Ready, Steady, Go

I've moved. Check out the new site: http://www.martindugard.com

New location, new name for the column (stolen, sort of, straight from George Plimpton), and a bold new adventure about to begin. After two great years publishing at Active.com and Competitor.com, it's going to be an exciting ride...

The Big Announcement

Watching The Barefoot Contessa on a hot summer afternoon, trying to formulate the big announcement in my head...

My thoughts drift back to Floyd Landis, even though I swore I was done with the Tour. That picture of him and Amber in Sports Illustrated looks like a mug shot. I'm not sure if my buddy Austin wrote the piece (there was no byline), but it was well written, and makes for a nice segue into the next phase of Landis's career: The Publicity Offensive. Smart move having Amber on TV with him. Floyd can look a little hostile now and then, but she softens his image.

So you'd think I'd read about Floyd and get all inspired, but I never made it out for a run today, an act of omission reminding me that I need to put a little more oomph into my Olympic efforts (What Would Pre Do?). Instead, spent the morning coaching a speed camp for my cross-country team and kids from other local schools, and then the afternoon battling traffic between Orange County and San Diego and back again. The 5 South towards Mexico used to be such a simple drive, but San Diego is growing up and that road gets bumper to bumper in a hurry. Passed the time with a Springsteen Live in Milan bootleg. Funny what you do when there's nothing to do but listen to music and think: I timed Clarence Clemons' saxaphone solo in Jungleland. Just in case you're wondering, it clocked in at two minutes and forty-two seconds.

Speed Camp is something of a misnomer, because it's really more about form. Every runner has a quirk to the way they run, and so I believe there's no such thing as "perfect" form (every now and then some of my friends down at ASICS ask me to write the catalog copy for their running shoes. They simply hand me a batch of technical stats and reduce the shoe to a 245-character description. Anyway, that's where I learned how most athletes need some sort of structure or cushioning or gait correction in their shoes. The neutral -- "perfect" -- footstrike is a rarity). But I basically put 63 athletes through a two-hour series of form drills this morning. More than anything, it made me realize how much I relish the chance to pass on some of my training knowledge to the next generation of competitors -- and how much easier it is to laugh and joke in the hot California sun when you're the jovial guy with the vente coffee barking direction instead of the athlete who's sweating and panting and running and fighting back the urge to heave. I've been on both sides of that line. I can't say I prefer one over the other, I'm just saying I had an easy morning.

A few years ago I spent a week with the Navy SEALS during their BUDs training. I learned that they pass each day butting up against their personal limits, and then finding, to their surprise, that they have surpassed them and reached a new limit. My speed session today wasn't as hardcore as that week with the SEALS (impossible... you'd be amazed at how much those guys suffer), but I like to think that I helped encourage a new setting of limits. We'll see. The camp goes on for another two weeks.

Onward, I got an invite to head to Italy for some sort of great big Alpine trail race (just to watch, not to run. But does it really matter? I mean, this is a free trip to Italy that we're talking about), and then the folks at Xterra said they'd like me to come to Maui and do their October race. The last two times I raced Xterra I was among the last to exit the water. So the Maui thing would, of course, involve swim training... I talk so much about pushing limits and forcing myself out of the comfort zone. Swim training would be a fine example of putting up or shutting up.

Man, I love to travel. I've only been home two weeks and I can't wait for the next trip.

Of course, I want to do both Italy and Maui. Not sure if I can. Life at the Tour de France (hard as it may be) is pretty much like recess from real life, because there's no sort of balancing act involved. And that's pretty cool, what with me being a grown man with responsibilities and all. But back here in the real world, balance is key. I struggle daily to strike a fine line between family, work (I'm been writing a long history project for the last year), and coaching. Much as I'd love to just jump on a plane, it's not always feasible. On the other hand, if I could find a way to have my wife come along on the Italy trip the whole thing just might work. Her birthday's coming up. Maybe the boys could come along... Stay tuned.

OK. Barefoot Contessa's over. Semi-Homemade is on now. Love how Sandra Lee eats while she cooks, and makes very sly sexual comments as she leans into the camera (her raised eyebrow over "shrinkage" a few weeks ago was priceless).

Before I go, the Big Announcement: these daily dispatches are moving to a new home. Sometime in the next couple days I'm jumping from Active to launch a new site that focuses on endurance sports, global travel, and good food. You know, pretty much the same stuff you've been reading all along, but at a new address (to be posted tomorrow). I want to push and expand this format, taking it beyond just the Tour into a new adventurous realm.

I hope you come along for the ride.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Tongue Lashing

My wife hated what I wrote yesterday. H-A-T-E-D. Said I came off as an elitist snob...

I tried explaining to her that I meant to show how mediocrity is not a fitness level or a body size or a pace, but a state of mind. I told her that the Olympics reference was a metaphor to explain my own struggle to push myself out of my comfort zone, not some actual quest to become an Olympian (a wonderful dream, but I'm now built more like a tight end than a world-class runner). I admitted that walking a marathon is better than not running one at all, that the important thing was to be out there doing it, etc, etc. And, once again, I repeated that mediocrity is a state of mind, not a fitness level. I even pointed out the reference to perceived level of exertion as my evidence.

She wasn't buying it.

Words like "sanctimonious" and "arrogant" and even "big fat jerk" were tossed around our kitchen table -- all of them, by the way, directed at me. I learned a few things along the way: Turns out I'm not always fun to work out with because I measure training time by suffering level instead of merely enjoying the experience for what it is. One of my sons reminded me that I'm never happy doing things the easy way or the slow way, and he said so without one iota of admiration in his voice, which meant that those traits weren't a good thing.

At one point (and I am not sure of this, because the slings and arrows were coming at me so fast and hard that I mentally checked out for awhile and went to my happy place), my wife may have even said that I have connection issues and that my rants were the words of a man unable to come to grips with his own diminishing running talents. Yeah... it hurt.

I wanted to tell her something that a good friend emailed me about mediocrity, which basically said that anyone happy with mediocrity was a Communist. Which I don't personally believe and which I find rather extreme, though I still thought the comment very funny in a cloud-cuckoo sort of way. But she wouldn't have gotten the joke. So at the risk of coming off like Ann Coulter, I just kept my mouth shut.

My wife is a smart woman. I treasure her point of view. So when she says stuff like that, I take it to heart. I'm still very fond of the idea that we as human beings must push our mental, physical and emotional limits each day. Sometimes it takes a few well chosen words from my wife to remind me that we all do it in different ways.

So where do we go with this blog now that the Tour is over? Do I retreat back into the Landis world until the case is settled (it would be fun for awhile, but by Labor Day it would wear thin, and by Christmas, well, I'd be transcribing court documents, and that's not inspirational in the least). I don't want to be some sort of arrogant pit bull, speaking Maddox-like to the hardcore competitor. This is all a work in progress: endurance sports, travel, and the good food along the way. Sort of a cross between the Tour, Tony Bourdain's Travel Channel stuff, and maybe a little Food Network.

Onward. Susan Butcher died the other day of leukemia at the age of 51. The Iditarod Champion was one of the toughest athletes I ever met. A few years back I was covering a sled dog race in the Grand Tetons. The base camp at which I was staying was 25 miles out in the middle of nowhere, and the temperature when I arrived after midnight (via snowmobile) was well below zero. Yet Butcher was outside with her dogs, making sure they had a warm place to sleep and tending to an injured tendon on one animal. She spoke about a dog's muscles and bones the way an orthopedist would discuss a human's. She was smart and gritty, and very tough. Butcher wasn't the first woman to win the Iditarod, but it was her repeat victories that coined the unforgettable phrase: "Alaska: Where the Men are Men and the Women Win the Iditarod."

Finally, a nice piece in the LA Times Sports (www.latimes.com/sports) section this morning about athletes of all levels and abilities training on the dunes at Sand Dune Park. A nice bit of motivation.

Talk to you later.

Shake and Bake

I'm officially done with the 2006 Tour de France, so I didn't catch Floyd Landis on Good Morning America this morning. No point. Time to move on and let Floyd either clear his name or suck it up, take the suspension, and start training for Beijing 2008.

Why not? I am.

It happens this time every year. The afternoon sun is starting to assume a pastel hue, telling me that autumn is on its way. The Southern California hills are dry and brown, smelling of dead grass, dust and sage. Usually the Tour de France or the Olympics have inspired me to train harder and with greater sense of purpose (they haven't been there for me this year, though, so I had to find a new source of inspiration). At some point I realize I need something specific to train for, just to make it all interesting. I start by wondering if I should do Ironman, figuring I can beg a media entry and finally get the requisite day in Kona under my belt. But I'm not much on the swim workouts and six-hour training days, so I invariably abandon that idea as soon as it comes over me.

Then I move on to Xterra, which is a more adventurous (which I like) and more efficient use of my training time. I've done a few Xterra's and have enjoyed the suffering very much, particularly the time in Saipan that I blew out both my spare tubes within the first two miles of the bike and ended up riding the next sixteen miles through the jungle and coral on a bare back rim. The temperature was nearly a hundred and so was the humidity, and it took me so long to finish the bike that they were about to break down the transition area. But I'd flown a good distance to be there, and quitting would have been unsatisfacory compared with being able to grit it out and cross the finish line, excuses be damned. Plus, it would have deprived me of the chance to see the WWII Japanese tanks rusting in the jungle, and the caves where Japanese soldiers hid from the American invaders. Sometimes motivation can come from the wierdest places.

Even now, writing that, Xterra sounds like a pretty good idea. The Maui race is three months away, my cross-country team has that weekend off, and I've got plenty of time to get in shape so I can tear it up on the bike and run (which will be necessary, because I suck at swimming and have no interest in getting better).

But it's got to be Beijing. I've done this every August since I can't remember, rededicating myself to the Olympic ideal and dreaming of qualifying for the Trials, making the team, then doing a Billy Mills and coming out of nowhere to win the gold. Of course, my idea of training is different now that I'm married, with three kids, a mortgage, and a career that consumes vast amounts of mental energy. The training table, for instance, allows for Normandy Camembert, Grey Goose Vodka, In-N-Out Double-Doubles, and Zinfandels so robust they kick your teeth in. There is no limit on the amount of Starbuck's I am allowed to consume on a daily basis. And sexual abstinence isn't even open for discussion.

The Olympic dream gets me out the door, which is as good an excuse as any to run. Invariably I give up the pursuit in six to eight weeks (I never stop running, but I just stop the high-mileage, run-at-all-costs weeks). In the meantime I get focused and faster. That quest to be better spills over into the rest of my life. I feel mentally, physically and emotionally sharper. I find myself reveling in the simple pleasure of running alone, whether it be slow or fast, depending upon my mood.

One of life's little caveats is that there is room for just one passionate pursuit at a time (I don't care what anybody says about being a Renaissance man -- if you want to be the very best at something, you can only be one thing), and the reality is that I'm not an Olympic runner. So, succeed or fail, I rededicate myself to becoming the best writer of which I am capable. My dreams of Olympic glory fall by the wayside until the next August. They may sound like delusions of grandeur, but they're actually one of my favorite motivational tools.

Moving on. Before I get to my latest source of inspiration (now that mimicking Floyd looks a little sad, imitating Lance looks almost old school, and invoking Prefontaine risks a Nike patent infringement lawsuit), I should add something interesting that a friend said the other day. He mentioned that "the world wants us to be normal." People are comfortable with normal. Doing things to make yourself better (which should be the goal we all strive toward, shouldn't it? Shouldn't we, to invoke the Army's famous phrase, dream of being all we can be instead of sinking into the muck of utter normality?).

I liked that thought.

Which is why it's time to pick on the Penguin. Now, I've never read this guy. But just to show that I do read your reader comments (and hello, by the way, to Gladiator, Hooter's Camille, the Cheese Beggar, the nice woman in Illinois, and so many others who've been writing in), let me just say that I really liked that characterization of Runner's World as a magazine for "fat, overweight people who aspire to walk a marathon one day."

I'm glad that a guy like the Penguin is inspiring folks of all weights and size and heights and races and creeds and colors to get off the couch. But really, can't we do better than that? Would it be too much to ask for people to rise off the couch and kick a little ass now and then? Asking mediocre people to move their mediocrity from the couch to the running trails is progress, I guess, but it's still a form of settling. Instead of inspiring them to run (as if running or even exercise is some all-purpose path to fulfillment), shouldn't we be inspiring people to plug into something that they'll want to do to the very best of their ability?

Or maybe like this: Shouldn't we all approach each day as if we're training for the Olympics, whether that's in running or work or any other area of life?

I understand the concept of perceived level of exertion. And I know that a very fit Kenyan Olympian is striving just as hard in his race as the two-hour 10k runner who's really pushing his own personal limits. And I understand that if someone can find satisfaction in just shuffling instead of actually running, then that's a very good thing. So let's get all that out of the way. This isn't a rant against fat people or slow people... it's about striving each day to push ourselves.

So... if a guy like the Penguin is just encouraging people to embrace mediocrity while wearing a pair of running shoes instead of slippers, and if a magazine like Runner's World embraces him for speaking to that audience instead of giving him a swift kick in the ass to remind him that the very act of being a runner (stepping out the door, logging the miles, embracing the process) is a compact that entails pushing to get better every day in order to rise above mediocrity, then that's just pathetic. Pandering to the lowest common denominator may sell ad pages, but that doesn't make it a good thing.

Finally, my new inspiration: Ricky Bobby. I laughed a ton and I got a little misty (the dad stuff... it always get the best of me), but most of all, I got fired up watching Talladega Nights. With the no Olympics this summer and the Tour becoming some sort of weird litmus test on conspiracy theories, I found solace in the Shake and Bake. How a car racing movie made me want to go home and begin training for the 2008 Olympic Trials, I don't know, but it did.

Anyway, the Men's A qualifying time for the 3,000-meter steeplechase is, I think, 8:36. Right now I'm in 12:36 shape. Lots and lots of work ahead of me.

Talk to you later.

Plan B

So it's done...

Floyd Landis's "B" urine sample came back positive for an excessive testosterone/epitestosterone ratio in his bloodstream today. The Tour de France says he is no longer considered their champion, but will allow cycling's international governing body to do the actual title-stripping. This would make Oscar Pereiro the Tour champion, thus making a travesty of this entire drug-spattered Tour. At one point Pereiro was so far out of the race (nearly 30 minutes) that he was phoning it in, just waiting for the Tour to end. But thanks to a gift from his friend Landis, who allowed a Pereiro-led breakaway to get preposterously far ahead on a scorching French afternoon three weeks ago, Pereiro was suddenly back in the race. Does he deserve to be Tour champ? Never.

Does Landis?

Landis says he'll fight to clear his name, and that there wasn't excessive testosterone in his system, but a lack of epitestosterone. Not sure how that works, but I hope that's the case.

This whole Tour was about drugs and doping from the very get-go. First it was the Basso and Ullrich suspensions. Then, just when it seemed like all was well, I had an inkling that the world cared more about the drugs than the race itself. The New York Times chose not to have legendary cycling write Samuel Abt write their daily coverage, sending instead a cub reporter from the Business section to write the blow-by-blow. He promptly made a nuisance of himself, following other Tour journalists around like a lost puppy and nosing in on other people's interviews. But rather than cover the race, all he kept asking about was drugs, making it clear that his marching orders were to chase the drug story instead of the competitive aspect of the race. How sad is that?

When I get stuck while writing, the question I always ask myself is: What's the story? When a publication like the NYT can only focus on drugs at the Tour de France, the story is drugs, whether we like it or not.

I'm in shock and denial right now. I feel for Landis and his family. I am praying that he finds a way to clear his name, because Floyd Landis is one of the finest individuals in cycling, bar none.

Back in May, when I was working on a Landis piece for the LA Times, I asked Amber Landis what she would do if her husband won the Tour. "I think I'll throw up," she answered, imlpying that the nervous pressure of watching him race would finally be over. Well, it's not over. In many ways, as Floyd ramps up his legal defense, the 2006 Tour de France is just beginning.

Ironically enough, the news of Landis's negative test and impending two-year suspenson comes on the same day that the National Football League will induct several men into their Hall of Fame. I'm not saying Troy Aikman, John Madden, Warren Moon, and the others aren't worthy. Far from it. But when those guys got injured in the first half and then miraculsouly sprinted back out onto the field to play the third and fourth quarter (Madden excluded), there was more than a little pharmaceutical assistance involved. One man's hero is another man's doper. It shouldn't be that way, should it? If we're going to insist that athletes compete clean, shouldn't it be ALL athletes? Wonder when the NYT is going to send Jimmy Olson off to do his in-depth on that issue.

Talk to you later.