This weekend was supposed to be all that and a bag of chips running wise. Boy, was I wrong. Bonnackburn, Illinois is the worst running city since Dallas- or anywhere in Texas for that matter. This city sucks. It looks like the city planner got ****faced one night, woke up on his buddy's couch with pizza boxes and over him and a lampshade on his head after two hours of sleep and said "****, I have to have my plan of Bannockburn to the Governor in 15 minutes." I mean, this city is terribly laid out. My first run, I mistakenly turned right out of my hotel room. Big mistake because, well, first off, the road that I run on is actually a state highway. Second, there's a sidewalk on the left side of the road, but only for about a quarter of a mile when it turns into a slanted crushed rock- broken asphalt shoulder thatis like half the width of a sidewalk. Its pretty trippy to run that close to cars going 65mph. That crushed rock "trail" lasted for a mile, at most, then I decided to go right up Telegraph Avenue to the Lake Forest Metra station. Well, there's no sidewalk and not even a shoulder until you get to the Bannockburn/ Lake Forest city line where there's a sidewalk.
Whatsmore, you have to cross some street and then go another half mile or so to get to the station. I forget what the street is called, but its probably some state highway. Every street here is a state highway. Well, I get to the intersection running on the one sidewalk which is on the right side of the street, and the sidewalk across the highway is on the left side. Are you kidding me? Plus, there was a "cross traffic does not stop" sign, which I thought was weird for a relatively major intersection. Whatever though, I didn't really want to get hit, so I turned around and ran back.
So, now I've learned. I only turn left out of the hotel parking lot toward the tri- state tollway where its all paved and nice. Still, that limits my options a little. The one thing that this city does have going for it is that there's a forest on the outskirts of town that has a pretty nice trail system. I've only ran five miles or so on the trails because they're two and a half miles away from the hotel, but they're better than running on the same road over and over and over.
The people here are nasty too. Well, I shouldn't say nasty because they haven't punched me in the face unprovoked or anything, but they're extremely over- defensive. So, I was going to Chicago and then to Evanston on the Metra, and even the 9:20am train from Lake Forest to Chicago was overcrowded with no open seats. So I asked some girl who looked my age if I could sit by her. She said politely that she'd rather not have that, so whatever, I kept on moving to the next car. I asked some other girl the same, and she said yes, but her mom said no. Her mom! are you kidding me? whatever though. She said no again a little more sternly, so I kept moving. I was a little pissed, more because I had to stand for the 40 minute train trip than anything else. I dunno, maybe intentions got misinterpreted, who knows, but I was just trying to get to know somebody. Who knows?
Truth is, I'm not here to have a grand ole' time though, I'm here to coach the Courage Center team. I realize I haven't really explained what this entails, so here we go.
I don't think I have an official title, but I coach the ambulatory track athletes. I don't know how many athletes I coach because people seem to attend practice as they please (which I hate,) but I would guess the number is around 5. When runners come to practice, they are basically separated into 3 groups: wheelchair racers, race runners, and ambulatory athletes. Wheelchair racers obviously race in specialized racing wheelchairs and you've probably seen them before- there's usually a wheelchair division in Marathons. Race runners are a relatively new category. They're usually ambulatory athletes in that they can stand up when running, but generally they don't have full control of their lower extremities or have poor balance. Because of that they use an apparatus that looks somewhat like a walker and somewhat like a tricycle. Ambulatory athletes usually have mild Cerebal Palsy or something of that ilk where they have full, or at least good enough, control of their lower extremities. Often times there's flexibility, motor control, and balance issues to work through.
Usually, there's a coach for each group, although not always. I've coached the race runners, but never the wheelchairs. Obviously, being a distance guy, I know some, but not a lot about sprints so I have to read up or bounce ideas off the St. Thomas track coach and stuff like that. As far as the 400 on up, I can coach some basic strategy and technique, in the mile I really know what I'm doing, but the 100 and 200 I'm pretty much clueless. We only have one meet a year in addition to the National Junior Disability Championships. The one meet we have is the qualifying meet in which athletes have to run pretty lenient times in order to qualify for NJDC's. The meet's all in one day, which is a lot of running, especially for the younger athletes and those that have to run hard to qualify. I'm currently looking into making that meet a dual meet with a masters track meet being held the day before at the same track, but who knows, we'll see how it goes.
So this year I had two athletes going to nats. And yes, I tried to grow a stachie for nashies but failed miserably. One is a distance specialist and one is a 200- 400 specialist. So on the 20th was the pentathlon with the only running events being the 100m and the 800m for the women, the 1500m for the men. Both my athletes were the only ambulatory athletes in the event, albeit in different divisions which meant they could throw together, but not run together. The girl ran the 800 in, if I remember 4:02, which was far off her PR but since she ran even splits, I was pleased even though she just did the pent for fun. The guy I really pressured to do the pent, not only because he was all gung- ho about throwing, but I figured he might as well get a 1500m time trial in before the 1500m for real two days later.
Jeff came to me last year when he was a 9:15- 9:20 miler. Not to get into detail, but his main issue, for me at least, is that he can't really pick up his feet, which severely compromises his stride. When he ran the mile at the NJDC qualifying meet, he ran a 9:29 after minimal training. From then on I really specialized him, and he ran 8:37:24 after doing four events against no competition. I was really pleased, and I think he was too. Fast forward to Thursday (I went to Sigma Chi Headquarters on Wednesday, but I'll get to that tomorrow since its getting late) and the 100m and 1500m runs were on the docket. Jeff was up in the first heat of the 1500, and I told him to get in behind and form a pack with somebody, and picked a kid with a qualifying time of 8:18 for him to run with. His qualifying time was a minute slower, but I told him to hang withe 'em for at least a lap. He might have gone to the starting line a little overwhelmed but thats okay; better than overconfident.
In about 100m he finally got in behind the 8:18 kid, in a pack with that kid, and a race walker. He ran like that for 700m or so, then he made an awkward pass of the 8:18 kid and promptly died 300m later. Running all by himself, he died hard. I knew, he knew, and everyone in the state knew he went out too fast. So did the entire field. I was strategically the only one standing in the backstretch grandstand, so I could yell instructions to Jeff. Mostly it was just form and stride length stuff, but on the third lap I told him to tuck in behind the race runner. It was risky because I knew he had to slow his pace a little, but he didn't have many more options. It paid off big time, and he blasted his last lap in 2:11:89 (his fastest of the four), and finished in a PR 7:56:96.
