So, I wake to the news that Alberto Salazar has been banned from the sport we both love for four years. Which seems like a long time to me and not nearly long enough for many of my friends.
Thinking wouldn’t it be nice if the sport became drug-free. Combine a couple slogans maybe. Just say no, just do it. We can argue which comes first.
Three more years down the road, I find myself watching five heats of the Women’s 400H.
These are the Wild Dog days of summer, fully occupied by the obligation to watch all nine heats of the Women’s 200m. No time to start something new. Seems I was having a similar problem a year ago. When the Oregon Project’s coach came under scrutiny. – JDW
Searching for something to get me started. I have writer’s block, I think. Working on it. But that’s another story.
Maybe I can find something needs reworked. Even better doesn’t need reworked. Anything.
Still looking for the first chapter of that running novel I started twenty years ago. I somehow manage to package disorganization, procrastination and fear into the perfect useless old clod. But I am deaf to such negative self-talk. So, I struggle like an old runner, slow and stiff. But always forward. And in so doing, I come across this historic nugget in one of my reports in Track & Field News. I’m thinking 1991.
Alberto Salazar ran 23:26 to win the Nordstrom 8K (Portland, August 11). Greg Hitchcock finished 2nd at 23:37.
Salazar, retired at age 33 from the restaurant business, is back to being a full-time runner. His goal? A berth on the 1992 U.S. Olympic team in the 10,000m. He sees no sense whatsoever in running a marathon in hot weather.
In a conversation with The Oregonian’s Abby Haight, Salazar confirmed a reorganization of priorities. “I would rather watch my kids playing soccer on a Saturday morning with a cup of coffee in my hand, than be at the track.”
Salazar seems to have put things in perspective. “Things happen. I was on top of the world. I was the best,” the man says, and rightfully so. “And then I wasn’t the best. And I actually was happiest when I wasn’t the best.”
It’s always good to see a great one back in the winner’s circle again.
Me and Alberto Salazar must go back at least 37 years. We have flown in little airplanes together. We have run alongside each other. I was in New York when he dusted Rodolfo Gomez in the Marathon. First time I ever had Cobb salad was in his restaurant. We rode together in the same big white van as he coached the Nike Hood-to-Coast relay team to a record-setting victory. Last I looked, that record stands today. Never saw any drug more stimulating and performance enhancing than a cup of coffee. Okay, maybe a Chai Latte, but that’s it, I swear.
Alberto Salazar is – Benoit, Decker-Slaney, Prefontaine, too – in the chapter “The Greatest” in When Running Was Young & So Were We. On sale today at https://www.amazon.com/When-Running-Was-Young-Were/dp/1909457167/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1471277576&sr=1-1&keywords=when+running+was+young+and+so+were+we
And when folks ask me about the book, one of the questions I most often get is “Why those four?” None of my older buddies ask me that, of course. Just the new folks. But originally, I never really gave that question much thought. That quartet was obvious to me. They seemed to push the hardest.
And I came across this, or something like this.
I am running alone, just knowing any minute now those fast kids real speedy but still behind me are going to come scampering past, they have no mercy and frankly their talent is scary. I can hear their footsteps and so I accelerate and when I hit a turn, I surge, trying to get away, trying until I can’t really try any more all I can do to hold this pace, which is too fast. I can hear their footsteps, so finally I work up the courage to turn around and see how many of them there are.
And there is no one there.
Postscript.
“I loved to run, pure and simple. When you’re hitting it right, to run feels like an effortless float. On the other hand, it’s so exhilarating to look back after a race at the point you thought you were finished, dead in the water, and know that you pushed beyond that point. You can live easier with yourself, remembering moments like that. It’s not the same as managing a sharp, clearly defined jag of pain. The pain of distance running is more like a comprehensive, bodywide exhaustion. Your will drains out of you; every fiber in your being tells you to stop. Your thoughts go muddy. The world looks foggy. You are just about ready to give up, to stop struggling and sink beneath the water.
“And maybe you do give up, for a fraction of a moment, for just long enough to taste the bliss and terror of surrender. But then you take another step. You discover that the point of exhaustion and surrender that you were sure you’d reached in fact lies up the road another mile. You realize it’s okay to feel awful; feeling awful becomes your new normal. You can take feeling awful in your hands and shape it to your will. If you’re very lucky, during a few golden moments over the course of a career, you can seize control over your suffering to the extent that you’re playing with it. This is the most wonderful – and dangerous – feeling in the world.” – Alberto Salazar, 14 Minutes. ***
A SAD STORY HOWEVER IT’S TOLD
https://tonireavis.com/2019/10/01/a-sad-story-however-its-told/#more-19911