If you are a sports fan -- and older than 10 years-old -- you have probably heard of Jason McElwain, the autistic athlete from Rochester, NY who set his high school basketball court (and the Internet) on fire on February 15, 2006.  The long-time equipment manager for the boys' varsity hoops team, his coach decided to insert him into the game for the first time ever at the end of the last game of his senior year.  

What happened next captivated the nation:  after missing his first two shots, he made his next 7, including six 3-pointers, for 20 points in the last 4:19 of playing time.  The video of his amazing game predictably went viral, and in the next 5 months, "J-Mac" met the President, Magic Johnson spoke at his school, he spent a week at training camp with Peyton Manning and the Colts, he appeared on virtually every morning and late-night show out there, and to top it off, he won an ESPY for "Best Moment in Sports in 2006"  ​(beating out other nominees such as Kobe Bryant's 81-point game...)

Thinking back, it's pretty amazing to me that J-Mac's big moment happened ten years ago already.   At the time (and now), it was seen as a "triumph of the human spirit."  Despite any limitations he may have had because of his autism, Jason seized his opportunity and made more with it than anyone could have possibly hoped or imagined.

So how did he do it?  Did he just get lucky, as some have since asserted?  Um, sure.  Maybe -- maybe -- you can get "lucky" during a game and hit one or two three-pointers.  But six in a row, in the first varsity game he ever played???  I guess "luck" is one explanation.  Or . . . perhaps . . . the fact he would regularly stay after practice, long after the "real" players had left the floor and he was done with all of his managerial duties, and practice his own shot . . . maybe that had something to do with his success on his big night.  

This was a kid who did not speak until he was five years old.  Yet he had the self-confidence to go out there during his one chance, and he showed the world what he was made of.  Wow.  
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In the decade that followed that magical moment in February 2006, Jason took up a hobby that fit his spirit of self-belief, faith, and desire to simply work harder than anyone else:  distance running.  

I have written this for years . . . distance running (and especially ultrarunning) is really the "fairest" sport out there.  It is as close to a pure meritocracy as you will find in sport; the harder you work, the better you do.  Period.  Attitude, discipline, and determination mean far more to your chances of success than "natural" talent, your socioeconomic status, or even how old you were when you first started speaking.  

When, a few years ago, I heard Jason became a distance runner and wanted to run the Boston Marathon, I figured it was a really cool story and that he would surely take the "celebrity" route to get into the race, following people such as Will Farrell (who ran a 3:56 in 2003), Mario Lopez (5:41 in 2002), and Tedy Bruschi, former Patriots' linebacker (5:26 in 2012).   None of them ran official "qualifying" races; rather, they used their celebrity and money to get into the race.  (Note:  Don't get me wrong; I do not think there is anything wrong with a race designating a selected number of its spots to raise a lot of money for charitable causes).  

Although he surely could have taken this same path, J-Mac chose the only path he had ever chosen when confronted with a challenge:  he worked his butt off.  After training all year in 2012, Jason toed the line at the Rochester Marathon (on September 24th).  He didn't just qualify, but he realized his goal with a smoking 3:01 finish.  That qualified him for the 2014 Boston Marathon.  (He had to wait until the 2014 race because his marathon was a few weeks after the "qualifying window" had closed).  

                                                        (J-Mac bringing it home in blazing fashion in Rochester...)

Fast-forward to April 2014, the most eagerly-anticipated Boston Marathon in the race's history, given the bombing in 2013 and the "Boston Strong" movement that emerged from that unspeakable tragedy.  

While many runners who qualify for Boston are just "happy to be there" and train much harder for their qualifying race than for Boston itself, that apparently just is not the way J-Mac is wired.  He trained even harder for Boston than he did for Rochester...

Unfortunately, the race conditions for Boston '14 were far from ideal:  the temperature reached into the 70s, which -- while ideal for the millions of spectators who lined the course -- is far from ideal for the runners themselves.  (In my experience racing marathons, the "sweet spot" is about 45-50 degrees).  

So, given everything above, do you think J-Mac used the weather as an excuse and let it affect his performance?  

​I didn't think so either:  he ran a blistering 2:57!!!  (That equates to 6:45/mile for 26.2 miles).  Wow, redux...
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,J-Mac is a story of an autistic kid who didn't start speaking until he was five years old.  He never played a varsity basketball game until his team's last regular-season game his senior year.  All he did was score 20 points in 4 minutes.  And as an encore, he ran sub-3 at the Boston Marathon. 

"Luck," I humbly-suggest, had nothing to do with any of these events.  Rather, Jason tapped into his inner lion, that confident voice inside all of us . . . the one that says "we've got this."  The one that says "there are no limits."

Jason McElwain's success was not an accident.  He worked his ass off for it.  He was not born with any special athletic gifts or abilities.  Quite to the contrary, the odds were stacked against him from the beginning.

Think about Jason when you pursue your goals this year, whether you are running your first marathon, trying to qualify for Boston, running your first ultra, trying to win a 100-miler, or trying to get into the Badwater 135.  If you really -- truly -- want to reach those goals, you can.  It is completely within your power . . . you control the outcome . . . you just need to know how to get to Carnegie Hall.

Good luck to all of you with your 2016 running goals.  And for those of you who will be at the Long Haul 100 this weekend in Wesley Chapel (Tampa area), Alex and I will see you in a few days!!  

http://www.zwittyultra.com

(Rumor is that this guy turned to the Dark Side after DNF'ing at an ultra in 2015 and being unfairly-judged by others . . . if only he would have followed the Tao of Taylor Swift...)

Happy New Year!!  With ringing in 2016, and saying goodbye to 2015, we say hello to new resolutions, crowded gyms, busier lines at salad bars, and . . . perhaps most-importantly, a whole new slew of ambitious running-related goals!

Well, whether 2016 will see you run your first marathon or ultra, get a PR at a 50-miler, hit the podium at a 100-miler, or finally qualify for the Badwater 135, here are 10 tips to help make 2016 the best ​running year of your life!!
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Okay, if you are anything like me, the first thing you do when planning your running year is . . . well . . . plan your year by setting goals.  What races are you going to run?  What new distance are you going to try?  

Here is my two-part advice on this topic: 

Step One:  Set an audacious goal.  Something that scares you . . . a lot.   A guy I know -- and have competed against at Badwater -- who is simply referred to as "Seal" in a recently-released book, puts it this way:  "I can't find out about myself in a 5k.  I can't find out about myself in a marathon.  I need to find the most ridiculous, disgustingly-hard thing I can find, and try and conquer it . . . and when I finish, I have all the answers to the questions I've been asking."  (Yes, I'm paraphrasing a bit, but you get the point; this guy has gone through the infamous SEAL "hell week" twice; he probably knows a thing or two about suffering and overcoming it...)

As one of my friends, a super-famous running buddy (who also happens to share my initials), says:

"Struggling and suffering are the essence of a life worth living. If you're not pushing yourself beyond the comfort zone, if you're not demanding more from yourself - expanding and learning as you go - you're choosing a numb existence. You're denying yourself an extraordinary trip."  

Amen, brother.  (And thus ends the "kind-of name-dropping" portion of the show) :)

The point, though, is that the bigger the goal, and the more scared of it you are, the better the reward when you finally conquer it.

But being audacious, however, is only the first step of the "goal-setting" equation.  

Step Two:  take baby steps towards reaching that goal.  Having grand plans without having a chance in hell of actually completing them is, well, "sub-optimal," as Rog and Davo are fond of saying (bonus points to anyone who gets that reference).  Psychologists have a name for it:  delusions of grandeur.  That's where Bill Murray and the movie What About Bob comes in . . . take baby steps towards your goals.  If your goal is to run a 100-miler in 2016, don't schedule your first 100 in February if you've never run longer than 20 miles.  Run a marathon.  Then run a 50-miler.  Then a 100k.  Why skip steps?  

And the idea of "baby steps" transitions us nicely into our Tip #2:

(Fair warning:  Tip #2 will ask you to follow the advice of Nick Saban, the "Darth Vader" of college football...)
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As all college football fans nauseatingly know, Nick Saban is famous for preaching to his team not to think about the result of a game, or the cumulative result of a season, but rather on the process of getting there.

For those of us who are not Alabama fans -- which encompasses pretty-much everyone who does not live in the great state of Alabama -- I like to phrase his message a bit differently:  Win The Day.  Don't focus on the "big picture."  Be a "trees"-type of runner, not a "forest" one.  

​With the runners I coach, I only give them schedules for one week at a time.  Believe me, I do not have this policy to give myself more work to do; it is obviously far-easier to write a schedule for a month and say, "here you go; report back in 4 weeks."  So why do I make more work for myself?  Because (in addition to wanting customization as much as possible), runners should be concerned with today's workout.  ​All that matters is today.  String enough "todays" together, and that is when amazing things start to happen...

Put more directly:  be better today than you were yesterday.  That -- quite literally -- is all you need to do.  If you can honestly say to yourself when your head hits the pillow at night that you made yourself a stronger runner than you were the night before, and string enough of those days together for long enough, you will reach unimaginable heights in this sport.

And that leads us to Tip No. 3:
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​“What was the secret, they wanted to know; in a thousand different ways they wanted to know The Secret. And not one of them was prepared, truly prepared to believe that it had not so much to do with chemicals and zippy mental tricks as with that most unprofound and sometimes heart-rending process of removing, molecule by molecule, the very tough rubber that comprised the bottoms of his training shoes. The Trial of Miles; Miles of Trials.” 
--John L. Parker, Once a Runner

That quote perfectly encapsulates what it takes to be a successful runner:  consistency in training.  I have written about this point ​ad nauseum for years, and it is still as true in 2016 as it has always been . . . there are NO magic pills in this sport.  The runners who achieve their goals are the ones who train consistently and intelligently, plain and simple.
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-"Balance is key, Daniel-san."  While quality consistent training is definitely the key towards reaching great heights in marathon and ultrarunning, none of us are professional runners.  We need balance in our lives, in order to be the best runners and -- more-importantly, people -- we can be.   While we all think running is awesome and, if you are anything like me, a big part of your life, it is not your life nor what encapsulates you as a person.  We all have other interests, responsibilities, desires, passions, etc etc.  And while most people reading this right now share a passion for running -- often running for a really long time -- we need to recognize that while we are similar in that regard, we are not necessarily similar in (a) what drives us to run, and (b) what else we like to do when we are not running.  Which leads us to good ole' Tay-Tay:

-"Shake it Off"  Again, none of us are professional runners.  So why do we see others -- so often now, especially in this age of instant reactions and social media -- trying to push their own agendas, values, and beliefs upon us?  There is so much running-related "noise" on social media these days that it can be deafening.  Wouldn't it be great if we all recognized, as an absolute truth, that (a) all runners are different, (b) we all have different motivations, and (c) there is NO "right" or "wrong" in this sport??  My main point here is simple:  don't judge others, and don't let others' judgments of your goals affect you.  Your goals and your motivations are yours and yours alone.  So own them and be proud of them.  If family members, work colleagues, friends, Facebook "friends," or anyone else judges you for setting an audacious goal, for being content with a DNF, or for whatever reason, just recognize that they are projecting their own issues upon you.  That does not and should not become your ​reality.  Just do your thing (with "clear eyes", and follow your heart, and you can't lose).

("Clear eyes, full hears . . . can't lose!!!")
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The final tip of this article is one that your rational brain will not believe until you have "been there," but I will say it anyway:  there is absolutely nothing magical about any of the distances of races you will be attempting, whether it is 26.2 miles, 50 or 100 miles, the Badwater 135, or something even longer.  

They are just random numbers.  Take the marathon for example.  The 26.2 distance came to be because of the confluence of two factors:  (a) the distance from the city of Marathon to Athens in Greece is roughly 25 miles, and (b) in 1908, the King of England added 1.2 miles to the traditional "marathon" distance (25 miles) so that it would finish in front of his residence.  Absurdly-random, right??  The same can be said about 50 miles or 100 miles . . . they are simply round numbers, ultimately based upon 5,280 segments, measured by the average size of a human foot hundreds of years ago.  

My point:  do not be scared of distances.  Sure, each new distance presents its own challenges, and its own strategies for conquering the distance.  But after running well over a hundred marathons and ultras (of increasing length), I firmly believe that, with experience, you will agree with me that the numbers that define these races are just that . . . numbers.  And once you realize that, and take away the power that some daunting distance may have over you, then you can begin to see it for what it really is:  simply a measurement of the distance from point A to point B.  There is nothing preclusive about any distance . . . if you want to run x number of miles (no matter how big "x" is,  you can, regardless of your "talent" as a runner).  In other words, there are no limits to what you can accomplish.  As my buddy Ray Zahab (dammit, yet another name-drop) is fond of saying:  "90% of this sport is mental, and the other 10% is in your head"!

I hope 2016 will be the best running year of your lives, and I cannot wait to see as many of you as possible throughout the year, starting on Jan. 16th at the Long Haul 100 in Wesley Chapel :)  

See you "out there"!!!

www.zwittyultra.com