Coaches’ Blog

No regrets. That’s what it’s all about for me.  I realized this very early on.  My greatest regrets are things I never attempted, not my failed attempts. I probably realized this in 6^th grade when I never asked out my crush, Jessie. Then Jason beat me to the punch. Who would have ever thought that they’d stay together all through all of junior high and high school and then get married. That taught me my second lesson, everything happens for a reason. (But that’s a whole other blog entry, this one’s about regrets.)

I’ve been coaching now for 8 years and I’ve always brought my meets home with me. Saturday night and Sunday are spent figuring out what went wrong, what adjustments can be made, how can we make them. How can we make a big step forward with the least amount of change? Eight years of this same routine. Not that this is a bad thing. I think it’s healthy to always want more.  Sometimes it’s as small as thinking I should have adjusted a HJ or LJ approach. Maybe I should have bought a different trail mix for the decathletes. Maybe we need to add a step to a 4×1 exchange. Or maybe we need to transition a 200 runner to the 800. I’ve always woken up on Sunday with some of my first thoughts being geared towards how Saturday’s meet could have been better. Until this Sunday.

Sure we could have done better. Sure, we can do better. Yes, we will do better. We can go faster, higher, stronger, but that isn’t what I’m trying to say. Regrets are about knowing that you left everything at the track on that day and couldn’t have done anything more on that Saturday. I fully felt that way about our effort on Saturday. From the cheering fans, teammates, and friends to the coaches and athletes. I couldn’t have asked for more from this team. They gave everything they had in every aspect of the meet.

Was I worried at some points that we’d lose our energy? Definitely. A track meet is more like a marathon than anything else. We definitely got out of the blocks well thanks to the 10k and long jumpers.   Then we held pace in the middle in every event. But still, just as in the marathon, you can run 20 great miles just to see it blow up in the last 6. Not this team. Not this Saturday. The focus was intent. Each athlete saw their role in keeping the momentum rolling. The energy was palpable.  And they kept it all the way through to the finish.

Thanks for everything this weekend guys. Now let’s run it back and do it again next week, next season, next year.

But, now to the most important part of this blog post. And that’s Jessie from 6^th grade. Is that the most important part? Yeah, but it really has nothing to do with Jessie per se. It’s the fact that I learned from that mistake and I didn’t make it again. When the most amazing woman in the world walked across my path 7 years ago, I didn’t let her go. I married her. I don’t think I’d be half the man I am without her. And I definitely wouldn’t enjoy my life half as much. Thanks for everything Marion.

A mere 72 hours after Jesse Faller broke his 5k school record, Tufts alum Matt Lacey dominated his expectations in his first ever Boston Marathon.  Lacey still maintains a stronghold on the Tufts 10k record with his impressive performance of 30:04.  He is easily one of the most selfless athletes that I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with.  Pair that up with his tenacious racing style and his never-ending quest for perfection, and you can see how sad I was to see him go.

Hey Ethan,

As I’m sure you saw the marathon went way better than expected. I ran a very even pace throughout, and felt really good up through the 21 mile mark. The last 5 miles were tough, but mostly because my quads hurt, and I was afraid they were going to cramp up at any moment. I fueled and hydrated very well and ran relaxed. Going back to the first week in March when my knee started hurting my weekly mileage was: 18, 26, 35, 32, 42, 55, 40, so honestly I wasn’t even thinking about breaking 2:30, but the first 5, and then 10 miles felt easy, so I kept going, waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it never did.

The real reason that I’m writing is to say that all the Tufts support I heard during the race was fantastic. Wearing the brown top was a great decision, I never went longer than 3 minutes without hearing “Go Tufts” the whole race, and beyond hearing the team going crazy at the end, I saw alumni out at the old spot on heartbreak hill, as well as TUXCTF alumni at other points on the course (and there were probably more I didn’t see).  I just wanted to say that I couldn’t have been more proud to be a Jumbo, and best of luck hosting NESCACs this weekend.

Lacey

Yes, this guy ran 14:19 and 30:04.

Some people say that you learn something new everyday.  I’m not sure if that is 100% true, but I think you should strive for it.  If not, life gets boring.  You lose sight of that when you’re in school getting information crammed down your throat around every corner.  Maybe we should do less time trying to force-feed students their education and doing more to make them lifelong learners.  If you take care of the first then everything should take care of itself.

This thought comes from two main things.  One, it’s 6AM and my brain hasn’t fully warmed up yet.  And two, I just posted a new blog on a website partly run by a former Tufts runner.  Mike Don helps run the Athletes Honey Milk website.  Here’s the post.  As a result, I’m excited to learn two new things today.

1. Sometimes our greatest strength is also our greatest weakness.  That same drive that pushes a runner to be great can also be the same drive that pushes him over the limit.  It’s a fine line between motivated and over-motivated.  It’s one that get’s blurred from time to time.  I love working with motivated runners, but there are times when it is even more challenging.  The concept of “less is more” in training is a tough one to get through.  Some people just feel like they need to be doing something hard everyday in order to feel bigger, faster, stronger, more fit.

2. Sometimes it’s important to focus on the positive and not the negative.  As I step back and read my post on Athletes Honey Milk, I realize that I focused more on the negative aspect of motivation.  I should be happy that our athletes are always looking for the next step to make themselves better.  And trust me, I am grateful of that fact.  Sometimes coaching seems to be a whirlwind of constantly changing what you’re saying.  You could have a conversation with one athlete where they need to work harder and do more.  Then immediately turn around and have a conversation with another athlete about doing a little less and resting more.

It definitely keeps the days fresh and interesting though.

It is difficult to anticipate how a 5000 meter race will be run at a championship meet.  You never know how it is going to be run, you must be ready for any kind of scenario. Will someone take the pace out quickly and try to burn off the kickers and the individuals who are doubling back from another event? Will the race be a sit and kick event? The problem with taking the race out hard is the fact that early leaders typically loose.  On the other hand a slow pace will allow the entire field to have an opportunity of winning the race.

As the distance coach at Tufts this year I wanted a tactical race. We had Jesse Faller coming back from the DMR and an early season achilles injury.  I believed Jesse was the best miler in the field and we were hoping for an improvement on his 4th place finish from last year. As it turned out the pace was slow for the first two miles and Jesse was able to sit and stay relaxed.  You could see anxiety on the faces of the competitors. With 1000 meters to go the paced dramatically increased and the field quickly disintegrated as two runner got away. Faller was able to stay mentally tough and use his sub 4:10 miler speed to close the last lap in 29 seconds to secure 3rd place and All-American honors. The race set up very nicely for Jesse even though you never know how a championship 5,000 race will run.

Since coming to Tufts, I’ve been extremely fortunate to be a part of some fast relays. It’s one of our calling card at major invites. In the past six years, we’ve had five DMR teams qualify for the NCAA Championships (one automatically), a 4×400, and reset our school record in the 4×800 and DMR this year. Over these years, we’ve been blessed with some talented athletes ranging from short sprints up through 10K but, although this may sound counterintuitive, it takes more than just fast runners to run a good relay team.

So, what is it, Mark? Is it practicing handoffs everyday? Is it working collectively with your four relay legs more often? Are there ways to train specifically for relay races? In this coach’s opinion, the answer to these questions are….well….maybe. With all matters track & field, I believe there’s a “science” and an “art” to the relay race. The scientific aspect is well documented and I’ll spare you the details of biomechanical gait analysis for long sprinters and middle distance runners here. Rather, I’d like to focus on the “art” of developing a national caliber relay squad.

2010 School Record 4x800 Team - 7:42 (Hanrhan, Marvel, Coach Carberry, Hale, Kirschner)

I believe, above all else, there’s got to be trust among all four relays legs. I won’t guarantee your relay team won’t be successful without everyone being best friends but it’s certainly an element that shouldn’t be missing. Trust can be commonly formed through experience. The job of a coach can be made very easy when you have a limited number of possible relay legs. Many high school programs only have four reasonable legs for a relay. This can be quite a blessing when those four guys or girls can get season after season of experience passing the baton along to each other. With experience comes trust and trust builds a stronger team. Having too many possible legs and testing too many relay squads doesn’t forge these relationships. Think twice before putting a four person squad together that has a hard time getting along.

Another vital part to building a relay team is acknowledging your team’s weaknesses. A distance medley team has a prescribed order (1200-400-800-1600) on the collegiate level but there isn’t a simple way to slot for these spots. A solid middle distance leg might garner his strength through speed endurance, making him a more legitimate 400m/600m/800m runner. Moving that runner to the 1200 spot on your DMR might be exploiting their weakness (endurance base). Rather, an above average miler might be a perfect candidate for a 1200 leg if they have more of a base mileage and strength backgrounds. The coach needs to put egos aside and be willing to limit weaknesses in as many legs as possible.

Finally, the least important – although necessary – aspect to a relay team is organizing the order. For 4×4’s and 4×8’s, the old adage states: put a veteran leader on leadoff, your weakest leg second, someone who can make up ground on third, and an experienced closer on anchor. As a profession, coaches need to break themselves of this mold. I once heard of a high school coach who made a younger brother always hand off to his older brother. There’s an “art” to this or maybe the little brother was just too scared to ever drop the baton! Be knowledgeable about who else is in your race, what you believe your legs are capable of running, and where you think you’ll be handing off on every leg.

Each of the next five meets will be a Friday/Saturday combo meets for us.  Valentines Invite, DIII NE’s, Open NE’s, ECAC’s, NCAA’s.  I’ve never actually noticed it before, but it really puts the screws to your work week.  You find yourself losing the better part of a full work day with a meet on Friday.  It really makes the week pretty hectic because I still try to cram a full work week into the 4 day week.

To be honest, I didn’t even know that Monday was Presidents Day until someone told me today.  The job of a coach or an athlete doesn’t really pay attention to national holidays.  If you’re supposed to workout on Monday, it doesn’t matter how many presidents we want to celebrate or how many Auto sales there are…you’re going to workout.  Tufts had a snow day the other day (really shouldn’t have by the way), but no one even considered canceling practice.  Worst case scenario, you just strap on the snowshoes and make your way to the track.

I won’t lie.  I love the Friday/Saturday meets.  Everything in life has it’s costs and benefits.  The costs are that I have to up my productivity a bit for the next month or so.  I have to do 5 days worth of work in 4 days.  However, the benefits are that we get to throw down some serious performances.  The guys are ready to go and they’re excited to put together something special.  The competition starts to ramp up and everyone steps up the challenge at hand.

Thursday nights become the calm before the storm.  You never know where the excitement will come from, you just know that something is coming around the corner.  Who’s going to pop off a great performance and take it to the next level?  Everyone has the potential.  Who is going to put the pieces together this weekend?

Well, it’s 2:30 on Friday afternoon…let the games begin.

With another season of 12-hour track meets at BU upon us, allow me to be the first to start up the conversation about entries.  I’m always intrigued by coaches interpretations of what their athletes are capable of and how they rationalize their entries.  As I’ve said in previous posts, I am all for more transparency in the entry system.  (That has a different ring though after last night’s State of the Union.)  I feel that coaches will be less likely to fib their entry times if their decisions are posted across the internet and at the meet.

This weekend, we’ll be a slightly split squad as 5 Jumbos head over to BU to race while the rest of the team heads up to Bowdoin for one of the more competitive quad meets in the region.  I love the extreme dichotomy between these two meets from an entry standpoint.  They couldn’t be more different.

At the Terrier Invite, it’s always a question of how to get your athletes in the heat that’s right for them.  I don’t want my 14:50, 5k runner in a heat with a bunch of 14:30 guys, but I also don’t want him in a heat with a bunch of 15:20 guys.  When there are 15:20 guys entered at 14:40 and 14:30 guys entered at 14:00, you can see the dilemma.  What to do?  What to do?

This year, I went straight by the Purdy Tables.  They have a place, but I rarely put any stock in them.  I even used the tables for their current season best performance, not their lifetime PR.  It seemed like the common sense thing to do.  We’ll see how it works out.

As for Bowdoin, we enter our athletes, and then on Saturday the coaches get together and call each other out.  We all know each other’s athletes enough to know who should be in the hot heat of the 400m or 800m, so why not just sit down and make it right.  I love this process.  It really puts the common sense back into meet management.  Obviously it isn’t possible for bigger meets, but it works great for something the size of the Bowdoin Invite.

I won’t lie, I’m not 100% ready to weigh in on the Castor Semenya issue yet.  There’s a lot going on here and I will admit that I don’t have all the relevant information.  If you want some of the latest updates, you can read this article at NYtimes.com.  To be honest, it actually scares me more than anything else.  And by that I mean it scares me anytime politics and genetics or politics and the human body get put in the same room.  The fight always gets ugly when that happens.

At first glance, I don’t feel that this is an issue of fairness.  If someone is born with a genetic disorder/advantage then that’s just athletics.  (I really dislike the use of the word defect or disorder in this situation too)  In a lot of ways, Shaq has a disorder…he’s freakishly tall and weighs about 330 lbs.  And yes, it would be unfair if I played a game of 1-on-1 with Shaq.  But that doesn’t mean that he should be penalized because of that.  And that’s really what we’re talking about here…people that Castor is beating are upset about that.

In my eyes, sport is simple.  It’s about taking your innate gifts and making the most of them.  If someone’s better than you because they were born with an advantage…tough noogies.  But if someone artificially boosts the gifts they were born with, then that’s a different story.

It looks like Semenya may have been born with a physiology that gave her an elevated testosterone level.  If so, right now, I’m pretty sure that I don’t have a problem with that.  Floyd Landis having 12x his innate testosterone levels in the Tour de France - problem.  Tayshaun Prince (6′ 9″) having a 7′ 2″ wing span and being a great defender - not a problem.  Ethan Hawke surgically making himself 2″ taller in Gattaca - problem.  Babe Ruth having some extra weight to hit home runs because of all the beer and hot dogs (and horrible pitching) - not a problem.  Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds becoming pharmaceutical petri dishes to break records - problem.

Off the top of my head, a couple of my concerns with all this are:

#1 - The athlete’s health - Too many athletes, coaches, agents, etc put health on the shelf for the betterment of performance.  Is your lineman at risk for diabetes? How many concussions does your safety have?  How hard is Shaq’s heart beating to circulate his blood?  Will that creatine give you pancreatic cancer?  What is Castor’s testosterone doing to her body long term?  Stuff like that.

#2 - Who actually wants a level playing field?  - If we medically or pharmaceutically level the playing field then aren’t we just destroying the powerhouse/underdog aspect of sport.  David v. Goliath epitomizes sport.  David isn’t too impressive if someone made Goliath take some pills to make him the same size as David.

I’m actually pretty interested to hear what you all think.  We had a great back and forth about race, genetics, and sport last year.  Maybe we should get one going about gender, genetics, and sport.  Any thoughts out there?  If you’d like to respond with more than a ‘comment’ then feel free to email me a post.

So I should really be cramming for my GRE’s that are on Tuesday morning, but I really don’t feel like it.  I guess it’s one of the blessings of growing up.  You never really care what other people say about you any more.  I could really care less what a computer-based GRE test says about me.  However, I really appreciate the irony of the whole experience.

Here I am taking a standardized psychometric test to get admitted into a graduate program in cognitive development.  To my best guess, I don’t think that the child development department is a big fan of standardized tests.  I’ve been lucky enough to take six classes with the department and so far in almost half of them, there has been at least one lecture about the weaknesses of psychometric testing.  How great is that?  To know that your GRE’s are interpreted by people who don’t really care about standardized test.  It makes it tough for you to really put your heart into it.

Yet here I am, still plugging away at some verbal practice questions.  I’m great at the sentence complete, a little worse at the analogies, and utterly atrocious at antonyms.  The math on the other hand is a breeze.  However, I can’t express enough how thankful I was when one of my athletes sent me a great TJ video on youtube.  I’ve already watched it three times and it’s one of the best I’ve ever seen.  Great angles, great slow motion, high quality.  Thanks JPak.  Not just for the video, but for the procrastination.

Although, is it procrastination if I’m watching a video for work?  Or is it the complete opposite of procrastination?  Maybe I’m working too much, if I’m watching TJ videos at 7:30 on a Sunday.  Now I’m just confusing myself.  I think it’s time for a 4th watch of the video.

A friend of mine just called me out on the fact that I have yet to post any actual New Year’s resolutions so far this year.  To be honest, I don’t always respond well when someone ribs me so as a result, my next post will not be about my resolutions, but something completely unrelated.  Yeah, it’s not my most admirable trait, but I’m stuck with it.

Lately, I’ve been really enjoying my walks home from work.  I only live about 1 mile from the track so I’ve been able to walk to/from work for the last few years.  I’ve started noticing the enormous difference between my walk ‘to’ and my walk ‘from’ work.  My morning walk to work is always mentally rushed.  I’m sipping my coffee, walking the dog, and thinking about my To-Do list for the day.  Mentally, I’m scheduling my entire day trying to maximize my time.

On the other hand, my walk home has become incredibly relaxing.  It could be the cold air from the New England winter, but my 10 min walk home really invigorates me and helps me switch modes from office-life to home-life.  I find myself reflecting and thinking on such a deeper level than I ever do in the morning.

Last week I spent a lot of time thinking about how our strengths and weakness come from very similar personality traits.  For example, I have an insanely addictive personality.  Once I get started on something, I stick with it until it’s completely finished (reading seven Harry Potters in 2 weeks, watching full seasons of TV shows in one sitting, etc).  I know I’m not alone in this fact.  Everyone knows how addiction can be genetic in nature.  I’ll admit that you could find an addictive personality one more than a few branches on the Barron family tree.

However, isn’t the flip side of the ‘addiction’ coin just dedication.  Everything that makes me sit down in front of my computer and watch the entire 1st season of Firefly in 1 day is what made me an All American.  It helps me push through my inbox when there are over 100 emails.  That sheer idiocy to keep going when all logic tells you - “maybe you could use a break.”

It’s all about direction.  Extreme dedication is simply addiction pointed at something productive.  To put it in words that our engineers will understand.  Dedication is a vector.  It has both magnitude and direction.  So, be careful and watch your vectors.  Those personality traits that make you a dedicated athlete could come back and bite you if you don’t keep your vectors pointed in the positive direction.

Maybe we’ll get into some matrices and linear algebra analogies next time.  You can’t go wrong with some Cartesian comedy, right?