The Cockiness of the Unstoppable Runner has Faded

Diederik van Hoogstraten

Blogmaster's Note: This blog entry is an abridged version of the Afterword of Diederik's book, the Running Dutchman. 

My good friend and fellow Flyer Eddie R never struck me as a poet. But after we we ran the 2010 Boston Marathon together, he composed a haiku once he realized that my name consists of seven syllables—the second line of a haiku. He sent it to me without comment:

Finished ahead of

Diederik van Hoogstraten

Two six point two miles

And that’s how my friend made sure that two words—“beat Eddie”—ended up at the top of my to-do list. I am pleased to report it happened as soon as my book was printed in Dutch: I ran a 3:03 at the Amsterdam Marathon. I’m still working on my revenge haiku.

The time after a big race can be tough. This one goal has been the determining factor in life. It has been the reason plans were made (with running friends) and cancelled (with other friends). New York, with its tight-knit running community, is a great place to forge running friendships. So when the goal is reached, a new emptiness beckons. But the post-Boston days weren’t bad. Not long after Boston I joined my friend Chris Morgenroth, when she ran a half marathon in pouring rain a week after our marathon. Soon enough, the usual suspects and I were looping the park again. Before I knew it, we were having beers at the first Flyers New York Marathon meeting. We had entered the Era After Boston seamlessly.

It was time for new adventures, challenges, and distances. I was lucky to be a part of the 200-mile Ragnar relay in New York State, joining two vans full of Flyers, peanut butter, water, and baby wipes. We all ran three legs of varying distances. It was my first midnight run after enjoying a beer with dinner. It was also the first time I ran nine miles on no sleep, sick to my stomach, and dizzy after two earlier runs and lots of time in a moving van. This final stretch worried me, but it turned out one of my best runs ever: an hour and 15 minutes on hilly trails and roads in the sun, the van pulling up beside me with water and cheering team mates, and a runner’s high I have rarely experienced.

Running is one thing; talking about running is another. Haruki Murakami wrote that a true gentleman does not divulge details about his love life or his workout regime. Luckily, Murakami broke his own rule when he wrote What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. And when I wrote my book, The Running Dutchman -- published in Dutch in 2010 and soon to be published in English -- I decided that it would only make sense if I dared to be frank about my past, fears, and passions. Today, my doubts about opening up have faded, for I know that a handful of readers found inspiration in my story. 

Since finishing this book I have run with my sister Dorine—she who often said she would never run because she couldn’t run. My teenage niece Vera has joined me on runs too. They broke habits and went out for that first, daunting jog—often turning into runners for good.

In the meantime, I started to struggle. One evening in 2011 in Central Park I ran 800-meter repeats with my fellow Flyers. It was the end of a ridiculous 11-month stretch. During that time I had run four marathons under 3:10, doubling up on back-to-back races in the fall and spring. During one of two 50K’s I did in between, I fell on the trail as I checked out a female competitor’s behind, broke my hand, and still finished the race in fifth place. I don’t remember how many half marathons and 10K’s I entered that same year, but I do remember my happy 1:23 p.r. during the New York City half marathon. I also recall never once stopping for a break. The personal bests, the respect in the running community, and the occasional placement in my age group had become addictive. Always racing, I hadn’t thought much about the effects of the constant pushing and pounding of a body around 40. My joyful self-confidence had shifted into carelessness. While I am no psychoanalyst, it seems to me I was making up for lost time. Running feverishly, I was still trying to prove something: I’m not slow and addicted. I am not weak.

That summer evening I pushed hard. Leaning into a turn, I felt pain shoot up through the front of my right foot. I ignored it and finished the workout. The pain kept me awake at night, even though I rested and iced the foot. Of course I still showed up for speedwork the next Tuesday. Two weeks later I was on the operating table, watching my surgery to remove a snapped-off piece of bone. I felt powerless, and to counter those emotions, I think, I requested to be awake for my surgery. The images of the ordeal solved nothing. Instead they became haunting memories during a time of struggle, not just a quick interlude before the climax I had planned for the fall: a sub-three-hour marathon.

What followed was a cascade of injuries and doubts, leading me to revisit the very questions that running had answered over the years. I think I probably needed to experience it to shake off the cockiness of an obsessive runner.

I confess now that I barely avoided a return to “my own worst dark seasons,” to borrow a phrase from the novelist Barbara Kingsolver. Those were the seasons before I quit smoking a pack a day, the time before running saved me. Running had provided me with focus. My writing and thinking gained clarity. The motion of the body seemed to correspond with a stillness in the mind. “Runner” had become a part my identity. Who was I when I couldn’t run?

A right-foot sugery was followed by steroid injections for a back hernia and finally a left-knee sugery to fix a torn meniscus. Through it all I worked on my core and tried yoga. It has made me stronger, more balanced in body and mind. When I push myself now, I have found that I can again. I have gotten on my bike and into the pool and onto an Alter-G treadmill, allowing running to come back to me—gently, this time. Now I see triathlons and ultras in my future.

The cockiness of the unstoppable runner has faded. No personal bests have been recorded since I ran back-to-back 5-mile p.r.s at a 6:10 and 6:09 mile pace on the Central Park hills, one week apart in 2011. I think I will break my records again. What’s more important: I don’t really care. What matters is the simple forward motion on the trails and beaches where I’m free.

-Diederik van Hoogstraten

Blogmaster's Note: DJ's book will soon be available for sale. For those who may be interested in reading it, I'll provide information for purchasing a copy after the book comes out. -Dave K.

Read more...

Writing About Writing About Running: The Fall-Out

Diederik v. H. in Central Park

COURAGE

Until I started doing it seriously it was hard to see running as an act of courage.  Then I learned from experience, and from watching others, that the solitary runner at the starting line of a race is exposing himself or herself.  Regardless of distance and pace, it is just you, embracing the challenge from yourself for the world to see, without the comfort of a team or a coach.  It takes something to be there and give it your all, in public.  It may be courage.

When I once ran with ultra-marathon champ Dean Karnazes, he told me that he loves running with others -- often admiring strangers -- because the fellow runner is as 'naked’ and vulnerable as he or she will ever be.  Dean enjoys connecting with people in those moments, when all pretense and natural defenses fall away in the struggle with pain, weather, exhaustion, and self-imposed limits (‘I can’t’).  That is pure courage, Dean told me.

VULNERABILITY

Another thing I didn’t realize until I did it was that writing a memoir creates a whole new realm of vulnerability.  I could have known, of course.  But experience is different.  In fact, writing about running, as I did in my first book, The Running Dutchman, turns out to be like a 50K.  Not that it’s necessarily too much.  But definitely a lot.  A lot of exposing and vulnerability, meaning you can easily get shot down, or lifted up, or both.

NUSport, a pre-eminent sports magazine in the Netherlands, reviewed my book, which was published in Dutch as De rennende Hollander. I occasionally write for NUSport and I was glad to see that my status as a contributor did not keep the reviewer from saying what he really thought!

Kind words from Runner's World

The good news: he gave me a 7 out of 10. The less pleasant news: the book should been 80 pages shorter (perhaps), my editor should have been tougher (true), too many errors made it into print (shamefully: yes), and some personal anecdotes were dreadfully boring (what can I say?).

Before all of this could depress me, the review concluded by saying that the author is a pretty fast runner for an aging former smoker, and a compelling writer. The Dutch edition of Runner’s World had earlier described my love for running as infectious and simply recommend the book.

The trick has been to not take any of it too seriously.  Both criticism and compliments can be meaningful - but it’s also true that both usually say a lot about the person expressing the views. A negative response should not bring me down, just as I cannot let a public DNF (Did Not Finish, or Did Nothing Fatal) --like the NYC Half in 2010-- devastate me.  A kind word about the book is nice, as is a PR, but neither should go to my head.

PUSHING THE LIMITS

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.  T.S. Eliot

As time passes since the book’s publication last fall, I also realize more and more that I am far from the only one impacted by the book.  Other characters show up by first name (like Eric, my best friend / doctor), role in my existence (like Mom, or sisters), or anonomously (when I sensed that an ex-lover might not be pleased by her appearance in my abbreviated life story).

Nobody has really complained. But some commentary has been unspoken.  One of my sisters, a voracious reader, never said a word about the book, which I gave her with a personal message inscribed.

My poor dear parents have both been very supportive, even though I treat some elements of my childhood not so kindly.  I dedicated the book to them. I meant that; I love them and I am grateful.  But I also think it made them less inclined to take offense.  Nice pre-emptive move, I say.

Many of my parents’ friends and distant relatives -- gently and not so gently pushed by my parents / personal PR agents to buy the book, now! -- have expressed kind words.  Some have been surprised.  One of them wrote me a nice hand-written letter, a gift of a former time amidst the piles of direct mail and email that buries us nowadays.  She said she learned a lot about my folks, and about me.  'There were elements I’m not sure I wanted to know,' she added. ‘I wondered why they were there.’



Writer About Writer About Running Completes Caumsett Park 50K

It’s a question I sometimes ask myself I find myself at the starting line of a 50K or a 5K: what am I doing here?  I suppose it’s the sense that doubts and fears can be shaken off.  That limits need to be pushed. Whether that is courage or stupidity, or a little bit of both, remains an open question.

Diederik v. H.

Read more...

Writing About Writing About Running

Diederik v. H. in Central Park

Although I never took his class, the wisdom of a much-revered Columbia University Journalism professor stayed with me since it was passed on to me by one of his students. Don’t go looking for your debut, he would tell aspiring authors in his book writing class. It will find you.

Since graduating in the 1990s I would occasionally struggle with the anxiety familiar to any not-quite-there-yet writer. When will I ever write that first book? And what on earth will it be about? Recalling the lesson of the book ‘coming to you’ would often calm me down. Try to trust that it will simply, unexpectedly present itself, I told myself - like a great love.

When my book found me exactly a year ago, I was still stunned. The idea of De rennende Hollander (Dutch for The Running Dutchman) came to me with a such unusual clarity that it took me moment to realize that this was it. The first book! One reason I was a little slow recognizing the signs was that I never expected to write about myself, or running, or me running.

Four, even two years ago I couldn’t have imagined this. As a journalist I shunned the ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘mine’. My stories were intended to be distant and impartial. Not only did I not write about myself - I tried to be invisible as a writer. Moreover, I was barely what I’d call a runner at all, until I joined the Flyers in the early days of 2009.

The tough magazine assignment it all started with.

Then I gradually discovered how running brought me joy, good health, inner peace, self-confidence and new friends. I used to proclaim that ‘people don’t really change’. Now, I was changing. Running was changing me.

The notion of writing about it started to grow on me. Just a few words, maybe? Why not, really? I had been devouring the books of Dean Karnazes, Pam Reed, Christopher McDougall, and especially Haruki Murakami. They helped and inspired me. They were writers and runners, like I was. Why wouldn’t I share my experiences, like they did?

An assignment editor at the weekend magazine of my newspaper in Holland agreed. So I sat down - and struggled with 2500 words. I have cranked out many a magazine feature of that length in a day. This one took me weeks. I couldn’t find my flow, rhythm or tone. When I had filed the piece, I craved the satisfaction and liberation I generally feel after hitting ‘send’. It wasn’t there.

An alternative book cover.

‘Re-write’ is not a phrase we love to hear. Thankfully, I rarely hear it. This time the editor was clear. You have some good stuff, he said. Start over.

There was only one way. I cleared my schedule and spent two days furiously writing. The words suddenly came in waves. When it was done, it was good. I did not love the photos of coach Toby Tanser and me. But the story about gradual change through running looked all right.

I have never received so much feedback to anything I have written, and I doubt I ever will. Among the many reactions were two emails from publishers in Amsterdam. One of them would print my book within a year.

Writing about running proved to be liberating. I had a story to tell. Many stories, in fact - about running and living in New York, being a part of the Flyers, camaraderie through running, my childhood, triumphs and fears and dreams - they all spilled out of me. It was like therapy, Central Park being the shrink’s couch, my Mac the ever-patient shrink.

Once again, the writing process was, at first, scary. But after struggling I followed another piece of advice from a book-writing friend. Write like no one else will ever read. Let it out, she told me. You’ll deal with the world later.

She was right, and I did. Book writing turned out to be just as exciting and interesting as running marathons. It takes time and patience. Think, trust, and learn the distance and course. Over-confident first timers will stumble, as I have. Exprience counts, as I discovered. But when the flywheel is at its optimum speed --Murakami’s metaphor-- long-form writing and long-distance running can be equally gratifying and soul-warming.

Selling the book at the Amsterdam Marathon expo

As a general assignment reporter I cover a wide variety of stories. One day I’ll be at the United Nations in New York, the next at a college football game in Texas. I talk to fallen CEOs and inspiring teachers, corrupt politicians and young filmmakers. Over the past few months alone I wrote about the Tea Party, the Democratic Party, the track star-turned-pro-basketball player Marion Jones, Boardwalk Empire creator Terence Winter, the Los Angeles River and the BP oil spill. I clearly do not believe that one needs personal experience or PhD level knowlegde to cover these subjects.

But I do now believe that a deeply felt sense of your subject is helpful when writing a first book. It’s a tough process, not unlike a first 26.2 miles. Knowing what you’re doing --and believing that you really do-- is key. The book found me because it was about stuff I know a little something about: my self and my running.
- Diederik van Hoogstraten

Read more...