I plopped down on my mattress, the lower of one of the bunk beds, and took my first Spanish siesta. When I woke up it was late afternoon and there was a lot of noise coming from the common room. There, I found a dozen people sitting around a table drinking beer and wine, and laughing. Although people sometimes spoke different languages in smaller circles, everyone came back to English when they addressed the group. They invited me in and a young German-looking guy put a glass in my hand and filled it with a dark, rich red wine straight out of a box. I thanked him and told him I would pay him back.
“Don’t worry about it,” he shouted. “This stuff costs only one euro per liter here!” Then he shouted salud, and raised his glass to the ceiling. Everyone else echoed this word, raised their glasses, and promptly drained them.
“I can tell I’m going to like it here,” I said, and drained my glass.
The next week was pretty much a blur. Each evening started the same way. As a large group we drank wine, stumbled out of the hostel, found food, and then hit up a nightclub until three or four in the morning. I slept until noon, woke up and threw on my running shoes. I then headed into the unbearable mid-afternoon summer heat for a hung-over shakeout run.
“Man, you are crazy,” my roommates said as they watched me from their bunks as I laced up my trainers.
Our hostel was situated only a mile from one of the largest municipal parks in the world, the Casa de Campo. This hilly, desert terrain was full of wonderful dirt trails. It was also full of prostitutes. Daily, as I entered the park through one of the main gates, I saw several women in nothing but g-strings and heels. I ran by them, shirtless, and they whistled and shouted, saying something in Spanish that I didn’t quite comprehend. I kept my gaze on the road and wondered if it was rude to stare at their almost completely naked bodies. Or is it rude not to stare? Either way I remained nervous as I continued along my runs.
On more than one occasion I made a turn on a trail only to come across two people in what can only be called potentially embarrassing circumstances. Unabashed however, and in the midst of coital bliss, they smiled and sometimes waved. Do I look, or not look? I decided to just wave back and continue my run.
I relayed my stories to my hostel friends in the evenings and everyone laughed. Some of the guys adamantly wanted to see, and possibly meet, these prostitutes for themselves.
“So, you are like, a professional runner or something?” I was asked, often.
“Yeah, on Team USA,” I proudly said.
“Shouldn’t you maybe not drink so much and perhaps run more?” was usually their next question.
That was my opportunity to go into my pre-rehearsed speech about how I wasn’t sure I would ever have this opportunity to travel again and wanted to make the most of my trip. I told them I had just graduated college and more than anything just wanted to enjoy my summer. I knew that training with Coach Gags in the fall was going to be brutal and I wanted to be mentally rested when I showed up at his practices. Though I knew I wasn’t treating my body the way it needed to be treated for optimal performance, there would be plenty of time for that when I returned to Oregon.
Just as I had always loved coed cross-country practice, so did I love this coed hostel. Early on I made friends with a beautiful Argentinian girl who was staying at the hostel, too. We made out most nights, but found it impossible to find any alone time in our rooms, which were shared with five other people. On the second floor of our building was another hostel that rented out private rooms for twenty euros a night. On the last two days of her visit I splurged on a private room and finally got to enjoy some alone time with her. She didn’t speak a word of English, but it didn’t make too much of a difference.
Although I have been back to Europe every summer since, this first trip stands out in my mind as one of the wildest. Running fast was low on my priority list; having fun was at the very top. In fact, the only part of that trip that I remember as distinctly not fun was waiting outside the Russian embassy in Madrid for eight hours trying to get a visa to enter the country for my next race. Four hours into the wait, and not even half way through the line, I almost bagged the whole deal, but then I remembered Chris saying he had negotiated a two thousand dollar appearance fee for me if I ran in Moscow. I stayed put knowing how badly I needed the money.
When I finally had my visa in hand, I returned to the hostel to get back to the partying. Toward the end of my stay in Madrid, Lauren flew over to join me. She was studying at Gonzaga University in Spokane now, and was about to begin a semester abroad in Seville. During our lazy days at the cabin we had made plans to overlap in Europe and travel together for a few days. I met her at the airport when she landed and ran to give her a hug. Though I was enjoying my time traveling alone, I was relieved to see her. Lauren and I had already traveled together to many foreign countries, and trips were always more fun with her around. We caught a train from Madrid to Valencia where we enjoyed a swim in the Mediterranean and a large dish of paella, a native rice dish.
The next morning we caught another train to Buñol, a town due west of the city of Valencia. This tiny, sleepy Spanish village of approximately nine thousand people is known internationally for one thing: La Tomatina. This festival, which occurs on the last Wednesday of every August, brings thirty thousand people to the town for the world’s largest food fight. Dump trucks full of tomatoes drive in, pressing past the crowds to the town square where they dump their loads of produce. People from all over the world come to hurl tomatoes at strangers, and to have tomatoes thrown at them.
To Lauren and me, this was the party of the decade. The fight lasted several hours and when all the tomatoes had been thrown there was a river of tomato pulp running down the streets. When there was nothing left to throw, tourists piled back into trains to return to Valencia. Exhausted and covered in tomato juice and pulp, Lauren and I crammed into one of these trains.
The next day I walked Lauren back to the train station where she would travel to Seville. I hugged her good bye and told her I was proud of her for taking on a trip of this magnitude. International travel is tough, but living in a foreign country is tougher. I then headed to my train, which would take me back to Madrid where I would catch my flight to Moscow.
My experience in Moscow was very similar to that in Birmingham. I enjoyed representing my country and being around my teammates. The results were similar as well; I again finished fifth, with a time of 1:48. Considering I had spent the majority of the two previous weeks drinking wine, fornicating, and throwing tomatoes, I was rather pleased with this result. It also made me excited for the future. How fast can I run if I actually take care of my body?
As I showered in my hotel room after the race, I smiled while the warm water cascaded down on me. Just then there was a knock on my door. My smile faded as I wondered who was on the other side. I stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around my waist, but when I went to open the door there was no one standing on the other side. I looked, left, then right . . . and then down. There, at my feet, was a white envelope that had been slid under the door. It looked rather fat and had my name written on it in thick black ink. I reached down and picked up the girthy envelope.
When I opened it, my jaw dropped. Inside were twenty crisp one hundred dollar bills. I knew there was an appearance fee associated with this race, but I never imagined it would be paid like this! With just one day of work my net worth had tripled. Having never held this much money before, I felt paranoid. I looked around the room nervously, unsure of what to do with the cash. I ultimately decided to stash it in my computer case.
When I went to dinner I asked some of my teammates if they, too, had received envelopes full of cash.
“Oh yeah, it happens all the time when you compete in Eastern European countries,” said one.
“Best part is you don’t have to pay taxes on it,” said another.
I was no accountant, but I was pretty sure Uncle Sam was going to want a piece of this money, and said so. “I thin
k you are supposed to report all overseas earnings to the IRS.”
You would think I had suggested handing over their first-born child, the way my fellow runners looked at me. They burst out in laughter and began to tell me all of the creative ways to sneak cash back into the country. Some stuffed it in their underwear, others in the soles of their shoes. I smiled and nodded, then made a mental note to report my two grand to the government.
I have always reported my overseas earning to the IRS. I don’t do so out of any moral code or sense of patriotic duty. I do so simply because of a piece of advice Coach Sam once gave me. “You can default on a loan from the bank, you can cheat on your wife, heck you can even go bankrupt and you still stay out of jail,” he said. “But, if you cheat on your taxes you are gonna go to prison.” Never one to take a piece of advice from Coach Sam lightly, I made it a personal policy to never mess with the IRS.
That night in Moscow I had a great time with my track and field teammates. I asked them all the questions that had been on my mind about professional running, and learned all I could from them about life on the road. They told me that most of the meets held after-parties and that they all served booze.
The after party in Moscow was no different. On a table next to the food were several hundred shot glasses, all full to the brim with crystal clear Russian vodka. Every time I approached the buffet someone with the meeting grabbed me and, in very broken English, asked me to take a shot with him––or her. Not wanting to be rude I always said yes.
Many shots later I was spinning and stumbled back to my room. I managed a few hours of sleep before waking and packing my bags again. I then caught a flight back to Heathrow and realized I had a sixteen-hour layover. My flight back to the Unites States wasn’t until eight o’clock the next morning.
Tired of partying and in desperate need of a good night’s rest I made some calls to various airport hotels. The cheapest accommodation I could find was three hundred US dollars per night. Even though I had an envelope of cash burning a hole in my backpack, I simply couldn’t stomach the thought of spending that much money for a room I would, for the most part, be unconscious in.
I made a new plan. I was a brash, over-confident twenty-two-year-old professional athlete traveling through Europe. Surely I could find someone to share her bed with me tonight. I packed my backpack full of extra clothes, a toothbrush, and a new book, this one The World According to Garp by one of my favorite authors, John Irving. The two thousand dollars in cash remained tucked at the bottom of my backpack. I then put everything else in a locker that was available at one end of the terminal.
I made sure to grab my Team USA jacket as well, and then caught a train bound for downtown London. When I stepped out from the underground I found a brilliant September afternoon. The sun was shining and it was quite warm. I found the nearest park and lay down under a tree to read my book. I quickly fell asleep, but woke as the sun was setting. It was a beautiful evening, and I took a moment to watch several ducks splash in a nearby pond. I smiled and watched couples walk hand in hand as the light slowly faded.
As the sun set, the temperature began to drop. This reminded me that what I needed was food and shelter to get me through until the next morning. The first was easy to come by. I simply walked until I found a pizza parlor. I sat down and ordered a beer and a pie while I read. A few tables away a group of young people were speaking Spanish. I could pick up most of what they said, and every time I heard something interesting I picked my head up and looked their way. More often than not I caught the eye of a girl who was facing me. I smiled and she smiled back.
The table was made up of three girls and three guys, and I assumed they were all paired up. When one of the guys approached me, I expected to get chewed out in Spanish for smiling at his girl. Instead, he touched my jacket and, in perfect English asked, “Where did you get this?” I told him I was part of the USA track team, and that I was flying home from my last competition of the summer. He took a seat across from me and we chatted about running, traveling, and London. He then suggested that I join his table, and I gratefully accepted.
There was a seat free next to the girl I had been smiling at, and I grabbed it. Now, just a few feet away from her, I could see she was a classic Spanish beauty with dark eyes, dark hair, and dark, creamy skin. She was dressed in punk-ish clothes and had several piercings, including an eyebrow ring. I began to wonder if she was as wild in bed as her image suggested she was in life.
I let the group know that they should continue speaking in Spanish, that I understood most of what they said, but the guy who had invited me over said, “No. Because we are in England, we will speak English.” I’ve always liked that policy.
To show my new friends my appreciation for their companionship, I purchased a couple of pitchers for the table. We spent the next few hours talking, laughing, and pounding pints of British beer. I worked up the courage to talk to the beautiful brunette and found her name was Lucia. She was originally from the south of Spain, but was currently living in London to learn English. She was single, and when she spoke English it was with an accent that made me weak in the knees.
Lucia suggested we head to SoHo, part of London’s west side, for more drinks, and to find a club where we could dance. Although dancing is not my first choice of how to pass time, if a girl suggests it, and if I have enough drinks in me, I will own a dance floor. As if to test this policy, when we arrived at the club Lucia grabbed my hand and led me to the dance floor.
We spent the next few hours bar hopping, and downing gin and tonics. By the third club I leaned in to kiss her and she kissed me back. Making out in the middle of the dance floor she stopped, leaned into my ear and said, “Esta noche eres mîa.” Tonight, you are mine. I had no other sleeping arrangements, but if I had, I would have bailed on them to spend the night with her. “Claro que si,” I whispered back. Yes, of course.
At some point just before dawn we arrived at the apartment Lucia shared with several of her friends. Fortunately, she had her own room and we made good use of the privacy until an alarm on my phone went off signaling that it was time for me to get back to Heathrow. I kissed her goodbye and we exchanged email addresses. As I stumbled down into the nearest Underground station smelling of her perfume, and with a backpack full of Benjamins slung over my shoulder, I felt so grateful that I had chosen the sport of track and field, or rather, that it had chosen me.
9
The flight back to the United States was long, made even longer by my anxiousness to begin my new life in Eugene, Oregon. Not long after I returned home, I went to Coach Sam’s where all of my worldly possessions were located. I then loaded them into my car and drove the hour from Salem to Eugene blasting music, almost giddy with the possibilities that awaited me there. I no longer had to focus on school, or work, or fraternity stuff. Every bit of energy I had could now be put toward my new career.
As I rolled into town I played Lou Reed’s “Take a Walk on the Wild Side” on my stereo because in the movie Without Limits it’s the song that plays when Steve Prefontaine drives into Eugene for the first time. I was now officially living the life I had dreamt about for years.
The dream rolled on for several months as I got to know Coach Gags and his team at the Oregon Track Club (OTC). The team was comprised of roughly twenty men and women, many of us fresh out of college. Gags made it clear that his mission was to develop all of his athletes and try to get as many of us to the USATF Championships as possible. Ultimately, he had hopes that a few of us would make it onto the Olympic Team in 2008. He knew most of us were under contract with Nike (others worked odd jobs to help pay the bills), and that running was our primary focus, so he worked us hard.
Those first few months were also confusing for me, as the paperwork for my contract with Nike still had not come through. The seventy thousand a year that Chris had estimated I was worth ended up being a far cry from what I was eventually offered. I had indeed pigeonholed myself with Nike by telling the media I
was going to work with Coach Gags. Thus, none of the other shoe companies made an offer, eliminating any competition for Nike that could drive the price up. To add insult to injury, Chris found out that one of my old college coachs called Nike and told them not to sign me. According to my agent, he told them I was an arrogant little shit who couldn’t be controlled. Sounds about right.
These days I am often contacted by Willamette University and asked to donate my time and money to the school. Though I am grateful for the memories, the friends, the wonderful teachers, and the degree that I received from Willamette, I am reluctant to give them anything. I feel that Willamette turned its back on me when I needed it most at the end of my collegiate career. Furthermore, one of their coaches cost me tens of thousands of dollars in lost income with his telephone call to Nike. Several wonderful people at Willamette University have worked hard to repair the damage done to my relationship with the school, but I am stubborn and have a hard time forgiving a school that employed a coach who tried to sabotage my fledgling professional running career.
Fortunately, thanks to Coach Kelly Sullivan’s advice, I had chosen the best agent in the game. Despite the call from Coach Kendrick, Chris Layne was able to get Nike to commit to a contract. He was even able to get them to pay me retroactively for the summer months when I represented them in Europe. With a nice chunk of money coming my way and a loan from my wonderful parents, I purchased a small house in Springfield, Oregon, a small town just east of Eugene. I rented out my extra bedrooms to a couple of teammates and the three of us lived as frugally as we had in college.
Life was simple and I was happy. Very happy. A typical day began at eight A.M. One of us would make a pot of coffee and we proceeded to get fully caffeinated while watching a fishing or hunting show on TV. Practice started around ten and lasted several hours. Most days we covered anywhere from six to fourteen miles in our grueling morning sessions. Some days we had weight lifting after the runs. Always, we returned home exhausted and ate several thousand calories. In the evening we ran again or did some form of cross training. I had never trained like this before and seriously wondered if my body could withstand the workload.
Life Outside the Oval Office: The Track Less Traveled Page 9