“I felt the glow of a top finish and did a little jig.”
Cross country season is over. Twenty-four weeks of training and racing came to an end yesterday at the California State Meet. My girls team took third place in our division and made the podium. It was a hard-fought conclusion to the double days, Saturday long runs, summer camp, and those many days in between that make for the consistency needed to become a champion.
The girls were ecstatic. I felt the glow of a top finish and did a little jig. Made it home from Fresno and downloaded to Calene about the great weekend until I was talked out. She listened patiently, then resumed watching SVU. My queen loves her murder mysteries.
The emotional hangover began at nine a.m., when I finally rolled out of bed. As always, the high of winning is replaced by just a hint of burnout. I dreamt about stats and peaking. An intense weekend of Thanksgiving followed by travel, racing, and back to travel. I saw so many good friends in the coaching world and had a few laughs while in Fresno. Track season doesn’t start for five weeks, which means a ton of well-earned downtime. It’s this way every year.
But instead of asking myself what I would do differently as a coach in terms of workouts, I find myself questioning why the weekend felt so lonely. In the midst of all that love and team spirit, I came home feeling like I’d made some bad solitude choices. You may remember last week’s blog, when I wrote about my routine for the State Meet. Most of it revolved around avoiding people so I could focus on the racing. I got to the course at 6 a.m. for instance, after eating a solitary dinner the night before, then locking myself in my room to watch college football until it was time to wake up and run.
I cling to that routine to calm my pre-race anxiety. But it’s flawed. It was born at a time when I had my own kids on the team, Calene traveled to State with me. Friends like Hempy, Burkhardt, Burns, the Cyborg, and many others rose with me before dawn to arrive at the course early. We’d BS in the dark and watched the sunrise. It was often very cold. Hempy was the one who got me in the habit of arriving at Starbucks just as they opened.
As I shivered alone in the dark yesterday morning, eager to walk the course as the sun rose, I realized that those guys made the State Meet process a communal gathering instead of a solitary repetition of the same routine, year after year. I never realized how much I missed them until I woke up this morning and wondered what I need to do different next year.
Will I change the workout structure next season? Of course. A few new wrinkles are always a good thing. But the biggest change will come at State. I won’t eat dinner alone. I won’t arrive at the course before sunrise, all by myself. And I won’t make the Irish Exit, leaving in the midst of postrace celebration to make my solitary way back home, when I could stick around an extra half-hour and soak it all in.
Writing and coaching are solitary professions. I’m a solitary guy. But there’s a lot going on in my world right now, and for that I need people. So, yes, things will change — and I’m not waiting a whole year to start the process.
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.
