monument.  In fact, my sophomore year, I dropped my mile PR from 4:40 to 4:19, and lettered my junior year. Coachese never did figur out how to get me to screw my head on straight, and I missed my senior season due to injury. But even then, he kept me on as a manager, even though all I did was occasionally help out by driving the van.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Zane Castro, my long-suffering triathlon coach and now good friend and confidante. Zane bore my inability to remember  payment due dates with good humor, and my ignorance with patience. If I can credit anyone with finding ways to improve my mental game, it would be Zane C. Through hours upon hours of detailed delivery, Zane turned me into a believer and helped me develop realistically demanding mental approaches to sport. His techniques busted a decade of bad habits, and for the first time in a long while, I learned to enjoy competition and not fear it.

Each one of my coaches played a very important role in shaping who I am today, not just as a runner, but as a human being. I don’t think it’s any exaggeration to state that some of the things I’ve achieved as a person wouldn’t have been possible without some of the help these folks provided along the way. So, wherever all my old coaches are, I’d like to say that tonight as I rounded out a 16M day, I thought about you all and would simply like to say, “thank you” for the good influence you provided along the way.

Thinking: “Aid”

July 17, 2010 By in Running Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Continuing the theme of “aid,” I’d love some inputs from you readers. Here’s your chance…tell me about some neat ideas you’ve either seen or participated in so we can get the word out! There are a lot of perspectives out there and I want to know what your thoughts are. It doesn’t have to be Africa or Afghanistan…it could be something local and relatively simple. I had a great discussion with my buddy Zane a few moths ago. We talked about how you don’t have to go on a big trip or move to another country just to help improve someone’s life. Opportunities to make a difference abound, even in our everyday lives. Or, maybe you think aid is a lot of bunk, that the best way to make a difference is a life well-lived…nothing is out of bounds and I want to know what you think. Take a sec, leave a comment, and let’s talk about it.

Exactly what is aid?

July 14, 2010 By in Running Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

As I’ve taken ample time to reflect on the race and where to go from here, I have also thought long and hard about existing paradigms on foreign aid and how we might need to break them in order to develop effective models from the ground-up. I asked Jen to prepare an entry based on her experiences she had on her 2008 trip to Ethiopia with Mocha Club. After losing the first draft due to the fact that our computer died before she had a chance to save it, she was kind enough to write it…again. Enjoy!

I still have the tan canvas Keens that I wore on the muddy soccer field in Ambo, Ethiopia. In fact, the mud can still be found inside the shoes. The inside of the shoe is imprinted with the word “washable” but I have no intention of doing so since it has been there for over two years and serves as a reminder  of one of the most memorable experiences I had while I was in Ethiopia. The outside of the shoes, however, are quite clean and look almost as good as they did when they came out of the box. The shoes are clean because of a young group of street boys that live in Ambo, Ethiopia.

Before I go further, allow me to give you some relevant information about these boys:

–          My team spent a day with about 30 of them. They have been single-orphaned or double-orphaned and their extended families have either neglected them or they have no family.

–          They are rejected within their own community (like most societies…even our own)

–          They range in age from 7-17-years-old

–          They have odd jobs, but can usually be found shining shoes on the street corners in order to earn enough money to buy their next meal

We drove our bus to an area where Mocha Club was building a new school for the Kale Heywet Church and we were lucky enough to have a large field nearby so after lunch with these boys we made our way to the field and began to play soccer. This field was muddy. The type of mud that is mixed with clay so it is slick and it sticks to everything. I could barely run down the field without slipping every two feet. As I walked off the soccer field I recalled a conversation I had with the nurse who had administered my immunizations, “whatever you do, just stay away from mud and lettuce.” Uh-oh, oh well! I looked down and saw my pants covered in mud and I had about six inches of mud surrounding my shoes. If I attempted to scrape it off with my hands, then it would stick to my hands so I walked over to an area with a few rocks and began to scrape  my shoes. That is when one boy came over and knelt at my feet and motioned for me to give him my foot. I rested my muddy shoe in his hands and he began to scrape them with a stick. He was barefoot himself.

I looked up and in front of me stood one of my friends and a boy knelt at her side and began to clean her shoes in the same manner. My eyes swelled with tears and as I looked down at the boy they fell from my eyes. At that moment he looked up at me and grinned as if it brought him great joy to serve me with everything he had.  I had to ask myself if I had done the same?

Soon, the boys all began to say their goodbyes and quickly rushed off the field. We inquired one of the older boys where they were heading and that is when he informed us that since they had spent the day with us that they had lost out on a day’s worth of wages and they needed to hurry and head to town to clean shoes in order to have money for dinner.

My heart broke upon hearing this. Here we were, thinking that we had done good by playing soccer and talking with them and yet they were the ones who sacrificed their time to be with us. We looked down at our muddy shoes and decided that we could still do one more thing. We piled into the bus once more and made our way to the main street where we found the street boys. As we exited the bus they greeted us warmly and we sat in their make shift tents and two-by-two we had our shoes cleaned. When I sat down to have my shoes cleaned, I had my doubts that the boy would be able to get the mud (or clay) off my canvas shoes. Especially when I saw the muddy water he was going to use to clean them with, but, regardless, I lifted my foot and let it rest on the rock that also served as this boy’s chair and let him go to work. I watched in awe as he fiercely scrubbed my shoes and in about thirty seconds my shoes were cleaner than when I had stepped onto the field.

Afterwards, I stood off to the side and marveled at how quickly the boys worked, the fact that they used rocks as their chairs, and that one of the greatest acts of kindness and service is to wash another’s feet and the ones to do this for me were the street boys of Ambo, Ethiopia. I overheard a conversation that our group leader, Geoffrey, was having with one of the street boys. Geoffrey asked him what he thought of Ethiopia and the boy replied with a big grin and said, “Ah, yes. It is the life!”

It is this experience that I draw from when I think about the misconceptions of “foreign aid.” I have realized that before I left for Africa I thought I was going over there to “help” them. I knew I wasn’t going to change anything grand, but that I would (perhaps) impact someone’s life. But I was the one who had it “messed up.” They served me and taught me that aid and service is a two-way street; a give-and-take relationship. I would be doing Ethiopia an injustice to go over there and think that what works here in the U.S. is going to work in Ethiopia. First, they love their country and we must truly understand that. Second, the only way to serve and aid is to teach so they can, in turn, teach others, etc.

So the Chinese proverb stands correct,  “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”.

Serving is truly a beautiful art. It takes practice, but what is so intriguing about it is that it is contagious. Like when I stood on the field “serving” the street boys thinking I had done them well, then one boy came and sat next to me and cleaned my shoes. He trumped me!  This is why my “washable” shoes will never be washed.

My experiences in Ethiopia were some of the happiest days of my life. To serve others and to have others serve you with everything they possibly have, it is, well, like the street boy said, “It is the life!”

1 Timothy 6:18-19
Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. 19In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.