Fries, Tumors and Grace

I drove out to UCLA Medical Center on Saturday to visit Patrick in the hospital. It wasn't what I was expecting. Thinking bed pans and tubes in unnatural places, instead my family and I sat in the hospital's cafe along with Pat, his mom, and Charlie's family. The smell of burgers and fries covered the place. Interns and MD's chowed down on food not meant to keep people healthy. It wasn't your typical hospital visit.

I'd imagine Patrick wasn't your typical brain surgery patient however. Cracking jokes and talking about leaving that place, he didn't meet my expecations of a hospital patient, just had my brain operated on kid. True, I've never known anyone who has had their brain operated on, I'll admit, Pat's my first experience, but if Pat's the average let's-take-something-out-'o-your-brain-kind-of-patient, it doesn't look that bad, actually!

In reality it just proves something I've just always thought: Pat's a tough kid. His uncanny ability to race and race hard was evident early on. I have to assume that beyond the grace of God, he's come through this surgery with the same speed he covers a race course. His tenacity has won the day.

We will be patient in the healing process, knowing that one doesn't operate on one's brain lightly. However, as I sat there conversing with a 16 year old just days separated from his brain tumor and smelling lunch and seeing life and listening to his commentary about the fate of our beloved Dodgers' season, I could only conclude this: Remarkable!

Welcome back, Patrick.

Nuf Said

50-some miles run. Lots of team bonding. Stronger team than when we left. A great group of 29 kids over 7 days. Home. 'Nuf said.

Just Desserts

Last night was fun. Each condo was challenged to make their own dessert, with a contest for best taste and best presentation as decided by our judges, the coaches of Chino Hills XC, our condo neighbors and good friends in the sport.

We've staged the contest in past years, but this year took the cake, or so to speak. All four condos put together truly tasteful and creative offerings. Despite the smell of smoke coming from one condo and several hours on the phone with a mom in Riverside by another condo crew, the outcome was stunning and a difficult choice for our seasoned judges.

The winner was from Condo 26, who put together a mockup of Deadman's Pass. (DMP is one of the more challenging runs of the week, yet was wiped out this year due to smoke from a distant brush fire so the dessert creation was as close as we came.) The concoction was complete with candy trees and gummy bears prowling the Snickers trail. My personal favorite was "Mammoth Dirt" - a delicious creation of chocolate ice cream inside an actual flower pot, covered by crushed chocolate sandwich cookies, completed with gummy worms working their way out of the "soil" and an actual daisy flower centered in the middle!

A fun, hilarious night of judging, brown-nosing the judges and good natured smack-talking among the competitors left us with the greatest icing on the cake: we got to eat what we made!

Sean Lee trying to convince the judge that "presentation" doesn't matter. Taste is everything!

Mammoth Dirt

Going The Distance

Long runs are the staple of any competitive distance runner. They are bread and butter, the cornerstone, the groundwork needed for success. "Big Smokey" - a 11.8 and 9.8 mile long run over hill and dale has long been a key workout of our Mammoth camp.

Under cool skies this morning, our kids truly went the distance. For the first time in King XC's 8 years of running Big Smokey, this was the first time we had every runner finish the course, not one "DNF" in the bunch.

The course is a test of mind and body. Rarely does it go flat, only in the last 1.5 miles does the terrain act nicely, but then that stretch turns into a mental war, as the waiting vans look tantalizingly close yet are still so far away. Up the hills and down and across the lonely stretches on the backside of the mountain, the runner is challenged to stay focused, to think of strength and perseverence, to press on.

Reds Meadow

After a day greyed over by smoke blown in from a Santa Barbara brush fire, this day dawned much clearer and bluer, allowing us to get back to our training and on to one of our favorite runs -- the Reds Meadow trail. It was a welcome run after waiting for the smoke to clear yesterday and losing much of our planned workload.

I've personally traversed this trail some 15 times over the years, and the creek hopping, vista viewing, tree dodging jaunt through the woods never ceases to amaze me. It's a relatively easy six miles atop soft, single-track trail over Mammoth Pass and down the hillside into Reds Meadow. But the expanse of the Minaret Range off to the west is literally breathtaking. The woods are quiet except for the chatter of athletes, the symphony of sound breezing through the pine, and the occassional clatter of falling water.

Tradition has called for a wonderful breakfast at the Reds Meadow Cafe, so we again enjoyed all the fixins of a great breakfast, shadowed and cooled by towering Lodgepoles and Ponderosa pines.

A hike down to rainbow falls followed, again it was fun to watch the kids take a cold wade and try to be heard above the din of the falls. Though the water was lower than in past summers, the sight was breathtaking.

The Pyramid of Success

Last night after dinner, Coach Clendenen gave a great talk on one-half of our theme for the week, "competitivenss". She's had the privilege of experiencing high-level sports as both an athlete (she was on scholarship at Cal Poly SanLuis Obispo for swimming), was raised in an athletic home (her dad was the UCR basketball coach for 30 years) and is now married to a caddy on the PGA tour. Her experiences are vast, and she's witnessed some of the best sports has to offer.

What was great about her talk though was really the talking the athletes did. A great group discussion unfolded as groups of guys and gals broke up to talk about the strengths and weaknesses we have in the competitive arena. It was awesome seeing the likes of Charlie, Ethan, Patrick, Larissa, and Carissa leading the discussion, coaxing from their teammates pearls of insight and wisdom and peeling back in moments of candid honesty the veil of weakness. Powerful stuff!

Tieing it all together was Coach John Wooden's famous and well-used "Pyramid of Success." The top of that pyramid is "Competitive Greatness", something hopefully all athletes and teams aspire to. Below it are the building blocks that get athletes to the pinnacle, or as the case might be, the "stumbling blocks" that keep teams and athletes from ever achieving their greatest potential. Wooden's Pyramid is a powerful tool for helping any success-minded group get to their goals. We're promising ourselves to really work toward that this season. As was mentioned in the talk, as coaches, we feel the foundational level of the pyramid has been firmly and successfully laid in place already, good news as we continue to climb upward.

We'll continue to build on that groundwork of "Industriousness, Friendship, Loyalty, Cooperation, and enthusiasm" - all of which we're witnessing in spades this week - to hopefully bring our teams to the peak of competitive greatness by November. That's our goal, onward we climb!

Not Your Average Teenagers

It's pretty remarkable actually when you stop to think about what teens can do when motivated and properly channeled. Seems like sometimes that the stereotypical teen -- you know, the monosyllabic grunting sleeping in wanna-be -- is cast to describe ALL teens. But it ain't true. Hang with some cross country runners you'll be inspired -- these aren't the stereotype. Hang with this group in Mammoth and you'll really be inspired.

Today our group covered nearly 12 miles in two workouts, spent 30 minutes learning a fairly demanding yoga routine, cooperated to prepare and consume three meals together and all with a "can-do"attitude. I say again, it's remarkable!

Our afternoon jaunt took us up to a bluff overlooking town, far too steep for the first mile if you ask me, but a wonderful challenge rewarded by stunning views of the caldera and Mammoth Mtn. Down thru the woods we meandered, finishing with yoga at the park, then to Mammoth Creek for a cooooold stand in the river to ice down the legs. All told, we were on task with our workout for almost 3 hours. Not a complaint. Not a "are we done yet?" Gamers, all of them.

It's a luxury of Mammoth ... having the time to be able to train right. The time to take care of all parts of the body in a concentrated week. From the mind, to the legs, to stretching and yoga, to the biting cold of icing tired limbs, competitive running is a full-body endeavor and only those who discipline the whole enchilada will find success.

Today, I feel we did that. 29 teenagers. 12 miles. 30 minutes of yoga. 5 minutes in a cold river. Pretty remarkable, indeed.

Ahhhh .... Mammoth!

There's just something about the first run in Mammoth. Maybe it's the long drive getting here, maybe the sense of responsibility I feel to get 40 people up here safely, I'm not sure, but whatever it is the traditional first run is always a joy. The Mammoth Rock run.

Can a run be a joy? It seems that here, despite the searing lungs that come from thin air and the occasional boulder that tries to take you down, the simple act of running through the woods, in clean air and 77-degree weather is a joyous experience. It jogs the mind to wrap itself around different vistas, different thoughts. Thoughts of gratitude come easily in places and moments like today.

I'm reminded to be thankful, thankful for health and vitality; and for mobility.

A soak in Mammoth Creek after the run rejuvenated the legs and brought forth laughter and silly songs from the girls. A bubbling team, a bubbling stream .... ahhh, Mammoth. There's just something about it!

The Comeback Kids

Giving up is easy. Pressing on is hard. Successful people aren't successful necessarily because they are talented, they're successful mainly because they don't give up easily. They get pressing on. It's in their blood.

We got to brag on three kids today who pressed on recently through adversity; Chris, Larissa and Brandi. When faced with the obstacle of academic ineligibility this past grading period, they were faced with a choice: Give up or go on.

They chose wisely. Working to improve their grades and their running, the three have come back from an academic brink that has led many-a-teen to athletic suicide and are now not only eligible but they are running better than they ever have and looking like varsity athletes.

Is that cool or what??

May we all do likewise when faced with the same or similar hurdles. We all have a choice: Give up or go on. It's the fine line between success and failure, accomplishment and mediocrity, winning and losing.

We celebrated three winners today.

Long Running Sophomores

Ran a long run today with the lead boys of the team. Haven't run over 7.5 miles in some time, but I enjoyed the chance to push outward again, it's so easy to stay in the Easy Rut, kickin' it and cruising everyday.

Craig Aguilar really impressed me today ... here's a sophomore, missed all of last summer but joined XC anyway, ran sprints (or was it hurdles?) in track and has now just been coming on with the distance stuff. We ran together for awhile, I probably talked too much, but he closed a 100-meter gap between himself and the leaders from about mile six to the finish. Good stuff.

Our sophomore class is a fun group -- young, eager, room to grow, and off to a great start. It's gonna be fun to watch what comes of this group. If this group -- of both boys and girls -- sticks with it for another couple of years, they could end up being something truly special.