Martin Dugard's Blog

The chemo ward is open on Labor Day, which is probably a good thing for my cross country teams. I might have said some things I regretted, were I with them at this morning's practice. Instead, I'm here with Callie while they go through an early morning workout on our league course. It's going to be hot today so it's important to get it done early. That, and the fact that Central Park in Huntington Beach will soon be overrun by all manner of picnickers, including a volleyball league fond of setting up their nets right in the middle of our course.

We ran OK in our first meet on Saturday. Not great. Not bad. Just OK. We hadn't raced or even run a time trial all summer. The first race was about shaking off the rust. But it was hard to see it that way because I wanted much more than OK. So in the 48 hours since, I've done the Kubler-Ross grieving cycle: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Through a weekend that saw ample time with my guitar, the neighborhood fantasy football league's draft (I took Ja'Marr Chase at #1 and Aaron Rodgers as the last and final pick in a quiet homage to what he once was), and an NCIS marathon, I obsessed about OK.

Denial came and went quickly. Anger held court for a very long while. Bargaining began when I took a look at the training log and saw what changes need to be made. Depression ran riot as I tried to fall asleep last night. I kept mourning the season before it really even began, realizing it's going to take a whole lot of work to beat some of the top teams in our division. Acceptance hit this morning as I gazed up at Orion in the early morning southern sky. Orion doesn't appear over California until this time each year — just in time for the start of cross country season. The two are synonymous in my mind.

You might say this is only high school cross country we're talking about. But as you'll soon read in The Long Run, this sport is my earliest and most powerful connection to running — and, in many ways, who I am as a human being. I can take or leave track season (to some extent), but cross country surges through my veins with an emotional current. I think about it when I'm not even aware I'm thinking about it, plotting new workouts and trying to build a stronger team culture when I'm writing a book about the Battle of Midway and especially when I'm writing about the 1970's running boom. So if we have an OK day when I expect something magnificent, it's not unreasonable that I am plunged into the Princess Bride's legendary Pit of Despair. There was even a moment between Bargaining and Depression when I wondered if it was all worth it. Maybe I shouldn't coach anymore. Wouldn't autumn be better spent traveling someplace fun? Maybe a mileage run with my buddy Chris Teske.

Of course, that's nonsense. I could no sooner quit coaching cross country than stop listening to Bruce Springteen. I think of myself as a really good coach. Not OK. Really good. What kind of example would I be setting for my runners if I abruptly quit just because one meaningless early season race didn't go perfectly? To be honest, OK was my fault. I failed to see a few tweaks our training needs at this point in the season.

After Acceptance came a new addition: The Bargain. Nobody knows about The Bargain but me — and now you. The Bargain is that I will give my teams every bit of running knowledge, positive energy, enthusiasm, and even love that the daily process of rising above mediocrity requires. Their successes are their own and I make no claims on their team and personal victories. In return, I get the fulfillment of interacting with them every day. Just being with them keeps me honest, makes me feel ageless, and gives me a deep well of strength for this fucking bullshit cancer roller coaster that will sap every ounce of positivity and hope if you let it. Frankly, I feel I get the better side of the bargain.

Now, on to the season Thirteen weeks until State.

The late playwright Sam Shepherd once wrote that the go/no go point in some new project came after writing fifteen pages. I remember reading that back in the 1980s and thinking that fifteen pages was a hell of a lot of writing before making up your mind. His quote is one of those things that finds traction in your brain pan, though for no particular reason. I mention all this because I'm fifteen pages into the new historical fiction piece and I'm having a blast. Turns out I can write fiction. Let's do fifteen more.

Like the stray dog that you don't dare name because you might just fall in love with it, there's no title to this book. The characters are still telling me who they are, so to speak, coming up with habits and attitudes that define them. I have only a vague idea of a plot. I have no plans to show any of this to my agent or editor for a few months, preferring to let this project get pretty over the course of cross country season (97 days to the State Meet).

What I did not see coming in all this is the freedom. I'm writing a book in my own voice, of my own choosing, in a new genre, and on my own timetable. Last week I thought it would be scary. This week it feels liberating.

It's filtered over into the rest of my day, giving my workouts and coaching a greater sense of purpose. Amazing what the simple act of exercising your creativity can accomplish. There's absolutely no certainty in any of this and yet I've been about as carefree as I can be. Wild.

To top it all off, the first race of cross country season is this Saturday. Christmas in August.

I hope you find your own fifteen pages. No telling how it might change your outlook on life.

"I read your blog," Calene told me the other day. This is news. Callie doesn't read my books and doesn't always venture into this space. It goes with the territory. Jerry Seinfeld says his wife doesn't think he's funny. Authors’ wives don't need to read our stuff because we (at least me) download about it verbally all the time.

"What'd you think?"

"It sounded scattered. Like the way you've been acting lately."

Scattered. I didn't know what to make of it. If anyone would know my state of mind, it's Calene. But I didn't press the matter. I was just glad she read something I wrote.

But that little word just won't leave me. I like to present a cohesive front: Husband, Dad, Writer, Coach, National Treasure. Put those five traits together and you've got a superpower. That's the guy I present to the world.

Throw in Caregiver. Dog Lover. Guitar Practicer (what I do each day can hardly be called playing). French Pupil (although Duolingo is mad at me right now for breaking my 247-day learning streak). Trail Runner (though only Monday through Friday when O'Neill Park is empty — not a fan of the weekend crowds). Searcher.

Granted, all of these combined might give the illusion of being scattered. I'm too ADHD to be a Renaissance Man, so juggling these diverse passions doesn't come naturally. I certainly don't feel scattered when I'm pursuing each one. Just obsessed, one at a time. We're all complex in our own ways.

Still, that word: scattered.

When I think of "scattered" I think of the way I feel at the start of a book, when I don't know how to tell the story. Where to begin? First sentence? First word? All those other things I do in daily life are a distraction from the absolute crushing fear that I will never solve those mysteries. Sometimes I go one further, wondering if there's a small possibility I have completely forgotten how to write.

Now, add in my current leap from non-fiction to fiction, which is taking its first tentative steps forward with the completion of a few hundred carefully chosen words.

I read somewhere that we are more prone to remain in a habit because it's comfortable rather than embracing the fear of attempting something new even if the rewards are enormous.

I've said for decades that I don't want to reach my deathbed with a list of books I wish I'd written. Fiction is top of that list. We're not talking about the Great American Novel. Just a made up "once upon a time" that shouldn't be as terrifying as it feels right now.

Coming off the creative high of The Long Run, which is the closest to sex my writing process has ever been, each morning I sit down to write fiction is like wandering into a dense jungle with no apparent way in or out. Somewhere in that jungle are pythons and tigers and quicksand and spiders the size of my head. I have to go alone. At some point I might get stuck in there. Really stuck, which has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with failure.

So, yes. I might be scattered.

I've got a Twitter account. I still can't call it X with a straight face. Ideally, if I'm trying to sell a book or build a following, it seems there should be a singular theme to what I post. Look at Three Year Letterman's satire or Amy Lofgren's ongoing crusade. But my feed is a random emotional purge, sometimes happy and sometimes funny and very often angry when I mean to be funny.

I went on a rant not long ago about the USA Track and Field Championships. They're very poorly managed and the people in charge at USATF have driven the sport into the ground. High school meets are better attended than last week's amazing racing up in Eugene. In fact, they shouldn't be at Eugene at all, if only because an event so prominent should be run in a major market where thousands have easy access, not lovely Eugene, which is almost impossible to reach without connecting flights.

That's the kind of rant that ends up on my Twitter feed. It's a reasonable argument but is it promoting my books? I don't think so. Just makes me sound cranky, rather than like someone who actually plans to do something about it.

Same with Facebook. I don't post much, other than when I want to show my friends where I'm traveling. Sometimes a photo of Callie looking beautiful. Instagram has become the domain of my cross country team, mostly during morning practices. I am inspired by the sunrise and the dedication of these wonderful kids I coach, so I spontaneously take a picture of the workout white board or dawn landing on the track as they launch into a 6 am session.

I don't do Tik-Tok, or that would turn into some other tangent.

In a world where social media influences books to be bought and movies to be watched, I'm still a Luddite. I have no intention of becoming an influencer because that sounds exhausting. But I need to focus on a singular message. I don't want it to be political. No need to take sides. There's plenty of room at the table for everyone, no matter their beliefs. As far as I'm concerned, if you're a reader you're a friend of mine.

Yet I'm at a crossroads: my next book is a step away from WWII history to focus on the Olympics and running. The history people know me but I'm still a mystery to the larger running world. I'm not sure many people will stick around if I go all-in on running posts. History is still my jam.

(Spoiler alert: to confuse the issue even more, my next book is a work of historical fiction. I was already leaning that way when the universe in the form of my friend and local mayor Brad McGirr randomly suggested I give it a try. I'd already been thinking hard about doing just that, so it felt like confirmation.)

Taking Midway is already in its fourth printing. The Long Run comes out in April. I can't very well abandon TM on my socials to focus on TLR. The irony in all this is that socials are all about baring your individual soul. I do a whole lot of that in The Long Run, so much so that it's a little uncomfortable how much the world will know about me when it's published. Gone forever are the days when a writer can hide in his office with his words and expect to sell a million books. Fewer bookstores. Not even Costco sells books anymore. So socials matter. I'll start with fewer rants on Twitter. Add more videos on Insta (that one scares me most). Maybe even Tik-Tok! A little running, a little history. A whole lot of Martin.

Follow me. Tell your friends. Let's see how all this evolves.

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Cleaned the condo last night. Woke up at 5, cold shower (that icy water comes straight off the mountain), took out the trash, Stellar Brew for coffee and a blueberry muffin, then down 395 as the sun limned the White Mountains. I took a picture.

I had the road to myself. Resisted the urge to go full gas, holding 65 miles an hour all the way down the mountain to Bishop. Kept the window rolled down to smell the crisp air. Some guy came out of nowhere to pass me. I just let him go.

Back when our boys were young, Calene and I drove each summer to visit her relatives in South Dakota. We drove the southern route on 40 some years. Others it was the 70. Sometimes we took the blue roads, those two lane highways off the main thoroughfares. One constant was that early morning wake-up, putting the sleeping kids in their car seats, then hitting the road at 4 am to get 300 miles before the boys woke up. McDonald's for coffee. Then back on the road for a couple hundred more. Good memories.

I've driven through every state, even Alaska in the dead of winter. In college, I hitchhiked across the country. When I finally read Kerouac's On the Road, I wasn't as impressed as I was told I would be. Catching long rides with strangers isn't as romantic as he makes it out to be. There was certainly no Maria.

After Bishop, it's a straight shot down the 395. The elk refuge just past Big Pine lived up to its name, a massive herd eating grass and sprinting zoomies across the green meadow. I like the solitude of the drive but am eager to get back to Callie after a week away. The car feels too quiet. I turn on the music and play it loud. Pass Independence. Manzanar. The big peaks of the Eastern Sierra still loom on my right. Everything on the left is farms and high desert scrub.

It's been a long time since I've done a cross country road trip. Never seem to have a reason anymore. I don't even drive in Europe anymore, not like when I drove every inch of France covering the Tour. The boys are all grown. Air travel is easier.

But there's a rhythm to the road: planning stops, selecting just the right tunes, an early start and a midafternoon finish, finding someplace for a good meal. A 300-mile day seems too far early in the trip. A 500-mile day seems to short by the end.

395 becomes a two-lane at Ridgecrest. A sweeping left turn and 100 miles of white-knuckle driving to swerve into oncoming traffic to pass trucks and RV's. I call Calene and wish her good morning. She reminds me we have a late lunch with a niece once I get home. My brother calls from Washington, DC and I turn off the music so we can talk for an hour. Then it’s onto the 15, a major highway winding down into Southern California. The solitude is over. Weekend Las Vegas travelers crowd each lane. I have to pay attention.

The Rover smells of stale coffee as I pull up to the house. It's great to be back. 340 miles door to door. I love to fly but there's something magical about a road trip.

Sorry the blog's a little late this week. Sunday was a road trip and Monday was an intense writing session. My editor correctly saw the need for three well-placed new chapters for The Long Run. Between morning and afternoon practice I found a sweet groove and wrote those chapters in one sitting. That's a lot.

My head hurt by the time I was done. I sat so long my legs were stiff when I stood. Sent the whole thing off to New York then realized it needed something more, so I sat down again after a dinner of Atomic Wings at John's Pizza and added some fills — a line here, a new paragraph there. Then I sent THAT to New York well past my bedtime and promised I wouldn't touch the manuscript again until I get feedback on the new edit.

So now I'm sad. The reason I was able to write three chapters in six hours is because it's the end of the book. That's when the writing is glorious.

Early in the book, when the concept is new, it's all about figuring where to go next. It's hard work. Slow work. Things pick up in the middle when you find the voice.

But at the end, when all is written and the writing process is nothing more than fussing, it's a party. Nothing to do but make the adjectives stronger and take out needless articles. It's fun. The sadness comes from letting it go, knowing the writing won't be so fluid until this point in the next book sometime next year.

Now it's things like photo selection and crafting the elevator pitch. But in the back of my mind I'm also thinking of the future. I just walked away from a chance to co-author a book with a famous guy whose name is not the same as my former co-author. I'm really in no mood to do all the writing and research and subsume my ego for the sake of a check. The voice I use in The Long Run is distinctly mine. I wouldn't lose it altogether if i wrote with someone else, but it would take a long while to get it back.

My goal when I walked away from the Killing series was to take my writing to a higher level. I've definitely done that with TLR. It's funnier, sadder, more intense. It’s is a summation of thirty years writing books, looping all the way around to the sort of stories I wrote when I freelanced magazine articles for a living..

So maybe you're thinking I should lighten up a little. Didn't I just write about taking it easy a few weeks ago? I'm in the mountains. My time is my own. I have many books to read. I can hike anytime I want. Nap. Play my guitar. I'll do all those things.

But here's another thing: I'm flirting with really focusing on recovery days being super-easy for my runners this summer. I mean REALLY easy. Thirty minutes, strides. Nothing more. That way they're mentally, physically, and emotionally ready for the hard stuff.

I'm a little afraid to do that with my professional life. I panic a little when I wonder where to go next, and in that panic I return to my keyboard, as I'm doing this instant — as if work leads to answers (it doesn't). So I'm going to get up now and take a long walk in the sun, knowing I have absolutely nothing to worry about. God will point me in the right direction soon enough.

Mammoth training camp starts one week from today. I normally leave a few days early to check out the trails and get settled. This year I'm leaving on Sunday morning, same as the team. Good friend Jim Poettgen is celebrating a big birthday and I'd like to stick around RSM long enough to wish him well before making the drive to the mountains.

My goal is to be on the road by 4 am, then watch the sunrise over the Mojave Desert. A tall black coffee, Springsteen on the stereo, a car full of books and running shoes. I can do it in less than five hours if the speed is good and the California Highway Patrol is sleeping late. The key is getting in front of all the motorhomes and big rigs and never stopping for a nature break.

I bought my books for the trip the other day. A new Mark Greaney Gray Man installment and some Carl Hiassen. Two different kinds of writing, but both very effective. If I run out of things to read once I'm in Mammoth there's always the local bookstore — though the number of new books for sale is few these days, replaced by an increasing stock of puzzles and legos, which seems to be the fate of bookstores everywhere.

I have no plans to do any writing while I'm up there, of which I'm glad. The "m" is not working well on my keyboard, a sure sign that maybe I've been writing a little too much. These past couple weeks to clear the head have been a treasure. There's so much crazy shit going on in our country right now, a slow breaking down of democratic institutions and rise of totalitarianism I never could have believed would happen in my lifetime. Not having to read the news or spend hours researching has allowed me to shut out that noise for the time being. Here's hoping the peace and solitude of Mammoth brings another week of the same.

I should beat the team to Mammoth by four or five hours on Sunday. Long enough for a short run on the Rock Trail. I used to do it top to bottom without really working too hard. Now it's a slog to go halfway. All good. Better than nothing. We'll do a scavenger hunt to introduce them to altitude, then I'll toddle off to Roberto's for Mexican food, letting them get back to their condos to figure out who gets which bedroom.

The week will go fast. Double workouts every day for the team, a run or hike of my own in between. Long nights reading on the back porch. All I ask is for a week without forest fires. A couple afternoon thunderstorms would be nice. If it sounds boring, it's meant to.

I spent the afternoon cleaning the algae from my backyard fountain. Bought a Shop-Vac for a criminally low price, drained the water, scrubbed the green stuff that has been building since the heat wave began a month ago. Planted two sunflowers in the front raised bed. Their height gives the garden a look more in keeping with the elevated location. Watched Wimbledon yesterday and today. Did a Matt Wilpers ride on Peloton. Walked Sadie. Went to church. Took Calene for dinner down at Nick's in San Clemente, a town I love and spent many a summer in my youth which now can't decide whether they want to be Newport Beach or Huntington. The dining room was so fraught with politics I made plans on how to behave if a fight broke out. Watched the Tour de France every day since it began, finished The Bear in three nights, almost done with Quarterbacks, sent funny reels to my wife, sister, and Sean Zeitler because they all like to laugh.

In short, I finished The Long Run.

Oh, I did the usual post-book thing yesterday, going back for another look at the text though I can't change a thing. Found out that the Peachtree 10k was the first to give out t-shirts back in 1971. Tucked that one away for the edit. Otherwise, I've been true to my word and using the down time to get my head right.

It's my habit to wake up at 3 am and ruminate. Been doing it since I was a child. There's always something to tickle the subconscious. This week I've been calming the beast with the simple reminder that I did it. I wrote a book that looked impossible from the jump. I really don't want to think about writing another history book right now. My interests are too diverse for me to become a specialist in any one thing. So I don't really know what's next. I'm thrilled that Taking Midway is already in its third printing but it might be a few years until the Taking series adds another title. For those of you wondering, if you haven't already figured out, I won't be part of any Killing or Confronting books, either. I'm only 64, but how many more books do I want to write?

Anyway, here we are. The impossible book is written. I will finally admit right now that I had doubts I could pull of the big bold story I wanted to tell. But I did. I'm sure of it.

Way back in 1996, moments before starting my first Raid Gauloises two-week adventure race, I sat alone in a quiet room to ponder what I was getting myself into. I told myself that when it was all over, for better or worse, I just wanted to be a runner again. That's where I am now. I just want to run. For as long as I can remember, that's always how I find myself.

I'm coming to the end of the running book. Two chapters to go. Maybe three. They seem to sprout organically. Maybe about 10,000 words, max. Weird things happen so close to the finish line. Sentences and words from a few hundred pages appear to me in the night, demanding I add a sharp fact or witty clarification. I pull out the Notes app on my phone and write them down then go back to sleep. But mostly I want to slow the pace and enjoy the last days of this project.

I dream of the chapters just written this weekend as I chase my deadline, relieved they are done but knowing I need to give them a sharp edit before I can put a check mark next to them on the butcher paper hanging on my office wall. The outline is written there in Sharpie, though the chapter titles and their contents have changed dramatically since I first drew it up at Christmas.

I'll finish the book today. The back matter can wait — acknowledgments, sources, etc. I desperately want to nail this first draft and spend a few weeks clearing my head with time in nature. But there's something about this process that makes me want to linger a little bit longer with these final chapters. I feel protective of the words and want to dress them up a little more with qualities like clarification and nuance.

But it's time to say goodbye. And so I will later today. Maybe.

Olympic Village in Munich (credit: Sandro Halank, Wikimedia Commons)

I got on the subject of coaches’ wives with my good friend Sean Zeitler this morning. Coaching is such an all-consuming passion that not only do we spend countless hours obsessing about the athletic performances of other people's children, we bring it home. It becomes dinner table conversation, morning coffee conversation, and one of those narratives that always lingers in our subconscious waiting to launch into a discussion.

For instance, I told Sean, "When a woman consents to spend a good portion of a European vacation touring a 50-year-old Olympic stadium for three hours so her husband can see the track — and then suggests we go drink beer where Steve Prefontaine drank beer after his Olympic race — that's a keeper."

I'm referring, of course, to Calene.

So this is an appreciation of coaches’ wives everywhere, in particular my Queen. She's also an obsessed author's wife, which gives her extra sainthood. Last week's blog was Part One of our Europe trip. Now we get to the meat and potatoes of our journey: Munich.

A big part of The Long Run, as the new book is titled, revolves around the 1972 Munich Olympics. I am getting to the end of this very satisfying project and considered leaving out a necessary research trip to this pivotal city. But it just wouldn't have been right or thorough, so we made the trek.

The train south from Copenhagen through Hamburg was splendid but delayed. Temps were in the high 80's when we arrived in Munich early evening. To revisit the coach's wife theme, bear in mind that our sole purpose of being in Bavaria was a long-ago track meet. No museums or cathedrals. No real sightseeing of the conventional sort, sitting in an outdoor cafe to people watch. We rode the underground to the stadium and paid three euros to wander aimlessly.

It is impossible to enter those grounds without being reminded of the Israeli massacre from those games. The low white profile of the Olympic Village rises across the highway from the stadium. A vivid memorial demands attention. So it was sobering to follow this path from the station. Thought provoking.

Once we got inside the stadium we could go anywhere except onto the track. We eventually sat up high on the press box side in the green stadium seats. Looking down on the crimson all-weather track, I pointed out where Frank Shorter entered the stadium at the end of marathon, Jim Ryun fell in the 15, Dave Wottle won gold in the 8, and Prefontaine made his two powerful attacks.

Calene indulged me when I brought up the men's 5000 on my phone and we watched Pre's final mile together, alternately looking at the race then down onto the track where those runners raced so long ago. Pre finished fourth on that day, outkicked in the last fifteen meters.

When I told Calene he and the British runners later met at the Hofbrau Haus in Marienplatz, she suggested it was the logical next stop in our tour. Mind you, Calene doesn't drink, let alone beer. But she well knows a good bratwurst and a cold liter of lager in the name of Steve Prefontaine is very much something I would enjoy. So we hopped back on the underground and made this final stop.

Calene and I have been married almost forty years. This writing gig and the coaching that now exists side-by-side weren't in the cards when we first met. We have traveled the world as I've researched my books. That visit to the Olympic Stadium is tame compared with the battlefields we've walked, World War II bunkers we've wandered into, and questionable hotels we've spent the night in the name of writing history. Combining writing with track and field was a fine indulgence, for which I am devoted and thankful.

Now it's on to the last week of the book and then cross country season. Huzzah!