by Julie Moss
I started training with David Lesley and his Magic Bullet team, the group with which I ran a swift thirteen miles the morning of my wedding. This motley collection of educators, scientists, and researchers loved to run, and then head off to work and positively influence young minds, or work on their vital projects. We shared a series of soul-forging and champion-building workouts, and I found myself feeling fresh and excited about attacking workouts again. It didn’t feel like competing either. I was just getting after it.
David Lesley is the only running coach I’ve ever had. He believed in my running and guided me as a pure runner, not as a triathlete who runs. Believe me, people make a distinction. “One of the things that impressed me right away about Julie is that she did not want to be known as a triathlete running a marathon. She wanted to be known as a marathoner trying to get into the Olympics,” David recalled. “She didn’t train with us all that much, but when she did, everyone was happy to have her. And I became really impressed with her work and her results; honestly, I did not see a 2:40-something marathoner in her at first. She made sure to hit the time and distance on every workout, and understood how precise I was about it. We ended up having three or four women doing 2:40-somethings.”
David and I built a bond that continues to this day. He is the perfect example of a coach whose belief in you precedes your belief in yourself, one of the greatest gifts a coach can offer. David’s strength was breaking down the numbers, not surprising, since he was the chair of the math department at San Diego State.
The Magic Bullets were very supportive of each other. We had some friendly, competitive rivalries, especially Sam Howland, Oonagh Bruni, and me. We met for Tuesday and Thursday workouts, and a long weekend run. On Tuesdays, we met at the Salk Institute for sprint intervals. One workout called for a series of two minutes of hard running with two-minute breaks. On another, we ran three minutes at roughly race pace, then one minute of sprinting, followed by three minutes at race speed, one minute of sprinting . . . tough stuff. On Thursdays, we’d go to the track and knock off mile repeats, which I learned to hate. The two-mile repeats on the roads served me better.
I trained with one goal: getting to the Boston Marathon, and running the Olympic standard of 2 hours, 45 minutes so I could compete in the 1992 Olympic Trials. In 1991, Mark and I headed to Boulder for our annual summer trip, where I ran extensively while he focused on Ironman. After we came home, I trained with the Magic Bullets. I wanted to run a 400-mile month over the winter, which I did, followed by these incredible sprint and interval workouts. A good example is the last big workout we did before Boston, a set of six two-mile repeats. We ran to a strict clock, starting a two-mile repeat every sixteen minutes. The faster we finished, the more rest we got. I finished in under twelve minutes each time, gaining roughly four minutes of rest. After that workout, I thought, “I’m ready.”
I made it into Boston with a well-placed phone call. Dave McGillivray was the technical director, so I talked him into bringing me out. There’s a lot to be said for street cred, since at that time, you normally got into Boston by one route—qualifying by time. A few years later, in 1996, David did such a good job with the 100th anniversary Boston Marathon that they promoted him to race director, where he’s since presided over a huge uptick in participation. In 1995, Boston had about 9,100 runners. In 2014, the “Boston Strong” year after the horrible bombing, there were 35,000 competitors (including the 8,000 who didn’t finish the tragic race)—and well over a million spectators. Every runner in 2014 can thank Dave and his team for standing resolute in the face of terrorism. They generated an atmosphere of such love, strength, courage, and support that competitors in that race still get chills when they think about it. One random fan told a finisher, “Thank you for making Boston smile again.” Dave still faithfully carries out his annual tradition of running the entire course after most of the runners have finished.
To qualify for the Olympic Trials, I needed to average 6:18 per mile. The course lent itself to a strong time if I didn’t push the first half too hard, which in Boston is a challenge: the first three miles are downhill, and it remains generally flat or with downhill tendencies all the way to Newton Lower Falls at seventeen miles. That’s when the four Newton hills appear, culminating in the infamous Heartbreak Hill at Mile 21. None of the hills are particularly tough on their own, especially for one who trained in Southern California and Colorado, but when you put them together over a four-mile stretch, after having already run seventeen miles . . . that’s why most Boston races are won or lost in the hills.
After Heartbreak, if you still have your legs, the experience is one of the most sensational in marathon—two miles of flying downhill, thousands of people screaming at you as if you’re the only person on the course, and then a flat stretch that takes you past the Citgo gasoline sign and Fenway Park. One mile to go. A couple of turns later—right on Hereford, left on Boylston—and you’re onto the final 600-meter finishing stretch along Boylston Street.
I had such a blast in Boston that I took Lisette back to run with me in 2004—her last marathon until the 2018 Paris Marathon, which we ran together. I even got cheeky with a guy at the top of Heartbreak, who looked like he was hurting. “Hey, where’s Heartbreak Hill?” I asked.
“We just came up it,” he said, huffing and puffing.
I smiled. “Okay. Thank you. Bye!”
That was my smart-ass way of letting off steam and lightening the mood. The atmosphere had become too somber. I could have said nothing, but it felt both lighthearted and even a little bit funny—to myself, anyway—to say that. I got my ten-mile PR on the first part of the course, breaking an hour, not surprising considering the layout. I slowed down in the hills, but I still averaged 6:24 per mile and ran a 2:47:19, just over two minutes off the qualifying standard. I was also the twentieth woman to cross the line. It was thrilling to almost become an Olympic Trials marathon qualifier. Maybe I was more than a triathlete who faded during the run . . .
I really wanted another shot at an Olympic qualifying slot, to race against stars like four-time Boston runner-up Kim Jones, Lynn Nelson, Nancy Ditz, Cathy O’Brien, forty-year-old Francie Larrieu, Lesley Ann Lehane, and others. Francie, six years older than me, made every Olympic team from 1976–92 at distances from 1,500 to 10,000 meters. She also set the world indoor mile record. (She would reach her fifth consecutive Olympics, placing third in the trials in 2:30:39.) That boggled my mind; how can anyone be so good at forty? Her reward was carrying the U.S. flag into the stadium in Barcelona for the opening ceremony.
I traveled to the Twin Cities Marathon in Minneapolis and tried again, but dropped out after twenty miles because I could not imagine hurting that much for another six miles. I didn’t have somebody that I could latch onto. I needed someone like David Lesley running by my side, encouraging me. I felt alone.
I couldn’t hold onto my pace. I’m not sure how much of it was physical, because I didn’t run the full twenty-six miles. I didn’t have the mental capacity to hang on. All it would have taken is one runner moving past and saying, “You’re doing fine! Let’s go. We’re on pace to run 2:45!” I had all my paces and splits written on my arm, but there were no more fast miles within me.
From this, I began to understand how powerful it is to give voice to somebody, to approach struggling runners and say, “Hey, you can do this. Just stay with me.” It picks up passing runners too. Simple acts of kind motivation in tough times work; that’s why we love motivational stories. I eventually did something bigger with this when Kathleen McCartney and I started the Iron Icons speaking series in 2013.
The level of pain also astonished me. On the surface, it makes no sense: why would an Ironman triathlete who sticks it out for ten or eleven hours in furnace-like conditions struggle with pain in a twenty-six-mile race that takes less than three hours?
It’s about pace. Marathon racing is much, much faster. At Boston and Twin Cities, I was running sub-6:25 miles, versus 8- to 9-minute miles in
the Ironman. With a marathon, I run at my very best, mile after mile, and then I have to summon even better miles to finish. A former top age-group runner and finisher of more than 100 marathons, sports journalist James Raia likes to say, “A marathon is a twenty-mile run followed by a 10K race.” I wasn’t ready for a 10K in Minnesota.
I didn’t completely abandon triathlons—at least not physically. Apparently, I was so checked out mentally that it took an afternoon of going through old race results recently to realize I’d made the podium in the Easter Island Off Road Triathlon and Margarita Island Triathlon in Venezuela in 1991. It was quite a Latin and South American year for Mark and me, since we also enjoyed a delayed honeymoon in Costa Rica that featured what we’d originally wanted in our post-wedding getaway—surf, sun, and relaxation.
If I felt burned out from racing after 1989 and 1990, it was small potatoes compared to how I felt after 1991.
By 1992, I was supporting the Virtuoso, which Mark had become. He was at the height of his powers. Between 1989 and early 1991, he put together a twenty-two-race winning streak, lost once, then won everything else in 1991—including his third straight Kona. He returned to Nice, where he’d won five times before taking two years away, and started another five-race winning streak.
After Nice, CBS needed someone to fly to London and do voiceover analysis with Phil Liggett, the future voice of the Tour de France on Eurosport (and NBC Sports Network). Would I be interested? I’d planned a trip to Italy’s Lake Maggiore with my brother, Marshall. We headed to Italy and had a great time, and then I caught a train to Paris and flew to London.
I sat all day in a production booth doing voiceover with Phil. After we finished, I hurried to a kiosk in the West End and bought a ticket to the musical Blood Brothers. There was a bit of time to kill, so I popped into a pub for a pint. When I walked over to the Phoenix Theatre, the street was cordoned off. Within two minutes, Princess Diana pulled up in a vintage Jaguar. Not bad for twenty-four hours in London!
The broadcasting experience was fun, something worthy of exploring in the future. However, Mark and I had other plans: starting our family. We aimed for a post-Kona delivery, so Mark could have maximum time with the baby and help me during his off-season. Unfortunately, I didn’t get pregnant right away. We rolled it over to 1993, and then it happened.
CHAPTER 14
Baby Grip Arrives
The pop woke me up. My water had broken, and our baby would arrive a couple of weeks early.
I was starting labor with a guest in our guestroom. A business associate of Mark’s came to town on Monday, November 15; my due date was December 1. He joined us for dinner at En Fuego in Del Mar, after which we strolled up to the Del Mar Plaza. On the way back to the car, a Braxton Hicks contraction fired across my abdomen, forcing me to grab the stairwell. As I crawled into bed a bit later, I felt Thanksgiving-turkey-with-all-the-trimmings full.
Finally, at age thirty-five, after postponing parenthood for my triathlon career, I was about to become a mother.
At 2:00 A.M. I called the Best Start Birth Center. An attendant told me to pass through labor at home and to check my temperature every hour. Since my water had broken, they wanted to rule out any chance of infection. Next, I called my mother, who had remarried and lived in Sedona, Arizona, with my stepfather, John. “Pack up and come over,” I said.
Our overnight guest departed about ten hours later. Mark and I walked down to nearby Cardiff Reef for a surf check. While scrabbling over the big rocks that protect the berm at Pipes Beach, our local break, my contractions began to intensify, closing in like wave intervals from a building storm.
When I talked to Best Start, they’d said to come in when contractions hit two to three minutes apart. By 5:00 P.M., fifteen hours had passed, and I was really ready to have this child. I put on my first and only maternity outfit, which the ever-trendy Lisette passed down. It consisted of stylish red pants and a top with colorful, embroidered ethnic designs. We’d just visited her, her husband, Ben, older son, Cyrus, and new baby, Mark in Bakersfield the week before, after spending the weekend at a retreat for Dance of the Deer, a spiritual group focused on Huichol shamanism that Mark had been following more deeply since his first Ironman victory. Before we headed back to Cardiff, she gave me the outfit.
Setty and I shared a healing ceremony at Dance of the Deer to bless and fortify our future pregnancies. After suffering through an ectopic pregnancy, which led to emergency surgery and fertility complications, she was unable to conceive for years and adopted her son Cyrus in 1990. Now she was pregnant—and protecting that pregnancy with everything in her calm, strong nature. “The reason why I did the ceremony was because Mark had a vision, which I really trusted, and he said by going through the ceremony, I would receive the healing that would help me get pregnant,” Lisette said. “I thought, why not? Julie and I both participated . . . and we both got pregnant.”
Our sons were born one month apart, Mark on October 19, and Mats on November 18. Setty’s busy life and high-risk pregnancy kept her close to home, while I remained in Colorado from late May until September. We raised our sons together, erasing any regret from not sharing our pregnancies more.
We arrived at the birthing center. The Best Start midwives examined me and gave me the thumbs-down. They said I was less than three centimeters dilated—still early labor—and sent me home. I couldn’t believe it. After contracting for seventeen hours, it’s like I hadn’t even reached T1, the first triathlon transition! Leave it to me, and the baby inside, to turn childbirth into a grueling endurance event.
By 2:00 A.M., a full twenty-four hours after labor set in, I was back on the phone, pleading with the attendants to readmit me.
They gave us the green light. I took the then-recommended two tablespoons of castor oil to promote labor, and we drove back to the birthing center. We brought along my ice chest, which I’d packed with the kind of solid nutrition you use when marathon or triathlon training. I made ice cubes out of Cytomax, and brought along GUs, lightly caffeinated electrolyte and protein packets that provide nice energy bursts midrace. Unlike most hospitals, the birthing center encouraged expectant mothers to eat to maintain their strength. No Snickers bars on this trip!
There was a problem though. Two tablespoons of castor oil can create havoc; it certainly did with me. During our ride to the hospital, I suffered from severe nausea and vomited all over my cute maternity outfit. So sorry, Setty.
I believed my participation in endurance events would help with labor. I was used to pain. I could tolerate and work through vast amounts of it. How much harder could having a baby be? I told myself that contractions were only ninety-second pain bursts with breaks in between, whereas races were nonstop pain. The effort of a ninety-second contraction would be no different than, say, a ninety-second sprint interval after already training for several hours . . . right? It would hurt, but the pain would subside. This mental approach calmed me throughout my pregnancy. How would it work now, twenty-four hours in, with the baby seemingly content to keep hanging out in my womb?
The baby clung to its final moments in the womb. The nurses put on a belly band and instructed me to start climbing stairs, which I did, repeatedly. I worked with the pain of each contraction as I walked, focusing on my breath with each push through. I could have done this all night, were I not so exhausted from lack of sleep. Finally, the midwives and I mutually decided I needed to lie down. If I got a couple of hours of good sleep, they said, I would wake up fresh and ready to rock the baby out.
Mark and I chose Best Start because it was the longest-established freestanding birth center in Southern California; these facilities were uncommon in the early 1990s. While physicians were on call, they did not actually practice in the center. We liked that. Deliveries were handled by midwives. Best Start also featured the Bradley Method of father-coached natural childbirth, and a water birth option. Our former housemate, Alana, gave birth in our hot tub, a phenomenal experience. However, Mark and I decided
that approach was a little too rustic for us.
We planned the pregnancy thoroughly. When we arrived at our second window of opportunity in February 1993, after not getting pregnant the year before, we conceived knowingly, the most intimate moment of our relationship. The baby was conceived on one of two nights. One was very moving and loving, the other completely silly and full of laughter. Much like Mats is today; he formed from the incredible energy and exchanged love of those two nights, and it helped define his essential self in a perceptible way.
I began my pregnancy like any good athlete: by squeezing in as much travel, competition, and training as I could, while I could.
Shortly after confirming my pregnancy, I lined up at the start of the Carlsbad 5000, the elite international road race held since 1986 on three major downtown streets of my childhood: Grand Avenue, Carlsbad Boulevard, and Elm Avenue (now Carlsbad Village Drive). The Carlsbad 5000 was started by the charming Steve Scott, the former American mile record holder, later the fine track and cross-country coach at Cal State University in nearby San Marcos. Steve also won the first Carlsbad 5000. Today, the race is billed as “The Fastest 5K road race in the world.” With Olympic and U.S. champions hitting times of thirteen minutes for men, and low fifteen minutes for women, you can’t argue. It was wild to see elites run this fast down the same streets on which we rode bikes and skateboards as kids.
