You Don't Know... Bolas

Real Runners' World--Kachina Village (map it)

A final altitude blog post coming to you straight from Forest Highlands, the once pristine neighborhood that Furman Elite has taken over for the last three weeks and made our own. One week to go and we have yet to exploit the 36 holes of golf, two immense club houses, pools, tennis courts, and other amenities reserved for that run-of-the-mill family with a bit too much money, a few too many mountain homes, and a genuine fear of the simplicity of a tent and an overused JanSport backpack. But don’t get me wrong, thanks to The Hi-Lands, Furman Elite has been blessed with a near ideal setup on the outskirts of Flagstaff. I’m sure the timing helps, arriving right between seasons when the weather is too cold to adventure into the mountains, but the snow accumulation is not quite significant enough for skiing (but just enough to complicate our daily running routine). I’m not sure how Jeff pulled off the deal he did to get us this place, who he wined and dined, who he was forced to sell his body (or Heidi’s) to, but we certainly couldn’t have asked for a better location or housing option for the six members of Furman Elite who bravely took a leap of faith and tripped it to altitude. As such, I can’t speak for the suckers who remained in Greenville during this time, enjoying the mild South Carolina winter, the home-made cafeteria meals, and the company of Bobby Gary; I can only assume, in spite of progressing nicely with their training, that without the rest of us present to entertain them and pump up their egos, they have resorted to cannibalism, or crocheting at the very least. Speaking of Coach Gary, he will be joining us at altitude in just two more days!! It would be a lie to say Furman Elite has been lost without him, but we do need a fourth guy to make ping pong doubles a reality, so welcome Coach to our stomping grounds. There’s a pullout in the BroDen or an extra bunk bed in the room at the top of the stairs (watch out, it’s covered in tomato paste).

So for our readers curious about the logistics of our Olympic-preparation training center in Flagstaff, allow me to indulge you. We’re crashing in a quaint 22-bedroom (give or take) cottage at 7000ft about 10 minutes from downtown and NAU’s campus. Through a series of connections, we’ve managed to obtain use of most of NAU’s essential facilities on select mornings when the rest of the world is soundly sleeping. In the case of the two or three snow storms that have struck the area, we pile into our all-wheel-drive GMC Monstrosity and off-road it down to Sedona, which, at 4000ft, has remained clear for our running pleasure. Otherwise, Flagstaff is home to miles and miles of dirt roads, the ones that wind deep into the Coconino National Forest and leave you considering where you might stash that next dead body. The training effect is slow to set in; the first couple weeks at altitude leave you gasping for air as if you’d been gut-punched by the same guy that killed Houdini. I think everyone felt pretty out-of-shape to start things off but the adjustment to the thin air is now becoming evident. Today, for instance, we tripped it south through Oak Creek Canyon to our go-to running location near Sedona. Over the course of our progression run, I, for one, felt akin to Justin Gatlin, Tyson Gay, Juice Jacobs, Eddy Hellebuyck, Mary Decker, Lance Armstrong, Leonid Shvetsov, Rashid Ramzi, probably Taoufik Makhloufi, and Christian Hesch, among others... all athletes who have taken advantage of the extensive aerobic benefits that altitude training has to offer, of course. Except for Hesch, he plain doped. Point being is, despite struggling to hit times at altitude that we’re usually accustomed to running, it is great to find affirmation in the few runs we do where the oxygen is plentiful. I know we’re all hopeful to see big gains in our aerobic fitness with four weeks of training in Flagstaff. We’ve sacrificed our sanity, certainly any shallow friendships we may have built prior to coming here, and the busy social lives that Greenville cultivated. But with those sacrifices comes the opportunity to say with full confidence: “Arizona, huh? Yeah, I was there once. That’s the state next to the one where they did ‘Breaking Bad’ right?”

-jackie b.

Dear Mr. Henshaw,

Here we embark, on this, our third week at the Flagstaff compound. Our second week without The Chad. In the last 15 days we’ve made at least 10 trips to Safeways, 3-6 trips to Michael’s and/or Jo-Ann Fabrics, and went to no less than 7 stores looking for a turkey baster and meat thermometer on the Thanksgiving day.

We’ve watched too many hours of football. Had not enough hours of crafting. My hair is slowly dreading itself. And much like Mama Kitty, I miss my precious cat fat Nurmi.

And together have run miles on miles on miles of beautiful Flagstaff runs.

But anyway, here’s some gifs with mediocre captions!

a tasty of some beautiful flagstaff tree ice

my favorite, the furman elite pre-run stand

some pre-run lady skips in the tire tracks

exciting crafting blanket gif

 craigers & femezy pong skillz

sitting down to watch football! and/or gopro videos

how we do the cleaning

 post endless-thousands buffalo time

aannndd finally, an out of context shout-out to the Furman teams

on their double SoCon wins

Until next time, 

The Bag Lady / @nicolebbush

Rally Point

             “To live is to fly, all low and high/ So shake the dust off of your wings and the tears out of your eyes”
                                                                                                                   --Townes Van Zandt

 As Furman Elite set out for an early morning threshold session, the first of the year, Jeff looked up into the clear October sky and declared it a great day to be alive. Two months ago, I woke up to one that surely wasn’t.  

            Right before noon on August 24^th, I was in Athens, GA crawling from an air mattress on the floor of a duplex, reeling from a late night and ears ringing from a Drive-By Truckers concert.  After the show, the Gilmer boys got word that our beloved 14 year old golden retriever was in end -stage renal failure—I pressed my father to euthanize her as soon as possible and resolved to stay in Greenville, having long accepted the realities of her advanced age. John, my identical twin, had taken it a bit harder, shedding a few tears outside of the Georgia Theatre. We were going to lose our childhood friend, but it was ok.  It was ok until John received a call that would change our lives.

As I filled my Gatorade bottle with water, I didn’t hear his phone ring—I only saw him bouncing on his toes, carving a path into the carpet, eyes narrowed, as if focusing on something far off but rapidly approaching, mouth downturned, strained. I could almost taste the metallic pang of fear in mine. Within seconds the urgency of his voice matched the lines in his face, “Wait, calm down. Wait, what?” Grasping like a drowning man at the side of a lifeboat, I pleaded with my brother,“Who is that? What’s happening? John, what’s happening?” Unmindful, his eyes widened.

 “Patrick, are you sure? Ok. Ok.” He stopped, pivoted toward me, and shared the vision, now clear and monstrous: “Clint shot himself.”

One of our oldest and closest friends, a former high school cross country teammate, had committed suicide earlier that morning. It’s still difficult to even write the line, let alone countenance life without someone with whom I had expected to share a great deal of it, but in that moment, I saw the grim realization in my twin’s face, a twisted mirror of the trauma that would soon be my own. I paced in a tight circle, taking the phone from my brother to hear for myself from our inconsolable “triplet,” Patrick, also a former teammate. I aged years in the hours that followed, as we notified our friends and family. I didn’t weep until I finished one last call, to the home phone number that I had memorized long before cell phones did it for you.

As I write this, I still have Clint’s number in my phone, as if I can somehow recall him to life if I preserve the mundane traces of his existence. It’s hard to read our text conversations. That’s where he doesn’t feel so distant. Maybe he can get off work to go fishing this weekend. Maybe we’ll just have to get lunch. The vague, lingering sense of unreality lives in an iPhone.

I got a call the next day and knew in my heart what it was about: I had already begun writing the eulogy. His father’s voice cracked when he asked me—only if I were comfortable—to say a few words, the words that a parent never could. He wept before I could finish telling him that I would love to talk about his boy. I packed a black suit, a week’s worth of clothes, and my running shoes and headed south on 85.  I bought a Beach House album and played it on repeat until I cleared Atlanta. I didn’t stop driving until I hit empty. I forced myself fix a dinner plate after I pulled into our driveway in Mobile. I hadn’t eaten a proper meal in almost 24 hours.

          
          My twin and I, always better together, found the right words to honor our friend and finalized the eulogy as we cared for our dying dog. Our old 5A state championship team gathered at our high school track and swapped stories late into the night. The next day, I pretended that facing a packed chapel was no different than toeing a starting line and finding courage in the face of doubt, strength amid pain. The unspoken lessons of an unforgiving sport that often demands more than you believe possible to offer kept my voice steady and clear. They helped me to hold a sobbing mother and to tell a 12 year old how proud he made his big brother. And like one 400m repeat past the breaking point, we woke up the next morning and put Honey to sleep. I carried her cradled and wrapped in a blanket into the vet's office and closed her eyes when she was gone.

         But those days were only the beginning of my battle with grief, a near-constant retreat. As an athlete, it affected my body in ways that I couldn’t have imagined: I lost sleep, my joints hurt, my head throbbed. They were the phantom pains of mental distress, as real as any physical ailment, but impossible to pin down. Easy runs became a chore and resisting the urge to crawl back in bed a daily struggle. I surveyed my previous season, one of both incredible progress and incredible disappointment, and wondered why I was even trying to rise above my station any longer. The gap is too wide; the times are too fast.  I delayed my return to Greenville, one day at first, then another, then a week. I stopped preparing for the LSAT, then I stopped reading, then I stopped writing. As life turned mechanical, the most important gears ground to a halt. By September, my family, close friends, and running were the only things keeping me from an emotional breakdown.

        

          Suicide is a complex and terrible thing, one that few are quick to discuss openly. It’s easy to recite the platitudes of grief as if a rosary, to cling to them just the same, but it’s far harder to meet this sort of bereavement in full stride. It places you in open dialogue with your own mortality in a way that accidents or illness never can. A freak car accident, a sudden heart attack, a terminal cancer—actuaries might call them “acts of God’—are perhaps easier to accept, though never easy.  Such were my uncle’s death by pancreatic cancer and my grandfathers’, both by heart failure. We carve space for the vagaries and contingencies of life and the inevitability of death, but we seldom make provision for self-destruction. When it happens, you can speculate about true intentions and mental illness, search for mitigation in toxicology reports, construct a narrative and try to ignore the bits and pieces that don't fit. But there is no process, no protocol: grieving a suicide is intimately personal and often tragically solitary.

         There is no getting over loss, only living with absence. I feel guilty. I feel angry. I wonder when long becomes too long. I fear a time when his death may become a convenient alibi for my own anxieties and fears, my excuse to again retreat from life.

Most of all, I miss my friend.
       

          There isn't a happy ending or silver lining to this story, only a new beginning to my own.  To carry a legacy of life, not of death, of gain, not of loss, is the final charge.  If you ask me how I’m doing, I’ll probably say that I’m doing alright, and that’s good enough for now. What better way to live and to heal than to chase down some dreams with a remarkable group of athletes and coaches. The retreat is over, and I'm not taking another step back. 

It’s great to be alive.

Sincerely,

Lee Gilmer, 10/24/13


P.S. Congratulations to the Furman men and women for their performances at the SoCon Championship—It was a privilege to watch you fight for every spot and make history down in Birmingham.

The Blueprint

Let me first introduce myself. My name is Wilkerson Given. I am from Birmingham, Alabama and I graduated from Furman. Growing up in the south, I have always loved the outdoors and Alabama football. I do not, however, eat most southern food, which is probably why I’m still alive. Although southern food is great and my mom has the best recipe for cheese grits in the world, I don’t eat it. I am also not a heart breaker.

            

My decision to want to pursue post collegiate running came midway through my senior season. After a hard working summer and fall cross country season under the direction of Coach Gary and Coach Neal, my appetite to compete and succeed grew tremendously. Although I have always had a competitive nature, seeing how consistent hard work in the right direction can pay off really made me want to continue and push to be the best I am able. Starting a new event my senior year also generated excitement and the possibility for big improvement. Thus after talking to Coach Gary and expressing my desire to go catch my dream (chasing implies you will never reach your goal), he kindly took me into the group. 

            

Alright, enough about me. Let’s talk Furman Elite and briefly about what is up with the FBS and FCS (Furman is in the FCS, otherwise no one cares). Furman elite is having a great year so far. Having recently moved into the heart of fall training after several weeks of buildup, the group is working hard and getting focused. With the increase in size of the group, the intensity and passion is undoubtedly more palpable. Every person (or dog, what’s up Brail) in the group brings something uniquely positive and when added together, great things are bound to happen. As they say, there is power in numbers. This year is looking to be unbelievably believable.

            

As for college football, things are looking up as well. Furman put up somewhat of a fight against LSU and Alabama is in their rightful place in the rankings. The second place position, however, is open for debate. FSU? Oregon? Ohio State? Doesn’t really matter but if it were based on band prowess, Ohio State would be a lock. That band is incredible. I am certainly hoping for an Alabama, Ohio State title game but everybody in the country loves Oregon so whatever. 

On to the next one,

Wilkerson 

"In This Great Future You Can't Forget Your Past"

When I look back on my collegiate running career at Michigan the word that comes to mind is tumultuous.  My first 3 years were injury riddled and marked by more failure than success.  Thankfully, as the Michigan program transitioned to coach Alex Gibby, I went through my own transformation.  With coach Gibby's help I returned to relevancy during my final 2 years of college.  With a final push in a Michigan singlet I resurrected my career and capped it off with a Big 10 title, an NCAA runner-up finish, and an Olympic Trials steeplechase final effort. Thanks to these performances it was an easy choice to continue running. 

Now it was time to decided where to continue running.  I could move back to my first love, New Jersey, but staying focused there is like being a kid in a candy store. So I took coach Gibby up on his offer for me to train under him in Ann Arbor.  This was not an easy choice seeing as I had never really felt at home at Michigan.  That being said, coach Gibby and I were really clicking and so I stayed and had a pretty good year on the professional circuit doing road and cross country races. During track I battled through injury to salvage an 8th place at USA's in the 3k steeple. In the end it was clear to me I had to find a happier home with more support and structure.

I decided to give a call to coach Robert Gary and coach Chris Neal to see if they were interested in having me be a part of Furman Elite.  After coming on a visit and hearing about all the great aspects of being a part of the group I was sold.  Now here I am living along side some supreme talent from across the country, and globe.  Furman Elite feels like the home I have been looking for all these years.  Being a post-collegiate runner is hard, but having people around me that are in the same situation has so many advantages.  I am confident we will all succeed here and that I will be happy for the long term.  I have great teammates, an insightful and motivated coach, as well as the support to live and train without a "real job."

I wouldn't have gotten this far without so many people believing what I am doing is meaningful.  And now I have Furman Elite to thank for this next phase in my career, one that will be lengen...wait for it....dary!

-Craig

I've got a good feeling about this.

As a collegian, nothing quite lived up to the feeling of my first ACC title. Crossing that finish line first not only validated all the hard work I'd put in- it raised the bar for the rest of my career. It made me truly believe that I was one of the best. It felt amazing. To make it even better, I won that race on my home track in front of our awesome fans at Virginia Tech's Rector Fieldhouse. My friends and teammates lined the outside of the track urging me on. My mom, though she nearly fainted, got to see my special moment up close. 

Two months later at the Virginia Tech Sports Banquet, a highlight video closed the ceremony. Included was a clip showing the last 50 meters of my ACC Mile title and my celebration with my coach afterward. I sat in a room with my fellow student-athletes, coaches, and faculty members watching the biggest win of my career on a giant projector screen. To say I was elated would be a strong understatement. It was truly an incredible moment I will cherish for the rest of my life. 

That moment, along with several other facets of collegiate athletics, made my decision to pursue professional track and field difficult. The thought of possibly never experiencing such jubilation made me view post-collegiate competition with less excitement than I had hoped. 

This past weekend, Furman President Dr. Carl Kohrt hosted Furman Elite, the Furman men's and women's cross country teams, and several contributors to the programs for dinner and a short presentation. At the conclusion of this wonderful evening, a video chronicling Furman Elite's journey to the U.S. Championships this summer played on the projector. As I watched my teammates have their hard work and accomplishments displayed for the audience, my thoughts drifted back to my time at Tech. I began to wonder if perhaps my doubt in post-collegiate athletics was misplaced- maybe that same excitement can be recreated, even one-upped. Perhaps this special environment here at Furman can produce that cohesiveness that filled college running with such wonder. And with that, I leaned back in my chair and smiled, content with where I was and ecstatic about the things to come. 

In the end, I know that this is insignificant. We're aiming for big things down here at Furman Elite. Certainly much bigger things than seeing ourselves on a big screen. But that night showed me that I'm in a truly special place. One where my accomplishments won't go unnoticed. Where I can step on the starting line and know I have a whole community urging me on. Where my efforts will be multiplied by my teammates to form a whole greater than the sum of its parts. And that's all pretty damn good. 

-Michael

Newbie Post #1

Furman Elite:

Furman Elite is back in action! After a summer of travel, adventure, and racing, the current 10-person roster is back in Greenville and gearing up for a jam-packed 2014 season. With six returners and 4 newbies, Furman Elite 2.0 is already hitting the trails and ready to roll!

The original Elite-- Nicole Bush, Heidi Gregson, Jeff See, Corey Leslie, Jack Bolas, and Lee Gilmer-- are joined by steeplechasers Wilkerson Given, Craig Forys, Stephanie Garcia, and 1500m stud Michael Hammond. Over the next few weeks, the new faces will introduce themselves to you (be prepared-- this blog is going to blow up with content!), but for now, a brief overview.

Wilkerson Given is a Furman University grad and known to the Elite as the blonde-haired, blue-eyed heart breaker. He's a strong, silent type, but under the Elite training, he's destined for steeplechase greatness. 

Craig Forys is a Michigan grad, a Georgia football fan, and owner of the cutest dimples you'll ever see. His quest for steeple success is going to thrive under Furman coach Robert Gary and alongside training partner Corey Leslie! 

Stephanie Garcia, 2011 University of Virginia grad and New Balance athlete comes to Furman ready to re-embrace the elite lifestyle. After a stint in Tennessee and in the Midwest, this wanna-be Southern belle is already thriving on South Carolina soil. The female triumvirate in Furman Elite is poised to take the world by storm!

And last, but certainly not least (although he's a Virginia Tech grad), Michael Hammond is already beloved in the Greenville commenty (he works at Fleet Feet-- swing by and say hello!). He comes to Furman with arguably the most potential of the new crop o'athletes, a sweetheart smile, and a championship attitude. 

The infusion of new blood into Furman Elite is exhilarating and exciting… from a newbie's perspective, at least. The prospect of creating one of the most dominant training groups in the country-- all thanks, of course, to the generosity of the University and its supporters and the prowess of Robert Gary-- is over-the-top thrilling and the prospect to send multiple members of the group to represent the USA in world championships and major competitions is surreal. We're all ready to put in the work, the hours, the passion, and the dedication to make Furman Elite the most successful group of post-collegiate athletes in the world… time to get to work! 

love,

stephanie marie