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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Applied For
Nick Symmonds––
Life Outside the Oval Office: The Track Less Traveled
p. cm
ISBN 978-1-935270-32-4
1. Autobiography 2. Sports 3. Running I. Title
2014
Copyright 2014 by Nick Symmonds
All Rights Reserved
including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Printed in the United States of America
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“I shall be telling this with a sigh, Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”
––Robert Frost
Dedication
This book is dedicated to Coach Sam Lapray. Without his never-ending love and support very little of this would have been possible.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Resources
Acknowledgements
About Nick Symmonds
Foreword
The first time Nick Symmonds came onto my radar was in Indianapolis, Indiana. Nick had just graduated from Willamette University and was at the USA Outdoor Championships. He gave a fabulous performance for a Division III kid in the men’s 800 meter. I was very impressed, and arranged to have someone introduce me to him. I knew I was leaving my current coaching position with the Nike Farm Team in Palo Alto and helping start Nike’s Oregon Track Club in Eugene, Oregon, near where Nick had gone to school, so I asked if Nick wanted to train with me.
While I had been impressed with his running, I didn’t know then about Nick’s tremendous heart to be a winner. Nick Symmonds is a very hard worker. From weights, to flexibility, to distance running, to speed training, Nick always gives more than 100 percent. He also has enough sense to know when he needs a break and then he goes fishing. That balance makes him a better runner, and the first time I saw that was at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene in May of 2007.
I met Nick in June of 2006 and he was training with me by September of that year. The Prefontaine was Nick’s first really big race and it is held every year at historic Hayward Field. I’ll let Nick tell you more about the field. On this particular day there was a gigantic crowd and Nick was running against a really great field, including Russian Olympic gold medalist Yuriy Borzakovskiy.
At that time, Nick had a problem of hanging too far back in his races before his big kick across the finish line. “You can’t do that in this race,” I said. “These runners are the fastest you’ve ever met. You have to be close.” So the race goes off and there’s Nick, with 200 meters to go in an 800 meter race, not last, but close to it. With 150 to go I see he’s gotten himself boxed in and that’s usually the end of it for a runner, there is no way to get out of the box to pass other runners. But somehow, Nick found a way out and kicked down the stretch and won the field.
Nick took his victory lap and did his press interviews. All the time I’m standing on the warm-up track waiting for him. After thirty or forty minutes he comes running up. “Wasn’t that great?” he asked. “Wasn’t that a great race?” I looked at Nick for a split second before I grabbed him by his shirt. “You didn’t listen to me, Nick. You still hung back.”
The look on Nick’s young face said it all. He learned a big lesson that day. Even though he got out of the box and went on to win, he could just as easily have remained trapped between runners and finished toward the back.
It is no secret that Nick has a brilliant mind. Anyone who has ever met him knows how intelligent he is. He has also surrounded himself with some really good people and has a supportive family. Nick’s one weakness, though, might be Mortimer. Mortimer is Nick’s pet rabbit. You’ll find out in the book how Nick came to get this rabbit, but I don’t think when Nick first got Mortimer that he knew he’d actually like the rabbit. But he did. Nick used to bring Mortimer to a lot of our team events, such as photo day. Half the time when Nick was driving around town running errands there Mortimer was in the truck riding right alongside Nick.
The men’s 800 meter race is one of the most competitive, and this is true around the world. Over the years, Nick Symmonds has been very, very consistent at the top of this race. He has been a national champion and so far has twice gone to the Olympics. Looking into the future, I believe that when it is time for Nick to hang up his track shoes, as impressive as his career has been (and still is), Nick will be remembered as someone who was never afraid to speak when he believed in something. So many people are afraid to say something, but Nick is definitely not one of those people. I know you’ll enjoy reading about several ways Nick has broken industry barriers, just by speaking up and out.
I also know you’ll appreciate reading about Nick. I think he is a wonderful man and I am honored to have been asked to be part of his book.
Coach Frank Gagliano
July 2014
Introduction
It’s a warm summer evening in 2008, and I stare down at the familiar rubbery surface of a running track. I am twenty-four years old and have spent thousands of hours on tracks just like this one. This particular track is a beautiful shade of red. It looks like most others: flat, rounded at the ends, with eight equally wide lanes.
I keep my gaze down, and am fixated on the soft, red surface, afraid to look up. I know if I do, what I see will cause my adrenal gland to dump a large amount of adrenaline into my system and send my heart racing. I want to save this adrenaline for the fight I am about to take part in––a fight for which I have been preparing for a decade.
As I stand nervously and shift my weight back and forth, I decide to look up to the sky, another familiar sight. The sun has descended past the horizon, but a brilliant sunset helps light the stadium. Large floodlights add to the quickly fading sunlight and set the mood.
I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths to calm my nerves and I feel my heart slow down inside my chest. My body begins to feel entirely at peace, when suddenly I am shocked back into the moment by a loud voice booming through stadium speakers. The voice is calling my name. I can no longer ignore my surroundings, so I open my eyes and look.
Around me are twenty-three thousand screaming spectators. Many are friends, some are family, and there are those who would very much like to see me fail tonight. The roar of the crowd is deafening and reminds me that the following two minutes will be two of the most important of my life.
I am at the 2008 Olympic Trials for track at Hayward Field in Eugene, Or
egon. I have spent ten years preparing for this race––a race that will decide which men and women will represent our country at the Beijing Olympic Games.
Though my shaggy hair and nervous fidgeting suggest I am nothing but a young boy who is in over his head, the bulging, sinewy muscles of my legs suggest otherwise. Furthermore, what cannot be seen is the blood running through my body, being fed oxygen by my large lungs and pumped by my powerful heart.
In both a literal and metaphorical way, this heart of mine has carried me from obscurity all the way to this championship starting line. Though many people have told me a short, stocky, white kid from Idaho will never make an Olympic team, my heart has always said otherwise.
Now it is time to find out who is right.
1
In one of my very first memories I am five years old, watching my little sister run for the first time. My sister’s name is Lauren and she is exactly twenty-seven months younger than I am. I watch as Lauren stumbles from the security of our mother’s arms down the hallway to the door that leads to my parents’ bedroom and back. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it is very prophetic that this should be my earliest memory: my mom crouching next to me, and my sister doing laps around the house in her diaper. These are two of the people most close to me and it makes sense that this scene would cement itself in my mind.
The only person missing is my dad, Jeffrey, who I am equally close to. No doubt Dad was at the hospital where he has practiced vascular surgery for the past three decades. Every day, Lauren and I waited patiently, playing games with our mom until Dad came home in the evening. Our favorite game was to attach ourselves to his ankles as he came through the door, using his size twelve shoes as our seats. As my dad’s long, bowed legs walked toward the kitchen where Mom prepared dinner, Lauren and I flew through the air, giggling.
As I grew older I thought my family was a bit of a cliché: two parents together and in-love, two kids (one boy and one girl) and a few pets. We sat around the dinner table most nights enjoying a home cooked meal and sharing the events of our day. Now that I am grown up and have moved out of that wonderful home, I can appreciate how rare and special it was. I was surrounded by never-ending love and support as I strived to impress the people I loved most––my family.
Since then, as I have traveled the world, I realize that I was born into a truly fortunate family. We were not overwhelmingly rich, but we were far from poor and my parents made sure that my sister and I never wanted for anything. Though I often took this for granted as a child, I now understand the sacrifices Mom and Dad made to ensure that I had everything I needed to be successful in life.
My mom, Andrea, was born in southern California, the youngest of four children. She spent her youth, as many California kids do, playing on the beach and life guarding at the local pool. She is a classic California beauty with blonde hair and brilliant green eyes. Though she only stands five foot three she seems much larger (and scarier) when she is mad. This seldom happens, though, as the majority of the time Mom has a huge smile on her face and enjoys everything life has to offer.
After high school Mom attended the University of California-Irvine where she majored in theater. Though she went on to pursue a career in teaching, Mom has always viewed the entire world as a stage. Whether at dinner with family and friends or at her job as an English teacher at the high school I attended, my mother has an incredible ability to make people feel welcome and engaged, both in conversation and thought.
On the other hand, Dad, who is quiet by nature, can sometimes seem intimidating. The son of a doctor and the youngest of three children, he grew up in Rochester, Minnesota. At six feet even, his dark coloring and sharp features reflect the Cherokee blood found on his side of the family. He has tan skin stretched taut over long muscles, and is so lean that you might assume he is an endurance athlete of some kind. In fact, Dad rarely works out––aside from climbing the hospital stairs dozens of times a day to visit patients, or puttering around the twelve-acre farm in Boise, Idaho where my sister and I grew up. Dad also has a deep voice that he uses to speak with knowledge and eloquence. My quiet, introverted dad could rival the most gifted orators.
Dad attended Colorado College as an undergrad and went on to earn his MD from Duke University. When I listen to Dad dictate medical charts, the words and terminology he uses sound as though he is speaking a foreign language. He is the epitome of Midwestern stoic, so it can, at first, be hard to know what Dad is thinking, though he loosens up considerably after a couple of beers.
My parents have been married thirty-three years and are still very much in love. People say that opposites attract, and my parents are a good example of this. Though they are very different in their personalities and interests, they balance each other well. Where Mom is tender and full of emotion, Dad is more even tempered. My mother is a lover of the arts and claims that math gives her a headache, while my dad still remembers his calculus and could probably list all of the known elements in order. They both, however, are encouraging and positive, and have supported my sister and me in nearly all of our endeavors.
Though neither parent was a professional athlete, both are athletic. Dad was a great hockey player growing up and in college, while Mom has been an avid swimmer and jogger all her life. When asked where I get my athletic abilities from, she laughs and swears it must have something to do with the fact that while pregnant with me she jogged until the day she gave birth.
My parents met in San Francisco in the late 1970s and many times I have heard, and been enraptured by, the telling of their meeting by my mother. “I still remember the first time I saw him,” my mother always begins. “He was tall, dark, and handsome, and he walked on these incredibly long bowed legs around San Francisco State Hospital where I worked as a ward clerk. The first time I ever laid eyes on him he had just stepped off the elevator onto my floor and I knew right then and there that he was the man I was going to marry.”
Dad usually allows mom to tell the story, but always backs her up with a smile.
My parents dated in the Bay Area for four years before getting married on May 14, 1980. Shortly after, my dad completed his medical residency and my parents moved from the hip streets of San Francisco to rural Blytheville, Arkansas. My father owed the US military several years of service for putting him through medical school, and the air force base in Blytheville was where he was needed. On their placement application form my parents listed Manila, Philippines as their top choice. There was a Manila, Arkansas not far from Blytheville, so I suppose the military thought it was close enough.
Needless to say, it came as quite a surprise when Mom and Dad found they were going to be stationed in the American South. While they found the other military families and the people of Blytheville extremely welcoming, they had just uprooted their lives from a major metropolitan city and felt the culture shock. Mom and Dad had weekly bowling nights and potluck dinners, but Mom felt something was missing. Apparently I was that something, and at six A.M. on December 30, 1983, she had an extremely cranky baby boy to keep her happy and busy.
The three of us finished our time in Blytheville and moved to Rochester, Minnesota shortly after my first birthday. My dad was to finish his residency at the Mayo Clinic––where his father had practiced medicine for thirty years. It was at this hospital that my sister was born.
Though we share DNA and were raised in the same home, my sister Lauren and I are very different. Where I have blonde hair and blue eyes, she has the dark features of my dad. I can be somewhat cynical toward the world and my sister, a social worker, takes it upon herself to change the world one child at a time. Her altruistic nature inspires me every day. One thing we do share, however, is athletic talent. My coaches like to joke that my sister, a multiple state champion in soccer and track, still has several years of collegiate eligibility that she never used. I have many fond memories of Lauren and me practicing soccer skills together, or racing our bikes. We were competitive in nearly everything we did and
I often wonder if my athletic talents would have developed the way they did without my little sister there to push me from an early age.
Not long after Lauren was born, my family relocated again, this time to Boise, Idaho where my dad joined a medical practice called Boise Surgical Group. I believe this move was important for my future athletic career, as Boise was the perfect city for a young athlete to grow up in. Its moderate altitude and never-ending possibilities for outdoor recreation had me active all the time. There was never a season where Lauren and I weren’t outside playing sports or enjoying the outdoors. The house we grew up in backs up to the Boise foothills, and during my high school days, I covered hundreds of miles on the hilly, single-track trails that criss-cross them.
When it came time for Lauren and me to go to school, my parents had a dilemma. Mom was raised Catholic and Dad Methodist. Though neither practiced their religion, they felt my sister and I should be brought up with some exposure to it. At the urging of my maternal grandparents we were both baptized into the Catholic Church. As Catholics ran most of the private schools in Boise, it made sense that Lauren and I both attend one of them. Early on, though, this presented a bit of a problem.
I began at St. Mark’s Elementary at the age of six and enjoyed school very much. Report cards typically read: NICK IS A BRIGHT AND ATTENTIVE STUDENT WITH A PASSION FOR LEARNING. ONE AREA HE COULD WORK ON IS CLASSROOM BEHAVIOR. NICK CAN SOMETIMES BE A DISTRACTION TO HIS CLASSMATES. Sounds about right.
I enjoyed most subjects, however our daily theology classes and weekly mass bored me to tears. I often told my parents this and they encouraged me to use it as meditation time. This worked well until fourth grade, when we were introduced to the catechism of the Catholic Church. This mind-numbing piece of literature spells out the tenets of the church and is pounded into young impressionable minds all over the world.
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