Why Go To Kenya?

A couple of people have asked me that lately. Most, the non-runners, think I'm slightly cracked for considering such a trip, especially since I don't plan to be on safari. My mother-in-law summed up those feelings with a question: "Isn't it dangerous?" To which I replied, "It's safer than Chicago." Being a smart-aleck comes somewhat naturally to me. When I get to combine it with truth, it becomes even more fun.

I have plenty of reasons for going. Just traveling to a new place, to meet and, hopefully, understand people that live very different lives from me is a sufficient reward in itself. Ditto for the fact that I'm going to get to watch some of the greatest runners in the world. For a step or two, I might even get to run with them.

Neither move me enough though to risk losing my business. Self-employed people who disappear for two months tend to migrate to unemployed. We'll see. That's a journey I will be trying to avoid. (Which brings up the subject of acting in the face of fear - I'll tackle that some other time.)

What will get me off the proverbial couch and on to the road to Iten is a story. The core idea of it I had three years ago when I first started writing novels. What must the Kenyans go through when they come here, to the United States, to run and attend university?

I began to go do the list, Reno, Kimowba, Keoch, and Lagat at WSU, Mike Bot, and a dozen others. Almost exclusively male. The question changed when I recognized that, and became what does it take for a woman to leave Kenya to come to United States to run and go to school.

That I might be able to answer from the couch, but I couldn't do it well, with real understanding, without making the trip. There will be too many subtleties that I'll miss, too many assumptions that are flat-out wrong. From a first-world perspective, many people point to the obvious and condemn the third-world culture for a lack of enlightenment.

Stealing a phrase from a nephew-in-law, there are no voluntary vegetarians among the starving. So it is for most of us, that our underlying prejudices will inform our judgment, to the detriment of the truth.

The time that I have in Kenya won't strip me completely of my biases, but it will give me a base to learn that I have them and to work around them. Then I'll be able to write the story that I want to tell.

---

The following I wrote as part of an exercise. It will give you an idea of where I'm headed.

From his battered white Toyota, Rob could see her bare feet caked with the dry umber dust of the road to Kapkeringon Village. Grace had none of the baby-giraffe look of the others headed the school from shacks in the fields. Instead, she unfolded one fluid stride at a time, feet lifting puffs of red haze in the post-dawn light.

She flew as the fastest of the sparks flowing past the newly green tea fields. She wore the school uniform of Kapkeringon East, a poinsettia-red skirt, a button up shirt with small blue and white checks, and a vee-necked sweater the color of rubies. Her books, both of them, she carried tied together with string on her back.

Grace saw him long before she reached his car. She eased across the road to the far side. Her eyes, when she got close enough for him to see, were deep wells, and her gaze was more curious than cautious until they met his. Then, they turned down in respect to his age and his skin. Still, he had seen the flicker of a question before she averted her eyes. Who was the muzungu—white man?

He waited until she was well within earshot, so that he wouldn’t be shouting over the buzz of insects pollinating the crop.

“Habari za asubuhi.” Good morning, what is the news.

She slowed without seeming to at the morning greeting.

“Nzuri sana, assante,” Grace replied, the accent lifting on the next-to-last syllable. The news is good, thank you. Like her eyes, the words hung diffidently. A light sheen of sweat lent a polished glow to her skin. It was almost a deep mahogany rather than the darker black of most of the children and was stretched over a body so spare as to show every muscle. Her head, like that of all the students, was shorn to her scalp. 

She risked another glance when she was opposite him. In that a fleeting moment, he saw her take stock of him. A flash of white teeth showed, and a crease smoothed on her forehead, and he recognized a bit of her uncle in the expression, the look Joseph had when he figured something out.

Grace surged, three long strides that opened space between them and carried her on to school.

Kenyan Travel Update

Kapkeringon

I'll be staying for two week in Kapkeringon Village which is where Justin Lagat has a house. It's about an hour from Eldoret and should be great for building up my notes for a book. Plus, I will get to go for runs with Justin. (Yes, I've already told him I'm slow - it will give us time to chat.) As a younger man, Justin worked with the tea farmers in the Nandi Hills area.

Justin still trains, but I think he might have made a bigger name for himself as a writer for RunBlogRun. During the Kenyan Championships, Justin posted a steady stream of info and pictures so that the rest of the world could get results almost real time. If you're interested in what's happening in Kenya with runners, Justin's your guy. You can follow him on twitter.

Simbolei Academy

After I leave Kapkeringon, I'll trek over to Iten. I've already booked the cottage at Simbolei Academy, just outside of the town. My understanding is that it's about a 1.5 mile walk into town and about 15 miles to Eldoret. Andrea Kaitany has been wonderfully helpful in getting me up to speed on what I can expect. An added benefit to me is that my rent for the cottage will help build the Academy.

A shameless plug: They're doing good work there at Simbolei Academy and small donations go a long, long way to delivering an education to girls who otherwise would stop after primary school. Unlike the US, a secondary education is not paid for out of public funds but by the families. This makes educating all the children out of reach for many of the families in the Rift Valley, where the commerce so prevalent in Nairobi has yet to appear. Consider sending a couple of dollars their way, please. Here is the link to their donation page.

Visas

Make a note for yourself - if you want the East African visa, don't send the application in five months before travel. I did, and the kind gentleman at the embassy is returning it to me. The Kenyan visa is good for six months. The East African is only valid for three. Oops.

I opted for the East African visa as it permits entry into not just Kenya, but also Rwanda and Uganda. While I don't currently have a plan to visit either, I like the flexibility of picking up and going on a whim, especially after reading Running the Rift.

My family will attest to my low impulse control when it comes to adventures. My wife gave up trying to rein me in. Instead, we reached an agreement that I can do all the truly stupid things I like provided I don't do anything tragically stupid.

I'll resubmit the application in November. The embassy official already gave me a heads-up that everything looks fine, so I should be good to go.

Does Running Have the Most Dysfunctional Governing Body in History?

Settle in, because I'm in a bit of a ranty mood.

I haven't comment on the doping scandals that popped in the news, first with the accusations against the Nike Oregon Project and, this past week, the IAAF data that got leaked. I hope the allegations are not true but fear that worse is still to come. Justin Lagat made a great point about the lack of names painting all elite runners with the same tarring brush. As he put it on Facebook, "From now henceforth, allegations with NUMBERS and NOT NAMES are a good as useless to me."

That said, running has a big problem with PEDs. The lack of names comes from the reluctance of the IAAF to enforce sensible rules to protect the honest athletes. Today, we get the news that the IAAF went back and found 28 athletes were using at the 2005 and 2007 World Championships. So far, no names have been made public.

Color me skeptical, but I don't think they would have gone back and looked at those results except for the data breach last week. The IAAF got embarrassed and is doing exactly what every entrenched bureaucracy does, throwing people under buses. Given an option, I think they'll do it by reputation and seek to avoid actually naming the individuals (as Justin pointed out). Much easier to smear (mostly retired) athletes by innuendo. Plus they get to point out how actively they pursue PEDs without doing anything about the current problems.

The various governing bodies need the spectacle of competition to drive revenues. World records also act to drive interest. It behooves them to treat the many questionable tests reported as outliers. An outrageous scenario? Look to Lance Armstrong and the International Cycling Union, whom Floyd Landis accused of protecting Armstrong.

Is it so hard to picture the same in running?

Now, on to Nick Symmonds.

USATF, in their usual immitigably tone-deaf manner, managed to bring back images of the bad-old-days of the AAU. As part of the agreement to be on the US team for Worlds, athletes are required to sign an agreement, part of which states that they will wear official Nike uniforms and gear at team events. The problem is that the term "team events" never gets defined. A good idea of what they meant can be inferred from a letter they sent along with the agreement, to wit: "Accordingly, please pack ONLY Team USA, Nike or unbranded apparel ..."

Man, it's almost like Nike hates real competition and uses the USATF as a bought-and-paid-for enforcement arm.

Remember the comment above about how bureaucracies react? Yep, they live down to that low standard. For starters, they questioned his honesty in bringing this up now when he had signed the agreement in the past. Of course, he was sponsored by Nike back then, so the point was irrelevant. Now he's sponsored by Brooks. He'd like to honor his contract by wearing Brooks gear at appropriate times. Hard to do when you're told to leave all your branded gear that doesn't have a swoosh on it at home.

According to Nick, he got hassled by USATF officials in a hotel lobby for wearing Brooks stuff. I am unclear on how coffee-drinking becomes a team event. Nick evidently had similar questions, hence the reluctance to sign the contract without a better definition of terms.

The USATF refused to define the term. When Symmonds didn't sign, they sent out him a nicely passive-aggressive email stating, "Without you having submitted a fully executed USATF Statement of Conditions for the 2015 IAAF World Championships, I am disappointed to have to inform you that you will not be named to the U.S. Team in the men's 800m event."

Yep, all Symmonds' fault and they are so disappointed, but not enough to go against Nike.

Now, in the aftermath, the attacks continue. Alan Abrahamson, noted Olympic writer, put forth an article that seeks to subtlety paint Symmonds as greedy and looking to enhance the Symmonds brand. Cueing Abrahamson, "Consider: This predicament is entirely of Symmonds’ own making." This piece of prejudicial writing comes early in the article, clearly to color everything that follows.

Later in the article you can nearly hear Abrahamson harrumphing as he writes, "That he said he made “several offers” to help USATF draft a new Statement of Conditions is misleading and unhelpful . . .  who is Symmonds to take it upon himself to undertake such an individualized effort?"

Abrahamson finishes with a nice piece of character assassination:

Oh, and if 1:44.53 is your season’s best in the 800, and you’re looking at a field in Beijing that is going to be dramatically better than it was in Moscow two years ago, and you’re at risk of not even making the finals, you might make the choice that it’s better for your brand not to go but, instead, cast yourself as a crusader in the vein of the saintly Steve Prefontaine against USATF.

The doping problems, the sponsorship strongarm, follows on the heels of the delegate mess earlier this year where the governing board of the USATF overrode the vote of the membership to place USATF President Stephanie Hightower onto the IAAF board instead of Bob Hersh. Willie Banks, former Olympian and Board member summed it up succinctly as "totally unforgivable." 

It's becoming quite apparent that the organizing bodies have no respect for the athletes they presume to govern. It's almost like the athletes exist to fund the USATF for the employees instead of representing the best interests of the sport.

Local Running around Asotin

Let's start with some fun news. The Seaport Striders held their annual fundraiser in Asotin Friday evening. The temperatures stayed up a bit, probably in the mid-80's, but that didn't stop Brady McKay from clocking a 16:30-ish time (I forgot the actual time, sorry). Brady's headed to LCSC later this month to run for Mike Collins and the Warriors. One of Coach Potter's kids from Lewiston was hot on his heels.

Mike Halverson organized the proceedings, with a major assist from Asotin coach Tim Gundy. They took an informal poll at the beginning of the race to see how many liked the evening race. About a third put up a hand. How many would prefer a Saturday morning race? Another third. How many didn't care? The rest. About average for a running group.

Tim Gundy set up the course for 3 miles, rather a full 5K. No one complained about the .1 difference, and most folks had a smile when they got to the finish. With the exception of some of the speedsters up front, the participants treated it as the fun run/walk it was.

I did not run. I timed, which makes me the lazy one for the event. Two of my daughters, my wife, and a couple of friends walked. The daughters pushed strollers with the little ones. I did pony up an entry fee, though. A good cause and the Striders match the entries and donate the proceeds to the three local high school programs. Not sure how much ultimately made its way to the schools, but every little bit helps.

Many thanks to the Striders!

Also on the good news front, I've had an article accepted by Like the Wind magazine. Not sure when it will come out, but tickled about the whole thing. For the runners out there, if you want a chance to publish an article, check out Like the Wind's contributor pages. They're open to a variety of writing styles and topics. Something to consider . . .

There's a whole lot of less cheery news on the running front. I think I'll tackle that on Tuesday, plus an update on the Kenyan adventure.

Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron, A Review

Naomi Benaron, author of Running the Rift, takes the material of a beautiful country and a beautiful people to gradually lead the reader on a journey that encompasses the greatness that occurs in the simplest of acts alongside a descent into nearly unimaginable horror. Following the story of Jean Patrick Nbuka, the plot shifts step by step into Rwanda, and then, in rim horrifying detail, into the genocide that defines the country still.

Recently list as one of the top five novels that all runners should read by the Guardian, it works - just! - as a novel about running. Jean Patrick, a young Tutsi, grows into Rwanda's best hope for an Olympic medal in the 800 meters. For Jean Patrick, this is not a revelation, but the culmination of a dream that started in grade school when he raced his brother to the gates of Gihundwe. The hard work, more than a decade of it, comes later in the story, woven in seamlessly with the greater story of the country.

The story of Rwanda, in the lead-up to the dissolution of civilization, and into the aftermath, dominates the story. Benaron deftly builds the tension, first with a rock-throwing incident at Gihundwe, Jean Patrick's primary school, then in the streets. The sense of menace tracks the youth all the way to university. His saving grace, what keeps him safe, is his ability to run like the wind, to earn the nickname Mr. Olympics.

In the midst of that, Benaron presents all the beauty of Rwanda, in the sights, sounds, in the simple descriptions of the food. Her writing is elegant and clean, adding enough to bring you into Rwanda, to sit you at the table so you can listen to the babble of voices and taste the banana beer.

Benaron applies that same skill to the blackness without resorting to the melodramatic, letting the story follow the history with a sense of inevitableness that leaves the reader in fear for Jean Patrick and his love, Bea, as the tipping point to chaos approaches.

The author also leaves the reader angry, not just at the human cruelty, but at the cowardliness of the rest of the world who looked to Rwanda - and looked away again while the Tutsi were annihilated en masse and twenty percent of the Hutu, those sympathetic to national reconciliation, were murdered.

As I mentioned above, Running the Rift is just barely a novel of running. The running is well done, but it is the rest of the story, beyond the cleanliness of pain that is the 800 meters, that makes this into the powerful story that needs to be read.

You Can't Get to Kenya From Here

The old joke that you can't get there from here applies. At least, if by here, you mean Asotin, Washington, and you're trying to get to Africa.

One advantage of living in an out of the way corner of Washington State is that we complain about sitting through a full cycle at stop lights. We make allowances for farm equipment, wildlife, and our neighbors who are exchanging pleasantries in the middle of the street from the truck windows. 

We also look at the pictures of traffic in places like Seattle and San Diego and question the sanity of living the bumper-to-bumper road rage lifestyle. When family complains about three-hour commutes, we remind them they could move. Not here, mind you. We like it the way it is, and outsiders claim they love the place when they move in, and then try to change it. 

So, most of the time, it's grand. The exceptions occur when you want to leave. In my case, trying to get to Kenya. The moon mission required somewhat more planning but the route was at least pretty well defined. The end point - landing in Nairobi - is, too. It's the getting out bit. 

First, we have one regional airport, across the river in Lewiston. Very convenient in that it's eight minutes away. With only two gates, there's no nonsense of losing three hours of your life standing in line while TSA dithers about giving hard-eyed looks to potential geriatric terrorists and pulling all three of my daughters for 'enhanced' screening. 

Stunningly inconvenient when trying to match up with connecting flights. It would have been much easier if Alaska Airlines hadn't canceled the morning flight. That's a fifty percent decrease in the morning flights. Not for Alaska; for the whole airport. 

Now Alaska wasn't the only option, but they would have gotten me to Seattle. From there, by plane, you can get anywhere. The trick with Seatac is getting to the airport, and I can leave my house and fly there faster than someone from Bellingham can drive there, at rush hour. 

Delta also has a morning flight, but they head to Salt Lake City. Fourteen stops later, you can get to Nairobi. Oh, and it costs more. And takes longer. You do get the added bonus of a twelve-hour layover in Heathrow, though. Not exactly how I plan to visit London when I finally do. 

The average flight time, counting layovers seem to be about 37 hours, with some of the quicker ones getting there in 24 hours and the longer ones promising to have me at the airport in Nairobi in time for the return flight six weeks later. 

The next option was to play around with airports. I checked Spokane. Nice airport, easy access. Surprisingly, not any faster, nor any cheaper. You can bypass Seattle and go due east, but the Delta conundrum of cost and time strikes.  

I looked at Seattle, figuring I could arrange the first leg separately. And I could, not that it made a lick of difference. 

I looked at booking each leg separately and through multiple east coast airports, London, Amsterdam, every option I could think of. The online sites balked, and returned a 'no-can-do, amigo' response.

On a lark, I tried Pullman. The Pullman flights are continuations on the route from Seattle to Lewiston and back, so I didn't have high hopes. It pays to be persistent. Pullman had a morning flight, funny enough, and the cost was relatively low with a reasonable transit time. Put it into the mental file as the benchmark to beat.

Deciding that I had arrived at my level of maximum competence as a travel agent, I contacted a professional to see if she could (hopefully) do better. I sat in a comfy chair while she cycled through the same options I had. It got to the point where she'd go, "Let me try something" and I'd predict her next search pattern. I think it messed with her mind a bit. She start to type, look at me, I'd tell her the next search sequence I tried, and she'd say, "Oh." Type the rest of the query, and tell me what I already knew.

She didn't find anything that I hadn't, both in scheduling and pricing. She did confirm that the Pullman flight was the best option. Not the ideal option, but the best available. I fly from Pullman to Seattle, to Amsterdam, to Nairobi. A one hour flight, a ten-hour flight, and an eight-hour flight. I did spend a little extra to get the seats with more leg room on the way to Amsterdam. I would have done the same with the flight to Nairobi, but the option didn't exist. Along with the extra leg room, I get free premium entertainment and booze. Might need both, but need to be sober when I hit ground as the layover in the Netherlands is a scant one hour and forty minutes. 

I also get one free bag on two of three flights, so I bought a new suitcase. I deliberately chose an overly large one. With a little scrunching, I think I could fit all six grandkids in it. Perfect for the return trip when I load up on souvenirs. 

Now, on to worrying about the next thing, plus I have to send out the paperwork for a visa. By Kenyan regulation, you can't apply for a visa without confirmed travel and it must be within the next six months. Done, and done, and time to head out to run.

Have a great day!

Rick Riley's X-Country Camp

Good thing I brought run gear. I took the morning off to head up to Spokane and meet with Rick Riley at his annual running camp. Due to the multitude of highway repairs, I managed to arrive only five minutes early. I'd been hoping for thirty minutes.

The kids were already assembled, tweaking shoes and sunglasses as they got prepped for the day's session. Unlike a lot of camps, Rick runs a day camp with the sessions going about 2 hours officially. Since everyone (except me) arrives early, it is closer to 2.5 hours.

The other point that jumped at me were the ages. Most of the running camps I'm familiar with cater to the high school athlete. The Rick Riley X-Country Camp encourages all ages to attend. I think the youngest this year was Katie, age eight. I didn't get Ryan's age but he's right around there as well. A couple of other were nine. Rick has a pretty fair number of his St. George's squad helping out as coaches for the youngsters, along with TJ, a former Spokane Falls decathlete.

I asked Rick about how young a runner he'll allow. "first-grade on up," he said, "and we'll figure out how to make it work for them." Very different from most camps, indeed.

On the other end of the spectrum were the high school kids. These headed out for a 45 minute easy run just after I got there. Pacing them on the boys side were Nathan Vanos and Emrek Danielson for the guys. The ladies were led by Marika Morelan and Madie Ward. Madie was on a bike for the week as she heals up from a lower leg issue. Coach Riley was hoping that she'd be back on the run in a week or so.

On a side note, it was my first exposure to these runners on a non-race day. Lots of cheerfulness and smiles. It's easy to forget that the race day face the kids wear is only a small glimpse of them.

The rest of us took a warm-up lap around Audubon Park, where the North Central team holds its home meets. Once around, and then the teaching started, first with the coaches leading the group through a stretching routine. Rick followed up with the philosophy behind the stretching, just enough to get their attention.

Then it was out for some easy running. I managed to land on a recovery day, which was helpful. When the youth coaches asked the kids how they were doing, a variety of aches and pains were reported, mostly calves and quads. When Rick asked five minutes later, all those miraculously healed and everyone reported, "Fine!"

Off we went on an easy run. The coaches bounced up and down the group, providing feedback and encouragement. Lots of encouragement, actually, which is awfully nice to hear. I hung out with the little kids, both because I wanted to chat to TJ and also because it's been a lot of years since I've run with kids that only come up to my waist. The shorter girl wasn't even that tall. Pretty much they're all Chatty-Cathy's, so I just listened in. When a couple dropped off pace, TJ dropped back with them and I ran with the rest.

Next came speedwork, disguised as a game. Rick picked the littlest kids to be the team captains and then ran a relay. Again, a lot of smiles, though the team captains looked a bit overwhelmed by the responsibility at first.

As the kids cooled down from that, Rick had them settle in for a short lecture. Today, he covered goal-setting. He gave them a ton of ideas on how to go about setting goals, had Nathan and Madie talked about their goals from the previous year, and talked about his experience when he set the National Outdoor record. 

Then he hit them with the kicker: you got to do the work.

If you're interested in Rick's camp for next year, you can click here for the info.

Determined Runners by Justin Lagat, A Review

In Determined Runners, Justin Lagat penned a nice synopsis of the advantage that Kenyan runners enjoy. The book, a compilation of articles published elsewhere and bound by the thread of experience, takes just an afternoon to read.

If you're looking for that one killer workout that will make a difference, you need to head over to Runner's World instead. What Lagat has put forth is not the specifics of training, though some of those are certainly present, but the mindset necessary to run like a Kenyan.

Lagat is, as with it seems every other fit young man in Kenya, a distance runner who has trained with the best in the world. A writer as well, he contributes to RunBlogRun.com under the column The View from Kenya, offering the perspective of a professional athlete in a region where running is neither a recreation nor a sport. It is very much a business, and the athletes treat it as such.

For fans of the sport, Determined Runners gets the inside scoop of the running camps, the efforts of the athletes, and a sincere desire for Westerners to compete on their home turf. In discussing the running camps, he makes the point that many of the best athletes left, not because of training differences but of the attitudes of the camp managers, who sought to treat adults as high school athletes to the extent that there were bed checks and asking permission to be away from camp on personal business. It's hard not to hear an echo from Keyna's colonial past in this, with the big camps assuming entirely too much control of the life of the athlete. Being held out of completion was a close second on the list of camp complaints. Access to races and sponsorships is critical if you want to earn a living on your legs.

Justin Lagat also runs a website called KenyanAthlete.com which is devoted to news from Kenya. Lagat, an outspoken critic of doping, also uses the site as a means of disseminating information regarding the various issues plaguing the sport. Per Lagat, "I want to be part of a clean sport and Kenyan athletes to be known throughout the world as those who can achieve greatness in our sport without the aid of drugs." The turmoil in the sport of running grows with each with positive test of a marathon winner, the accusations hurled at the Nike Oregon Project, and the apparent corruption of the Russian Federation. Lagat toils in support of a clean sport, writing that the doping problems in running hurt the youngest runners most as companies back away from sponsorships.

I recommend that for runners who want an understanding of the Kenyan perspective, Determined Runners makes for a great entry point. You can purchase Determined Runners at Smashwords.

Beast Mode and Running. Why Bother?

Running advice flows on a spectrum from "anything is great" to "it's never enough unless you win". Generally, it's the extremes that win out, as with everything else. Lately, I've read a lot of running stuff on the obnoxious end of the spectrum that presumes to tell you how to get into 'beast mode', or crush the competition.  

Now, this is the stuff that's past the four million "how to PR" articles out there. This is the wing of the running world that considers a race to be a mortal battle, treats running as the single most important thing in the universe.

The beast articles had an interesting effect on me-they annoyed the hell out of me and I wasn't sure why. Which, in turn, set me to thinking. What is the purpose of 'beast mode' and why the heck should I care.

Since I'm about as un-hip as they come, I turned to the internet, keeper of all that is hip, happening, and ten seconds from irrelevancy. Near as I can tell, beast mode has a dual meaning. First, to wig out and lose control of your anger as in "The dude went totally beast-mode and started smashing things.' Think The Hulk.

The second meaning is the one I think the running advice people are applying, to become tougher and more persistent to reach a goal. Generally, I'm in favor of toughness and persistence. I'm not the kind of person who likes to go out and do things half-assed, yet I still find the beast mode exhortations obnoxious.

It took me a while to figure out why. To get there, I had to revisit the reasons for running. In Born to Run, McDougall writes about the rise of persistence hunting in conjunction with brain development. What struck me in the book was the behavior described of the Kalahari bushmen and the games described for the Tarahumara. They both feature great runners at the front of the pack. They also both feature the pack, and the effort of those lesser runners to do their part to win the prize, whether a dead antelope or bragging rights.

In the case of persistence hunting, all the runners participate. First the weaker runners will do the early work of singling out the prey and driving it. Later, when the prey is weakened, the stronger runner closes in to finish the job. By spreading the work out among a group, the overall load on one runner is reduced, placing the prey at a distinct disadvantage. It is a cooperative exercise.

Likewise, the game played in the Copper Canyons was cooperative, with the teams moving as packs to keep the ball (I forget the term McDougall used) moving ahead. When it went off course, the pack split, retrieved it, and forwarded to the main group. Effectively, it's training for persistence hunting.

And that it the core of my antagonism toward the hucksters shouting at me to get into beast mode. I very rarely seen the term used by professional runners. The professional runner puts in work, usually in a team environment. Compared to the major revenue sports such as football and basketball, there's relatively little trash talking. They reserve the energy the wannabe's invest in beast mode for race day. They call it competing.

The beast mode attitude seems to be aimed at the lower tiers , usually either to establish self-declared the runner as one stage up the social ranking (much like pace is used to differentiate runners and joggers) or used by people who expect to make from those emotionally invested in that ranking. Pretty much to opposite of what the elites do, and what our ancestors did for survival.

Oh, and questioning beast mode is not allowed. Just ask someone who professes it as running philosophy.

Have a great weekend of running, however you like it.

Update on the Kenya Trip

Time for a fast update on the trip to Kenya. First, the new passport arrived. After jumping through the hoops presented by the powers-that-be, along with sending $52.25 to a service that will retrieve a certified, embossed copy of my birth records, the process was a breeze. I'm still a bit unclear why I needed a certified copy instead of the embossed certificate I had that was given to my mother on my birth, but it's the government. Arguing simply delays the inevitable, which surrender to the bureaucracy.

Next came the research phase and that will continue until wheels up, currently scheduled for December 27th. So far this week, I've read Kenya - Culture Smart by Jane Barsby,  How To Be A Kenyan by Wahome Mutahi, and Uncertain Safari by Allan Winkler. On the darker side, I've started Histories of the Hanged by David Anderson which details the Mau Mau rebellion. I also got a map of Kenya so I can build up my mental reference points for the places mentioned in the various books. All in all, a good start.

Not a history or cultural guide, Determined Runners by Justin Lagat was an interesting read and short enough to complete in one sitting. This was the first book I've read on my new iPad and a part of the test on which computer to take with me. Anyway, I thought the book offered a different and will put up a short review later in the week. Justin is a regular contributor to RunBlogRun.

Did you know that Kenya uses 240v, 50 hertz power? Nope, neither did I. Looks like I need to find out where to get a transformer once I get in-country. I've played this game before, in Australia. The plug-ins are different, too, but I can buy adapters for those before I leave.

This assumes that I will be in an area with power. I have an invite to Nandi Hills, home ground for Kip Keino, Henry Rono (one of my favorite runners and author of Olympic Dream), Janeth Jepkosgei (with the totally cool nickname of "Eldoret Express"),and Mike Boit. If I end up in the outerlying villages, which hopefully I will, power and running water may be a bit on the iffy side.

I also have checked in with Richard and Andrea Kaitany who run Simbolei Academy. The Academy exists to expand the opportunities for Kenyan girls who live far from the urban centers. Due to the economics of the region - culturally very rich, but cash poor - girls often are not able to attend school past the primary grades. Richard and Andrea recognized a need and sprang into action. Building the Academy takes time, though, and money. Buying seven acres of land from a closed sawmill, they've begun to transform the property into a school. They also have a cottage for rent. No word on openings during my visit, but I'm very hopeful.

Found a fun sounding B&B style house for the time I'm in Nairobi.

There's a whole slew of vaccinations I need, plus malaria medication. Frances, my doctor, will be thrilled. She'll also question my sanity, but she's been doing that for years anyway, so it's no extra bother.

I checked out driving in Kenya, and decided to rely on public transportation. They drive on the wrong side of the road (Yank perspective) and I won't be there long enough to make the adaptation to driving on the left. It should be enough time to reawaken the Australian habits of looking right, left, right before crossing traffic. I'll just have to remember to keep my head on a swivel when I get back, lest I get caught looking the wrong way and step in front of a bus.

Not worried about food. If it can't outrun me, it counts. Except for Brussels Sprouts. I have a catch-and-release program for those.

I plan on running while I'm in Kenya. Fortunately, I'm pretty sure the Kenyans are much too polite to laugh. Unless they've imbibed Chang'aa - their version on moonshine. The literal name means "kill me quick." Still, I can't go to Kenya and not run. Shoot, I can't go to Indianapolis and not run. Indy is not nearly as exciting. So I'll be running.

You know the punch line for the joke about out-running a lion? - "I just need to outrun you!" Know how fast the Kenyans are?

Really hoping not to come across hungry lions.

May I Listen?

As part of a new book that I am writing, I've been taking a look at communication. Since the book is about coaching, I went looking for someone with very particular skills.

I found her, and her name is Neely Spence Gracey. If her name seems familiar, it might be because she's an 8-time Div. II champion. Also, the daughter of Steve Spence, Olympic Marathoner. I discovered that she coaches when I came across a comment of hers on Letsrun.com. She got bonus points in my book for posting there using her real name, plus she exuded a positive attitude.

In addition to being an outstanding athlete, Neely coaches other runners to achieve their best. She was kind enough to reply to an email that I sent her out of the blue a couple of weeks ago, and agreed to help me out with my book project.

Now, I have to confess, I am fascinated by communication and not just in the realm of coaching. My regular job has me working with homebuyers, most of whom I never meet until the day of inspection, most of whom are under stress with the home-buying process. In the three hours or so that we're together, I have to find a way to build rapport, and to identify how best to deliver the information I divine from the crawlspace, attic, or electrical panel.

One of the highest compliments I've ever received came from an agent in Moscow, Idaho, who told her client that I was a great educator. That is, in essence, how I see the core function of my profession. All the technical knowledge in the world won't help if I can not accurately transfer it to the client, both for the defects that might be present, but also for all the other systems present.

This is also the reason I like having the client with me - I never know when they will ask a question that may take us into a discussion that, while not strictly inspection-related, is important to them. The client may not care that the electrical panel is fine, they expected that; instead, they want an open floor plan and need to know if a particular wall is a bearing wall.

Through listening to their words and watching the body language, I can see what is important to them, and simultaneously figure out the best means of presenting information. For some, bluntness is best. Others need to be led to the information in baby steps with supporting data at each point.

Similarly, when I am coaching with the junior high kids, listening and watching are mandatory. With the kids, all their emotions write themselves across their faces and their posture. Also, because they're pre-teen/early teens, those emotions flutter faster than a hummingbird's wings, the process never stops.

In one of Neely's responses to me, she mentioned that her dad started by coaching 13 year-old her like she was a college athlete. Her answer reminded me of coaching my own girls. I quickly understood I couldn't treat them the same way I did myself. Our motivations, expectations, and fears weren't the same.

Relentless positive reinforcement works. Bashing them doesn't and the athletes simply check out. Presentation counts. Kids don't like backhanded compliments, they need the truth straight up, with zero snark. Joking and humor work, but running people down, even ones that aren't on the team, makes them think about what you're saying about them when they're not around. Once you've destroyed that trust boundary, you might as well quit. When I work with the kids, I focus on what they're doing right. We build on that, one baby step at a time.

I also look for the triggers that influence them.

One young lady would get nervous to the point of hyperventilating while standing at the start line. The solution that worked was to get her to the line just in time. Her warm-ups we did off the course, with friends. Once they dropped into that easy getting-going rhythm, they'd chat about a dozen things, none of them race-related. When she got to the line, there was no time to panic.

This is the antithesis of my warm-up and thought process. I operate very differently, with long warm-ups and visualizations. A couple of the kids work the same way, but most don't. By watching them, and listening to the emotions below the words, I could see and feel her concern. As Neely Gracey said to me, "Just like actual coaching, communication needs to be individualized and adjusted based on need. Creating an environment for confidence is so critical . . ." 

In one simple statement, Neely hit on a point that everyone can learn from. Most people, when considering communication, talk about talking. How to present yourself, highlight your ideas, how to convey your instructions, how to modulate your tone to influence. All of that focuses on one-way communication. Sadly, this often leaves the speaker talking to themselves.

Good communication is a two-way process and constantly adapting on the part of all the participants. Average coaches can tell you what you need to do; great coaches listen, adapt, and lead.

---

For those interested in getting coaching from Neely Spence Gracey, visit her at her website. Neely is incredibly approachable and open, and has been through the running wars.

Racing the Rain is out

My three copies of Racing the Rain, John L. Parker's best book to date, arrived today.

Why three copies?

One for me, obviously. One for the XC team, so I don't lose my copy like I did (twice!) with Once A Runner. To be fair, I lost a copy or two to family members as well. The final one for the school library - that way, I can send the junior high kids down the hall with a recommendation on a book they'll love.

Below, the review I wrote back in May for the advance copy. Next time I see John, I'm getting my copy signed. Hopefully, that will be the Olympic Trials next year in Eugene.

Still envious of that cover . . .

For those that want to order a copy, feel free to use the link to the side. I'm an Amazon affiliate. Not much money is involved, but a latte a year isn't too much to ask, is it?

Run gently, friends - or curl up with a brand new book and head off for an adventure on Florida's Gold Coast.

---

Racing the Rain delivers the goods on young Quenton Cassidy with Parker’s flair for inspirational running scenes, an intriguing cast of characters, and a verdant setting above and below the surface of the Florida Gold Coast.

Parker opens the novel with scenes from an American childhood that will seem alien to most of his young readers, but that resonates with authenticity for the age; and, of course, there’s a race.

The boys in the story—Cassidy, his friends Stiggs and Randleman—roamed freely as the story unfolds, the early years touched on at the highlights, until Racing the Rain settles into the early teenage years when Cassidy turns serious about sports even as he searches for his identity.

For Cassidy, identity gets bound by the character of the Florida Gold Coast and by Trapper Nelson. Trapper, who as Cassidy thought of it, “. . . was supposedly bigger and stronger than Paul Bunyan, had more powers than Superman, knew more about animals than Tarzan . . .”  is the first to suggest that Cassidy pursue running, and was wise enough to wait for the seed to germinate. Trapper lives alone in the Everglades and the two form a relationship built on a mutual appreciation of each other and the Glades.

Parker’s ability to write a race scene that leaves your pulse pounding was the backbone of Once a Runner. In Racing the Rain, he adds a graceful skill in describing the natural world of Cassidy, whether describing a foray to capture bait fish amongst the cattails in the tide pools, scuba-diving in coral “so exotic they seemed not the product of the natural world, but of some schizophrenic jeweler,” or the feel of the oppressive summer heat as he works for Trapper maintaining an exotic menagerie. Parker’s affinity for Florida helps him paint the scenes with details that allow the richness of the place and time shine through.

As an author, Parker also added some misdirection to his repertoire as he gently builds a training program for young runners under the guise of telling the story. Gone are the sixty quarter miles, replaced by the guiding wisdom of Archie San Romani through Trapper, and later, from his coaches, especially Mr. Kamrad. The running is interspersed with basketball. It’s on the court that Cassidy first stars, learning the lessons of diligent practice and focus to reach beyond the barriers that had been applied to him.

Parker does a smooth job of bringing the previous book’s characters back to round out the scenes. Readers of Once a Runner will recognize many of the characters, not the least Mizner and a young Jack Nubbins and the race finale takes place at Southeastern University, the setting for Once a Runner.

Parker continues to blend in the science of training with his racing, but does so subtly. He sets basketball as the prestige sport, with cross country and track distant also-rans in the school hierarchy of popularity, not so different from the reality for most runners. As the plot develops, so does Cassidy’s character. The reader watches the writer deftly molding young Cassidy into the man that he will be in Once a Runner, the athlete with an almost visceral rejection of stupidity masquerading as authority. The tension builds through the second third of the novel as Cassidy is forced, by a combination of his own talents and decisions as well as the internal pressures of the sports programs with the prestige to decide on his future.

The result is less a one dimensional running book like Once a Runner and more a coming of age story for Quenton Cassidy, teenager. As such, it should have wider appeal to more readers. And yet, there’s that Parker touch, and the runners will recognize the magic that Parker brings to running fiction, that makes it special to all of us that once dreamed of being that runner.

_______________

Paul Duffau writes novels about running and works with junior high cross country runners part-time. His first novel, Finishing Kick, was recognized by Running Times in their Summer Reading list July, 2014. His newest novel, a high-octane adventure set in the mountains of Montana, is Trail of Second Chances. He blogs on the running life, running book, and interviews people that he finds interesting at www.paulduffau.com .

Catching up over the weekend.

Northwest Runner arrived just before the weekend, and for once, I had some time to settle in and read. One writer that I've been enjoying with each issue is Greg van Belle. This issue had his take on the trails versus roads debate. Quoting Greg, "I've done the math and trail running is 100 percent better than street running. You can't argue with math." The whole article is plenty fun. You can follow Greg on Twitter at @gregvanbelle. While you're at it, I'm there at @paulduffau.

Dana Richardson & Sarah Zentz have put together a documentary on the Tarahumara that won a prestigious Award of Merit from IndieFEST and the Golden Palm Award from the Mexico International Film Festival . The movie, Goshen: Places of Refuge for the Running People, explores the efforts of the Running People to maintain their way of life against the assaults of the modern world. For more info, you can head to GoshenFilms. The movie is available for sale - a reminder that if you want more running related stuff, you need to support the artists involved.

Finished reading a cultural guide to Kenya. The description of their driving habits convinces me that I should be hiring people rather than attempt transporting myself. Also, the advice never to get between the hippo and water seemed pretty obvious, but given the hippo is the deadliest critter (can something as big as a hippo be called a critter?), it probably needs repeating. Also, I've booked four days at the High Altitude Training Centre. I need to find out who was the slowest runner ever to stay there. I might be able to claim a somewhat dubious record.

---

One disagreement I had with Scott Fishman was on the subject of setting a goal that I wanted to enjoy every run. Scott maintained that enjoying a run was not quantifiable and thus could not be used as a goal. He also maintained it wasn't realistic to expect to enjoy every run. He was wrong, at least on the first point. The second is open to debate and would depend on the individual.

To quantify the enjoyment factor on a run, we simply need to borrow the tools used by the medical profession with the perceived level of pain or the Borg scale of perceived effort for exercise. I now use a scale 1-5 to rate my running enjoyment with 1 representing 'it sucked' and 5 representing 'awesome'. The goal is to always stay at a 3 or above, and I adjust workouts to make that happen. If running in 105 degree heat will result in a 2, I find a different time to run or a cooler location.

Yesterday I was up before dawn and on the trails up North Asotin Creek as the sun broke, surprising a flock of turkeys - one momma and a half-dozen poults. Later I saw a pair of 3-point bucks. In between, I traversed from the grassy valley, raindrops that clinged to the taller stalks glistening in the rising sun and up the pine-scented canyon. I started creaky and finished feeling comfortably tired, exactly what I aimed for. That was a solid 4 on the pleasure scale.

By planning the runs around the pleasure scale, I've been much more consistent with the running and it's showing in my fitness. I'm also having more fun than ever. You might give it a try yourself.

Deer Drinking from Sprinkler

In lieu of actual content, I offer this picture, taken from my front door.