Picture this:

You show up for your first running practice and your coach tosses you a bike tire. The rubber has no rim, no spokes, and it wobbles through the air until you hook your arm through the middle and catch it. You look up at your coach and he says, “This is the wheel that will carry you through your running. Right now it won’t roll, it can’t carry your weight, and its not going to take you anywhere. The rim will be built the moment you realize that running is something you love. You can roll that type of wheel across a nice smooth street now and then and its great. That’s a weekend warrior. Now if you want a wheel that you can fly across the trails on, off-road up a mountain with, a wheel you can perform your best with, you need to build strong, even spokes so no bump in the road can flatten your tire.”

This is the way I was introduced to running when I was a freshman. Not in those words, but with that type of feeling…like running was something you would build rather than do. I wish you could have been there…after one minute of his “welcome speech” to the incoming freshman and parents, he’d make your legs itch to get started.

Mine were shakin’ when I showed up to my first summer practice with tennis shoes instead of running shoes, five minutes late, trying to disguise my nerves and look tough but not too tough, nice but not meek, thinking way too much about what these people would think about me. The girls and guys were all stretching in a circle and they looked so…big. I mean, I was 12 years old, 4ft 10 inches and under 80 lbs. Some of these kids were like 18!

Coach DeLong walked around the outside of them with a notebook, asking about last week’s mileage and teasing some of the older girls about boys. As I got closer, I saw that everyone was smiling and I began to relax. I took a deep breath and slipped into the stretching circle unnoticed. And as we all faced each other and reached for the sky to stretch our shoulders, I looked around at all the faces and knew I would be OK here.

My team had an atmosphere, you know what I mean? We ran together, ate lunch together at the same tree in the quad every day, went stag to dances together when we didn’t have dates (or sometimes because we didn’t want dates). The older girls would take care of the freshmen like big sisters, teach us how to race, how to go home with as little homework as possible, how to survive the popular kids at school, how to not get food poisoning in the cafeteria. These girls taught me how to run fast, get good grades, and still have a life. For four years, my team was my family.

But stuff comes up, you know? One kid hurt his knee and couldn’t run; one kid got pregnant; one kid got an eating disorder; one kid had parents that wouldn’t let her race in the most important race of the year, one kid practiced hard but always choked in races… I thought about these kids, I thought about why these things happened, I thought a lot about what could be done to avoid these problems. And basically since I’ve always been a little bit of a dork, geek, whatever, I thought about it until I came up with a new way to look at being an athlete.

All of it came back to the Wheel. Granted, there are times when no matter how strong your spokes, you will run over a thorn so big that there’s no way to avoid a flat. Bad luck, and it sucks. But most of the time you get a flat, it’s because your wheel isn’t balanced, and some spokes are weak or missing altogether!

People always ask me about running. It’s my job to run and I talk a lot, so I guess I’m an easy target, but that’s cool with me because I love to help people become better runners. And from meeting thousands of you guys, I know that not all of you have had experiences exactly like me. Many of you don’t have a good team. Some of you struggle with your coach. Some of you have health problems that you can’t put a band-aid on. The more I talk to high school kids, the more I develop the ideas that have been brewing since I was that tiny little freshman.

The Wheel is the concept I train by. It took its shape at Stanford when Coach Dena and I would talk about running so much that we lost our voices. It is the way of thinking that has helped me improve in at least one event every single year since I’ve started running, which, as you know, is hard to do! It is from my own mistakes and from observing the people around me that the Wheel came to be. It is not a rule; it is not made of stone. You guys need to help me bend and tweak it as we figure stuff out in our running.

I want you to improve and be fast and have fun. I want you to have the opportunity to ask questions from someone who gets it. I want to offer you a way of thinking about running that will make your times better, your teams better, and practice more fun.

So check out “The Wheel” and lets get started!

-L.

The Spokes of the Wheel

So here’s the deal with the wheel. Listed below are the six spokes to getting the most out of yourself in sports, each with a little list of topics that fall within that subject.

Every week or so, I’ll pick one of these topics and brood mysteriously over it in my apartment for a few days, refusing to change clothes or shower until I find my inspiration to write. And then I’ll type feverishly into the night and post my thoughts on this webpage, whereby you, as a reader, will enthusiastically write oceans of comments about my blog, giving me so many opinions and questions that I am inspired to start the whole cycle over again and go back to brooding mysteriously.

1. Training
Components: Mileage, hills, threshold, intervals, etc.
Recovery/Adaptation (the importance of rest and sleep)
Setting goals
Seeing the big picture
Trusting your plan
More than one way to skin a cat
Common Pitfalls

2. Competing
Your racing style (maximize your strengths)
Developing Versatility
“You race the way you train” (how training translates to racing)
Nerves, Superstitions (the good, the bad, and the ugly)
Common Pitfalls

3. Social Balance
School, Friends, how to have it all
Sacrifice (how much is too much?)
Why having something else is important
Social Support Network
Common Pitfalls

4. Nutrition
Athletes v. Sedentary People (Say hello to your new eating habits)
Meal Timing (Pre, During, Post Workout)
Emphasis on Recovery
Eating to Run v. Running to Eat

5. Communication
The coach/athlete relationship
Learning to speak the language of your own body
The concept of integrity: “do the things you say you are going to do”
Handling difficult team situations
Common Pitfalls

6. The Mind
Understanding Confidence (building it and maintaining it)
Fears and Freak Outs
Visualization
Goal Setting (creating a “window of acceptability”)
Common Pitfalls

Disclaimer:
Remember, I may be a professional athlete and all, but in my opinion, there are no true “experts” in sports. Hard-core athletes and sports-geeks like us enjoy getting deep with our sport once in a while, and a blog is a great way to record and collect thoughts to use as a resource. So don’t be afraid to tell me I’m nuts, or to post a comment with a totally different opinion…and don’t be surprised if I passionately disagree with you ☺.

Got it? Good!

Until next time, I’ll be brooding…
-L.