Preparing to Elevate

"And we all got to ride this river

And we all got to feel the rain

And we all dig what we're given,

Even the pain"

-The Yellowjackets, "Even the Pain"

It's time to go to altitude. I guess everything I'm doing is not hard enough, it needs to be done with less oxygen now. I will be going to "Kinetic Village" with the team for a week. We will live and run at 8,000 feet, and we will be thinking much more about the latter and very little about the former. And this will drive me crazy. I am already losing it. I need to talk to some people that are not runners, I need to talk about something other than covering ground quickly on foot and how to do it better. I will not find that in Kinetic Village. We will probably have daily quoting of scripture from Once a Runner and will most likely also discuss many factual runners. If I could go back a year in time and tell early September, 2008 me what I was going to be doing, he would be extatic. Now that my perspective has changed... wait, scratch that. Now that I have perspective, I realize that the best way to get good at something isn't to think about it all the time. Sure, you pour your heart and soul and blood and nuts into it, you can even live the lifestyle and center your life around it, but if you can't focus on anything else, you will not accomplish anything.

I want to sit down with the people I know, I just want to have those conversations we always would have, where we talked about everything and nothing at the same time, where stories were swapped and hypotheticals were discussed and allegations of dude-kissing were made. Even on runs, I want to talk about something other than what we're doing. I miss my old team, with Brondello's childish spirit and wit, Robert's racist ramblings, Baffi's comments that were nutted by the line that separated the lewd from the philosophical, Ross's attitude of a 400 meter runner, Colby's contrapuntal opinions, Bongman's occasional gems, and Budge's depraved sexual fantasies. I never thought I would miss that but I do.

I need real people. I'm sure that everyone on this team is a real person, but the problem is that there is only one thing that unites us: we are runners. In high school, your whole team grew up together, you lived in the same town and you had to bullshit for the same teachers. Now we're just a bunch of kids from all over the state who have one talent and interest in common.

And the workouts, they all make me so tired. So much damn running, drills, abs, even stretching takes a couple lifetimes. I'm eating healthy, which means nothing that you enjoy eating. My calves are shredded, my quads are twitching, my hamstrings are tightening, my hip flexors are quivering, and my butt is, well, let's just say I feel like I've been dropping some proverbial soap quite often.

So what do I do in times of adversity? Do I take advice from my pianist Joe Zawinul and cry out "Mercy, Mercy Mercy!" No, I grin and bear it, because I know that I can put up with bullshit for longer than the universe can throw it at me. Have you kicked aversity in the balls today? Because I have, and I shall continue to do it on the daily.

Major bonus points if you got the "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" reference.