Mammoth Vacation

One week in Mammoth is never enough. I remained happily busy the entire time with various activities including running, hiking, fishing, biking, paying guitar, reading, eating, and warding off mosquitoes… billions of ravenous blood-thirsty mosquitoes.

Twin Lakes - a view from The Bottomless Pit

My favorite aspect of running in Mammoth is that everyone is doing it. With dozens of high school teams scurrying about the town and trails, inspiration as well as competition can be found everywhere. During most of my runs I was accompanied by my best friend and nearly sister, Jenn, aka the crazy-vegan-minimalist-marathon runner. Oh yes, it doesn’t get much more raw than that! After the trials she faced during the week (tripping on a run, crashing on her bike, nearly passing out on our long run) I’m so proud to hear that she got 6^th place overall in the Crater Lake Marathon on Saturday!

On a couple of nights, we visited with our high school team at the apartments they were staying in for their training camp. It’s hard to believe that I started there, that seven years later I was coming back to inspire the kids to be great runners. My high school coach asked me, Jenn, and my brother Nic to host a question and answer session for the team regarding running after high school. I’m not one who enjoys public speaking sort of activities (in fact, I dread them), so I was reluctant to verbalize my knowledge. As I sat down in front of the high schoolers, the nerves that tingled my twitching smile, provoked my clammy hands, and flushed my face red were flooding through my body and mind as fifty young eyeballs were cast upon me. Every pair of eyes surveyed me with a different gaze, and behind each gaze was a unique mind and mission. Some eyes were glazed over with a screen that splintered my words into tiny particles that dissipated into Z’s through a sleepy serene mind. Other eyes gaped wide open exposing a crouching receiver waiting open-handed to snatch the words that flew in and neatly sort them into the brain's bank. And then there were the eyes hiding confidently behind a foolproof veneer through which no words perforated and the only collection of information gained was from observations tied to self-commentary. Most of the questions came from the same handful of kids. 

The question that slapped me in the face and is still throbbing a week later was this: “What would you be doing right now if you weren’t running?” This inquiry was almost too overwhelming, like the last block placed clumsily on top of the Jenga tower of my composure as a runner. The pieces came crumbling down for an instant as I thought, “well shit, I’d be… backpacking, traveling, mountain biking, doing yoga, eating raw, adventuring, watching every sunrise, starting a food blog, racing triathlons, pulling straight A’s, barefoot running, meditating at the peak of a mountain, starting a band, rock climbing, kayaking… STOP!!!” After a mad wave of adrenaline, I shook my head, rewinding the clumsy placement of that detrimental Jenga block, and took a deep breath. I placed the block back on top carefully so that the tower showed no sway what-so-ever, and thought to myself, “I am a runner because I love what I do. The challenge, the camaraderie, the positive lifestyle, the grunt followed by the reward: it makes me who I am. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

But really? Really? Did you really just ask that question? A competitive runner lives for running. I call it the Running Disorder: every decision and action made is set in motion only after one asks her/himself, “how would this affect my running?” We live to run, and if we didn’t have it, we’d be a bit lost.

I decided that I wouldn’t think about what I would be doing right now if I wasn’t running, because it’s like a pointless “what if” question. It doesn’t really matter, because I’m not doing it. I’m competing collegiately and building character. I’m exercising my work ethic to its max and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Yes, all because I chose to be a runner, I am a success.

The day after I got home from Mammoth, a sad day indeed, I did a mile repeat workout that knocked me off my feet, literally, for two days. Hip pain is one thing I won’t test my boundaries on, so when I was feeling a stab in my hip, I laid myself down for the next two days to let it recover. I’ve had too many bad experiences with running through injuries and they never lead to anything right: IT band syndrome, stress fracture, torn plantar fascia, and a quad strain, to name a few. The recent decision to rest was one of the best I’ve made because I was back and running on Tuesday with no pain at all. If an injury is ever in question, it’s always smarter to rest rather than working through it. It could save your season.

But it wasn’t an easy decision to take a couple days off running, especially after reading in Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul by Deepak Chopra that “one research study found… if college athletes in the peak of fitness are put flat on their backs in a hospital bed and not allowed to get up, within two weeks, their muscles lose ten years of training.”
 ...TEN YEARS!!??!! Yikes! Frightening, eh?

So I’m back in Santa Barbara now, training with my girls, and it’s the best feeling ever. It’s so much easier and more gratifying to train at your optimal level when surrounded by your team. In Brain Training for Runners by Matt Fitzgerald, I read that in a study, runners “performed 21 percent better in a maximal exercise test when they competed against other subjects of similar ability than when they did the same test alone.” Racing season starts in a couple weeks, but first we have a time trial and get to welcome about a dozen new freshmen girls into the program.

On a very last note, my family went to a Chinese restaurant a few days ago and my grandma’s fortune cookie stated, “You are a classic.” So fitting! Mine vaguely read, “People are waiting for cues from you.” Hmmm... I'll toss that one around my mind for a bit.

Rainbow Falls

What am I listening to right now? Astral Weeks by Van Morrison