Follow Nick’s training @ http://www.strands.com/nsymm800

2008 Olympic Trials 800m champion; Two-time USA Outdoor runner-up (’06, ’07); 2007 USA Indoor champion; Seven-time NCAA Div. III Outdoor champion (800m, 1,500m)

I can still remember my first season of high school cross country with stunning clarity.  It was an exciting time as I embarked on a new chapter of my life.  I recall how those first few weeks of conditioning were brutal and I would go home every afternoon barely able to lift my fork at dinner.  However, each day after school I would throw on my beat up trainers and head to the track to meet the coach and find out what new form of torture he thought up for us.  At the time, I hated everything about running (except maybe the fact that the men’s and women’s team practiced together).  I hated the pain; I hated the way my body was always drained of energy and I didn’t like the coach telling me when to go to bed and what to eat.  But, the thing I remember hating most was the t-shirts we were given the first week of practice.  Now, I certainly don’t claim to be any kind of creative genius, but these shirts were the worst.  They were relatively standard issue: white, cotton and our school’s letters on the front.  But it was the quote on the back of these shirts that really rubbed me the wrong way. It read, “Our sport is your sport’s punishment.”  It was seeing these words and understanding their truth that made me realize how masochistic our daily endeavor really was.

To understand my feelings you have to know what led me to the cross-country team in the first place.  In the fall of 1998 I stood just over 5′0″ and weighed in at a whopping 95 lbs.  Up to that point, my sport and passion in life had always been soccer.  I dreamed of playing on the high school varsity team and perhaps one day in college.  However, there was very little interest from the head soccer coach in putting a pre-pubescent fourteen year old anywhere near the playing field when there was a good chance he would be obliterated by fully developed juniors and seniors.  Instead, it was suggested that I spend a season with the cross country team and work on my fitness so that when I returned a year later I would be more developed in my cardiovascular fitness and muscular strength.  This was tough for me to hear because I loved everything about soccer.  I loved the team, the games, even the practices.  In fact, I would say that the only part I did not enjoy were the times when we would mess up a drill or show up late to practice and the coach would actually PUNISH us by making us run laps.  So, imagine my utter disgust when I was asked to wear shirt advertising the fact that we were, as the coach put it, “running for fun!”  I thanked the team captains for my shirt and as soon as I was home tossed it in the bottom of my closet.

I continued to push my body to its limits each day at cross country practice and found myself growing stronger and faster and, of all things, winning races.  At first it was the winning part that kept me going.  I loved crossing the finish line in first, knowing that on that particular day I defeated an entire field of people in a physical challenge.  Of course, as a late bloomer, the cross country course was one of the few places where I could actually achieve such a feat.  For years it was the pure desire to win competitions that fueled my training.  Though I would dread the countless miles that I would have to log day in and day out to be great, knowing that the next competition was only a few weeks away would keep me going.

Then, somewhere along the line, everything changed.  I learned to love the training as much, if not more than the competitions. There was something incredible about going for a ten mile run and knowing that I had seen and accomplished so much, usually before noon!  Whenever I ran in a foreign city I would return to my hotel room knowing that few tourists saw the sights and places I had been; those out-of-the-way bike paths and trails that we runners eagerly search for the second we touch down in a new place.  Running a workout no longer felt like a punishment of any kind, but rather more of a challenge to surpass my prior achievements.  I got to the point where training had become so much a part of my life that my eating and sleeping cycles completely revolved around my workouts.  To this day, I live my life the same way.  I love to race and feel the rush that competition provides, but I have learned to appreciate the process and cherish the journey.