Pool girls are monsters of wickedness; Insatiable in their lust for hygiene and acid.

For the entirety of my childhood, water was an absolute antagonist towards my being. I took swim lessons as a pre-teen while others were entering kindergarten. I choked and dragged myself into the water.

About three years ago at a local YMCA, I signed up for a swim class, wherein I could not swim from one end to the other. Frustrated to a point of maximum exertion, I quickly resolved to find a means to make this work.

After suffering for an hour or so, I began to realize I needed to exhale under water. Not the most esoteric of directions, but nonetheless impossible prior to this date. I came home that evening and my mother said my face was grey and I looked worthy of an emergency room visit. I resisted, and slept.

As an ancillary comment, I often find the most challenging of endeavors arise from new pursuits in the evening.

The aforementioned swim was the most difficult task I have ever faced in a pool of water.

Yesterday paralleled itself to that summer’s day three years ago.

I had the full intent and purpose to swim two miles. Within eight minutes of swimming, I realized how sick I was due to a cold that my body can’t exterminate because of my lack of running.

My arms, back, and core all failed to exercise their physiological duties, and my ensuing workout was a swim unbecoming of a triathlete.

It ought be noted that from the start, I was sharing a lane. I promised myself that at 30 minutes I would rest and re-evaluate if this was worth it. My goggles continued to leak, my eyes continued to burn, and I kept cracking the lane divider with my body. I was utterly over my head.

Swimming does something to the anatomical constitution that is not found in running or cycling. When the human body is on a horizontal plane, torqueing to receive oxygen, it becomes bitterly self-interested. For the moment you deviate, (i.e. turn vertically, or alter your breathing pattern) an awful and ignominious state of nausea begins. Witness my impediment.

Every time I stopped swimming, either due to the acidity within my goggles, or to regain a sense of balance as more swimmers entered my lane, I became sea-sick.

Through rest came greater discomfort.

Thirty minutes away became an eternity. At the forty-five minute mark there were a total of four swimmers plus a child in my lane. At this point my vision had assumed a shade of grey due to the bloodshot quality of my eyes, my muscles felt as if a fine fork were scraping through the soft tissue, and the excess of chlorinated water felt as if my skin tissue had become plasticized.

Shortly after reaching the 2700 meter mark, the pool girl began to dutifully wash the deck with a pressure washer, powered by a diesel generator. As I would enter the water and pull the weight of my being away from the wall, a dull noise would replace the horror of the machine. I could hear and feel the resulting water from the machine sprinkle upon my back, as if I were a groundhog trying to shelter his head from the mechanized armies of man.

At this point I was swimming blind. If I hit someone in my pursuit of goal, so be it. The assistant pool girl then began to check the pH balance of the water, and swiftly hurried into the control room of this aquatic black hole.

I remember back at the 1200 meter mark, floating and taking my goggles off for a second, and every instinct of my childhood wanting to erupt. I wanted to break down, just sit on the corner and cry. Wishing I could just scream out loud, rather than continuing to find no meaning in the struggle at hand.

At 3,000 meters, and clad in the armor of this battle, and having now only about 200 meters remaining, I recalled Shakespeare’s Henry V and it’s description of combat “Once more unto the breach, dear friends”

Those whom have shared similar experiences, can recount the thrill and excitement that comes with the simple struggle. Some injure themselves for days, weeks, months, or even years. And when that moment comes – When the past is acknowledged but forgotten – When fear exists but replaced through courage – When suffering only elicits a smile – And finally, when walls of inhibition are finally shattered with the tools of strength and integrity, the zenith of human will is manifest.

This much I now know.

Physical labor breeds a far different fatigue than endurance sport.

But at times I feel that certain ideals, practices and events define my understanding of Christmas.

I try my best to deviate from these traditions, to experience the new and evade the old. It works to a point, but then it falls back into the awful whirlpool of tradition.

I spent the better part of this warm winter’s day constructing an igloo. It had the purpose of becoming an ancillary holiday decoration, but slowly (as most of my projects do) grew into an Anglo-Saxon shelter from the age of feudalism.

I built it with the volunteered assistance of an 8 year old and a 12 year old. It taught me something about the creative energies of man. Nothing mandated that it become an igloo. It could very well capitulate into a mess of snow and stick and grass. But we searched the barn, searched the yard, search the garage, and we exited with a bail of hay and several wet logs.

I rode long on the trainer before this, and never thought to recover or hydrate. I’ve learned something new in the last thirty days or so. Our bodies are engineered to stand the test of a cruel and dark world. Runner’s are people too.

We aren’t merely sadistic and selfish and lonely people who prefer a solitary pursuit of happiness. We aren’t bound by our perennially tight hamstrings or a fear of a lateral movement. We are dynamic people, too.

So I worked hard at this project for the better part of the day, grossly dehydrated but determined to finish. Albeit the entire time I was envisioning a run thereafter that was never supposed to transpire.

I took the run by the horns.

While running in the darkened shadows of what in another day might hope to be a sidewalk, I listened to an old carol, made anew.

“Remember Christ our Savior…To save us all from Satan’s power when we have gone astray.”

Oh tidings of comfort of joy.





For those whom are perplexed by such archaic vernacular (such as myself), a tiding is literally “news” or “information pertaining to something”

Arguably the biggest bang of a proverbial light-bulb going off in my head occurred after these words were uttered in my ear-buds. It hit me so hard I thought I kicked a large stone in the road.

Star of wonder. Star of loyal beauty bright.

I then jumped over numerous snowbanks, opened up the larger biomechanical gears, and ran through the light mist of a 40-degree December’s night, amidst 4 foot snowbanks melting abound.

Westward leading… Still proceeding.


When I came home, I felt more learned. I felt as if someone who had just had 2,007 years of history injected into his cerebellum, which executed the lesson into a 7:00 min/mi pace in just under four miles.

Guide us to that perfect light.

I am now, in all likelihood, riding the dangerous wave of overtraining. But it is an event and an exercise that has become all too familiar in these seasons of truncated light and exaggerated feasts. This being done, I can now slumber.


God rest ye merry gentlemen.

Rest ye, indeed.

I’ve heard much talk of struggle in sport. I also hear myself aggrandizing the difficulties I personally face therein.

Yet at times the loudest volumes come from the most quiet of days;

I speak of the Faustian temptation of the off-day;

I speak of the ambitions of a 20-something trying to run until he is buried;

I speak of the pandemonium of metaphysical message boxes counted 14 deep, compounded by layers of G-Talk, and the clarity somewhere therein.

I have been blessed with so many privileges. I therefore have the obligation to help those whom are less well off. I’m not referring to a progressive ideal of feeding the poor, or assist those whom cannot afford bread. But I speak of a brazen reality. The fact that despite the cavernous abyss of scheduling time with friends and family, is someone whom is forgotten. They don’t have a place to go. A friend to laugh with. They sit alone. And they have forgotten the joy of spontaneity.

It may sound above my experience to dictate of such a struggle. But it is not. I spent one year in an institution wherein I isolated myself, confined myself, and punished myself in a manner that no one, no matter how disoriented, ought to experience.

I see it others. I see others struggle within themselves. They are surviving widows, lonely husbands. People whom seemingly lost everything when they lost vocational duties.

Let me tell you something: Clarity doesn’t come to fruition through the routine. It doesn’t come from repetition. Story and memory may be relished from nostalgia, but progress is not killed in such habits.

Breaking barriers and trying new endeavors are the means of understanding. Seven years ago the idea of running wasn’t repulsive, but it wasn’t a part of me. Six years ago the thought of running 12 laps instead of 8 on a track was a feat. And two years ago I swore I would never embark on a legal crusade of education. Witness a comedy of errors.

If it was not that important to me, it would be funny.

Today I voluntarily chose to rest my body. I haven’t done this since I was forced to do this since last September. And before then I can’t recall. The greatest fear I have in doing this is creating distance from the sport. I fear I will lose the strength and tenacity to go out on a cold December morning. I.e. Expecting to be picked up by someone whom I misinformed about my estimate time of arrival -The possibility of running that course again to return home, because the coldness dried the strength of a cell phone’s battery.

I’m not referring to getting “out of shape”. Fitness is merely a bi-product of this pastime. If gaining 20 pounds and developing a lust for dark chocolate was a bi-product of running, I’d still do it. For me, it rarely is about the end.

The only instant that the end becomes within my field of vision, is when I lay awake wondering if I’ll be able to run forty years from now. I want my ability to stare back at me like a hand-less clock with numbers.

It is exactly this desire that makes me become more aware of my state. I recognize those whom never started; Those whom through no virtue or control of their own, have been denied the right to participate in something they may one day come to love.

Today effectively ended my first semester at law school.

The ability to step back and reflect on the experience has been something on an ever-contracting appendix. Minutes thrown about in the most precise manner – And yet at the end of the day few things seem orderly.

But today it is over. My final exam on property law, taking just under four hours to complete has been conquered. But the war has just begun. I now face a long break, employed in a new entity, anxiously awaiting the second semester.

My nerves were raw, my brain turned to sludge, and my emotions 3 seconds away from utter capitlation.. But at the end of the exam today I had a very simple thing I wanted to do – To talk.

I wanted to talk law with people whom don’t engage themselves therein. I wanted to talk about sledding in early winter. I wanted to talk about running cross-country. Anything -Just something to get the knotted tensions out of my own head. Inculcate my inherent feeling of insanity upon another.

When you have someone you can do this with, they become more than a friend. To say they are a sounding board is a brazen mistake, but at times all they have to do is listen. They are someone whom you can talk with, talk to, and understand until eternity.

I have few of these people in my life, but tonight I talked to a few of them. They understand me. They give me their shoulder when it is needed, and they never ask why.

At the end of this pandemonium, I vest in simple passions. Running. Reading. And the ability to yearn for something that was so challenging that is now behind me.

I wish I was still in the classroom studying criminal and property law. It conveyed a distinct sense of understanding, as esoteric as it was. I felt as if a trade was being acquired. Something far beyond the realm of undergraduate education.

For within the last week I have thrown everything I could at it. The mountain was grand, but the insane drive to surpass the mediocre was irrevocable.

The drive is not solitary. It requires unyielding support and understanding. And I have received it.

I had to take a break from articulating the affirmative defense of entrapment because of the irresistible impulse to describe what this storm means to me.

The greater New England area is enslaved to a massive snow-storm that paralyzed nearly a half million Americans in the mid-west and killed 27. This morning I woke up before it arrived, and ran my favorite 8 mile loop around this area. Came home, drank coffee, and began to study.

As I listened to the radio, the traffic reporters were aroused by the vehicular paralysis spread far and wide over the Commonwealth. They would expose the wonders of gridlock and “brake-riding” as if it were a cardinal virtue. People rushed to the nearby markets to stock on provisions and solace – A most animalistic behavior.

Others rushed outside to speak with neighbors upon the forecasted ignominious plunder mother nature will bestow upon the northeast. I sit and sip my coffee and work.

The school children run out of school with their parents and sport utility vehicles, complete with xenon headlamps, gargantuan tires, and in-seat DVD players, only to become frantic and neurotic inside these monsters of passive safety.

Being a runner has a physiological side effect that literally alters the way human cognition occurs. It releases the stresses and energies and fears that the body normally generates. It heightens the senses and awareness. And it makes one far more placid that others in a moment of great crisis.

Fear, panic, and utter chaos produce nothing. They are merely airborne diseseases that spread faster and more chronically than the nastiest of infections. Nothing positive comes from aggrandizing something that is beyond one’s control.

But sitting here and not being captivated by the anarchy outside gives me great solace and comfort in an hour of great peril.

A year ago at this time I was eerily close to hanging it up. I could not seem to heal myself. I thought my body’s inherent ability to run had been erased through a cyclical pattern of injury.

I can recall running at the lake for long runs; Wherein, I would injure myself for the next six days, only to return the following Sunday with my running buddy to do it all again. This is how I ran Disney. This is how I ran Boston.

One of two things would happen. I would either solider on to the next thing, ignoring the pains and suffrages that I learned to embrace - Or I would simply stop.

At times I thought maybe I had run too much for my own good. Degenerated my tissue and skeletal system to an ignominious level of peril. What was most disconcerting was the fact that none of my ailments were “clinical”. I didn’t have a torn meniscus, a ligamental tear, or even shin splints. I had pains that wouldn’t leave which rendered me incapable of walking without some limp or stride deficiency.

Waking up on a rainy May morning, the day of commencement, I walked down to the hotel treadmill and gave it a whirl. I ran two miles absent the sharp, snapping pain of compartment syndrome.

Throughout the summer I ran more and more, but still careful not to do anything that would elicit the old pains of autumn, winter and spring.

I feel blessed to be able to run now. Going out without thinking of what I’ll feel like after; Not forecasting how hard it will be to walk to class the following morning; Or even if I’ll be able to run many years from now.

Every step I take at this place is one of understanding.

Every hill can spark a flash-bulb memory of some sort of pain.

But sometime between the pre-dawn hours and the ride home, I have begun anew.

I long to run with those who presently cannot. On these trails I learned to become a distance runner. Every time I run here, I think of someone who painfully can’t. I no longer begin the run and condemn those whom are not out here. I breathe the same cold air in ecstasy today that I breathed a year ago on the most familiar trails, but under the most uncomfortable of conditions.

A runner whom is removed from his habits faces a test far greater than any race, or of any physiological capacity. The best runners are those who can recover from forced physical inhibition, and find a renewed passion for the sport.

Whatever the ailment, wherever the recovery, and however long the leave of absence, the human will soldiers on. It’s what brought me back here. It is what ensures the survival of contentment. It is the antagonist of false security. It is what has ensured the democratic promises of the English-speaking peoples for centuries.

The human will is a simple organism, which is engineered for a single quality:

To prevail.

Hindsight: Part II

The beauty in this sport is that you never lose anything you can’t re-gain. Other athletic endeavors are composed of cutting edge moments of opportunity. 4th Quarter Mayhem; Penalty Shot Overtimes; 9th inning bases loaded and down by one run. They all express a sense of singular opportunity.

Ask any competitive team-sport athlete where he was when he dropped the fly ball. What stadium the hockey player struck the post at during a breakaway. A basketball player could eloquently describe the distinct odor of the parkay when he missed the buzzer shot.

Running has none of these. Everything you have, and everything you do is left on the road, or in the muffled wood. It exists for a nano-second and then it is gone forever. Races are won by increments of time that have no relevance in any other sport. If a marathoner can outlast a fellow competitor and beat him by .0092 seconds, I challenge any official, in any other game, to evaluate a play within the same frame of time. It’s mechanically impossible.

The late Dr. George Sheehan once wrote that he had given up thousands of things for his running. None of which was a sacrifice.

I raise these points only to describe what it’s like regain something I thought I had lost. When you enjoy yourself and your fellows to a degree of insomnia, it is hard to want anything more. So naturally one begins to realize what they have lost. The thousands of gains a man reaps in a day can instantly vanish if he has lost a single thing. This is why it is crucial to reflect on the fortunes, the privileges, and the inherent character that defines us. For it builds up so very tall, that a stiff wind could swiftly extinguish its fortitude.

I thought I had lost a place I held in sacrosanct. I knew it was there. It was not going to have waste committed upon it, for it was conserved and protected land. But conservation is only as good as the distance between its’ patrons. Witness the open-market; If every soul in the western hemisphere went to the same store to purchase their daily dosage of contentment, I doubt the store would exhibit the same traits it vends. Three is a crowd. Familiarity can breed contempt.

Distance running has a unique trait. After 6 miles of distance run, the mind enters its’ most humanistic state. Antagonisms are trampled and disagreements are happily rectified.

Armed with such an absolute truth, I cannot lose anything. Running is now, what it was then. It is the same earth. The same water. I explored it with people and shared feelings that forged what we have became, and what we still are. One by one they follow a path I ran so many times before. learned what Zatopek meant when he said “We are different, in essence, from other men.”

I learned what was dedication, and what is the marathon.

HINDSIGHT: Part I

I am pained.

I am witness to a point in time that has torn my thoughts and emotions and all that I stand for in two very contrasting ways.

To stand firm at this point in time if one of the hardest things I have had to do. It transcends one’s politics or religion. I am beginning to wonder how much more time I have before I have to certify my policy on life.

I have friends whom are both conservative and liberal, Democrat and Republican, Runners and those whom are not. At times I feel as if I am linchpin therein.

I can only attest to what I’ve experienced thus far. But when everything boils down, I still am raw and unlearned in so many arenas.

Contrasting my beliefs is a system that I feel no longer can suffice. At some point in a man’s lifespan a point of certainty must be reached; A man must evolve into one of principle – A time when nothing will come from equivocating.

I refute the idea that the most definitive mind is the most educated. The measure of a man is rarely determined in his allegiance to an ideology.

Yet I also feel that the basis of human cognition is one of infinite capacity. The human being will not cease in the presence of danger or the manifestation of indecision. It must re-assured, if by no one but itself, that it is the master of its own house.

Paradoxically, the promulgation of laws ensure the legitimacy of a free society. The Sovereign can only exist in an arena wherein the citizens respect the authority therein.

The beauty about our constitutional republic is the very fact that there are exceptions to this paradox. Statutes are overwritten. Policies are abolished. And minds disagree.

In the long, history of the world, only a few states have been granted the role of preserving democracy, in tyrannical times. We are blessed to live under the wing of a mighty eagle, who assures the survival and the success of liberty. But we are also under the vindictive mentality of might makes right. This is not an eagle. To quote Churchill “It is a monster of wickedness, insatiable in its’ lust for blood and plunder.” But the ability to vest in the armaments of the world’s last superpower is to sleep under the wing of a dragon. And it is warmer than you may think.

Falling under a guise of history, and emboldened by a false pretense, I spent time under such an illusion. But once the beast begins to awake, you can no longer equivocate. You must determine where you stand. You must understand the calling versus the passion. And you must be able to discern them.

I support those who brave men and women who stay awake at night. Who lumber along 100 degree desert floors, who make light the savageness of the world, to ensure the last bastions of Christian Civilization do not blow out.

And for this reason, I have developed an enlightened degree of self-interest.

Pursuit

We all have weaknesses.

Some are more flagrant than others. As of late, I find myself questioning my strengths; What I perceived to be formidable tenets of my constitution are becoming eroded by the rising tides of law and physical training.

The Greeks who spoke so long ago of (strong mind , strong body) knew all too well the inherent strengths of the human condition. They knew the propensities and the fears, the objective and the subjective, and the axioms that govern human behavior. I would only wish to have a fraction of this understanding.

When I find myself in contexts such as the present, I begin to withdraw. I distance myself from social distractions, and work in pattern that is arguably unhealthy. My greatest weakness is the inability to cease something I have started. I work harder when I prohibit superfluous distraction.

Bayley had a profound point when he accurately asserted “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” The deprivation of pleasure is the medium towards one’s paramount condition.

The danger in endurance sport is precisely this; continually denying one of the pleasures the laymen take as necessity. The endurance athlete simply closes their eyes. They deny themselves the comforts of the familiar, for the excitement and danger that comes with even the most peaceful progress.

Einstein has been said to be a cruel father. Neglecting, dismissive, and crass. I find it hard to conceive that these fallacies ever existed in the man outside his work. As a young man who values his family above all else, I can assure anyone that I would swiftly cease and desist all personal ambition should my family demand it.

I abhor the idea of self-aggrandizement. I find it fundamentally unethical. The armor of dignity often clads the weakest constitutions. It is for this reason that I find myself often concealed in a veil of secrecy. I work hard and I disclose it only to those whom I must demonstrably certify it before.

I find great comfort in this. Similarly, I find an inherent truth in distance running. I abstain from the sports which require a six-man support system. Jefferson once said that “Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind.” Being alone in the dark road in the cold rain is when every evolutionary instinct within oneself advises against the heart’s intent. It is only here where I learn the most and yearn the least.

Men weren’t made to disobey their biology. They weren’t given the rights they have from the state, but from the hand of God. Every living thing has an estimate of their capacity. But it is only that.

I’ve met with people who have conquered obstacles and impediments greater than I have ever dreamed. And they have won.

Working tirelessly and grinding ones’ nerves to a degree of discomfort is a horrific proposition. But at the end of that road often lies the apex of man’s achievements.

When man works himself to the level of imminent collapse; When he intoxicates himself with his own blood, sweat and tears – And then, after all this, only when the mind can seek no pleasure by the present course - This is when the walls

What I'm about to assert is something that despite past wishes, is finally coming true.

I've been working very hard the last few weeks to become a stronger runner. And it has worked.

I have waited over a year to regain this level of fitness, and it finally is beginning to manifest itself in the roads ahead.

Suffering on the hills.

Hammering the treadmill.

Core workouts five times per week.

All of this was done after I worked to illuminate the most shadowed corners of my training. The areas where dust accumulates and rust composes.

And then tonight I found what I had in me. I found great speed and ability and strength after a grand day with even grander acquaintances in Boston College's systematic destruction of Miami. Go you Boston Eagles.

Following a day of the quintessence of New England, came great reward in the lonely night air.




7 miles at tempo pace, feeling as if I was floating along what would become a new reality. A new, uncanny ability to seemingly ascend into the heavens.

That's all I know at this point. But I sure am happy.

I’m not as eccentric as I once was.

I’ve learned to relax some, control less, and live more.

But there are certain stimulants that elicit grand memories of a time long healed, but still raw.

Environments.
Weather.
Music.

Temporary silence.

They all fire the synapses in my brain which create the flashbulb memories of an insane history.

About two years ago this time, I would be home on holiday. I would run on average 7-9 miles in the freezing, salt encrusted streets of a suburban New England town at 7:00AM. For no other reason than I could. My speed was non-existent; My monotony established; My routine precisely that.

I would then return home, bathe, coffee and a small breakfast. Then it was onto the bike on the trainer. I remember watching the tragedy in West Virginia of those coal miners who perished on CNN Morning Addition from my trainer.



Then the day seemed to end. Training was over. School was in recess. And I was alone.

So I began to read, work in advance of my senior thesis due dates, and largely bury myself amidst coffee and books. Seemed like a grand thing.

Triathlon is a lethal creature if it is not tamed. For it can be loved as easily as it can be abused. After fulfilling Dr. Cooper’s minimum daily requirements of 30 minutes of daily aerobic exercise, one may feel validated. Not so in multi-sport. The bane of our very existence is the same thing that makes us better: The ability to endure pain and fatigue and distractions, while maintaining a quasi-life. To endure is to know achievement.

However after so many miles, so many beats per minute, so many strokes per cubic centimeter, the wheels will come off. And when they do, it is the equivalent of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object. Hell hath no fury like an injured runner during the utopian season of cross-country.

As I begin my off-season now, I come off a largely successful season: A sub 4 hour marathon, a sub 3 hour Olympic distance triathlon, and placing second in my age group in an 8k road race. I feel validated.

My memories and passions are pure. Running in the snow and then going to Starbucks to bury myself in a presidential history book. Cycling on the trainer until I feel as if the room has become 105 degrees, only to run outside to my deck to completely cool off, and then collapsing on the carpet for 2 hours. Notwithstanding these curious habits, I find great comfort therein.

Yesterday I ran a 10-mile Turkey Day course, which I felt fantastic pursuing. Then this morning I hammered the largest hills I can find, including one of which I have for 4 years longed to test myself on.

I was quite sore shortly thereafter, as in these short moments of man versus 9.8 meters per second of downward force, I meet the extent of my physiology. I fight my genes. I fight my pain. And I fight the earth.

The hill brings man down to his innermost strength. Its what children stop in the middle of a game of tag when their prey runs up a hill in the playground. They realize the struggle ahead, and they falter.

It therefore makes perfect sense for the non-runner to see a lonely figure in the distant grass going up and down a steep knoll, to just shake his head in disbelief

The hill is one of the few periods in a weekly training regimen that guarantees the most opposite of emotions. It’s a sweet nexus of adversity and triumph. It elicits only the deepest and most guarded instincts of man. For it is in the hill that a man knows what he truly is. It sheds away the façade from even the most conditioned of athletes.

A man can have a heart the size of a boulder. He may have the legs of hydraulic compressor. But every physiology is challenged on an incline. Cars change gears, cyclists shift if its not too late, and the runner’s legs pool with litres of lactic acid. Every runner suffers on a hill. But so does anyone who attempts this noble feat. There is an absolute truth in escalating one’s heart rate while moving above, and admirably, beyond a 180 degree plane of earth:


Within incline lies equality.

I’m not as eccentric as I once was.

I’ve learned to relax some, control less, and live more.

But there are certain stimulants that elicit grand memories of a time long healed, but still raw.

Environments.
Weather.
Music.

Temporary silence.

They all fire the synapses in my brain which create the flashbulb memories of an insane history.

About two years ago this time, I would be home on holiday. I would run on average 7-9 miles in the freezing, salt encrusted streets of a suburban New England town at 7:00AM. For no other reason than I could. My speed was non-existent; My monotony established; My routine precisely that.

I would then return home, bathe, coffee and a small breakfast. Then it was onto the bike on the trainer. I remember watching the tragedy in West Virginia of those coal miners who perished on CNN Morning Addition from my trainer.

Then the day seemed to end. Training was over. School was in recess. And I was alone.

So I began to read, work in advance of my senior thesis due dates, and largely bury myself amidst coffee and books. Seemed like a grand thing.

Triathlon is a lethal creature if it is not tamed. For it can be loved as easily as it can be abused. After fulfilling Dr. Cooper’s minimum daily requirements of 30 minutes of daily aerobic exercise, one may feel validated. Not so in multi-sport. The bane of our very existence is the same thing that makes us better: The ability to endure pain and fatigue and distractions, while maintaining a quasi-life. To endure is to know achievement.

However after so many miles, so many beats per minute, so many strokes per cubic centimeter, the wheels will come off. And when they do, it is the equivalent of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object. Hell hath no fury like an injured runner during the utopian season of cross-country.

As I begin my off-season now, I come off a largely successful season: A sub 4 hour marathon, a sub 3 hour Olympic distance triathlon, and placing second in my age group in an 8k road race. I feel validated.

My memories and passions are pure. Running in the snow and then going to Starbucks to bury myself in a presidential history book. Cycling on the trainer until I feel as if the room has become 105 degrees, only to run outside to my deck to completely cool off, and then collapsing on the carpet for 2 hours. Notwithstanding these curious habits, I find great comfort therein.

Yesterday I ran a 10-mile Turkey Day course, which I felt fantastic pursuing. Then this morning I hammered the largest hills I can find, including one of which I have for 4 years longed to test myself on.

I was quite sore shortly thereafter, as in these short moments of man versus 9.8 meters per second of downward force, I meet the extent of my physiology. I fight my genes. I fight my pain. And I fight the earth.

The hill brings man down to his innermost strength. Its what children stop in the middle of a game of tag when their prey runs up a hill in the playground. They realize the struggle ahead, and they falter.

It therefore makes perfect sense for the non-runner to see a lonely figure in the distant grass going up and down a steep knoll, to just shake his head in disbelief

The hill is one of the few periods in a weekly training regimen that guarantees the most opposite of emotions. It’s a sweet nexus of adversity and triumph. It elicits only the deepest and most guarded instincts of man. For it is in the hill that a man knows what he truly is. It sheds away the façade from even the most conditioned of athletes.

A man can have a heart the size of a boulder. He may have the legs of hydraulic compressor. But every physiology is challenged on an incline. Cars change gears, cyclists shift if its not too late, and the runner’s legs pool with litres of lactic acid. Every runner suffers on a hill. But so does anyone who attempts this noble feat. There is an absolute truth in escalating one’s heart rate while moving above, and admirably, beyond a 180 degree plane of earth:


Within incline likes equality.

So now that I’ve finished that leviathan of a criminal law assignment, I may address the peril and plunder that was my run this evening.

Prior the beginning, I felt tired, sore, and just beat. But my soul cried run.

So as I drove home in the cold midst, which would make anyone else speed to the nearest Starbucks for a Pumpkin Spice Latte, I considered outside versus inside running. I succumbed to the former.

Oh Lord, help me understand the follies in my choice.

So I hopped on the treadmill, hoping for the best, (albeit, I wish I was running in the mist outside) and was met with bitter reality.

Everything hurt. And now my left ITB is critically sore around my knee, and I lust for inactivity. I have scheduled a 10 miler tomorrow morning before the feast. Not too sure if that’s going to happen.

I should have just run in the mist, amidst the tears and rain.

So I’m going to take a break for a bit of time from all this work.

At this instant in the semester, I have found great stress and burden. My roommates find a similar struggle in their endeavors.

Finals loom. But before the exam itself, arrives a tsunami of project development and deadline drudgery.

The stress grows as tolerance dissolves.

For the past 7 hours, absent 1 for swimming, I have been buried within these three projects. The monster of which is an interdisciplinary examination defense I must prepare for a client whom is far from ethical.

I intend to succeed in this test. I have great intent, but even broader expectations.

Regressing for a moment to my race last Sunday – I placed.
Second in my age group. Received a medal today recognizing said accomplishment. I don’t usually re-affirm my efforts, but I have not done something like this in over 3 years. Witness my child like enthusiasm.

Absent adequate hydration, I have continued this project, as I continued to suffer Sunday. Without knowledge of what I gambled on in those last 2,000 feet, and what the judgment will be on this defense, I have found a certainty in law and in running.

Somewhere in man’s greatest mistakes lies his greatest strengths.

Solace

Today was the nexus of great struggle and unimagined creativity.

My current educational pursuit is the most challenging endeavor I have ever engaged in intellectually. It steals my energy, and it robs my passions from outer outlets. Make no mistake – I absolutely love what I am doing, and yearn for more knowledge. More argument. More precedent. More possibility.

But at times, it makes me so very tired. At times I want to simply run - Forget the days proceedings. The same thoughts run through my head

I guess it's time I run far, far away; find comfort in pain,
All pleasure's the same: it just keeps me from trouble.



One week ago this day, I was injured to a degree of immobility, after improperly stretching my psoas major half-way through a twenty miler for the 2007 Disney Marathon.

I could not walk in forward direction. I was reduced to moving laterally into that emergency room.

This same injury prohibited me from participating in a local 8k road race, one year ago today. My father had worked tirelessly to ensure a fluid transpiration of said event. And I was stuck home. Staring at my entry fee for Disney. Searching online forums for solace.

He returned home hours later, with surplus post-race refreshments from the 25th Essex Turkey Trot. They sit in my basement today, dusty and covered in with the debris of a years time. I refuse to drink them. I did not earn them.

Today, I had a promise to keep. I had to run that very race, on the 26th annual year. I wouldn’t settle for a placid performance. I had been working on my lactate threshold the preceeding week. And I could run comfortably at a 7:00 min/mi pace. I had to test myself.

The course was by no means easy. Elevation rose steadily, creating a sense of sheer pain. There was little to no comfort throughout the entire endeavor. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t really think about the pains in my body. Exhilaration masks the greatest of foes.

I recall vividly the mile 3.8 mark, wherein a sharp turn took the race left. And a man whom I clearly could see wanted to punish himself that day, banked on my right. He passed me, and I realized he had the pace I needed.

From this point on, I found pleasure in pain.

After my adrenaline released, and I saw him continuing to run hard upwards. I knew if a similar condition would have arisen in my preparation for this day, I would have surrendered. In this race, I needed more. I broke through. I stayed the course, unwavering in effort. The only element that changed was my heart rate, my feeling of imminent vomit, and the darkened smile inside my heart.

I had a rough estimate of wherein my capacities lie, and an even rougher understanding of the remaining 1.2 miles. But I took a chance.

The last turn brought the course back onto the main road. The finish line invisible before cresting one last monster.

Giving a hill everything you have is not something that is easy to describe. It is not as beautiful or as bone-chilling as testimonies described with such facility in popular magazines. It requires audacity. And an unyielding commitment to surmounting the challenge therein. All one can do is realize what lies within. George Sheehan once wrote of a hill; What it demands of a man:

"..the Hill demands more and more. I have reached the end of my physiology. The end of what is possible. And now it is beyond what I can stand. The temptation is to say, ' Enough. ' This much is enough. But I will not give in. I am fighting God. Fighting the limatations he gave me. Fighting the pain. FIghting the unfairness. Fighting all the evil in me and the world. And I will not give in. I will conquer this hill, and I will conquer it alone."

Knowing there was resolve in the completion of this event, I thought at one point that if I do pass out on this corner, it would be for the noblest of ambitions.

My personal record at this distance is 38:20 (Feaster Five 8k, 11/25/04) Today I ran 37:00:00. Flat.



Running in this season is personal. Some love the foliage and the cold weather, others love to sweat in the heats of July.

On 4 hours of sleep, a state of dehydration, and a hurried promise to keep, I managed to find the balancing point. Thereafter, I continued my educational pursuits, while keeping a little grin at the new time on my wrist.

Running in these familiar towns, meeting old faces whom have seen far worse circumstances and injuries than I, gives solace to one who strives to maintain balance. It’s a simple pleasure. It is neither esoteric nor nostalgic. It is pure.



Cherished, days as this, are what plug the voids of uncertainty.

Yesterday I was able to run in a grand place.

Albeit, it has been some time since I ran there. But I also felt a comulsory urge to see this spectacular manifestation of New England autumn.

I'm running harder than I ought to this close to Manchester. Friday was tempo 7 miles. Yesterday was 8 miles in slippery mud and much and wet leaves.




I ran as the sun was setting, and left after dark.

Today, I feel a tingling in my left heel, though my hip pain is gone.

So today, I did my first long-base ride for Timberman 2007. 2 hours 4 minutes on the trainer.

God I love New England.

Getting Serious; The Road Is My Therapist

Since Manchester I have run two times. More than I have run after any marathon, within such short proximity to a completion thereof. Wednesday on the treadmill, 4 miles.

Today on the road, 8 miles at tempo pace. I felt like a XC runner finishing a race at the end. Strong push off, high knees, and great acceleration. The pain was gone. I felt a bit tight in the beginning, but this quickly abated.

But what I have to say here isn’t about me. It’s about my discovery of the most apt descriptions of running I have found.

One is Dr. George Sheehan’s Running & Being: The Total Experience. A storied book by a storied cardiologist, who knows what weaving a distance run into a man’s life means.

The other is today’s Endurance Planet Podcast, which I highly encourage all you download at www.enduranceplanet.com

I highly encourage all those whom are interested to check these grand sources out of their local reference desk, wherever it may be.

Running loosens the rough edges of my nerves.

As I sit my hamstrings ache.

Pure exertion cannot be replaced by skill or finesse.

Runner’s are always in pain or injured. It’s the ticket price, for low orbit-flying.

To say that to run is to fly is sensational. But its true.


And yet after all this, I’m still finding myself on the road.

When I run one of these damned endeavors, I always have a primary goal: To finish. I don’t seek, I merely discover.

Since I’ve adopted this philosophy, it appears that I’ve come out just fine. This last week has been something of a watershed moment in my life. I learned a lot about myself, but more importantly, about the resolve of the human condition.

I learned man must be prudent in his decisions, in dreams, and his expectations. This is the price one pays for having a manifest destiny.

I never expected this marathon to be preceded by a chain of events so original, and completely destructive of my emotions.

Today, for the first time in several months, I felt the tide turn. I felt resolute. I could put the bitter history of Disney and Boston to rest, and rectify the mistakes of recent history.

This is the price one pays for having a manifest destiny.

I don’t subscribe to a lot of the dogma of my generation. I shun conventional wisdom when others act pursuant therein. If the blood in my veins was qualitative, it would be 97% chivalry saturation, and 3% audacity saturation. Chivalry is not dead.

This is the price one pays for having a manifest destiny.

Having friends who transcend even the hardest of times, at the most uncommon moments, is a gift. I never expected, in all my wildest expectations, that I would owe so much, to so few.

This sport is demanding. But it is also hilariously simplistic. It requires the most simple of human attributes, and yet it tests these innate characteristics to the edge of human limits. After these limits are stripped of the gloss of culture, they are abolished.

Life is a lot like endurance sport. Both make you discover new obstacles, both require the respect of demands, and both allow one rise to new expectations

This is the price one pays for having a manifest destiny.


There is uncertainty in this sport.

If there wasn’t, it would not elicit the sensory emotion it does. Each of those runners I passed today ran their own race, independent of myself. But at the finish line, we all shared something.
There is a universal truth in running twenty-six miles, three hundred eighty-five yards. You need to be willing to leave the comforts of the familiar. You need to experience pain, desperation, and then you will be greeted with a euphoria like you have never known.

Manchester City 2007
Universal



tune: Duck & Run
3 Doors Down

Regress over a year ago into my life, and I was one who loathed change. I counted minutes. I pre-planned my advance plans, and had back up scenarios. I lacked the freedom I had sought for over 18 years.

Only those who intimately knew me before and after know what I speak of. I fail at conveying the dichotomy of my being again and again. Words and expressions can only convey what is received in the sensory world of communication.

I stand two days before another grand adventure of twenty six miles and three hundred eighty five yards. My family, my friends, and emotions are vested in this endeavor. It traverses the very area, that this dichotomy came to fruition. Thousands of miles over the same roads, are about to be re-visited.

Yet before this race, I have the chance to visit with special people, see new ideas, and gather new perceptions on what life entails.

In the last year, I can conceive of a handful of moments, when my world was rapidly altered - Sent in new directions, while providing a vivid sense of enlightenment.

One was following the most ill-placed running injury I had ever sustained:
The other was that sharp realization that balanced training incorporates new practices, and a great degree of fluidity.

On a cold rainy day at Franklin Park in the Boston suburb of Jamaica Plain, after running the first 2 miles in 2 weeks, a prudent runner simply told me

“When you come back, you want to be rewarded, not punished, for your obedience to your body”

The other was by a friend who now is among the closest.

“See this? This makes training become better. You’ll value it more. Trust me”

Both words are as clear now as they were then. They obliterated confusion. They provided a euphoric sense of relief. They changed my lifestyle anew, seeking whatever small satisfaction may be.

I’ve come to learn that life doesn’t peak, it merely rests. It doesn’t cease for the demands of timetables, deadlines or turning points. It merely adapts.

And at the end of this adaptation, clarity lies. I’ve seen both sides. And I’ve seen what happens when the tide is turned. And I’ll be damned if I drown in it.

The plight of a twenty-something is a tumultous tundra, of blood and plunder.

Adults no longer surround him, but he is expected to be at their level, and depraved of collegiate apathy.

The expansion of one's comfort zone is not pleasant. it is a brazen gauntlet of steep challenges and unlit oppurtunity. But at times, it is infinitely rewarding. In an age where upward mobility is has become the new Big Brother, the cherished times with good fellows is shorter than it was 40 years ago. But it has also more been more open to the creative energies of man, than any other time in history.

These energies mainfest themselves in the times of complete pause. At the times when you don’t expect anything. When you don’t seek anyone. And when your wants are absent, this is when the universe aligns.

I long believed, since leaving college, that the best days of my life were over. But the longer I live here, the more I think that the best is yet to come.

Regardless my state of mind, I possess an insatiable lust for happiness and comfort - All of which I find here.

I can stay awake at night, smiling. Trying to recount what happened during the day that made it what it was. Why that smile won’t dissolve into something else.

Strategies only complicate life. They deny the pleasures that yield most painfully to order.

The longer you wait, the harder things become. Until that flashbulb instant, wherein clarity arises. The dichotomy of chance and destiny becomes a single unit.

These moments transcend time. They cannot be estimated in numbers. They are the product of audacity and chance.

And when these moments come to fruition, I can rest.

I just want to stay in it.

I want to stay in the sport. I don’t want anything else.

Not running. Resting. And not tying my shoes. The times when I feel most separate, and most alienated. This is when I become most scared.

I need to return a state of suffering. Something even my last 20 miler can’t emulate. It is when the finish line is another 9 miles away. And you’re licking your fingers for whatever GU or juice or sodium is left. It’s then that I become who I am.

Manchester isn’t a race. It’s a war.

It’s peeling myself off the pavement after crashing at 22mph on a 90 degree turn. Its never wanting to move for the next week. It’s trying to run through rain and mud on a dented hip and dysfunctional ligaments. For the sake of something I call Cross Country.

It’s beyond a goal. It’s a renewal.

People drown. They crash. They fall apart. The wheels come off.

But you have to find trust. If you can’t trust something, you shouldn’t be out there. You just shouldn’t expect things that aren’t built for.

It’s a funny feeling to walk off a race course, covered in salt and pebble and skin, and never feeling better.

To cross a finish line… after never wanting to get up from the tar. Never wanting to move out of the road. Never wanting to move. People need to be inspired. I need to be inspired. And I need to leave nothing on the tar but my shadows.

Something got me off that wet asphalt. It wasn’t the cop. It wasn’t the volunteers. And it certainly wasn’t the cyclists Zipp wheels screaming by my body as I crawled over to the corner. But I got up.

I’m going to continue to get up. And come November, I’m not going back down.

Don’t Stop Moving.

In This

Two fundamental things are happening in this period if time.

Saint Anselm College, inter alia, competes in the most challenging and nerve severing event of the Division II Cross Country Season: North East 10 Conference

It is a monumental period for the team to be prepared for. I wish them only my heartiest best-wishes, as well as the strength and focus to run with speed and prudence.

I feel as if I’ve lost that experience. I lost three weeks earlier this fall. And I’m working like hell to get back. But my body is permitting me to only run 3 times per week, to reach the Manchester City Marathon on November 4.

Today was 15 miles in the heaven from which I feel removed from. It felt different this time. I don’t know why. But it doesn’t have the luster, the allure, or perhaps the conditioning that it used to have.

I can now recollect the memories of this special place, and what it meant to run there for three years regularly. I still drive there, for 1 hour, to run a long run there at a moment’s notice.

I’m not saying I’m right. Not saying that I don’t remember what it was like to be there as a novice runner, with the best friends I have. The best friends I have.

Watching other novice runners travel there for the first time. Witnessing blizzards and rainstorms and mud, and runs across a frozen lake. It is all to blistering to ever forget.

My body seems difficult sometimes. But I know that it was built to succeed. Not to fail. And in this, I trust.

I can remember when I was first mentored in this grand and jovial endeavor of endurance sport. I ran at random. Vomiting at the end of the street. Spitting. Hands on tired knees. Trying to look up. Straighten my abdomen, and resurrect myself from the primal belly-breathing that ensures an asthmatic survival.

Then I’d go home. Eat. Sleep. Go To School. Eat Dinner. And stretch in the front hall. And resolve.






“Here we go again”

One house farther

I can remember running my first 2.6 miler. My first 5 miler. My first 7 miler. Then running as long as I could freshmen year in college, in Vermont, on an unseasonably warm April 19, because my best friend growing up was running her first Boston Marathon.

Then I ran for two hours, and slept for 4 hours thereafter that summer.

I kept running. Ran Boston. Then tried to make gentle the collegiate life, and tame the savageness of what would become Triathlon.



If God invented the marathon to prevent man from doing anything more stupid, then triathlon caught him completely off-guard.

I learned what a cadence was. A derailleur. How speed-play was not just manifest in runner-speak, but had a valid meaning in multi-sport also.

There was a distinct feeling in the sport of multi-sport of total commitment. Total fitness. And total depletion.

The race of 9/9 was the hardest physical thing I have ever done. But after that ended, and I began training again, I saw the sport through a renewed sense of realism.


Today, I saw two of my best friends, get on a road bike, and just ride the countryside with me.




We are all fierce competitors, and even fiercer of friends. We test our limits, while ensuring the health of one another in the process. We never take no for an excuse, but we excuse our suffering when we know we are in danger.

It was a training ride for myself. But it wasn’t about me. It was about hearing their recollections after. It was hearing the thrill and joy in their voices. It was laughing in the wind as the sun set, as we gasped for air, and the heavy fishing trucks of Cape Ann flew by us. We were as Gods.

We rode by the manifestation of cross country heaven - Appleton farms. We time trialed as if we were fresh out of school, sprinting to the candy store.

I really can’t begin to describe what it means to me. Cycling is a lonely sport. As is running. And swimming. 99% of the year, I’m out there alone. With my thoughts. My body. My senses. There is pride in that, even arrogance. But there is also truth.

Having someone abetting me, breathing with me, swimming in the same sea of lactic acid as I, re-unites us in an uncommon bond. It elicits a moment in time that occurs only in the noble pursuit of promise and happiness..

I say this not because its coy. I say its because its true. Because when you look at me when I’m doing this, you can see, very plainly, that I’m experiencing a mild state of euphoria. Absent these challenges, these memories, and these short hours of ecstasy, I know nothing better.





This is Real Triathlon.