Not a Steeplechase

But an obstacle nonetheless. During my morning run thru Caldwell, it looked like I would not be able to get thru on Bloomfield Avenue. Police cars and firetrucks had the road blocked off and were detouring the traffic. As I got closer I saw that they were in the late stages of putting out a fire that had destroyed the Caldwell Diner. Well, runners can't just detour around obstacles like cars can, so I ran to the opposite side of the street and hoped that the sidewalk would be clear. It was and after passing some firemen who were resting and attending to their equipment, I passed the last police car and went on my merry way.

I had never been in the Caldwell Diner but had always wanted too. Maybe if it gets rebuilt I'll go there for breakfast some day. (Photo courtesy of The Caldwells Patch)

Summer Re-Cap

Over the winter I had to again resort to sending letters to the N-City school treasurer to find out when they would be sending my coaching fee. It took only two letters this time to get the check in the mail. I was very surprised to find out that they were paying me the same amount as in the first season. Even though I coached about one month instead of two. Even though we didn’t enter any races. And even though the students again showed up when they wanted to.

Meanwhile back at E-City, I decided to try again for the third year to start a cross country team. Flyers and announcements produced six female underclassmen who expressed some interest. After talking to them and letting them know what cross country involved, the list shrunk down to three. These three gave me the impression that they were very serious about running in the fall, but when, in the last few days of the school year, we couldn’t all get together for one single meeting to discuss the summer program, I decided to pull the plug again.

As summer recess started, I scoured the web for available cross country positions at other schools. There have been six. The first three, Gill St. Bernard, Ranney Prep, and the Bergen County Tech schools were too far of a distance to travel. The fourth one proved to be very interesting. It was not a high school, but a college, Caldwell College. It’s a co-ed college but it only has X-C for girls. Examining their website and race results on the web, I learned that over the past few years the team has had little success. There wasn’t going to be a large number of runners coming back either, maybe 5 or 6, not counting the incoming freshman. A plus for the job was that the school was close to home; a minus was that I would have to do some recruiting for future teams. I got as far as the HR department calling me to ask some basic questions and to let me know that I might be called again for an interview. Well, the call never came and I found out that they hired a young runner out of Ramapo College.

The fifth job was for Mount St. Dominic Academy, an all-girls school that shares the same campus with Caldwell College. This had lots of pluses: close to home again, lots of runners (they had over 20 the previous year), and a successful season the previous year. The minus was that it was for an assistant coach. Since I was in my third year of looking for a coaching job, and maybe I could always learn something new, I applied for the position. I got a little farther this time. The head coach called and set up an interview at the school. Two hours before I was to drive over for the interview, he called to postpone the meeting due to a family emergency. He said he would call the next day and set up another meeting. I’m still waiting for his call. Very strange. Their website is not updated regularly so I don’t know what they did regarding the position.

The sixth was for another assistant’s job at another all-girls school—Oak Knoll Academy. They had about 10 runners the previous year and were a middle-of-the-pack team in most races. I did get an interview this time and found out that five others were also vying for the spot. No need to go into any specifics—I didn’t get this one either.

And finally the new Athletic Director (the fifth in the last three years) at N-City called me to ask about myself and the two seasons I have coached there. We met today and talked about what has been going on there in terms of X-C. He wants to see if there is enough interest for Cross Country to move ahead and have another season there. He will be meeting the students on 9/1 and 9/2 and then get back to me on Friday 9/3.

On the personal side, this has been a very good summer for running. Unlike past summers, I have been running a lot and without pain. No pulled muscles. No bursitis. Nothing. I do about 25 miles a week and can hope this will keep up once school starts. I run almost every day—I had a streak of 30 straight days early in the summer and currently am on a 12 day streak. I entered a 5K race on July 4^th when I was just starting to get back into running shape and had a decent time. I will be running in a second race on Labor Day in a nearby town’s 5K.

Season Over

The attendance during the final week of the season surprised me. This week there were 4 runners on Monday, 3 on Tuesday, 1 on Wednesday, and 3 today for the season finale. It was a cold and windy day in the park today, but the three runners all wanted to close out the season with a 3.1 run on the park's X-C course. Most of them had finally gotten up to running 3 miles during practice so they had a chance to beat their personal bests. And they did. All of them. It was a fitting end to an abbreviated five week season at N-City.

Tomorrow is the Sectional Meets for the states public schools. The North Jersey Section 2 meet will take place in W-Park. That will then be followed by the CTC's (the non-public school state championships). This was the race me and the one runner from N-City went to last year. It's a full day of racing and for a X-C junkie, it's heaven.

So this ends another season of X-C blogging. I'll occasionally enter a personal note about my own running, and hopefully a good coaching position will open up somewhere next summer.

Four Down and One to go

Today finished the fourth week of N-City X-C with no one showing up. No one showed up on Wednesday either. This is worse than last year. I feel like I'm stealing their money. Oh, well.

Week 1 - 2.67 runners showed up for each practice.

Week 2 - The highlight of the season - 3.67

Week 3 - 1.75 getting worse

Week 4 - .625

Week 5 - will I be alone next week?

Exposure

Over the past year, the NJSIAA has realigned most of the high school athletic conferences in northern New Jersey. One of the new conferences is the Super Essex Conference which is comprised entirely of schools in the county. Gone are the gamesmeets against schools far away and new rivalries are now in place. The new alignment was met with some criticism as well as with praise. Anyway, the new SEC (Super Essex Conference) has been holding their dual meets at B-B-Park on Tuesdays and Wednesday. Last week, during the first week of training for N-City, the team got to see some races and today was the conference championships. They saw all of the teams in the conference as well as some of the top runners in the state.

Today we had 6 runners show up, 5 boys and 1 girl. Four of the boys showed some decent talent. A couple of them were impressed with the races and the quality of runners that they saw. They wished that we were a lot closer to entering a race. It was a good sign from this team.

The best case scenario would be that for the next 3 1/2 weeks, we get a few more runners and are able to take a nice group of runners to the CTC Championships on November 7.

Week One

This past week was the first week of training for the N-City runners in Year 2. Because of some cancellations, the team met only three times. The original sign-up sheet that was outside of the AD's office produced 50+ names. Nineteen runners of both genders have gone out of their way to get physicals, fill out forms, and turn them into the AD. Of the three days of practice, 4, 0, and 4 runners showed up. Nothing has changed at N-City!!

Of the runners who have shown up, two are veterans from last year. One ran at the CTC Championships in November '08. He is looking forward to going back. Whether we do or not depends on how much practice we get in during the next four weeks.

One Week Later

It has been one week since I was at N-City meeting with 25+ runners and the Athletic Director was handing out physical forms. At that time I told him to call me as soon as he had four runners who had completed and turned in their physicals. So far, no call.

In the meantime while I wait, I have continued to have fall practices with members of the E-City Softball team. More new sophomores have shown up and a couple of them show some minor talent. There are now 21 names on our "40-man roster" and 12 of them are sophomores.

I mentioned that during the summer there were a few X-C jobs posted on the Internet. There was one school, an all-girls one over in nearby C-City, which I presumed had a team but I never saw them entered in the Catholic Schools Championships in November. This same school hosts a softball tournament which we (E-City) have been invited to for the past two years. I took a chance and sent an e-mail to the AD that was listed on their website offering my services if they needed any help with their X-C team. I never heard back from her one way or the other.

Now one of the teachers at E-City asked me to tutor her daughter (in Math) for the upcoming SATs in October. Today was our first session. When we were finished I asked her and her mother what the status was at her school regarding X-C. I found out that the AD has been out for a while due to a pregnancy which is probably why I never heard back. I then asked this student to find out what she could about the team's status and who the current AD is. Once I find that out, I'll send another letter offering my services for next year. It's a good school and I think it would be a nice place to coach X-C.

And finally, I'm still running slow 2 mile workouts (today was 6 days in a row) with an occasional hard run. The pains are still there but they are milder.

Here We Go Again

For those who are tuning in for the first time, this is the fourth name this blog has had. The first was "E-City Runners" when I tried to start a team at the school where I teach. Then I changed it to "N-City Runners" when the E-City team quit and I took a coaching job over at an N-City school. The third version was "No City Runners or Just Me" when I was fired by the N-City school and I was expecting this blog to then be about my personal running only. But now I am back at N-City and thus the new title (with apologies to the late John Updike).

This past week I stopped in at N-City. The AD had a sign-up sheet of 50+ names. And about 20-25 kids of both genders showed up at a brief meeting after school in the gym (why can't E-City kids be this enthusiastic?). There was only one runner from last year that I recognized. The AD handed out physical forms and told the attendees to get them back to him as soon as possible. The meeting broke and I told the AD to call me as soon as he had four runners with returned physicals. With four I could start practicing. If these kids are as bad as the kids in my school in getting physicals filled out, it will be another week before practices start at N-City. My previous prediction of 9/24 as the first day of practice could very well come and go. We'll see.

I also found out that the school day now ends at 3:35 PM (2:50 last year), so practices won't be starting til about 4:15 PM. That will allow me ample time to drive up there after teaching at E-City. It will also make for a shorter practice session.

In the meantime, while I wait for N-City to be ready, I've been working out my E-City softball team. Some of the regular freshmen from last year seem to be hitting the ball hard this autumn. A good sign. A few new sophomores have also come out for the practices. The highlight though is a transfer senior from Virginia. A large girl who will have to play first base, but she has a good bat. She has been playing ball since about the age of 7. But enough about my other team.

On the personal front, I've started running again. About 3 times a week, usually a very slow 2 miles. The aches and pains are still around but diminished. The hammy is still there too but I am able to run with it. In fact, I'm not so sure it is a legitimate hamstring pull. You would think that a hammy would heal after 4 weeks of non-running rest. I wonder (this is probably how "doctors" thought during the Dark Ages) if it could be a hybrid hammy pull. Maybe it's a mixture of a hammy pull and a touch of bursitis. Maybe the bursitis is the more dominant of the two and that's why it doesn't go away.

I could probably get some kind of answer if I asked the AD (who is also an athletic trainer and a Health class teacher). But if I did I would be subjected to a 40 minute talk about himself and his injuries. And then there wouldn't be an guarantee that I'd get an answer after listening to him for that long of a time. So I won't mention it to him.

You're Hired?!?!?

I wonder if I jinxed myself again in my previous post, because when I got back to my school (E-City) after summer vacation, there was a message from the Dean of Students at the N-City school. To refresh your memory and to save you from going back thru previous posts, he was the contact in that school that informed me that the new AD had chosen another coach for the X-C program.

He wanted to know if I would be interested in coaching there again. It turns out that the new AD and his new coach had left the school after only a few months and I didn't ask for details. A new AD was in place and they were looking for a new coach. I told my contact that I would like to come in and discuss it. And that is what I did today.

When the new AD came into the room, I said to him, "I know you!!" So let's rewind back to the 2008 N-City X-C season. We practiced in the park near the school, and there was always a guy, who lived near the park, walking his dog nearby. He got to talking to me while the team was running the loop. It turned out that he was a former athletic trainer at I-City (that will be an easy one to figure out) school who was involved in some injury related lawsuit or something. Anyway, he is a scruffy old guy who likes to grab your ear and talk incessantly about himself and his life. I'm sure you all have met some guys like that before. It got so bad at times that I was asking some of my runners to come over and "save" me if I couldn't get away from him. While he was out of work he had asked me if N-City was doing any hiring, especially athletic trainers which was his specialty. I was never able to help him but it now appeared that he had gotten a job there.

It was supposed to be an interview for me and the X-C job, but he spent most of the time talking about himself and his situation at N-City. He was athletic trainer, was teaching Health classes, and was the new Athletic Director. He told me point blank that he wasn't too happy about the last one but he more or less had to do it as part of his hiring.

So long story short, he is also going to interview a friend of his, but I know that my contact, as well as the principal, like me for the job. So I told him that I would be interested in the job again if 1) he can get runners signed up (the program is inactive right now so we don't know how much interest there will be), 2) they get their required physicals (that was the hardest part for the AD last year--these kids took forever to get the physicals), and 3) my fee would be the same as last year.

Now I'm about 90% sure I'll be coaching there this fall but when will be the question. Based on this guy not thrilled about being the AD, I can envision him taking forever to get kids signed up and physicals turned in. So I'm predicting that our first practice will be September 24. And then once that happens I will be totally shocked if he goes out and gets us a meet. The time before we start practice will come in handy for having softball practices at E-City.

So why am I doing this? Two reasons: 1) the coaching stipend will offset my expenses incurred during the summer (see my personal blog), and it will give me a good place and time to get my own running in. Last year I was always able to beat the team in the 2 mile loop except for one male runner (that gives you an idea of what we had last year).

As for personal running, I am into week 4 resting my hammy and it feels almost 100%. So tomorrow I will be testing it after school.

The Jinx is Up

Just like Sports Illustrated cover stories, my previous blog became a jinx for my running. Just two days after my cross country run in W-Park, my legs were besieged by the old aches and pains that I have come to know too well. This time they were accompanied by a sore hamstring. The aches and pains took a little longer to go away this time but the hammy lingered. Today, after being on the shelf for three weeks, I tested the leg out, and while it wasn't painful, the sore hammy was noticeable. So I'll rest it for a few more days and test it again.

On the coaching front, a third job appeared on the net. It was a charter school in N-City. I didn't want to go down that road again (lack of training location, not an NJSIAA member, questionable commitment from the runners, etc.) so I didn't bother looking into it. Unless a major surprise happens in the next week or so, I'll be devoting the autumn to helping my softball team (those who are interested) improve their hitting and fielding.

And I am also going to commit to making any blog postings in the future less verbose.