Holiday group run

Kutchy sent this Long Island-based group-run photo on Saturday with a one-word text: "Blog." Yessir! From left: Zeng, Moe, Kutch, Marist Running Alum Eamonn Beers. Neat!
 

Notes from Professor Pete

As we head toward the finish line of the Fall 2020 semester, one we’ll never forget, we have now officially pivoted to remote learning for the final two weeks – this week is the final week of classes, next week are final exams … again, all remote learning. One of my course offerings that I’ve had the honor to teach for the past four years is Public Presentations, COMM101 – basically, Public Speaking. The “public” part of this class takes on a far different dimension on Zoom. It’s an entirely unique vibe talking into a screen versus standing up in front of a class. Hey, we have no choice. We have to adapt.

This class was taught in the “flexible hybrid” model. There are 20 students in the class, and half of them met in person on Monday with the other half meeting in person on Thursday. The rest of the class was “remote” and involved out-of-class assignments of varying nature. The “in-person” portion of the class has been on Zoom for the past few weeks due to our multiple pauses followed by the fact that most students departed campus for home during the pause(s). Today, the Monday cohort (fancy academic word!) did their final talks of the semester, and it went really well! Sitting in my closet office at home, flannel shirt on and coffee tumbler never far from my grasp, I scribbled notes furiously on a small notepad. My pencil filled up about 5 pages of notes! That’s how excited I was about their talks; I wanted to share some of my notes from the talks, because I feel we can all glean some great stuff from them.

About half the class chose to talk about the Covid-19 pandemic: How it affected their lives, how they have mentally processed it and how they will view it from the lens of the future. I was so impressed at how these young men and women took positive spins at what has been, in many ways, a dreadful year. One of our overarching themes for this class was practicing gratitude and it seems these young students took that to heart. Here are some of the thoughts and comments I was able to write down quickly as they talked: “I formed new habits and practiced gratitude.” … “I’ve learned to live in the moment more and that we need to take gratitude with you.” … “It changed my life for the better and made me more mature. I learned to let go of the negative mindset.” … “It was a huge blessing for me” (this is amazing!) … “I've become more adaptable” …  and my personal favorite, “In a time of darkness, it's up to us to bring the light” … Wow! There’s hope for the future, people!

Spencer’s sizzling 10km: 29:41!

Congrats to Marist Running alum Spencer Johnson, who spent a “different” 2020 Thanksgiving in a very special way, blasting out an incredible 10,000-meter performance in San Diego. Making his old coach proud in so many ways, Spencer ran remarkably consistent 5km splits (shades of Will Griffin’s 10km track school record) and did it on a repetitious course (17 laps + 55 meters in a parking lot). How cool is THAT? Here is Spencer’s race report, sent via email:

My teammates and I did a small 10k time trial in place of a turkey trot and it was a great day for all of us! We did it in the SeaWorld Parking Lot (the same place where I my PR (at the time) of 14:49 back in September). It’s crazy how in just two months of hard consistent training I was able to pretty much split that time and hold it in this 10k!

Here are my splits:

Mile 1: 4:47
Mile 2: 4:45
Mile 3: 4:47
5k: 14:51
Mile 4: 4:43
Mile 5: 4:45
Mile 6: 4:41
Finish: 29:41

We mapped the course out on Tuesday with a measuring wheel and my GPS watch seemed to line up with our mile markers. We also had a teammate pace on the bike and another pace our top runner through 5k then he paced me for a little over a mile.

Other results (in case you were wondering)

Steven: 28:49
Me: 29:41
Dillon: 30:50
Hunter: 31:45

Hope you and the family are doing well and Happy Thanksgiving!

My gratitude list

As though compelled to follow our own instructions from the previous post, our Thanksgiving 2020 was … different! We spent the afternoon at the home of good friends in Pleasant Valley for a tailgate-style Thanksgiving feast outside – food under the tent, lawn chairs in the front yard, dual fire pits going. The weather cooperated – it was pleasantly mild and we stayed for several hours of socially distanced socializing. Definitely neat, especially because of and for 2020. And here’s part two of my “follow your own instructions” post, a short gratitude list for Thanksgiving 2020:

 --Entire family together under one roof, healthy. For a few days, anyway.

 --As crappy as the semester was, we were still able to “practice” for a decent amount of it. Still able to do what we love and love what we do, albeit in a very different and very stilted way. It will make us appreciate “normal” that much more when it returns.

 --The loyalty of our alums, who have made an effort to stay connected with text, call, Zoom. Means a lot. We are all Forever Foxes. Special shout-out to my loyal blog follower Marty McGowan, who never fails to inspire me with his passion for our program.

 

--Flannel shirts. I have grown into a new appreciation of them, wearing them every day. Even have lined, outer-layer flannel shirts for cold-weather outdoor use (we have 3 dogs that need walking now, you know). Putting my phone in the left chest pocket and on speaker mode, I can walk around hands-free and talk and get stuff done, while the dogs also “get stuff done.” Neat.

 --My morning jogging buddies. We didn’t run together for the first 4-6 weeks of the pandemic but I’m glad we were able to resume our tradition since that time – for a distance, from a distance. Specifically, we have expanded our repertoire of “Netherwood” runs out on rural, hilly roads in Pleasant Valley and Clinton, and that has improved all our fitness levels, not to mention our friendships. I’m sure they are sick of hearing me whine, but because they are good and loyal friends, they listen. Also neat.

 --Seen circulating on Facebook and email and New York Times: “Zoom Thanksgiving beats an ICU Christmas.” Because of its pervasiveness, it has already become cliché but still works.

 --The incredible loyalty and longevity of Running Red Foxes coaches. Since early 1991, when Phil Kelly and I started this journey, we have shown Pittsburgh Steelers’ style stability at the helm: Phil had an incredible run of success that ended with his retirement in 2008; Chuck Williams started as an athlete in the fall of 1995 and never left, having been a coach in some capacity after his graduation and now the co-pilot at the helm for the past dozen years, devoting a large portion of his entire adult life to all things Running Red Foxes; Terry Horton has been here for the past dozen or so years, stubbornly refusing to retire (greatly appreciated!) and continuing to show great passion for a sport he has been involved with for about as long as I’ve been alive; and 38 years after arriving at Marist as a scared and skinny freshman in August 1982, I’m still here.

Making sense of Thanksgiving 2020

The holidays are going to look and feel different this year. Oooof. After the first dozen or so times I heard this, even a thick-headed dumbass track coach like me got it. Do we need to keep HEARING this? Or talking about the “new normal” already? Double oooof! In talking with two loyal alums (via Zoom, of course) last night, they posited that Christmastime would pose more of a pandemic threat than Thanksgiving. I get what they said and they could in fact be accurate in that assessment, but I think Thanksgiving may be more pervasively problematic. Here’s my point: Pretty much everyone celebrates Thanksgiving, and travel centered around this holiday might be more widespread than any other. And since this is the holiday staring us in the face right now, let’s talk about it.

There is so much chatter and information out there about Covid-19, but I’d like to think there is one thing we can all agree upon: Indoor gatherings, in enclosed spaces, for longer than brief visits, without masks, crowded together, sharing food and drink and talking and laughing and hugging and kissing – phew, that’s quite a potent concoction for the spread of a highly infectious virus. Most years, that previous run-on sentence would be a good way of describing the risks – relatively minor that they are – of colds and flu spreading during holidays like Thanksgiving (my childhood memory is filled with grown Italian men snorting and sneezing violently into a handkerchief and then neatly folding it and putting it back into their pockets for future use… disgusting!) As we hopefully all know by now, Covid-19 is not the cold and it is not the flu. Same concept, far more serious consequences. The anti-mask folks often crow and whine about being told to wear face coverings: “Don’t tell me what to do, how to live my life, etc.” When officials wag their collective fingers at us and implore us to forego our usual, big Thanksgiving gatherings, that anti-mask credo rings in many of our heads. “Come on, man, we gotta live, family time is sacred, enough of this crap.” I get it. I get it. We all get it.

And yet? We gotta be careful, people. Is it worth it? Is it worth gathering in large groups inside -- eating together, talking, laughing, hugging and kissing -- not knowing for sure where everyone has been, who they’ve been exposed to? We’ve also had to “embrace the suck” for the past 8.5 months. What’s another day, another few months? The year 2020 has been different in so many ways; isn’t it fitting that Thanksgiving, the holidays, should be different too? Shouldn’t we be big boys and girls and adjust and adapt? Maybe we can embrace the differences, create new solutions (no, not “new normals” because this cannot and will not be the norm long-term!) and look back and say, “yeah, that sucked, but wasn’t it fun and interesting and different in 2020 when we ______ (fill in the blank).”

So many “didn’ts” this year. We didn’t have an outdoor track season; graduations of all sorts; road races; preseason; cross country season; a fully functioning fall semester; other than on a screen, I haven’t seen family members in New Jersey pretty much for the balance of 2020, probably a similar story rings true for many of you reading this. In many ways, it all has sucked. But here we are, at Thanksgiving 2020. A time to reflect on gratitude. Not easy, this year. Sometimes the “not easy” is more gratifying, more worthwhile, in the long run (think: marathon training and racing). So, as you gather (or maybe not gather), at a smaller table with fewer people around you, try swimming upstream and, instead of ruminating upon the many didn’ts of 2020, try making a gratitude list. Might be a lot more difficult, when you’d probably much rather be gathering for holiday cheer and maybe even doing a Turkey Trot road race. But anyway. Try it. Even in 2020, my hope, desire and prayer is that you – we all -- can do that, and the list is longer than you had thought it would be. Happy Thanksgiving.

Who's counting?

Thanks to Conor and Lisa for their comments on last week’s post about the possibility of a winter XC season. It’s very rare to get comments, other than the occasional bots that are not actually human, on this blog. To hear from two very loyal Forever Foxes with very interesting and relevant questions was awesome. Their questions were complicated and I’m not sure I can fully answer them. But I’ll try. First of all, as I have stated here repeatedly as well in that aforementioned post, our “sport” is actually 6 sports. This is an often overlooked metric that bears repeating over and over and over. Back when I was a part-time head coach lobbying to become full-time (which happened, in large part, to the lobbying efforts of the 2000s era alums, and I’ll never forget that), I made the point that as “Director of Track/Cross Country,” I was overseeing more than 25 percent of the entire athletic department’s teams. Do the numbers. We have 23 D1 programs and 6 of them are “us” … pretty difficult to justify having more than 25 percent of your athletic program run by part-time coaches.

But I digress. Conor asked if our three-season athletes “count” three times … and again, I’m not sure I know the answer. I think it’s yes and no. Yes, in that each roster is distinct and the total of each roster is counted as such. No, in that when we give a final head count of overall athletes and male athletes vs. female athletes, for the purposes of equity, I don’t think a distance runner who does all three seasons “counts” as three distinct athletes. By the way, words matter: “Equity” and “Title IX” are close cousins but they are not the same. Please don’t ask me the distinction – I’m not smart enough to parse it. But they are different. Title IX is federal legislation and thus mandated accordingly. Equity is something that each individual school strives for, but without specific guidelines, in terms of the proportion of male and female athletes. There. I think I just did it. If a compliance person is reading this, they probably just cringed at this crude explanation.

Let’s keep going on this. Clemson University just cut its men’s programs – all three, XC, indoor and outdoor. Travesty. Atrocious. Make up any other adjective or adverb. It sucks. All of it sucks. Lisa’s point about the numbers is spot on. Football is a big driver of equity and Title IX decisions, because it is an all-male sport with a huge roster. Conor’s point about Lisa – a legit two-sport athlete in rowing and track – is quite interesting, actually. In that case, maybe she DID count as two athletes! I honestly don’t know. I can ask Liz Donohue, our outstanding long-time Senior Women’s Administrator and Compliance Officer, about this. Here’s the thing: These schools that are cutting sports – men’s track is a popular and easy target – in many cases are using the Covid crisis as cover to pay for the sins of poor budgeting or gross overspending in the big-ticket sports – football, men’s basketball. In most cases, quite frankly, it’s bullshit, and it’s young student-athletes’ lives that suffer. Some schools (Brown, William and Mary) have walked back their original decisions. In almost all cases, though, the damage is done and cannot be reversed. Cut is cut. And that sucks.

It’s about the money. It’s always about the money. But oftentimes, cutting our sport doesn’t actually “save” universities a lot of money. In our case, with men’s XC and track, we are relatively low budget in every way – scholarship allocation, operating expenses, etc. Anyone reading this that has any close association to the program knows this well and probably lived it for 4-5 years. We survived, we will survive. We are most definitely a loss leader, but so is pretty much every other college athletic team! However, if you look at the amount of income our athletes provide for the college in terms of what they pay to attend? Based on that metric, we are making the school a lot of money. Grab the back of an envelope and do the math. Between our three sports, we currently have about 45 men (again, Conor, that’s not double-counting the 27 guys on the XC roster who also do both tracks). Let’s say, after you deduct merit scholarships (academic, athletic) and need-based aid (from financial aid), each student is paying roughly half of the sticker price to attend Marist ($30,000). With a little bit of research, we would probably find that to be an enormous under-estimate – we dole out very little athletic aid (for men), our financial aid “gaps” almost all students (not meeting full need) and our academic scholarship allocation is proportionally much smaller than our competitors (we are the most competitive school, admission-wise, in the MAAC). Bottom line: Our guys and their families are likely paying a lot more than $30k a year, on average. But let’s just continue to scribble on the envelope. Based on this? Here’s the total: $1.35 million. Again, the total is probably a lot higher than that. Now, subtract salaries for coaches, athletic scholarships and operating budget costs – trust me, if this were a car accident, the “dents” in these areas would barely cover the deductible – and “we” are making a lot of revenue for the college. This is a long-winded way of saying that, while there is always grave concern of program cuts making their way to schools like us, the bottom line is literally the bottom line. For a tuition- and enrollment-driven school like ours, cutting sports is almost always bad business. At least, that’s what I tell myself when I wake up in the middle of the night sweating out news of another program in another conference getting cut.

Phew. A lot here to digest. I hope this makes a little sense and answers some questions while raising some others. Thanks again for the comments. Keep them coming.

Upstate Classic

It sort of felt like normal. There was a group of runners, Marist students, wearing red and white, lugging backpacks, getting ready to try to run fast. It wasn’t a championship cross country meet, as it should be this time of year. It was a road race, a rare, in-person, on-ground road race put on by the fine folks at Albany Running Exchange, called the Upstate Classic. It featured a 5km, half marathon and full marathon. Start and finish at the fairgrounds in Altamont, a cool little village in the foothills west of Albany. The course was scenic and rolling and mostly through Guilderland – it even passed Guilderland High School, home of several top Running Red Foxes past and present. Coach Chuck was driving his car around, cheering the top ladies in the race. He told me afterwards how good it felt to be coaching again, doing what he loves while encouraging athletes who were finally able to do what they love as well. The race was staged with Covid protocols, including staggered start times. ARE knows how to put on quality running events, and this one was no different. Perhaps, it was their most important race to date. They were able to provide runners – even a small segment of our team – with a sense of normalcy and a sense of joy, even for a few moments during these troubling times. Thank you to ARE for doing just that. We sure as heck needed it. Here are results from our Running Red Foxes on Sunday. 

Half marathon: Gianna Tedeschi, 1:19:15 (first overall); Ali Bartolotta, 1:21:05 (second overall); Talia Cutrone, 1:27:57 (seventh overall); Jenna Robinson (Marist alum), 1:34:01 (14^th overall); 5km: Brendan Dearie, 15:34 (second overall), Aidan Pech, 16:01 (third overall), Jon Kittredge, 16:18 (fourth overall), James Moehringer, 16:35 (eighth overall), Ian Wiesinger, 16:37 (ninth overall), Chris Courts, 17:41 (15^th overall); Boushra Belkhir, 19:01 (third overall); Marathon: Some Old Guy, 4:19:11

Say less

A few loyal blog followers have urged me to write more posts. Say more! I’m getting the opposite message from a small but significant segment of my team. Say less! Apparently, I’m long-winded. Apparently, I talk a lot. Apparently, I repeat myself. Apparently, my team meetings (back when I used to be able to DO such things) become long, rambling soliloquies and endless filibusters. I just completed a book called “The little book of talent: 52 tips for improving your skills,” by Daniel Coyle. Tip #42 = Six ways to be a better teacher or coach, with this second bullet point in the chapter: Avoid giving long speeches – instead, deliver vivid chunks of information: The question is not what big, important message you can deliver. The question is, what vivid, concise message can you deliver. I brought this up to a group of athletes and they jumped right on this, doubling down on this concept and essentially saying that I needed to take this sub-tip to heart. Cut down on the words. Get to the point. Stop talking in circles. Some want me to write more; some want me to talk less. Be Better? I’ll try to do both!

Doing the Lindy

As a kid, I used to imitate his extreme overhand pitching motion. This is what we did, back in the day, back in the early- and mid-1970s of my youth. We’d meet at a baseball field, play pickup games and pretend to be the players we saw on TV. When I batted, I was Roy White. Always Roy White, the steady, consistent outfielder for the New York Yankees. When I pitched, I was Lindy McDaniel, a player few had heard of and a guy who through no fault on his own always played on mediocre teams – including the Yankees, during their dark days of the late 1960s to early 1970s when they weren’t all that good. McDaniel had a good, long Major League Baseball career, as I learned in his obituary earlier this week in the New York Times. He died of Covid-related illness at age 84. Whenever I play catch with my son James in the yard, every once in a while, to this day, I’ll throw a fastball with my left arm extended fully straight up in the air, and I’ll think of Lindy McDaniel, long forgotten and now gone. I guess it’s no surprise and probably a recurring theme as you get older that the sort-of famous people that were part of your life growing up start disappearing from the planet.

Square peg, round hole

The NCAA recently announced a Division I cross country championship for next March – specifically, March 15, 2021, in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Yes, that’s right, folks. Cross country in the winter. We (MAAC coaches) had a Zoom call on Thursday morning to discuss the possibilities. There may be a MAAC Cross Country Championship in either late February or early March; details are still being hammered out, not the least of which – where can we run without having to deal with a lot of snow and mud and muck? Winners and top finishers will qualify for the NCAA Championship; there will be no “regionals” as we know it. At least, not in early 2021. You can look up the details of the qualifications, quite frankly I’m too lazy and confused to do it right now. Here’s the thing! I applaud college athletics for thinking creatively to work on restoring the possibility of seasons of competition in all sports. Fall sports to the winter and spring, peacefully coexisting with the spring sports. Shoehorn the winter sports in there somewhere, especially basketball! It’s great; when and if they tell us that we can board a bus to compete, I don’t care if it’s a cross country course under 6 inches of snow, a warm indoor track (neat, but unlikely) or eventually an outdoor track (I’ll be bitterly disappointed if that doesn’t happen). If we can play track, we’ll play track. Tell us when, where and how.

However! Here’s the unique problem with our sport: It’s not a single sport. Duh. We all know that it’s really 6 sports umbrelled into one, which administrators conveniently call “track.” In reality? We’re a fall sport (cross country), a winter sport (indoor track) and a spring sport (outdoor track). Times 2 (men and women). Trying to “move” fall sports to the spring – at least in our world – becomes a square peg into a round hole problem. Soccer, volleyball, even football in the spring? Sure! Book the field, the gym, and away we go! Cross country in the spring? Uh. Wait. We kinda already have a SEASON there now, don’t we? The trend – at least in these parts – seems to be that indoor track will mostly be a non-starter, so let’s plow forward with a late winter XC season. Again, tell me where and when, and we’ll order the biggest meat-hook spikes we can find and have at it. Racing is racing, and it’s been a long-ass time since our athletes could represent Marist in a collegiate race. Stay tuned. A winter XC season may happen, at least that’s what everyone I talk to seems to think. A truncated indoor track season is unlikely, but you never know, there may be a few random meets here and there. Personally? For months now, the only thing I’ve been banking on is an outdoor track season in the spring of 2021 – as I said, if that doesn’t happen, we’ll all be pretty pissed off and depressed at a completely lost 2020-2021 athletic calendar year (hey, it could happen, but I don’t want to think about it). A 2021 outdoor season? It may not be “normal” as we know it but I’d like to think it’s likely. But again, something is better than nothing. Even if it’s cross country in the wintertime. Stay tuned.

Rolek runs around Manhattan

As a follow-up to a recent post about Marist Running Alum Mike Rolek’s charity run around Manhattan? He did it! On one of those glorious late fall days (of which we’ve had many!), Rolek covered 32.5 miles (a bit more than 50km) and had a grand time doing it, for a very good cause. But rather than continuing with my description, here’s what Rolek emailed me earlier this week:

Overall, it went great.  Most important number:  We raised more than $10,000 for The Scholarship Fund for Inner-City Children.  Unreal.  All of the money raised will go directly to low-income families to allow children, who otherwise would not get the opportunity, to attend high-quality private and parochial elementary schools, high schools and colleges.  It doesn’t get any better than that. As for the run… it ended up being a little over 32.5 miles (4:11 running time - 7:43 pace and 4:50 total time - 8:55 pace which includes all breaks). Just an epic day. Started on West Side Highway right by Christopher Street Path and ran counter-clockwise. First 9 went very smooth. Probably felt the best through Harlem between 9-18. Hit the Top of Manhattan at 220th Street in high spirits. A lot of hills in Inwood Park (around Columbia athletic fields) around miles 20-22. Started to get tough at 23 by GWB. Rough patch between 27-29. And then charged home. An absolute perfect day weather-wise, 60s and sunny and no wind.  In terms of fueling - Gu right before start and then at 5, 10, 15, 19, 22, 27, 29.5. Water and Gatorade throughout. Flat Coke at 27.  I was lucky to have my high school teammate, and one of my best friends, Brian Trembley, run the first 15 miles with me.  He then hopped on a citibike and biked till mile 23ish (GWB) when the chain came off the bike - he ran the last 10 miles. What a savage. Overall, it was an unbelievable experience.  

Puppy love

There are so many Covid clichés out there, new habits formed during this troubled year of 2020, amplified with social media flexing and/or well-meaning articles in the fancy New York Times. That’s all swell. For a schmoe like me, observing from the comfort of my closet office upstairs, “new habits” are really just old habits with new names. Let’s start with the most obvious one in our sport and that is …

Virtual races!: Specifically, the ones in which you set a long-term, specific mileage total to hit over the course of several weeks and months. It’s great for accountability and a sense of accomplishment. Back in the day, we used to call these things our “training logs.” Now, we have Strava (which I have grown to like). And in 2020, the explosion of virtual races like the ones I have described (and yes, that I have participated in), in which we pay an outside agency to allow us the opportunity to log our mileage and see how we compare versus others. Am I being cynical and glib? Yes. I am.

Men not shaving because they’re working at home or otherwise Don’t Care about their personal appearance: This is my favorite. Are you kidding me? Anyone who has known me for even a short length of time knows my “shaving habits” consist of … not much. I don’t need a lot of prompting to grow a hideous beard. My shockingly white goatee right now is approaching 8 months' growth, with a relatively easy target of 1 year not too far behind, especially with the cold weather eventually settling in. Frosty face frozen beards, here I come!

Dressing down because you don’t have to look presentable at work: Like I need a reason to wear flannel shirts and flannel-lined pants every day? Puh-leeeeze. Now, this sort of grunge look is once again a “trend?” Ha! For your next trick, perhaps you can tell me that TUBE SOCKS will come back in vogue!

Adopting adorable pets, thus rescuing them from otherwise bad outcomes: Been there, done that. We have two dogs – Sammie and Mikey (who I like to call Michael, because, well, why not?) – who were acquired through pet rescue agencies. They are part of the family. For a while, several months ago, there may have been several days where I would have had more extensive conversations with them than with Actual Humans. They create a symphony of barking whenever, well, pretty much anyone or anything approaches the house. Sammie is high strung and has a difficult time relaxing, but she is a happy girl and a joy to have. Michael is smelly and fat and likes nothing more than to lay around looking grumpy. My kinda guy! Both of them naturally take up residence on the couch most days and in our bed most nights. We have a happy animal house (including Rickey the turtle and an unnamed goldfish, won by Natalie at some carnival, that simply refuses to perish). Who needs more than this? We do, of course! The chatter for a third dog seemed like a joke at first. But then, in what seemed like an overnight, rapid transition, the chatter grew into a loud chorus and I was completely blindsided -- outnumbered 2 to 1, which felt like 200 to 1. The two (wife Heidi, youngest son James) were persistent and wouldn’t take no for an answer; the one, me, the dissenting chief justice, represents the opinion that matters the least. It began looking like Three Dog Night was gonna be more than an old rock band in our house.

And so? Welcome Ellie to our already chaotic household. Ellie is a tiny puppy, allegedly a “beagle mix.” Anything “mix” is adoption agency code for “we don’t know what the heck she is, but she sure is cute, isn’t she?” Why, yes, she is! Alert readers may ask? Why Ellie! Immature Athletes On Our Men’s Team immediately jumped to the following conclusion: “Coach Pete named her after (junior distance runner) Ellie Davis! Har-har-har.” Uh. No. While we are extremely proud of the great strides Ellie Davis has made in her training and racing – especially during these pandemic months! – this dog was named in honor of Eleanor Roosevelt, arguably the greatest First Lady in history and inarguably the former residence of the nearest National Park to our house (Val-Kill, less than a half-mile from our Hyde Park home). Ellie enters a loving home inhabited by two dogs who have grown quite accustomed to running the show around these parts. This has led to some Tense Canine Moments – not to mention pee and poop and chewed-and nibbled upon shoelaces, homework (the dog ate my homework!), pant legs and even a long, scruffy beard. Life with a puppy! So cliché in 2020, huh?

The eyes of a tired nation

The New York Times story started with these words: “As the eyes of a tired nation remained transfixed on the results of the presidential election, the United States set a daily record for new cases for the third straight day …” As a career journalist and sometimes journalism professor, I continue to marvel at the outstanding reporting and writing of this newspaper, which some call “failing” but others rely upon for information. Oh sure, their editorial page skews as left as Clayton Kershaw and Andy Pettitte and the great Whitey Ford, no doubt about that. But for basic information and solid writing in the other sections, it’s as good as it gets.

But this is not another tired post about journalism, and it’s certainly not going to morph into a political post – we’ve got enough of THAT already. This a post about the “eyes of a tired nation” and to a narrower perspective, “the eyes of a tired campus.” Man, oh man, this election is so indicative of 2020, isn’t it? High anxiety, uncertainty over when it will end, lack of a roadmap, etc. Meanwhile, in case no one's been paying attention? The Covid-19 pandemic is raging as strong as it has since it started, setting grim records every damn day. The novelty has worn off but the harsh reality marches on. The late fall weather here is currently beautiful, but the cold and the dark are coming – literally and figuratively. Are we ready? Doesn’t matter … we kinda have to be, don’t we?

Here at Marist, I believe we have handled the pandemic crisis pretty well. Maybe we’ve skewed toward overreacting at times, and that has led to frustration in many areas – athletics especially. But now, sad to report, the virus has taken a pretty solid grip on our campus. We’re always looking for correlation and causation – who can we blame? Off-campus parties, fraternities, laziness toward mask wearing, not keeping enough distance, etc. Not this time. This time, it’s simply a nasty virus doing its dastardly job in the petri-dish setting of a college campus. We can’t point the finger at one group, one team, one dorm, one off-campus house. The fact that we have made it this far – early November – until an outbreak (yeah, everyone’s afraid to use that word, but I will here) occurred is pretty remarkable. But that is of little solace now as we are paused once again, with waves of uncertainty remaining over the final 2.5 weeks of the in-person fall 2020 semester, not to mention the early months of 2021. During the spring and summer, the logical brain said trying to do in-person college academics and athletics during a pandemic was foolhardy at best. At all times, the emotional brain said we HAD to try, and I’m glad we did. Now where do we go? Same old shit – space out with physical distancing, wear a damn mask, wash your hands. As a dumbass track coach with the sole skill of being a fast typist, I’d like to add a few more helpful, non-scientific tips:

--Get outside, even when the weather sucks. Fresh air is a great salve in these times.

--Stay connected, and not just through social media. Send a text, make a phone call, shoot an email, schedule a Zoom call. Especially to someone from whom you haven’t heard in a while.

--Remind yourself and others about things you can be grateful for, difficult to do now but vital nonetheless.

--Listen. There’s a lot of noise out there. Sift through it and hear the messages that matter.

Like this: A text from an old friend, a dude who checks this blog every day and who reached out to me out of the blue and urged me to write more, to post more, to help him through these crazy times. Duuude: I'm no Tony Robbins, I'm just the dumbass over here in the flannel shirt! But anyway? This post is for you. I’ll try to do more, based on your urging. And in following my own advice, I’ll end with this: I’m grateful for your friendship and loyalty through the years, and I forever remember our long-ago hard runs from campus, always pushing up that little hill on Delafield Street, you always leaving me in the dust when we returned to campus. Long may we run, Murph. Thank you.

Fast halves, near and far

After months and months of scant results posts, here’s the third one in three days! We got a text from Marist Running Alum Spencer Johnson, now tearing it up with the San Diego Track Club, on Saturday reporting that he ran a big PR at the Las Vegas Gold Invitational Half Marathon, sixth place in 1:07:31. A great effort at a unique venue, as you can see. Spencer reported that the desert air was dry and the course had ups and downs that can be detected by his mile splits, which are here via Strava: 5:07, 5:02, 5:18, 5:02, 5:05, 5:14, 5:08, 5:13, 5:13, 5:02, 5:06, 5:10, 4:52.

Back here in Poughkeepsie on Sunday morning, sophomore Ramsey Little ran a half marathon (time trial) of his own. He drove his car out to near New Paltz (Eltings Corners, to be exact) so he could run a linear, west-to-east 13.1 miles. His roommate, Dan Czop, cycled next to him to provide splits updates to me and the team and to provide encouragement. Ramsey noted Spencer’s time from Saturday and it motivated him to get moving at a fast pace He finished in a very strong 1:08:08 (5:11ish pace), with intermediate splits of 33:00 (10km) and 52:30 (10 miles). These are the mile splits that he sent me from his watch: 5:18, 5:23, 5:16, 5:18, 5:08, 5:13, 5:11, 5:05, 5:05, 5:11, 5:09, 5:11, 5:05.

And last weekend, freshman John Ignacz set the table with his own half marathon time trial, in which he blasted out a solid 1:12:43. Here are his splits from his Strava post: 5:39, 5:50, 5:39, 5:45, 5:42, 5:33, 5:30, 5:21, 5:38, 5:21, 5:25, 5:25, 5:28.

All good stuff. But before we get too excited … it IS 2020 and we just got an email saying all athletic department activity would be PAUSED on Monday due to several Covid positive cases connected to freshmen dorms, with the McCann Center being converted into a massive surveillance testing center. We’ll keep trying to outrun this virus …