{"id":2166,"date":"2014-05-23T10:45:05","date_gmt":"2014-05-23T17:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/o2fitness.net\/o2\/?p=2166"},"modified":"2014-05-23T10:45:05","modified_gmt":"2014-05-23T17:45:05","slug":"on-the-edge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/on-the-edge\/","title":{"rendered":"On The Edge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"on-the-edge-mountain\"<\/a>A regularly occurring blog post from o2fitness athlete and author, Brad Rassler<\/p>\n

SO IT\u2019S MARIN COUNTY<\/strong>\u00a0in the 1960s, see, and there\u2019s this great\u00a0all-star distance runner\u00a0by the name of\u00a0Wes Holman. Wes was the pride of the North Bay; he was hungry and fast\u00a0and\u00a0he even qualified for the \u201964 Olympics in the 10K.<\/p>\n

Holman was poor. He spent all of his time training. Back in those days, there was no prize money, no shoe sponsorship, no endorsement deals. You ran as an amateur, and if you wanted to eat, you worked another job.<\/p>\n

Holman loved to race and he liked to eat, so he swallowed his pride and did what everybody did: He cashed in the\u00a0airline tickets sent to him by race promoters, pocketed the money\u00a0and drove\u00a0to\u00a0races. There was a name for it: shamateurism. Everyone knew what was going on, but no one wanted to name it.\u00a0Holman saw the hypocrisy in the practice and he tried to organize the running community press for\u00a0reform.<\/p>\n

Holman\u2019s arch rival, fearing that the roof of the fragile \u201cshamateur\u201d house would come crashing in, ratted him out\u00a0to the amateur athletic commission.\u00a0Holman was banned from running. He turned tail on the sport, moved far away from his home and tried to forget the past.<\/p>\n

Twenty years later \u2014 1984 \u2014 Holman returned to Marin to train for the Cielo-Sea, a brutal race from Mill Valley to\u00a0Stinson Beach by way of the summit of Mt. Tamalpais.\u00a0Wes\u00a0badly wanted to win the Cielo-Sea\u00a0for reasons that had quite a little bit to do with redemption.<\/p>\n

So Holman moved into\u00a0derelict dredge\u00a0floating in a Marin back bay, and gave it up for the Cielo-Sea.<\/p>\n

Sound too plot-riven to be true?<\/p>\n

Well, yeah. I\u2019m cribbing from\u00a0On the Edge<\/em><\/a>, a 1986 film starring\u00a0Bruce Dern playing Holman. I won\u2019t spoil the film\u00a0\u2013 you\u2019ll\u00a0have to see the movie to learn how\u00a0the film\u00a0ends \u2013 but the denouement proves a refreshing twist on the Hollywood comeback trope.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m nursing a crapped out achilles tendon and I\u2019m riding a bike when I\u2019d rather be running, so I\u2019m thinking about\u00a0On the Edge.<\/em><\/p>\n

Maybe there\u2019s been a time in your life when running served as a kind of sandblaster for the soul. You ran because you had to. You stripped your life to the quick, and your time on track and trail ennobled and enabled. If so, you\u2019ll love the film.<\/p>\n

\"John-Marley\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My favorite lines\u00a0all come from Holman\u2019s coach, Elmo, played beautifully by John Marley:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to teach you everything \u00a0there is to know about the Cielo-Sea\u2026and that\u2019severything<\/em>\u00a0to know.\u00a0I\u2019m going to take\u00a0your bloated carcass and teach you how to become a mountain racer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are three things about the Cielo-Sea. There\u2019s philosophy, strategy and training. Any one without the other two is worthless. You\u2019ve got to be an artist to take on this mountain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elmo on downhill running:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is where philosophy ends. This is pure religion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you run the downhills? I just put my foot out. As soon as I put my foot out, I\u2019m committed. You see, I have to find a place to land\u2026it\u2019s just like falling. The last possible moment you catch onto something. Now that\u2019s fate. It\u2019s crazy. But that\u2019s how you run the downhill, see?\u201d<\/p>\n

Elmo on\u00a0Holman\u2019s banishment from the sport and his attempts to do the right thing:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s politics in sports. There\u2019s good politics and bad politics. Just like the labor movement and every other goddam movement. You know that Wes threw away his chance to run in the Olympics because he had the balls to stand up and face the whole damn sports establishment and let them know that the rich set up amateurism so the poor couldn\u2019t play?\u201d<\/p>\n

Elmo\u2019s last bit of advice to Holman:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI want you to go out and feel the course. Burn the uphill and soar the downhill. When you burn, you say soar. When you soar, you say burn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Great to watch Holman burn while I cool my heels, and wait for a healthier day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A regularly occurring blog post from o2fitness athlete and author, Brad Rassler SO IT\u2019S MARIN COUNTY\u00a0in the 1960s, see, and there\u2019s this great\u00a0all-star distance runner\u00a0by the name of\u00a0Wes Holman. Wes was the pride of the North Bay; he was hungry and fast\u00a0and\u00a0he even qualified for the \u201964 Olympics in the 10K. Holman was poor. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":2256,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-2166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletes-blog","tag-brad-rassler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}