Article in Woodburn Paper

Click here to read the article about the scholarship recipient that was recently in the Woodburn Independent.

I'm Not Doing That Again

“I’m not doing that again.”  We have all said this.  In some cases it is the guy finally breaking up with the train-wreck of a girlfriend who everyone tried to warn him about.  In other cases it is the addict finally getting sober after relapsing again… after getting sober… after relapsing, again.  Perhaps it is the alpinist  who has a hair-raising open bivy, in a storm, without adequate clothing or food or shelter yet goes back into the mountains.  But we often do.  Memories fade.  The immediacy is lost, and the potency of what was felt in the moment has been diluted to, “It wasn’t that bad.”

After my ultra-marathon last month (heck, in the middle of it), I swore up and down that I would not put my mind and body through the torture a third time.  Depleted of energy, dehydrated, blistered, and broken is a great state to reinforce the necessity of quitting these stupid ultra-marathons and the scholarship that is the albatross around my neck.  But only two weeks later the memory has started to fade.

During this time since the 28^th of April, I have had conversations with many of my students about the run, the scholarship, and the purpose.  Again and again I find myself talking about the fact that the chosen student is not the smartest or the most financially needy.  She is the toughest, most stubborn individual with the greatest drive and vision for herself.  My two recipients have been kids who refuse to say, “I quit.”  The whole purpose for running 50 miles is to demonstrate this value: stuff worth getting is hard to get; don’t quit even when it hurts or cuts you down or seems impossible.  Presumably I am supposed to live this value of dogged perseverance through terrible odds.  Through that lens it seems kind of weak that I have considered quitting because it was “too hard”. In retrospect I also see some very significant problems with how I prepared.  Clearly I had some setbacks including a sinus infection and a sprained ankle.  However, I recognize that I went into the preparation feeling like I could rely more on my own experience than I should have.  Knowing what to expect is helpful.  Adequate preparation is still necessary.  

Like a junkie, I find myself already missing the tortured high of running those long distances.  They are both meditative and elegant in their simplicity.  There is an erosion of the self that occurs; at the end, the carapace that conceals the tender self beneath has been dissolved through hours of sweat and effort.  I am left with only the truth and a self is vulnerable and raw.  Perhaps this is why I found the 50 miles so painful last week.  I was forced to come to grips with what I really wanted from the endeavor.  Was it about time (faster than last year), competition (placing higher than my friends with whom I had trained), or the scholarship (money raised from simply covering the distance)? I find myself entertaining the notion that I will do it again next year.  It matters so much to the winner of the scholarship, and it has been so deeply revealing about who I am.  I would presume that as the summer passes, I will find that “I am not doing that again” will fade into something else: a receptiveness of the idea that the scholarship and its incumbent 50 miles should continue.  Unlike the junkie, the boyfriend, or the alpinist, running the 50 miles does not threaten my well being (despite what people may think).  It is true that I lose my toenails, but I risk little physically.  I was left psychologically wreaked, not corporeally damaged.  Endurance is in the mind not the legs or lungs, and perhaps this is where I should start my training next year.      

  

Heartbreak Hill

Comparison of Boston Marathon and Capital Peak Ultra-Marathon Elevation Profiles

Yesterday, I successfully completed the entire 50 miles of the Capital Peak Ultra-Marathon, running a time of 8:53.  At ten minutes slower than last year, the times are fairly comparable.  However, I feel like the efforts were miles apart.  Although last year I suffered greatly during some portions of the race, I still enjoyed it;  Kathleen, with whom I ran much of it, provided me with companionship and motivation.  This year there was only immense suffering, an absence of joy, and no comradery.  

As some of you may know, I rolled my ankle fairly severely in December, putting my training off until late January.  Then at the end of March I contracted a severe sinus infection that ruined night after night of sleep.  Fortunately a two week regimen of antibiotic was eventually able to stem the tide of gunk flowing from the cavities in my head.  This left me with marginally two and a half months of time to seriously train.  These are not excuses for my performance but reasons why I was unable to arrive at the start line fully prepared.

Although I started the race with my two friends, Andrew and Andrew, there was no assumption that we would run together.  One had trained like a machine and the other had two decades of experience to rely on.  I knew that both would soon leave me behind to run my own race.  Within a few miles, I fell in with a small pack that included, surprisingly, Kathleen.  She remembered me from last year, and we chatted briefly before also parting ways.  By the time I left Aid Station #2 at 9 miles, I was essentially running alone.  On the initial climb to the top of peak, I passed nearly a dozen people and continued to feel quite strong as I began the loop back around to begin the "grunt mile" on the second trip up to the summit of Capital Peak.  This is where things really began to fall apart for me.  

At mile 20 I was 3.5 hours in and still not having any fun.  In fact I thought about pulling the plug and dropping down into the 55k course to finish.  My reasons for doing this were fairly simple (lungs weren't working right, I was too much in my head, my feet were killing me, etc.), yet I thought of Jeannette and the promise that I had made to her: I would do everything in my power to finish all 50 miles.  The pledges my sponsors had made were also in the back of my mind.  They had demonstrated their faith in me by making a commitment to support the effort.  I had to do right by them as well.  Therefore I made the agonizing decision to continue on the 50 mile course.  

I swear that when I arrived at Aid Station #6 (29.6 miles) there was a tiny man in a sombrero and Mexican poncho.  He greeted me with an upbeat "Hola", and I simply responded to this bizarre illusion with the idiotic, "Did I run all the way to Mexico?"  Was he real?  If not, then who refilled my water bottles while I crouched to ease the ache in my knees?

The 5.7 miles from Aid Station #6 to the place where you begin the long descent off the ridge line was bad for me last year and nearly as much this year as well.  Along this stretch, you begin to cross paths with the runners headed out while you are headed back.  The pitch of the trail is generally in their favor, so chugging back uphill is exacerbated by their long strides and easy demeanor.  At this point I could feel blisters forming beneath my nail beds and between my toes.  A change of socks and shoes as well as Bodyglide was waiting for me at Aid Station #7.  I just had to tolerate the discomfort until then.

When I finally arrived, I was fortunate to have the assistance of Becca and Shana who refilled my stock of gels and fluid as well as helped me into dry shoes.  Troopers that they are, they cleaned up after me including my disgusting and soaked Cascadias.  For a moment, as I sat in the delicious comfort of that chair tending to my angry feet, I thought again of just pulling the plug.  I knew that fresh shoes were just a stop gap measure.  They had offered to help me lance the blisters, but I declined knowing that with all the sloppy mud left to run through, doing so was risking getting foul water in the wounds.  I absolutely did not want to continue, but I stood up and jogged back into the woods. 

Again I thought of my commitment to Jeannette and the principle that I was trying to illustrate for her as well as all of my students.  If I quit, it would not have been because I couldn't finish, only because I didn't have the will to finish.  As if to illustrate that point, the last fifteen miles were pure agony.  My feet were stoic and putting up their best fight.  My quads, although trashed, seemed to relish proving that despite their depleted state they still had some mileage left in them.  It was my mind that was gone at that point.  (Remember the hallucination of a Mexican in a poncho?)  For six hours I had been running by myself.  Rarely was anyone with earshot.  Often it seemed that I was the only person on this 50 mile long ribbon of mud and rocks and sand, and this messed with my head.

As much as my body was trashed when I crossed the finish line, it was my psyche that truly lay in tatters.  A group of people, including my four friends, were milling about eating and drinking in the afternoon sun.  Exiting the chute, I headed to the deserted corner of the parking lot, dumping my hydration belt as I went.  A wave of emotion was poised to overtake me, and I was reluctant to let it all come apart publicly after having suffered so privately for so long.  Eventually I dropped into a squat and allowed the relief of finishing to finally overtake me. 

We live in a world ready to laud our greatest successes and condemn us for our worst failures, but in reality most of our day to day existence is neither triumph nor tragedy.  This race, this effort, was neither success nor failure.  It was merely coping and making do until the end was finally reached.  The goals that we set are only significant in relation to what we have done in the past.  For me, it is hard not to feel like the ultra was a failure because of a slower time and greater suffering throughout.  No one was there to witness those private moments when I faltered on the trail and felt like crawling to the next aid station was a legitimate option, so they only saw the final result which was completion of the whole 50 miles.  That must equal triumph, right? 

The comparison at the top of the page is meant to illustrate the relative nature of success.  Before I starting running ultras, I had completed a series of marathons.  Although Boston was not one of them, I use it as a comparison because of its famous Heartbreak Hill, which is the last of four climbs between miles 16 and 21.  Rising just 88 feet over 4/10ths of a mile, it is the final climb for the course.  I had my own Heartbreak Hill yesterday; however mine was not a stretch of asphalt or section of trail but rather a state of mind.  Somewhere around mile 40 I realized that adrenaline could not keep the pain at bay and that I simply would not make the goal of besting last year's time.  But I would finish despite the doubt that had crept in along the way.  Defeating that hill was not a physical accomplishment but a psychological one: how appropriate for a scholarship that seeks to reward determination and perseverance over academic skill or financial need. 

The Scholarship Award Goes to...

I am pleased to announce the winner of the 2012 Endurance Scholarship.  It is Jeannette Selvas Orozco.

As a junior, Jeannette realized that she was significantly short of credit and was faced with the question, “Would I make it?”  She then made the biggest decision that she had ever had to make: Jeannette decided to enroll in the Oregon National Guard Youth Challenge Program in Bend, Oregon.  Willingly and freely she entered a boarding school environment that is built on a foundation of strong discipline, extreme structure, and rigid protocols (the contents of a student’s personal locker have prescribed places: choice reading book on the right side of the second shelf; socks rolled and placed just so).  She did not just survive in this new school; she thrived.  Jeannette was recognized as one of the top 5 cadets in her platoon and honored for academic excellence and high achievement in physical education.  With dreams of boxing in the Olympics and becoming a law enforcement officer, she has a clear vision for herself in the future.  As she clearly articulates in her application, Jeannette refuses to be just another Mexican-American teenager who didn’t make it. 

I had the opportunity to listen in on my panel’s conversation, and many of the same themes recurred from the discussion they had last year about Caleb Dron, my first scholarship winner.  They saw in both applicants a person who was living their future dreams through their present actions.

I would like to write more about her experiences which have led to this point as soon as she and I have the chance to meet and talk about what she feels comfortable sharing with a wider audience.  I hope to do this sometime next week, so please check back for more information about her story and her journey.

It is my absolute honor and privilege to run for her on Saturday.  The shirt that I am wearing today (pictured above) is in honor of her and her accomplishments and will be the one that I will run in during the race.  Having her name on my back will certainly motivate me to run all 50 miles with heart and drive.    

Decision

Last night my panel was hard at work discussing the candidates for the scholarship. The letters of reference were weighed against the student’s responses to the essay questions. The life experience of one was considered in relation to the life experience to the other. Ultimately they came to a unanimous decision, but I am not going to share their choice until I have the opportunity, tomorrow, to speak to their choice personally.

Needless to say, I found it profoundly interesting that the members of my panel brought into their discussion their own personal experiences: as a psychologist, as someone who works with adolescent girls, as writers of applications, and as seekers of references. Each has witnessed their own version of perseverance. Their conversation was colored, for the better, by how they individually saw the world. The fact that they all came at it with a unique lens makes their unanimous decision all the more wonderful and significant.

I am profoundly proud to run on Saturday with this person’s name on my shirt and for their future as my cause. It motivates me and moves me emotionally. I look forward to sharing my panel’s choice with them tomorrow.

Application Due Date

Tomorrow the applications for the scholarship are due. Currently I have two in my possession, which I received today, and expect four or five more to come in before the end of the day. My panel of three has been assembled. Their task will be to sort through these applications this weekend and make their determination.

The group has asked for guidance: how to choose? The same issue was raised last year. They needed to weigh the life experiences of one individual versus that of another. It is horribly subjective, entirely personal, and ultimately gut decision. What is clear, though, is the set of values that the scholarship seeks to support.

First, the applicant should demonstrate that they are truly dedicated to their education. This does not mean that they are 4.0 student or in challenging classes. Instead they see the intrinsic value in becoming an educated person and are willing to make sacrifices to reach their aspirations. This person may struggle to find academic success, but they make that success their primary focus.

Second, the applicant should demonstrate that they have had significant and longstanding barriers to their educational success and that they have been proactive in trying to surmount them. This is not a chance to tell the best "woe is me" story. Although it is easy to be sympathetic to the trials that they have faced, the panel should be focused more on how the student has worked to overcome the barriers that they have faced. Ideally, these impediments have been an issue for a long time (i.e. not just a few months or even a year) and are academic and not just personal in nature.

Third, the applicant should demonstrate that they have forward momentum. I want them to find someone who will keep going and who will fulfill their dreams. The panel will look to the recommendations for insight regarding the likelihood that this will happen. As well, they will need to listen the voice in the student's writing. In their words, do they hear motivation, determination, and drive? The scholarship is a one time award. It is a launching pad from which a young person can take the next academic steps. After that they will be on their own.

I do not envy the task that the panel has. I watched the process last year, and at times there was tension between the members. Each felt like they had a dog in the fight. Yet it was truly remarkable to see them come to genuine consensus regarding their ultimate choice.

I hope to have their decision posted by early next week.

Setbacks

Today I had a phone consultation with my doctor regarding a case of sinusitis that I have acquired. For a week now, I have been ejecting from my head all the colorful fluids that one associates with a sinus infection. His prescription of amoxicillin was welcome. My fear all week was that the junk in my head would move to my chest. Twice in the last year I have struggled with a bronchial infection: last June and then in November. With three weeks to go before the ultra, I am very concerned about the effects that this will have on the race.

Preparing this year has been a series of setbacks for me such as the sprained ankle which inhibited my early training. I thought that preparing last year with an eight month old to look after was hard; now he is twenty months old and full of energy. Chasing a toddler around does little to prepare one for running 50 miles, but it takes a lot away from one's ability to rest and recoup after the long runs. The sinusitis is just one more hurdle to cross.

This project is about rewarding and supporting kids who have shown a dogged determination to surmount obstacles being perpetually thrown in their way. As I started thinking in the fall about preparing for this run again, I cockily presumed that it would be substantially easier than last year. After all, I would have my previous experience to rely upon. Fittingly enough, I really need now that experience more than I thought I would given the state of affairs; preparation has proved to be much more challenging than I thought it would be.

Training and preparing this year has demonstrated some crucial concepts for me relative to the values that the scholarship seeks to espouse. Most notably, it has been reaffirmed that perseverance and endurance are psychological traits more than physical ones. This last week it was hard not to wallow in my own misery, worrying that the sinusitis would cause everything to be for naught; it becomes easier to accept failure than to believe in a future success. Fittingly, I am looking for a student who refuses to accept their setbacks as endpoints and who are resolute, even stubborn, in their belief in success. So as I pop my antibiotics this week and try to knock the gunk out of my head, I will take my inspiration from those students who I have seen stay unwaveringly positive despite their immediate circumstances.

Why Support The Scholarship?

The Endurance Scholarship is now in its second year and funding for this project still relies on two simple things: my commitment to the ultra-marathon and your commitment to make pledges. As it was last year, I am asking for people to make pledges for every mile I complete with the assumption that I will go the full 50 miles. The question you may have is why it is that you should support this project.

First, this project has a very definitive goal: help a student go to college, and this is an endpoint where success is easy to define. Last year, I was successful because I was able to provide $2,500 to Caleb Dron who is now furthering his academic career at Chemeketa Community College, the school of his choice. Unlike a donation to the Red Cross or even your alma mater, the final recipient of the funds is known. No money disappears into “administration costs”. Every dime is paid out to the student. I don’t skim any off the top to pay for running shoes or Gu or the entrance fee for the race. You will know your contribution has gone to serve its intended purpose when the scholarship winner is announced just as it was in the week before the race last year.

Second, your belief in me is a crucial expression of trust and commitment. Offering this scholarship to a student from my school is an expression of my faith in their will to succeed and their drive to make it happen. Having a legion of backers like you demonstrates that there are scores of people who believe in my vision. The greater the number who donate, the more the project is validated. This collective will helps to motivate and inspire these young people to dream their grandest dreams. They come to believe in themselves because you demonstrate your belief in them through your support of me.

Third, it is universally acknowledged that education after high school is a crucial springboard to a stable adult life full of opportunity and promise. This scholarship does not place a greater degree of merit on college over a trade school. Instead it seeks to express the belief that choosing to continue education after it is compulsory is itself the goal. The data is clear: more education leads to greater income. However, we also all intuitively know that being a seeker of knowledge leads to a more fulfilled life.

Finally, your support is easy to do. I get to do the training runs which last four or five hours. I get to experience the ice baths afterwards. I forgo late Saturday nights in exchange for early Sunday runs. I have to deal with the chafing of skin on skin, mile after mile. I get to bruise and lose toenail after toenail—last year I was left with just three. You get the easy part. A pledge now and a check when I am done affords you the satisfaction of knowing that you were part of a collective effort to inspire, motivate, and support both myself and the student who will be granted this scholarship

I have made my commitment to the project; I hope that you will make a small commitment as well.

Why The Long Posts?

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Saturday I have a 50 kilometer run planned. Last year it took about four hours and forty-five minutes. Much of it will likely be run alone; my normal training partners are in better shape this year and will likely run a faster pace than I will be comfortable with. Commonly I am asked what I do to fill such an expansive period of time. Do I listen to music? Do I listen to audio books? Half-jokingly I often respond that do a lot of thinking. Although there is an edge of sarcasm to this, it is the truth. For several hours my mind is often engaged in quiet contemplation.

Speaking of which, I was once taught to meditate using the following technique. Imagine an expansive floor; mine is always a simple black and white tiled one. With a mental broom sweep away all thoughts except the one you wish to focus on. As outside thoughts drift in, keep sweeping them away. The floor should be clean except that one thing so that your focus is unimpeded. This process of maintaining a clean mind seems to happen naturally on the long solo runs. The background is breaths and strides instead of dichromatic tiles, and there is room only to allow in the plainest of thoughts. For much of the time the idea is merely present, and I would say that little thinking actually occurs. Instead I merely allow the thought to be an uncertainty worthy of examination.

It goes without saying that we live in a world where we are constantly being bombarded by information: some relevant, most inane. All of it competes for our attention, and we try to focus on much of it. The effect is a splintering of the mind. I see this everyday as my students try to work in class while listening to music. For years I have struggled with whether I should even allow it in class while the kids do independent tasks. The real issue is not whether the kids can work with music being pumped into their heads but whether they can think. Unfortunately school has become completing tasks not thinking through questions and problems. Can we really devote our full attention to a task if we are not given the mental space to consider it clearly and without competition?

A second common question that I am asked about this project and specifically the blog is why the posts are so long. Most are in essay format. Why not turn the blog into a Facebook page? Why not tweet about the runs once I am done: “50K, OMG my legs are toast, glad its over”. While this would surely simplify my life and likely also reach a much broader audience, this project, the Endurance Scholarship, is at its soul is about time. The kids who I want to reward have stayed focused on surmounting their obstacle for, in some cases, many years. They have swept away distractions because they knew that there was one thing that deserved their complete attention. For me, accomplishing my goal is also about time and the process that inevitably occurs as a result: a mulling over, a deep contemplation, and an unwillingness to accept the first thing as the best. No one I know could get off the couch and run 50 miles without a serious investment of time first. You cannot cheat in the process and still expect to finish.

Therefore the long runs are processes of discovery. They peel back the layers of strengths and weaknesses and expose, only after the passage of serious time and effort, what is really at the core. This is why the posts are not blurbs. You cannot explore in the 140 characters of a tweet. A Facebook post is not a thought but a bullet-pointed statement let alone a process of exploration. You only really uncover what you believe by trying to fully articulate it. These long posts are attempts to strip down an idea and reveal not just the heart of the issue in a way that is bumper sticker ready but to also consider the layers that lead to that condensed statement.

It is true that I do a lot of thinking on the long runs. Ideas are rolled across the mind the way wine should be drunk. A single glass is swirled and sniffed. The liquid is rolled across the tongue and aerated against the palate. Consumption is the last and least of the steps. The same is true for the thinking that occurs. Settling on the result is like swallowing the wine. It is merely the end of the larger and more meaningful process. Sometimes endurance is not about outlasting something that you wish would end but wishing something would last because the end is the least meaningful part.

Julie Moss competing in the 1982 Hawaii Ironman Triathlon

What Is Wrought From Failure

I have been thinking about Julie Moss quite a bit recently. Even if you don’t know her name, it is reasonable to assume that you have seen her mesmerizing finish to the 1982 Hawaii Ironman where she stumbled, staggered, and then crawled across the finish line—only to be passed in the final yards by the woman who had reeled her in slowly and ultimately won. As easy as it is to be moved deeply by her profound will to finish, I believe that there is more to her finish than drama.

Most of us will never come in first or second or even third in any competitive event of real substance. The majority of us live decidedly mediocre lives in the sense that our accomplishments are rarely noteworthy on a grand scale. Last year I placed 14^th in the Capital Peak Ultra, more than an hour and a half behind the top three finishers and 14^th out of 82 who finished. When I was in high school, our rowing team placed seventh in the New England Interscholastic Rowing Association Championships. Both finishes are respectable but generally average athletic highlights.

I am proud of my 14^th place finish not because of the actual position or the time but because I did relatively well as a “non-runner”. It is true that I trained for and had several marathons under my hydration belt by the time I laced up to train for Capital Peak. However running is not something that I identify as being my primary pursuit. Looking back through my training log from last year, I found that I was only running, at most, three times a week with a maximum weekly mileage of just over 40 miles. I don’t read running magazines, weigh the merits of one shoe versus the next, or surf the running forums on the web. The same is true for placing 7^th in the NEIRA championships. At the time we were an emerging club team, only a few years in existence, competing against schools with varsity programs that were decades older.

This is the rub with Julie Moss. She was, for all intents and purposes, a walk-on. With minimal experience and nominal training, she found herself in true competition with the best in the world, out of her league, literally. Often we want to take on competitors who are below us because it means that victory is nearly assured; we are at liberty to think smugly about how soundly we will beat our competition. Julie Moss’s strength was not in crawling across the finish line but in thinking until the very end that she could and would win despite the odds. It seems to me that her strength of character is not in that she willed her legs to walk but in believing that making them do so was actually meaningful. Otherwise she might have just lain there in the street and given up.

Along this same line of thought, the course for the Capital Peak Ultra includes an out and back section which is an 11 mile round trip. As a result the slower runners are passed by the quicker ones who have already turned the aid station at mile 30. I remember last year counting the men who passed me going the other way. One. Two. Three. Then five and six as a tiny pod. Nine and ten, then eleven. That was all. It shocked me that I was so close to the top ten. Starting the race, I clearly understood that I was “J.V.” and all around me were runners of substantially greater speed, endurance, and experience. Yet there I was genuinely competitive in the field. In that moment I understood Julie Moss’s motivation in a way that I had not before. She got up because of what she had already accomplished as much as what was still possible. I wrestled out the final 20 miles in much the same spirit.

Yet in the final miles I was arrested by severe pain in my foot. The rain was coming down in violent sheets as I pulled my shoe off to inspect the damage. Finishers eleven, twelve, and thirteen who I had been battling with for the last few hours passed me as I sat in the middle of the gravel road. What else was there to do but lace back up and keep going? And so I did. Yet I lost my battle and so did she. Even still, I like to think that we both illustrated the same point. Our endurance was not physical but psychological in origin, because it brushed against the insane to ignore the clear futility of action and keep moving forward and then be proud of what was so bravely wrought of failure.