The Ice Trash Can Challenge and Track

Title: The Ice Trash Can Challenge and Track

I was sitting in my mandatory New York State coaching class years ago when the venerable old teacher asked what we thought which sport caused the most injuries in Section V.  Someone said, “Football,” which is what popped into my mind and if that hadn’t won the prize you’d think “Lacrosse would be a contender!”  Let’s think about this for a minute.  You have boys that weight-lift year round and weigh over 200 lbs trying to run through each other to smash some 160 lb soaking wet kid into the ground!  To help with this they practice attacking pieces of equipment, throwing their body into it as hard as they can.  Or they send a football down to the other end of the field and unleash a bunch of huge guys to tackle the skinny kid attempting to run the ball to a large safe zone where no one will hurt him!  If only he can make it there!  Then you have grown adults screaming either for the army of hulks to level that skinny kid or for the skinny kid to run for his life!  I don’t know about you but that does sound dangerous!  (I do like football for the record:)  As for Lacrosse... I mean you are handing kids (almost old enough to go into the army mind you!) sticks and unleashing them on each other.  Anyway, the instructor said, “It’s cross country.”  I was the only XC coach in the room but I could feel everyone stunned around me.  “There is a lot of contact in cross country,” he further explained, “with the ground!”  I know a kid who made it through Seal training as an adult (the very definition of toughness), who got injured trying to do high school cross country... probably due to overtraining for his level.   

Why bring up XC during track season?  Our XC team learned a secret to help punish our bodies more and yet keep injury at bay!!!  The school doctor told us that ice bathing is what the Olympians and college athletes are all doing and that it would help us train harder!  We discovered that he was right and have passed onto our track brethren BUT this year track has taken this to a whole new level!!!  Before I tell you about that, let me tell you why this is so important in XC and track training.  I use the concept myself when I’m in heavy summer training to keep functioning so I know how effective it is! 

What is that?  Oh, you want to know why don’t we just make them hurt the first week of track or cross county and then they’d be fine?    That’s not how it works.  My hardest year of soccer was my sophomore year of college.  We were pushed to the absolute edge of endurance.  It was the first time in my life I hyperventilated (that was a tough practice:)  By day three of training I hurt so bad from double sessions I could barely move (I wish I knew about ice water bathing then) and really didn’t feel like eating (I love to eat!!)  In high school soccer there were years that I was sore the first week but nothing like this!  When my girl friend came to pick me up for a date I lumbered out to the car like I was auditioning for the walking dead!  That year we played man-to-man defense against the other team in college soccer.  WOW, you have to be in shape to do that!  Oh, we barely had any subs either.  It was the only time in my life I ever WANTED to be subbed.  Yet even that year I only hurt the first week.  That is because in soccer fitness is only a means to an end... it is not the end.  In XC and track there is NO end!!!!  Oh we try and peek you and all that but what I mean is in the training phase, we attempt to expand what your limits are every week.  We are never done getting you in shape.  Running is just like weight lifting.  Speed work days are like weight lifting and it tests how much pain your body can handle before it quits (why you spot people who try and lift something beyond the normal... in case their arms QUIT on them). 

Some of my former athletes are running for college programs.  They have access to highly skilled trainers, extreme cold devices, and advanced massage therapy to keep them going.  What does JT have?  We have trash cans and an old hotel style ice machine.  What?  Often I will walk through the building and collect trash cans filling them up with a hose and dumping ice in.  Students watch me sometimes and say, “I think that’s enough ice coach.”  I will smile maliciously at them and put another scoop in.  Pink and Cash are so small they can share a trash can and they both shiver together as they endure the cold.  Yes, walk by the trophy lobby sometimes and you will see several kids in trash cans scrolling through their cell phones.  I often ask them, “Do you still feel the pain?” to which they will reply, “Coach, I don’t feel ANYTHING!!!!”

About a week ago sweet, gentle Lorena (foreign exchange student from Brazil AND our number one short distance runner) asked, “Coach... when do you get in?”  “What?” I asked, as I was walking through.  “When do you get in to the ice?”  I laughed.  My daughter had a tough week of training this week and she went in to ice down, her eyes narrowed as she got in.  “Dad, this is very cold!”  I dumped more ice in.  “I don’t think I can feel my toes anymore!” she complained.  I was unsympathetic.  Then she smirked and said, “So dad... what would I have to do to get YOU into the ice.”  We haggled for a little bit and finally decided on a pole vault height.  I thought about it and on Monday I brought a bunch of three-by-five cards to school.  Each athlete has different time goals or distances in their events with the promise that if they make one of those in a meet they can put me in a trash can and they get to scoop the ice!  I have to stay in it for ten minutes!  I’ve never seen such motivated athletes during our Thursday hard day!!  I have to admit I began to get scared!  Oh, I set high goals and all that (I mean do you really think I want to sit in a can full of water and ice for ten minutes??) but each are carefully gauged for the athlete the card was given to.  I thought, “What if three people beat their time or distance?”  (That means three different times!!!  Yipe!!!!)  My daughter is a woman on a mission.  I asked her, “Are you ready for the invitational tomorrow?”  “Oh, yeah!  I’m ready to put you in the ice!!!”  I’d better buy a really interesting novel because I may be spending a lot of time in ice in the next few weeks!!!!  I can see the CSI’s examining my body now.  “How did this man die of hypothermia in the middle of an eighty degree day?”  The other says dramatically, “I’ve heard of beating the heat but this is ridiculous!” 

In writing you need to have believable things motivate your hero.  There is a reason cops look for motive in a crime.  Most sane people have one before they do something drastic.  Why is your hero taking a ring of power turning them insane to a volcano in an evil country?  Why is your hero a high level spy risking their life through car chases, shoot outs, getting out of death traps, and fighting large groups of men on a regular basis?  Motive is important.  Why am I excited (and terrified) to jump into a can of ice when I am NOT in heavy training myself?  What is the motive?  The hope that it pushes an athlete to get a huge PR!!!

*** 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 ***