Collective Triumphs and Personal Failures

It's 85 degrees with 90% humidity on the boardwalk in Tel Aviv, Israel at 10 o'clock at night. I'm 40 minutes into a 50 minute run, my first run in 6 weeks since I donned my college uniform for the last time.

The boardwalk is brilliant. It zigzags up the coastline, either extending its limbs into the Mediterranean sea itself, or coming back and forming a sea-wall against sections with stronger current. Ingeniously, the city uses green lights for their lighthouses, and as the head spins the already-green water gets lit a magnificent emerald color as the tide swells crash violently into sea wall, exploding what looks like thousands of gem stones of five feet or so over my head as I plod along the waters edge. I thought that the occasional spray would cool me down in this abysmally hot night, but the water is just so warm that I'm not sure if it's helping me or just adding salt to my sweat. Like sweat needs any more salt.

I'm wrapping up a 5 week journey that has taken me from Israel, to Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Spain, Holland, England, and back to Israel again. After a frantic run up to graduation, the time away is something I needed. But this blog is about my running, and I'll explain it through that lens.

Coming into the season, my sights were singularly focused on making NCAAs in the 1500m. I needed to shave 3 seconds, and I pulled back on mileage and increased the tempos and light speed work over winter, which was the balance I thought I needed to fix what was off last season. It started off great with a solid opening 800m in the first week of February, and a 3:05.0 1200m leg on our school-record DMR two weeks later. Unfortunately, a tweak during a workout led to chronic achilles pain and I was sidelined for a couple weeks, relegated to the pool. No worries, I swam relatively competitively most of my life, and can put together really nice workouts in the pool, so that's what I did.

The miscalculations started there, alone in a pool with no guidance or restraints, where the loss of running work led me to believe that I needed to work double time to make up ground that I had lost, or was actively losing. I would do one tough workout, akin to something like 12x400m @ goal 1500m pace (aka 12x100y free) w/ 90s rest. Then, I would cool down, stretch, then hop back in for some sprint work, akin to something like 10x200m all-out (aka 10x50y free) with 60s recovery. It was the pool! There's no pounding to grind down your joints and muscles, and so you can work harder than you can while training on dry land.

I spent two weeks coming up with creative ways to destroy my body over the hours and miles in that lonely pool. Coming out the minute my achilles could handle it (definitely too early, but managing the pain to the point of stasis), I walked right into one of the hardest training periods of the season.

My first race back after that week was 1500m where no one had run under 3:58, where my coaches and I decided would be a good test effort to see how I was holding up. We hit straight 64s, and it was so easy, but I was sore and tired from three hard weeks of training, and when I hit the front (totally by natural movement, without even trying to make a run for it) with 200m to go, I had no gears to turn to. The 3:59 I ran was fine for the circumstances, and I wasn't all that discouraged. I really was tired.

The problem was, by this point in the season, I had about 3 more 1500m runs to get to nationals. To run 3:50 or 3:51. I had the perfect race last season to run 3:54, and I would need the perfect race again to run that time. I became obsessed with the splits, with hitting the workouts, with getting comfortable running 61-61.mid pace. The first race went out in 2:03, and I was right with the leaders as we rounded the best with 500m to go, before completely falling apart in the last lap, running a 66.

At conference championships, our stud runner blew the field apart with a 59 or 60s lap from 400-800m, a pace I didn't think the two runners who followed him could sustain, and I held back and tried to pick them back off over the second half of the race. They surprised me and held on very strongly, and I ran in no-mans land the whole way, finishing a very disappointing 4th in 4:00, essentially a solo effort from 400m out, trying desperately to pull in the kits that just never came an inch back.

The last 1500m went out in 2:05, and I was prepared to go after it the second half of the race, but lost concentration as the pack just didnt break up at all, and was fighting for position on the pole when I really just should have gone around the outside, and ended up being way off pace with 300m to go and simply could close in the required 54 seconds, obviously, over the last lap to hit the mark.

Knowing that my nationals dreams were snubbed out, I begged my coaches to let me have one last go at the 800m, because I hadn't run it seriously in two years, and I saw my PR as greatly undeserving my ability level. I didn't think I would run 1:51 but I was hoping for 1:53 or 1:52.high at best. That week during training, the plight of my achilles was coming back, wrenching pain shooting up my left leg higher and higher as I tried to taper and get comfortable with the fast pace of the 800m at the same time.

Slipping on my uniform for the last time, I was visibly unnerved. Cross country season saw no personal bests, but courses are different so that is forgivable. Tracks are all the same, and Southern California has but one season - 70+ and sunny - so conditions save wind are not a factor. I had no set a PR this season, and was desperate. The race went out in 55.high, and coming around the back stretch I moved up on the deep, fast field. Approaching the 600m mark a sliver under 1:24, I took a step to get around a fading runner before the bend.

I felt a seize. Two steps. A wrench. One step. A small pop.

I step off the track, my achilles on the verge of tearing viciously along the middle of my calf. It happened once before, albeit a very slight tear, when I was 14 and growing rapidly. I don't remember the circumstances exactly, but I remember the pain. And this pain was the same.

My season ended with my pounding my fists against the ground, dropping out of a race I was on pace to PR in, my last race, and failing to finish in a good time meant failing to improve for the first time in 9 years. Since I started running the 800m in 8th grad with a time of 2:14, I had PR'd in once event or another every single year. My sophomore year of high school I PR'd in just about every RACE I ran. And now, at my most experienced, in my last season, I had failed to do so.

At home after graduation, I watched my closest friends have outstanding performances at NCAAs. My roommates ran the 4x400m together, one of them getting All-American honors in the 400m. Two other teammates also were All-Americans in the 5k and Steeplechase respectively, with a slough of other teammates putting up great efforts in other events (including others int he 5k and Steeple). Me not being there did not make me any less proud of them, or our program.

CMS had finished the highest it had ever finished in XC on both the mens and womens side, and our mens track team had re-taken the SCIAC title for the first time since losing our 19-year winning streak after sophomore year. We were ranked one of (if the THE best) duel-meet team in the country, and the freshman, who I had been so worried about coming into the season, had put up times and marks better than our class in many ways at the same age, leaving me confident in the future of the program. Our success was their success, and visa versa.

But in the back of my mind, I was physically and mentally burned. Six weeks away from running let both of those wounds heal, and I turn to the next phase of my life - the working life - with a renewed body and a bitter mind. My past successes have always fueled my desire to improve, as the joys of winning and hitting marks I once never fathomed just made me want to experience those moments more often.

The pain of failure is a stronger motivation. While I'm a runner - and runners always think, always know they can do better, even after a fantastic run - I have always found saving graces in my seasons. Even when I was very anemic and almost had to get a blood transfusion to correct it, I turned to speed and found PRs in the both the 400m and the 800m, where previously I was focused on the 1600m and the 3200m.

But failure is, well, embarrassing. I found myself wanting to shake people scanning the results of our latest meet. Saying look, I'm not actually that slow. I just had a rough patch and went a little hard here, and took a misstep there, and really I can compete with anyone, I swear. But those excuses, always left unsaid, get harder and harder to really believe after a slough of shit performances, one after another.

I'm not going to really start training again until my job starts up in August, but I'll be in Denver, CO, the mile high city. At 5280 ft, what better place to find my talent? I'm spending two years at altitude, and eventually I'll be able to return to the Southern California tracks where I last remember failure, and instill new memories of success. Of that I have no doubt.