Tag Archives: cross country

Hooray for (Mt.) Hollywood

Posted on October 7, 2023 | 3 comments

I am pleased to report that we hiked the Mt. Hollywood Trail this morning (not to be confused with Mt. Lee of the famed HOLLYWOOD sign). To do so, we left Malibu just before sunrise and arrived in the Griffith Observatory parking lot before 8am, well before you have to pay to park there but nowhere nearly before significant numbers of folks arrive to enjoy the spectacular hike, e.g., as we approached the trailhead, a large high school cross country team was stretching in preparation for some serious hill work.

From one perspective it turned out to be an easy hike—wide trails, easy to follow, and just 1.2 miles to the summit—but the 550 feet of constant elevation is anything but simple. Case in point: The many runner passersby did not appear to be whistling show tunes. And although I refuse to complain about SoCal weather, while the weather app said it was 67 degrees, most of the trail was exposed to the sun and it was the hottest 67 degrees imaginable, maybe with our slowly approaching the sun and all.

There were fun, quirky parts of the hike, like the Berlin Forest, complete with a road sign sharing that it is 5,795 miles to Berlin, Germany, one of L.A.’s sister cities, and a rest stop sponsored by Tiffany & Company, but of course, where one can sit and enjoy a nice view of the HOLLYWOOD sign. But the panoramic views along the way were the real stars of the show: looking back down on the Observatory and Park, looking out at Downtown Los Angeles, and on a clear day like today, looking all the way to Catalina Island and the vast Pacific Ocean.

For our purposes, it was simply another nice day to be together, out in nature, seeing something special, and not to be overlooked, enjoying the beautiful human diversity found in this City of Angels. It was a good morning from start to finish.

We stopped at one point on the trail in an area ominously named Dante’s View, partly to see what was there, but mostly to stop going uphill for a minute, and in that brief moment yet another small pack of the young cross country team passed us by, and when they did I overheard one young leader encouraging his teammates by saying, “This is going to make us better.”

Well said, my young friend. Well said. That’s why Jody and I got up early today and drove across Los Angeles—to be better, both individually and together.

This morning, thanks to a young runner that I didn’t even look up to see, I was reminded that courageously pushing ourselves up the hills of life surely isn’t easy, but it makes us better, and the views from the top are absolutely worth the struggle.

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I’d Like You to Meet Cross Country

Posted on September 9, 2023 | Leave a comment

Given 4,000+ miles of moves back and forth across the country just in the past five years, it stands to reason that I would love a sport called “cross country.” Now I love all sorts of sports, but with all due respect—and you would never know this from watching ESPN or reading the sports page—cross country absolutely crosses the finish line in first place.

I can see that you have a different opinion. That’s okay, your being wrong will in no way prevent us from being friends. Just know that I’m not alone. Writer/speaker/podcaster-extraordinaire, Malcolm Gladwell put it this way: “I won’t belabor the obvious about cross country. It is insanely fun. Races take place during the glory days of fall. The courses are typically in beautiful parts of the country. Cross country meets don’t feel like sporting events; they feel like outdoor festivals—except everyone is fit, as opposed to high. Everyone should be so lucky as to run cross country.”

That’s what I’m talking about.

My introduction to cross country came in the fall of 1985 when Coach Watson came to our high school cafeteria and asked several of us, “Hey, do you want to run cross country?” We said, “Sure,” not knowing what it was, but knowing that we liked Coach Watson and that it sounded like something to do, and with no actual training or meets in advance, we traveled to a town called Arkadelphia and came home with a state runner-up plaque. That’s a pretty cool way to meet a sport.

Sadly, I lost touch with the sport for a couple of decades or so, but another random encounter with a coach, this time “Coach Rad” at Pepperdine, who invited me to be a volunteer chaplain for his men’s and women’s teams, allowed me to fall in love again. I got to hang out with the coolest kids and tag along on early morning runs in spectacular locations, and more importantly, have a front row seat to witness what makes endurance running special, i.e., the human capacity to push through pain and discover a better version of yourself. A few years later, incredibly, while at Blackburn College, I got to be a college cross country coach myself! What fun it was to spend even more time with inspiring young people and watch them grow.

This weekend, I discovered myself back in Malibu, clear a-“cross country” once again, thinking about my favorite sport. On Friday evening, I was on my computer tracking my friends at Blackburn as they competed in Illinois, and on Saturday morning I was in person at Alumni Park to cheer on the Waves. On both occasions, I noticed that I was smiling.

I guess I’m just happy and felt compelled to share my cross country testimony today. You don’t have to be a cross country fan. I promise that I won’t hold it against you. If beauty and camaraderie and courage and fresh air and holistic health and resilience and smiling in general just aren’t your things, I hear that a sedentary lifestyle is pretty popular these days?

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I Liked Your Speech or Whatever

Posted on July 17, 2023 | 2 comments

I discovered that major moves activate a secret video room in a remote hallway of the brain where tiny staffers cycle through footage collected in the place you are moving from for you to do with what you will. They don’t waste time with the people and places that captured your heart since you could never forget those. (Unfortunately, same goes for the people and places that led you to reflect on the word throat-punch.) I think they are clearing out space for the new memories to come, so these scenes are apparently endangered, the ones you just might forget, and it feels like you should take the time to salvage the treasures.  

One recently came to mind from Illinois that I want to keep for sure.

I do a lot of public speaking, and last winter one of my assistant coaches invited me to be the keynote speaker for a running club’s holiday banquet that celebrated high school cross country runners from throughout the region. I drove to the restaurant on the evening of the event, and it was a bigger deal than I anticipated, honoring a male and female runner from fifty or sixty high schools, plus coaches and parents in attendance. I ate my banquet-hall chicken in a crowded room and got ready to do my thing.

Other public speakers will know what I mean, but I was really on that night. Like, really on. When I got up, I immediately felt like the entire room was mine, like Steph Curry must feel every time he touches a basketball. I was funny and inspiring, and most importantly, didn’t speak too long, and when I finished, I could tell that it was a hit. A couple of folks whispered kind words that I won’t repeat out of modesty.

Well, the rest of the program came and went, and since Midwesterners aren’t much into sharing their feelings, I didn’t have to fight through too many people to head to the exit afterward, which is where it happened.

I held the exit door for some folks on the way out, and a dad walked by with his award-winning daughter dutifully walking behind him like a little duckling. After the daughter passed, I noticed that she hesitated, then stopped, shyly half-turned toward me while her dad kept walking, oblivious to everything, and without making eye contact said to me, “I liked your speech or whatever.”

It was a heroic moment, but I instantly knew that she was disappointed with herself. Her body language was clear: she had flubbed it all up, said the wrong thing, sounded silly. I looked at her eyes and willed her to make eye contact and said with all that is sincere within me: “Thank you so much. You have no idea what that means to me.” Somehow, that must have been the right thing to say given the obvious relief in her very posture. Then, she did look at me, smiled, and with a new spring in her step turned to catch up with a still-clueless dad.

It felt good to deliver an inspiring after-dinner speech that night, but what felt a thousand times better was getting to be the only person in the world to witness the very moment that a young human had the courage to test drive independence and say something that was entirely her own reaction to a strange-looking man that had shared something somehow meaningful to her. I don’t know her name or even remember what she looked like. Well, not true: I remember what it looked like to see her dash away, a talented young runner sprinting off toward a life of her own making. I want to keep that picture as a treasure, which is far more inspiring than anything I might ever say.

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For Leaders and Followers

Posted on September 30, 2016 | 4 comments

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“I really knew I wanted to be Adam, because Adam was the first man. Ant I chose because, if there’s a nuclear explosion, the ants will survive.” – Adam Ant

It is my great honor to hang out with Pepperdine’s men’s and women’s cross country teams once a week and share a short spiritual message at one of their early morning practices.  Go Waves!  The team boasts impressive athletes, students, and people, and as college students listening to me at half past six in the a.m., they are also generous in not telling me to take a hike.

This year I am generally sharing some message from the Book of Proverbs, which is straight out cheating since I am teaching Proverbs to a class of graduate students in our condo each Sunday morning.  I think even Proverbs would applaud my resourcefulness.  Proverbs often uses observations from the natural world to encourage wisdom, and this week I used its lessons learned from watching ants.  Not the DreamWorks movie.  Actual ants.

Brief interlude for an ant joke: What do you call an ant from overseas?  (Pause for effect…)

Important.

Ha!  That’s okay, college students don’t think I am funny either.

So Proverbs chapter six uses the ant to teach initiative, i.e., it looks like no one is telling an ant to get to work, but it gets to work anyway.  (Translation to athletes: Do what is right without waiting for your coach to tell you what to do.)  And Proverbs chapter six uses the ant to teach against procrastination, i.e., an ant collects food in the summer so that it has something to eat in the winter.  (Translation to athletes: Don’t wait until race day to train!)

But in the spirit of Proverbs, I kept observing the ant to see what other lessons might be hiding there.  Well, actually I googled “lessons from ants” and let someone else do the heavy lifting for me.  Again, resourcefulness!

Researchers at the University of Bristol observed that when an ant discovered a new food source it went back to the colony to show everyone the way.  As it led the others back, there was a predictable gap between leader and follower, but when the leader was too far in front of the pack, the leader ant would slow down to make sure the follower stayed engaged.  And when the gap closed completely, the follower ant would metaphorically give the leader a kick in the butt to widen the gap again.

I think this is important for everyone.  For those times in your life when you are the leader, don’t get so far in front that you lose touch with those coming along behind.  Your job is to bring others along with you, not set a land speed record.  And for those times in your life when you are the follower, encourage your leader to stay out in front.  Your job is not just to follow—your responsibility also includes spurring the leader on toward the destination.

Either way, leading or following, you have good work to do.

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Measuring Strength

Posted on October 19, 2015 | 2 comments

At Riverside

I am loving the opportunity to tag along with Pepperdine’s cross country program this season as the Waves race toward the conference and regional championship meets. For those unfamiliar, although cross country appears on the surface to be an individual sport, a team’s score depends on the finish place of the top five runners on the team.¹ Therefore, a great finish by four runners can be wasted without a solid finish from runner number five.

Hang on to that thought.

I preferred to study alone in law school, but more often than not law students form study groups to help process the complex material encountered in class. The advice I remember (and now deliver) is to be careful when forming a study group because the group will proceed at the pace of the slowest student.

You are following along nicely, aren’t you? An organization is only as strong as its weakest member.

The analogy to any department, team, group, business, class, family, etc. is pretty obvious—as are the choices of what to do with this information. One option is to replace the weak with someone strong,² but often times such drastic measures are not possible, like, oh, say, a family for instance. The other option is not to be so enamored with the superstar strengths in your organization and focus on improving the weakest unit(s). That just makes sense.

What isn’t so obvious is taking this same concept and looking into the mirror, mirror on the wall.

It is hard to consider a more complex organization than an individual human being. Setting aside the astonishingly complex biology and considering only the complex amalgamation of traits, skills, interests, passions, and experiences of each person, it is interesting to consider that we as individuals are also only as strong as our weakest part.

The same lesson and same options remain for a stronger future: If possible, eject the weakness, but more likely than not, focus on making the weakest part stronger.

Locate your fifth runner and pay special attention to its training. It will determine where you finish.

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¹ Wave student-athlete, Trevor Sytsma, explains this well in his excellent blog post at http://www.pepperdinesports.com/blog/2015/10/cross-country-update-trevor-sytsma-1.html.

² Jim Collins says it this way: “[L]eaders of companies that go from good to great start not with ‘where’ but with ‘who.’ They start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.” http://www.jimcollins.com/article_topics/articles/good-to-great.html

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A Framework for Meaning

Posted on September 4, 2015 | 2 comments

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I have a new side gig as team chaplain for the Pepperdine Cross Country team. Go Waves! My friend, “Coach Rad,” graciously offered the opportunity to join the team at an early morning practice each week to share a five-minute devotional message. I like both running and talking, so I feel confident that my messages will live up to the compensation package (as a volunteer).

This week, I shared my suspicion that the team was an ordinary cross-section of humanity so that some of the athletes appreciated a devotional message at dawn while others were ambivalent but would kindly listen and still others wished that I would go to the wrong practice location.

Regardless, faith, religion, etc. is an historic attempt to develop a framework for meaning in life. From births to deaths and all the in-between major moments in our lives, we have an inherent need to make some sense of it all, so even if my morning devotionals fall flat as a running track, deep consideration of meaning in life is worth the trouble.

I then shared the foundational-yet-downright-disturbing Bible story of Cain and Abel. Geographers cite the domestication of plants and animals as the launch of civilization, and Cain and Abel represent this great beginning. In the story, one of the brothers (Abel) pleased God while the other brother (Cain) did not, so guess which one bled out in a field at the hands of his brother? Yeah, I guessed wrong the first time, too. The Bible’s editorial department could have used some marketing experts at least in the first few pages.

But here we are, trying to make sense of it all, realizing from an early age that sometimes the bad actors win while the good folks get the shaft. Welcome to life as we know it. Instead of filing a formal complaint with the Fairness in Life Committee that never seems to respond in a timely manner, the necessary question shifts from How do I always win? (which I voted for but apparently is not on the menu) to What is worth living for? (which is on the menu). Or, maybe better stated in the negative: What is worth dying for?

I have my answers.

You may remember from middle school the wonderful book by Lois Lowry, The Giver, a compelling science-fictiony story that challenges our assumption that a pain-free world is best after all. Nobody without a masochistic personality disorder prefers pain, but a well-formed framework for meaning in life allows one to endure it when it comes—and those meaning-full things are even worth the pain.

These cross country runners have a pretty good handle on enduring pain for a greater goal, so I think they have a pretty good shot at getting a handle on this old life, too.

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