If you haven’t read Chapter 1, read it here.

Chapter 2

“Today Was Our Easy Run”

I was not prepared for the Summer of 2010. In high school, in hind sight, I did not have the level of training that my new teammates had. The longest run I had done up to that point was 5 miles, and I am confident I walked a lot of that. There was no way out of it now. I was with the big boys and had to put in the work if I wanted to succeed, or at least not fall behind.

I remember the first run I ever did with the team; it was not the best run I had ever had. We met up early in the morning on a Sunday for a long run at the famous Hawkins Road, an area surrounded by grape and almond orchards with big rolling hills. Everyone was set to run 10-12 miles that day. Coach Cuevas gave me a simple 8 miles, out and back. It was a cold morning so I was dressed in basketball length shorts, a shirt and heavy sweater. All my other teammates showed up in short shorts and took their shirts off before the run even started. I thought they were crazy. Little did I know, that I was the crazy one! That run destroyed me. I was burning up less than halfway through the run and had to take off my sweater and tie it around my waist. I had to stop a couple times to catch my breath and let my screaming muscles relax. When I got done with the run I felt like I made a mistake choosing to run in college with experienced runners as teammates.

But I stuck with it, all summer long I showed up every single day, and tried my hardest to run with this group of guys. I remember one run in particular that changed my whole focus. We were out for a simple 6 mile run. For some reason I felt it necessary to take off from the start of the run. I ran HARD. At the 3 mile turn-around point I had a gap of about 100+ meters on the group. I felt great! Then about 4 miles in I started to feel the fatigue from going out too hard. I slowly started to tighten up and my paced slowed down drastically. With less than 3/4 of a mile left in the run, all the guys flew passed me and I would eventually come in almost a minute after them. Gasping for air and hunched over, one of my teammates came up to me and said congrats on a good run, and I said “thanks, I did better holding you guys off this time around”. He put his arms around me and said “Yeah, not to burst your bubble or anything, but today was our easy run”. This shattered my confidence all at once. I just pushed myself as hard as I could and it was their easy recovery day and they wanted me to know that. Who was I? Who was I to think I could hang with these guys? To them, I didn’t belong there, I was too short, too heavy set and too slow to be on this team.

But I didn’t let it defeat me. Sure, I felt like shit but I was determined to prove my worth! From that moment on I made it a point to prove I belonged, I was capable, I WAS a runner! And Every single day I worked to run as fast as my teammates, to keep up in workouts, to be one of them. Slowly but surely I worked my way up to being a decent athlete. My teammates then acknowledged that they had little confidence in me at first, but that they were impressed and proud of me. I improved my race times drastically. My fitness was the best it had ever been. And I worked hard. Sure, other were still faster than me, but I was right there with them, I could hang on for 10,12, 16 mile long runs. I fell in love with the sport and wanted more out of it. As time went on, I was one of the upper class men who was teaching the newer guys how to work hard, how to be consistent and dedicated. This slowly started to become a thing where I would help other runners in their workouts, talk them through rough patches and push them to be a better runner. This was the start of the next part of my life…Coaching.