“A cross country season is like writing a book, six months of intensity followed by a loss of equilibrium as the process comes to an end.”
“I’m so glad the season’s over,” I told Calene this morning over brunch. Tutto Fresco restaurant. Chili cheese omelet. Soft bread with oil and garlic. Ice water and a greyhound. “I really need the break.”
She rolled her eyes. “Let’s see what you say in a week.”
Cross country ended yesterday. A season of surprise and excellence, with those gut punch lows and emotional highs every season brings. Like my fantasy football team, only I’m the actual coach and the runners are athletes I actually see every day for six months.
I used to drive to Fresno, site of the California State Cross Country Championships. Four hours at dawn. Six any time after nine. Eight to ten coming back over the Grapevine on the 5 on Thanksgiving weekend. That’s back when I was head coach. Now I’m the offensive coordinator — an assistant who writes workouts but doesn’t need to wrangle hotel rooms or worry about team dinners. So now I fly. It’s actually only a couple hours shorter, but I come home less frazzled from the traffic. There are amenities in airports and places to plug in my laptop. I arrive refreshed.
Got up Friday morning in the dark, the house still smelling of turkey and stuffing. Made the dawn flight to Fresno, connecting through San Francisco. A four-hour layover is nothing when you have words to write and a manuscript to edit. Made it to Fresno by two, then on to Woodward Park to check in. If you have not been to Woodward, know that it is a sprawling public place as large as New York’s Central Park built around one of the best cross country courses anywhere. Sycamores turned gold and red from autumn, Canadian Snow Geese in the lakes, a flat starting area followed by five kilometers of rolling dirt and grass.
My routine has been the same since my first State Meet in 2007: check in at the official’s table while my runners jog the course, say hello to fellow coaches (a group of good friends which grows larger with every passing year), then head back to the hotel to await race day. I used to do the team dinner. Now I go alone to a place in Clovis called the House of Juju. There I have a bison burger with bleu cheese (“Juju Bleu”), then return to my hotel, lock myself in my room, watch college football until 8:30, then fall asleep, eager to wake up to race day. After training six days a week since the middle of June, along with twelve weeks of racing, State is it. The summation. All I want to do is see the sun rise and watch my runners do their best.
So I didn’t sleep well. But I promised to keep it light this year, reminding myself to have fun. Hit Starbucks for a coffee and pain du chocolat on my way to the meet. The teams arrived. Everyone looked loose. No sign of nerves. All good.
Cut to the chase: my girls finished third, making the podium. A team that wasn’t even ranked when the season began (“Don’t sleep on the Lady Eagles,” I told a good friend who does the rankings) surprised absolutely everyone. My boys finished just fourteen points off the podium, on a day when one of my tougher runners set a school record for the course. So we celebrated and wondered what might have been, but all in all it was a great day. I’ve won seven championships but have never had two teams finish so high at State on the same day.
Then came the flight home. I pored over stats, breaking down what went right and wrong. I didn’t get the upgrade, so the flight back was spent cramped in a window seat designed for a toddler, breaking down numbers. I got home and told Calene about the day but stayed awake on the couch long after she dozed off, still looking at numbers, wondering why I felt unsettled. Then, when I went to bed and slept late, my dreams were about what needs to be done better.
It was only this morning that I realized it’s all over. Over. Cross country season is done. Track starts in five weeks, a time during which I will attend an Italian feast, my oldest son will be married, I will run a trail race that promises to be gruesome in its demands, and I’ll have nothing to do every afternoon. Oh, and there will be Christmas and New Years.
A cross country season is like writing a book, six months of intensity followed by a loss of equilibrium as the process comes to an end. I cried when my girls team got their medals on the podium yesterday, because I get misty for reasons of all kind. I come across as such a hardass sometimes that it surprises them when I get emotional. I felt the same with my boys team, who were such a brilliant group of runners. My top three were stunning in their excellence.
So it’s appropriate that I wrapped up the Second Pass edit on Taking London this morning over coffee. I’m sending it back to New York, never to touch the words again. It’s all over. I say farewell, to the season and my new book at once. It’s a relief. I can feel my shoulders relax. Look forward to a few extra hours in my day.
But like Calene says, that will last a week. Just one. Then that slow build of hope and dreams begins all over again as I wonder what track season — and the next book — will look like.
Martin Dugard is a best-selling author, a board member of the USA Track & Field Foundation and a high school cross country and track coach.
