The Napa Chronicles, Volume 1

I first heard about the Napa Valley Marathon when I was 3000 miles away from it, living in North Carolina.

One of my training partners was a displaced Stanford professor who had run the race twice before. He told me all about its natural beauty and small-town charm, and I immediately put it on my mental checklist of races to do when I moved back to California a few years later.

My first Napa Marathon was in 2000. I was a semi-accomplished marathon runner at that point, looking to raise my game to another level.

I had broken 3 hours for the first time in 1998, and again in 1999 at the same race – the California International Marathon in Sacramento. The CIM is world famous as the "Fastest Course in the West", with an ideal elevation profile that almost guarantees PR times.

By 1999, I had done lots of marathons, but was only able to break 3 hours in Sacramento. Before long, those CIM times seemed a bit dubious – kind of like dunking on a 9-and-a-half foot rim. So I had it in my head that I needed to break 3 hours on another course to leave no doubt as to my ability.

My first target in this new quest was Napa in 2000. Reviewing this Napa course profile beforehand, it appeared very conducive to breaking three hours. I trained as hard as I ever had, and envisioned myself running strong through the final miles of the race.

There was only one catch in the plan. The race was only 6 weeks before the Big Sur Marathon, which had already taken its stranglehold on my psyche and become my favorite, most important race of the year.

With the short period of time between races, I was torn about how much to taper before Napa. A full three-week taper before the race and a week of recovery afterward would take a full month away from quality training in preparation for Big Sur.

I was reluctant to go that route, especially after multiple conversations with training partners who sometimes entered Napa simply as a quality training run leading up to the main event at Big Sur (It should be pointed out - although I didn't fully realize it at the time - that some of my training partners are maniacs.)

I ended up cutting back my mileage only a few days before the race, and showed up at the 2000 Napa Marathon with excellent fitness but very little rest.

The course has moderately rolling hills through the first half, and I stayed right on sub-three-hour splits with the expectation that the course would trend downhill during the final miles.

So you can imagine my concern when I drifted through mile after mile of the last 10K thinking, “Where did all these hills come from?”

I know this sounds like whining, but really - look again at the course profile. It looks like the last several miles are downhill, right? The course certainly doesn’t run that way. While there aren’t any backbreaking climbs, there are enough gradual, lengthy rises to make you think “Hey, wait a minute – these are hills!” I remember getting bitter and resentful – toward whom, I wasn’t really sure – which is definitely not the mindset you want to have when laboring through the final 10K of a marathon.

Given the minimal tapering I did beforehand, it shouldn’t be surprising to hear what happened in the final miles. I gradually but inexorably fell behind pace, and missed breaking three hours. My gas needle hit “E” at about mile 23, and I tried to ride on the leftover fumes for as long as possible, but the entire last mile felt like I was pushing against a rear fender that resisted all attempts at forward momentum.

My time was 3:03. I had run the kind of race that would have broken 3 hours at the CIM. I probably would have run sub-3 with a decent tapering period. I still might have broken three hours if I had anticipated the hills of the final miles instead of being taken by surprise.

The entire story was a classic example of not giving a race the respect it deserves, which is a fatal error for marathon runners. I felt undisciplined for letting my emotions and my focus get away from me in the face of unexpected conditions. It was very clear that I hadn’t yet made “the leap” to becoming a consistently strong marathoner.

But I didn’t beat myself up too badly over it. I knew there would always be next year. I resolved to train harder and focus more energy on the race in 2001. And there was no doubt in my mind that someday I would break three hours there.

And that’s where we’ll pick up volume 2 of this story in a future post.

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Carmel Valley Idol

Actual, unscripted dialogue between my 4-year-old daughter and the rest of our family on an otherwise normal weeknight several days ago. The game was her suggestion.

My wife, son, and I are sitting on the living room couch. 4-year-old enters stage left.

Me: Come on in, dog.

Wife: What’s your name, sweetie?

Daughter: I’m June (not her real name - it's her favorite Little Einsteins character). I’m 16 years old (not her real age).

Me: Where are you from?

Daughter: I live in New York City (not her real city), near the Statue of Liberty. I have two daughters (SO not real).

Me: Very interesting. Why do you want to be a Carmel Valley Idol?

Daughter: I like to sing.

Wife: What are you going to sing for us?

Daughter: “Hawaii Rainbow.” I learned it in preschool.

Me: OK, take it away.

(Daughter sings the entire song, then stands with her hands at her sides, smiling at her mother and me.)

Me: Thank you. Mommy, what do you think?

Wife: Hmmm…overall very good. A little pitchy in parts, but I liked it.

Me: I like it, dog. I like your look. You’re what this competition needs. Mommy – yes or no?

Wife: Definitely, yes.

Me (to my son): Yes or no?

Son (finally looking up from his comic book): What? I don’t know.

Me: It’s a yes for me. You’re on to the next round.

Wife: Welcome to Hollywood!

Daughter (raising both fists in the air, smiling broadly): Yes! (exits room stage left, skipping).


When are dreams like this outgrown? Clearly it’s normal for a 4-year-old girl to dream of being a music star, but somewhere along the line most of us give up on such notions and resign ourselves to the lives we have settled into instead of aspiring to the lives we desire.

Thankfully, running (or triathlon, for you tri-bloggers) makes many of us the exceptions to this unfortunate aspect of human development.

Nearly every runner out there is striving for some sort of goal. Whether it’s to lose weight, lower their blood pressure, break 20 minutes in a 5K, or run a sub-3-hour marathon, they all have some image of a faster, skinnier, or healthier body they want to attain.

To varying degrees, all of us recreational joggers, marathon racers, ultrarunners, and Ironman dreamers have more in common with my young daughter than we first realize.

We have an idealization of ourselves that we’re chasing each day. Sometimes the odds against the dream seem overwhelming, but with the right dedication we continue to audition, testing ourselves every time we lace up our shoes or jump in the pool.

Fortunately, unlike Hollywood, success in our sport doesn’t depend on impressing the right judges or getting the ideal break. It’s based more on determination and passion, and the self-discipline to ensure frequent practice.

So maybe the proper question isn't "When are these dreams outgrown?" but rather, "Why do dreams like this have to be outgrown?" I like the idea of having wondrous, childlike aspirations that are within my power to make a reality.

To put it another way - if chasing yet another 3-hour marathon doesn't keep me young, I'm not sure what will.

My recommendations to everyone out there who is chasing a goal are the same things I would tell my daughter for whatever pursuit she chooses: Don't worry about the length of the road ahead. Don't worry about what any judges have to say. Don't lose sight of the person you aspire to be.

And most importantly - never, NEVER stop dreaming.

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Silver Linings

Despite the disappointment of missing our weekend in the snow, the weekend actually turned out pretty well.

On Friday morning, I took my two daughters to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, far and away one of the best perks of living here on the Monterey Peninsula. The Aquarium is a world-famous educational and research facility, and family memberships are reasonably priced, so we’ve had the luxury of visiting countless times over the years.

Our kids are as familiar with the exhibits of the Aquarium as they are with their own school or church or anyplace else they frequent. My oldest son and I have even spent the night there, sleeping with our bags rolled out right under the shark tank.

On this weekday morning, we almost had the place to ourselves, and it was all we could ask for. My two-year old is just discovering the wonder of all the ocean creatures, and my four-year-old was more than happy to act as her tour guide while we were there. Even the normally reclusive giant octopus played along, and went for a walk across the front of his tank just as we came by.

With our son in school and the rest of us at the Aquarium, my wife had some free time to make plans and consider materials for the deck we’ll eventually build. It’s telling of the kind of life she leads that simply being alone in a store constitutes quality time.

After school my son and I went bike riding in Garland Ranch, covering about 5 miles in the fading sunlight of what had been a 70-degree day. He doesn’t get nearly as much individual attention as he would like, and was appreciative for the time alone in our favorite place to ride.

On Saturday Grandma had recovered enough from the flu to take our older kids to a movie – they saw "Hoodwinked" and loved it. Their outing freed up some time for us to move along with work on our deck project, and by the end of the weekend we took two loads of old lumber to the dump.

Finally, I was able to do an early-morning, 20-mile trail run. I didn’t feel particularly strong, and I’ve got a couple of unusual aches to pay attention to, but it was a relief to get in a long run and convince myself that I can still be ready for a marathon in 4 weeks.

(Speaking of Napa, I indicated a couple of weeks ago that I would write about my past experiences there. I haven’t forgotten – those posts are coming soon.)

I guess the lesson we took from this weekend is that quality time isn’t about having everything work out perfectly, but making the best of situations as they occur. And sometimes vacations aren’t so much about where you go as how you spend your time.

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Change of Plans

We never made it to the mountains.

More accurately, we never left our driveway. Our bags were packed, the kids were excited, and we were nearly ready to roll until a couple of phone calls changed our plans.

The first call was to the kids’ great-grandmother, at whose house we were planning on staying, to get a snow report.

The report was very short: “There’s no snow.”

Apparently it’s been raining lately as high as 6000’ instead of snowing. There is no snow on the ground at her house (at 5000’), and very minimal snow at the bunny slope where I taught my son to ski last year. We could have gone all the way up to the big ski resort, and paid a little extra to get the kids in gear, and we were considering this until the second phone call.

My wife called her parents, who were supposed to make the trip with us. They were both in the throes of the stomach flu (hmmm….can't imagine where they got it from). Her father hadn’t been out of bed all day.

It should be noted that our kids absolutely adore Grandma and Grandpa, and if pressed would probably choose them over my wife and I to accompany them on vacation. It would be a major downer to go ahead on the trip without them.

Grandpa was also going to be my asistant ski instructor. I wasn't confident in my ability to teach a 4-year-old how to ski while also supervising a 7-year-old skiing for only his second time. It seemed a recipe for disaster.

We talked it over with the kids, and decided to stay put. We’re all pretty bummed out, because there’s no telling if we’ll get another chance to make a snow trip this year. Between school and work schedules and other commitments, it’s hard to find times when the whole group can make the trip.

It was a tough call, and it’s a sad thing that we’re all staying home this weekend. Given the mood, I thought it prudent to allow at least an hour go by before asking the inevitable question…

“So, um….do you mind if I go running in the morning?”

And so it happened that I was able to run again this morning, when I wasn’t expecting to. I’d call it a silver lining to our failed plans, but I feel guilty in that I’m the only one in the family who gets to experience it.

I met the group in the early morning rain for our workout of church hill repeats. I’m still not running at full strength, and I was careful to take the intervals fairly conservatively. Still, I completed the full workout, and came home feeling like all hope isn’t lost for a good race at Napa next month.

Remember how I said my training had veered into a ditch? I can’t claim that I’m back to cruising speed, but let’s just say that this morning’s workout was like AAA pulling me back onto the road and putting air in my tires.

I’m keeping the vacation days off of work, and now my goal for the rest of the weekend is to find a silver lining for the rest of the family. I’ll take my son for a bike ride, take my daughter to the Aquarium, and play with our toddler at home. I’ll try to figure out a way to give my wife a bit of a rest from her nonstop grind, or at least share the load with her.

And perhaps if all goes well, I’ll try to sneak in a long run sometime, too.

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Perspective

4:00 AM, from my 4-year-old daughter’s bedroom: “DAAAADDYYYY!!”

I walk to her room and sit on the bed: “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

Her: I had a bad dream.

Me: What was it about?

Her: I don’t remember, but I didn’t like it.

Me: Well, you’re awake now. The good thing about bad dreams is, once you wake up, they’re over.

Her: Yeah.

Me: You’re here in your room, and we all love you very much. You’ve got your love blanket, Liddy (her doll), and Love-A-Lot Bear with you.

Her: That’s Tenderheart Bear.

Me: Right. OK, lets try to go to sleep again. Lie down and close your eyes. I’ll stay here a while.

Her (drifting off to sleep): Night, Daddy.

Me: Sweet dreams, angel.


5:30 AM. I’m awake in bed. My throat hurts, my ears hurt. Feeling lousy. I consider my options for the remainder of the morning, then climb out of bed and lace up my running shoes.

I managed a five-mile run through the neighborhood this morning, that felt…well, “good” is a little strong, but “it didn’t suck” seems appropriate.

At the very least, getting out for a run felt better than laying in bed for another hour feeling sorry for myself.

Reviewing yesterday’s post, I did an awful lot of griping about something relatively insignificant. Fussing about minor illnesses and missing a few training days is quite trivial in the grand scheme of things - especially when you receive a comment from a guy with a liver transplant.

Yet I inevitably hatch some doomsday scenario in my head with any sickness. It’s almost unavoidable, and I don’t understand why. It’s one of those unanswerable questions I have, like why can’t Protestants and Catholics get along, or how come it took The Bachelor four episodes to get rid of Tara the Lush.

Anyway, I’m feeling a little better today. Not yet good, but no longer sucky. And for this week, that’s considered progress. By next week, these past several days will seem like a bad dream.

Like bad dreams, there’s one good thing about being down in the dumps: once you have a decent run, it’s over.



**This is my last post for several days, until we return from the mountains. Have a good weekend everybody.***

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Basket Case

“Do you have the time- to listen to me whine- about nothing and everything all at once?” -
Green Day, ‘Basket Case’

Tuesdays are probably my most important workout of the week – our 13-mile loop at tempo pace is ideal marathon preparation, and the most accurate assessment of my fitness level from week to week.

This morning, I completely blew it off.

I thought I was coming around from the weekend’s illness, but yesterday I could barely drag myself through an easy 4-miler, and I felt completely drained for the rest of the day.

Up until this week, my training for Napa had been coming along pretty well: 2 weeks of 60 miles, 3 consecutive 70-mile weeks, with a long run of at least 18 each week. Although I started several weeks behind schedule in my mileage buildup, I was starting to think I could have a pretty good race at Napa.

But now I feel like I’ve veered off the road and into a ditch.

Even assuming that I bounce back to health soon, the rest of this week will be difficult from a training standpoint. We’re traveling up to the mountains for our annual “One weekend of fun in the snow and then come back home where it’s warm” vacation.

My wife’s grandmother lives in a town called Big Trees, which is on the same road that goes to the Bear Valley ski resort in the Sierra Nevadas. The house sits at about 5000’, and it’s only a 20-minute drive to get to the base of the resort at 7000’.

It’s the ideal setting for logging some quality mileage at elevation. Unfortunately, I’ve never really taken advantage of the setting. It’s sometimes a point of contention between my wife and I when I try to do too much running in the mountains – and she has some valid points.

It’s not really a vacation for her if she still has to get up early to get the kids fed, dressed and packed up for their day in the snow, while I’m outside running. And our kids seem to need more supervision than usual when we’re up there, because the setting is relatively unfamiliar to them, and not as “child-secure” as what we’re accustomed to at home.

So it’s very likely that out of 4 days, I’ll only run once or twice, for a short duration. Which would be OK if I were coming off a hard week of training. Instead, I’ll be coming off a week of doing almost nothing. By the time we’re home I’ll have spent almost two weeks off, with a marathon only 4 weeks away.

All of which makes me very nervous.

Logically, I know I’m probably overreacting. There’s a good chance that I can maintain my current fitness level for another week or so with minimal training. My self-confidence has taken a shot, but it will only take a couple of strong workouts in early February to get that back. Perhaps the days off will be a blessing in disguise, allowing my body to rest and repair before another strong training period next month.

Or maybe I will have spent too much time in the ditch to be able to fully recover in a short period of time.

Between now and then, I’ll have no way of knowing. And that kind of uncertainty just kills me.

For today, there's not much else to say. Thanks for indulging my whining. The next post will be more positive, I hope.

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Life on the Farm

I’m still sick, although not with the stomach virus my kids caught. Somehow it mutated into a head congestion/sore throat/ear ache thing for me, which seems strange. I’m not sure if these germs all came in on the same vector, or if our house is like some Grand Central Station for all manner of infectious transportation.

At any rate, I haven’t run for two days out of the last three, which doesn’t leave you much to write about when you are supposed to be blogging about running. So I’m taking a page from the playbooks of Johnny Carson and Larry King, and turning the blog over to a guest host. (Don't worry - it isn't anyone nearly as annoying as Joan Rivers or Nancy Grace.)

My Aunt Joanie sent me this e-mail a while ago after reading one of my articles (and it’s been so long ago, I don’t remember which article it was). It was such a fantastic story that I saved it and asked her if I could post it sometime.

To set the stage a little: My aunt and uncle have lived in a town called Park Falls, in the Northwoods of Wisconsin nearly all their lives. They don’t make towns any smaller, or life any more rustic than what you find in Park Falls.

My aunt grew up working on her family’s farm, and that’s where this story starts…

Dear Donny (yes, I’m still allowed to use the –ny instead of the more mature –ald for your name),

Finally got to read your article. Very interesting. Funny. And closer to home than I'd thought possible. Allow me - a reformed runner - my fifteen minutes of rebuttal…

I learned to dislike running early on. Running was always very closely associated with disrupted sleep and disaster. I refer to the 3am jail-breaks of insomniac bovines.

How my father (God rest his soul) always knew when these bovine delinquents were executing their great escapes I'll never know...but he sure did. Nothing rousts you out of a deep sleep faster than the words, "Cows are out!" Even now, when I hear that phrase used in the slang for a zipper undone, I flinch.

Why they always waited until the wee hours of the morning - usually the morning of a big test - just proves their demonic nature. 'Dumb' animals? My great aunt Fanny! These creatures knew exactly what they were doing. And the most benevolent of them, the sweetest, gentlest, most liquid eyed, soft mooing pets by day quickly turned into cunning, calculating vixens by night. They were wily beyond belief, knowing just where the fence was the weakest.

The worst culprits were the best milk producers. They just knew that even the wrath of my mother (God rest her soul) would not be enough to reduce them to hamburger for churning up her garden.

Perhaps they were only bored. I'm sure that the sight of us, their 'masters' running around in mismatched boots, nightclothes (we had a vain hope of returning to bed and sleep) vocalizing in subdued screams (mustn't wake the neighbors three forties away!) brought some excitement to their mundane existence.

And run we did. A lot. It was track and field all through the night.

Sprints: racing to head off a 1500-lb moonlight crazed bovine is not for the faint of heart – assuming you can beat them to the fence, they can’t exactly stop on a dime.

Hurdles (high and low): inevitably their escape route would take them among common farm yard items...plows, tractors, wagons, rocks, other cows and cow pies. Knowing when to jump and when to bob & weave was an acquired art - and I had the bruises to prove it.

And, of course the marathon. Whoever said that cattle weren't distance runners either never saw a Western cattle drive movie or never chased a determined cow. The Energizer Bunny couldn’t keep up with them.

And just when you had all but one rounded up and headed in the right direction...BAM! Like a siren call, the lone straggler (or maybe ringleader) would let out a bellow & the whole herd would be off again. And let me tell you, “Stop!”, “Come back!”, “Here bossy, bossy, bossy”, and even “You stupid cow!” have absolutely no affect on a cow bent on escape.

IF you were lucky, they'd have pity on you and decide that cavorting in the rising sun just wasn't as much fun as it was in the moooonlight & it was time to go to the barn & rest.

The only saving grace was, no matter how bleary-eyed you were when you showed up in school, it was all explained by, 'Cows got out'.

Enjoy your run. I've had mine.

Be Well,
Aunt Joanie

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