October 1, 1979 (Monday)

From running log:
Cross country practice. 0.3 mile warm up run, 6.2 workout (6.5 miles total). Road LSD. Cold, windy, drizzling rain, 55F. I ran terribly again. What's wrong? My rhythm is all off, everybody ran ahead of me and beat me in the workout, except for Todd who's running lousy lately too. We need a good performance Thursday. I think that Ben, Tim, and Moose should do well. I wonder if I'm sick? Is it just a slump?

30 years later:
Days like this one thirty years ago are why the best cross country teams are often the product of an experienced and attentive coach. I don't mean to criticize our coaches, I truly believe that they were doing the best that they could. But a more-skilled coach would have seen Todd and I lagging behind all of the other runners, looking wan and drained, and that coach would have shut us down for the day and maybe even a couple of days. High school runners are not yet experienced enough to know when to say that enough is enough. We were wearing ourselves out, but no one was there to instruct us to slow down. As you can see from this log entry, we'd both reached a point where our bodies simply refused to keep going.

This illustrates a classic dilemma of the human condition. We have a seemingly innate tendency to believe that when things aren't going well, the answer to the problem is to do more of the same thing that got us in trouble in the first place. We are all guilty of this, it's part of being who we are. In the running world, it is manifest when a runner becomes exhausted and starts plodding through workouts like a zombie, therefore decides he/she is "out of shape" or "in a slump" and thus needs to push even harder and longer during workouts. You can see how this vicious cycle inevitably leads downward. Another example would be when the man of the house decides to "do a little remodeling", when of course he has no idea what he's doing. He starts by hammering through some dry wall, only to crack a gas pipe. After shutting off the gas, he tries to repair the pipe, only to ruin the threads on the connecting pipes. So he goes out to spend money on gas pipes, but in order to fix the problems he caused he ends up tearing into the walls on three different floors of the house. Then he struggles to repair the walls ... you get the picture. You must know at least one person who fits this description (and don't be surprised if it's yourself).

In 1979 my gut instinct was that I was in a slump and I just needed one good, hard workout to turn it all around. To all of you runners and coaches out there, anyone who says something like that is tossing up a big red flag. Your task is to have that person rest a little, back off, re-think, and if necessary call in an expert (in the runner's case that would be a doctor, in the weekend handyman's case that would be a licensed contractor).