MAAC XC Championships: My theory of relativity

The Albert Einstein quote goes something like this: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. (Interesting side note: In trying to ‘fact check’ this, it turns out that Einstein probably never said that, but he is almost always connected to this quote). Anyway. Einstein is one of my favorite sources of pithy quotes – the signature on my emails contains an Einstein quote: (“Strive not to be a success but rather to be of value” … I also like, “If you cannot explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”). The “insanity” quote (whether he said it or not) is fresh and relevant in my mind in light of the deeply disappointing outcome of yesterday’s MAAC cross country championships for both our men’s and women’s team down at Disney. We are on our way home now, but we continue to try to unpack this meet in an effort to learn from it and to move forward in a positive manner. It is also fresh in my mind as our first course of action for most of the men and some of the women this morning was to seek out an appropriate venue for our Sunday long run. With help from a fellow MAAC coach and the trusty Internet (not to mention Begs), we ventured off Disney property about 25 minutes into rural Lake County, Florida, to a world-class 10-mile loop on clay/dirt roads. I say “world class” because national and international caliber runners have flocked to this venue for some forgiving soft surfaces and gentle rolling hills – as well as an awesome sunrise in the Sunshine State.

We experienced all of the above on a cool Florida morning. It was an outstanding choice, despite the early wake-up call after a late night of MAAC activities – awards banquet and fireworks at a jam-packed/crowded Epcot (wait, what happened to that pandemic thing?). After arriving back at our Disney hotel at Coronado Springs resort pretty late last night, there was discussion of skipping this side trip and simply doing our long run back in Poughkeepsie on Monday morning. I’m glad we resisted the temptation to roll over, hit the snooze and not run on the clay dirt. It was worth it, definitely worth it. Back to that insanity thing. The temptation, after a dismal performance at a meet, is toward self-reflection and “what do we need to do differently and better so this doesn’t happen again?” That process started soon after the races concluded, continued all day yesterday (at least in my mind) and still pervade my thoughts as I type this at 33,000 feet on jetBlue flight 1294 back to Westchester County Airport. Waking up to do a team long run on a Sunday falls squarely into the “same thing over and over” category, to be sure. Do we want the same outcome in our final two cross country meets, or next year at MAACs XC, or if and when we return to Disney for this meet? Of course we don’t! Sheesh! Did we define insanity by doing this long run this morning, as we do most Sunday mornings? Maybe. But you know what? As the sun rose over the eastern skyline in rural central Florida on this Halloween, the day after a meet we’d like to quickly forget on the final day of a Disney trip that on balance was a truly great “student-athlete experience” for our team and the other MAAC teams, there was no place our small group of runners would rather have been. I mean, who am I to second-guess Einstein? Maybe we’ll mix things up moving forward – this week, this month and in the future – so as to tip the outcome scales more in our favor. For today, the “same old” long run was not your ordinary Sunday mileage, and my theory of relativity states that it was pretty neat, even if yesterday’s meet results weren’t. OK.