A Writer's Journey Part XI

A Writer’s Journey

Part XI

I was sitting in my New York State mandatory coaching class with coaches from basketball, soccer, and other sports.  The older gentleman teaching us asked the group, “What is the most injury sport in Section V?”  He paused letting us think about it and then said, “It’s not football.”  That surprised everyone, myself included.  Especially with New York States growing concern about concussions, you would think that would have been the top of the list.  The man smiled at me knowing I was an XC coach and said, “It’s cross country.”  Then he explained, “There is a lot of contact in cross country... with the ground!”  This man was not an XC coach himself and even had a story how he went out for cross country for two days in high school, found it boring, and quit.  (He said his first day they ran five miles on the TRACK!  The next day, they were to run five miles again, the opposite direction!!  Doing that for one practice would be very tedious but TWICE???  I’m all for running five miles but not around a track!)  When I had this class I had been coaching for years and had learned the hard way that athlete’s getting hurt in XC is extremely easy, especially seventh and eighth grade kids.

I have heard, “Just make them run!” over the years, from well meaning people.  I have learned to reply something like, “Pretend I am the coach of a weightlifting team.  Would you want me to start a kid bench pressing 400 pounds the first day?  Of course not.  Running is the same thing.”  I had a young lady at track practice last night tell me, “I’ve done soccer and basketball this year and thought I was in shape,” she groaned, as we walked to the line to face another sprint.  I replied kindly, “You are in shape but this is very different from what you are used to.  Don’t worry though, soon you’ll adjust and be fine!”  I would say, in pure fitness sense, wrestling is the toughest sport I know of (though any sport can be if you have a high enough dedication level) BUT even wrestlers struggle initially in track.  It is not that track is “harder” than wrestling, it is just that it requires a different skill set of fitness.  Just because you are a championship swimmer or bicyclist, doesn’t mean you are going to win a 5K without training for it. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t understand any of this when I started coaching cross country.  I was going to make my team work hard, which I thought meant make them run a lot!  When I asked the Dean at the college I graduated from, he told me his Championship level XC team ran 45 minutes every day followed by five sprints.  They started out for 15 minutes jogging and then ran the last thirty hard.  I mentioned in yesterday’s blog I also picked out a book on XC from the library (there aren’t a lot of them, even at the bigger library I went to) and examined what it said.  The coach inside showed his thirty years of accomplishments in XC and boy were they impressive!  He went to States almost every year and Nationals about 20% of the time!!  Wow!  His program was very different from the Deans.  The first day they ran 24 miles!  A few days later they ran 5 miles of 400 repeats!!!  College XC is aggressive but I think even they might blanch at this program.  What I didn’t grasp is that the key to this XC book I was the freshman running 350 miles over the summer and the juniors and seniors running a 1000 miles over the summer!!!!  Yipe! 

The guys I was coaching, Aaron Cummings, Mike Miller, and John Farrand, were seniors and athletic but I’m sure they hadn’t run 50 miles over the summer much less a 1000!!!!  They were woefully under prepared for the program that I dreamed up.  I took what the Dean said and merged it with the book.  What did I come up with?  THREE HOUR practices!!!  I’m not kidding or exaggerating!!  During these practices I had them do over fifty sit ups (one time not diffused) and that was just a warm up!  Speed work, running miles and miles, and then more speed work... I’m blessed those three boys didn’t end up in the hospital.  Later on in my career I had an athlete go blind during speed work (temporarily) and one time I saw stars during speed work, and these two examples came from only doing ONE session a day!

They survived physically (they were seniors after all and had their adult bodies that were done growing) but after three days they were all mentally shot.  I realized the program was too hard, so Thursday morning I got in my car and drove to their houses.  I explained that I grasped what we were doing was too hard and asked them to please be patient with me.  I also apologized for the extreme pain I had put them through.  They told me they were on the verge of quitting but they forgave me and agreed to stay in the program.  What would have happened if we had kept going like that?  It’s called, “Over training” and it is very easy to do as a coach.  They would have become slower and eventually their bodies would have failed them, leading to an injury.    

Did I burn the book?  First you must remember that is was the libraries book, not mine, so burning it was out of the question!  (I’m not independently wealthy, remember:)  Second, I would struggle to understand the book over the years, like someone trying to find Eldorado the lost City of Gold.  A few years later Brandon, Chris, Doug, Josh, and Court would run 200 miles over the summer and attempt a watered down version of the program.  I would call that Legend Year but that story is far too long to retell right now. 

Joshua O’Neil would try this program his senior year, after I had over a decade of coaching under my belt.  He ran 200 miles over the summer his junior year and missed a sectional patch by a second!  He wanted to try the “Legend” program his senior year.  He only ran 120 miles that summer but he was in an Elite summer wrestling program and had a fair amount of tournaments and matches that cut into his running time.  We both hoped this was close enough for the program (wrestling does have a lot of cardio in it) and so we tried to run the program STRAIGHT UP!  I have two main programs now for runners to grow as runners.  The DBR program for sprinter athletes and the “distance” program for those who were naturally long distance runners, both difficult!  BUT what Josh was attempting was in a whole different world... maybe a different GALAXY!!  The first day Josh and I ran morning practice, ran to the high school from my house in Troupsburg (a distance of close to seven miles), and then ran evening practice with Alyssa Ross (she couldn’t make morning practice that week.)  We logged seventeen miles that first day.  The program called for 24 but we felt it was close enough.  Then we started at my house and ran to Boyd’s Corners Park (now named Mayo Park) a distance of roughly twelve miles (with some VERY large hills in it) and then ran practice!  I think the program called for 23 miles the second day but this was as close as we could get!

Josh ran every single speed work drill in that book for six weeks by the numbers!  He did it flawlessly and was extremely proud of each drill he nailed!  Unfortunately this did not translate into better times.  In fact, he got slower and slower!!  I thought at first this might be a mental block (like Rachel) but I began to grasp that he was over-trained.  One night I had him come to a special practice after regular practice and tested him.  He tried to do a basic speed drill, one that he had excelled at his junior year and he just couldn’t do it well.  “I’m trying as hard as I can coach!” he said in frustration at his dismal times on the page.  “I know,” I replied softly.  We began to immediately rest him and he found some limited success at the end of the season but nothing like his junior year.  This story does have a happy ending:)  He was in AWESOME shape for wrestling!  He was like, “Coach, I don’t get tired anymore!”  Josh went on to win a sectional patch.  The program is not the only reason he got one but Josh thinks it definitely helped.  He recently told me, “Coach, college wrestling wasn’t as hard as the Legend program!”

What do these stories have to do with writing.  Oh, my dear friend, they have everything to do with it!  Do you know how many aspiring writers are in the their own “Legend” program?  What do I mean?  A writer tells me they are trying to write a book.  They excitedly tell me all about it:)  Don’t judge them, they can’t help themselves!  Yet when I encounter them at a later date and ask them about their book, a glum expression overshadows their face.  “I’ll get a chapter or so written and then I realize it isn’t any good, so I’ll start all over again.”  They are over-training, especially at their level.  Like a new cross country runner, they are not going to state championships or nationals their first year (or at least that isn’t what generally happens) but they want to do so badly.  They see the bigger boys and girls on the team training hard (in this case professional writers who are national or global best sellers) and they compare their efforts to those above them.  Instead of getting better, they are overtraining!  Yes, your first book will be nothing compared to your twentieth novel but you have to build up to that!!  It is a learning curve my friend!  So instead of yelling in frustration and throwing your manuscript in the trash, finish it!!  Have a decent editor give you tips and edit it!  Then get it published!  The Saga of Recluse author has written 78 novels to date (BIG ONES) and is an amazing writer!!  BUT I read his first book and it was TERRIBLE!!  Well, terrible compared to what he would become.  I could see the seeds of his future writing in that novel but it was not great.  He was a new writer at that point and like a runner, he would grow to be much greater!  I see this all the time in XC.  STOP ripping up your novels and FINISH one!  You’ll grow, just be patient with yourself!  Stop over-training and just enjoy the journey!!

  *** Author Adrian Essigmann has eighteen books in print on Amazon.com, soon to be nineteen!  All of them are $.99 cents on Kindle, with the exception of “An Assumed Risk” which will be (Lord willing) an e-book before summer.  All of his books are available in soft cover too!  Type Amazon Adrian Essigmann and his author’s page should come up ***

Book list

Fiction

Wolf Hunting – Action/suspense

Wolf Hunting 2: Trick Shot – Military action/ science fiction

American Fairytale – Colonial America/ Fairytale

Life, Liberation, and the Pursuit of Video Games – Dystopian

Asylum Series (Tribulation genre meets CS Lewis meets lost)

Asylum

Killer Robots

Werewolves

Elf Princess

Zero Book – 666

C-3 Series (Pilgrim’s Progress meets Ender’s Game)

An Assumed Risk

Heavy Opposition

A Distant Boom

Two Hearts

The Magnificent Six

Don’t Pass Go!

Two Paths – Coming Soon!!

The Princess of Ashes Series (C-3 Series spin off)

Falling Ashes

Non-fiction

Miracles Can Happen: The Jim Ross Story – Jim Ross was miraculously sparred from death... twice!

Attack on Girl’s Track – A look at boys competing in girls sports, from the perspective of a track coach.  The book uses five years of track results from Section V (2012 – 2016) to prove its point.