Martin Dugard's Blog, page 11

COACH CAREGIVER

I surprised absolutely nobody yesterday when I tweeted that I am going to continue coaching. It's been almost eighteen months since Calene was diagnosed with a rare cancer. You never know what's going to happen with a Stage IV situation. So as we got used to waiting rooms filled with other cancer patients and the wonderful nurses administering chemo, it just made sense to step away from anything that prevented me from focusing on getting her better. Spending two or three hours a day with a bunch of high school distance runners seemed like an easy thing to cut. I had a few quiet discussions to let people know my intentions, telling the school I was going to leave.

And I meant it. It was supposed to happen at the end of this cross country season. State Meet, end of season banquet, then BOOM, call it a career. Irish exit.

I've coached some sport or another since my oldest son, Devin, began T-ball at age five. He's now thirty-three. I fulfilled a lifelong dream when I began coaching distance runners in 2005. It's my belief that a writer can't — SHOULDN'T — sit at their desk ten hours a day. It's not mentally or physically healthy. Plus, having an appointment at the track gives structure to my work day. I know when I need to stop writing and get in the car to head to practice, where I stand in the sunshine, click a stopwatch, and yell at children.

If you've ever been a caregiver, you know there is nothing you can do to make cancer go away. The doctors do all that. Being a caregiver is exhausting because you desperately want this person you love so much to heal. But it's a mindset, not a task. As we got used to the chronic nature of cancer, with its frequent doctor visits, side effects, and startling way that it comes to feel normal, it became obvious I needed an outlet to make sure I was mentally strong. Day drinking is not the answer, nor is hovering over Calene to refill her water glass and retrieve her reading glasses. She's got cancer but she rides the Peloton, walks Dana Point Harbor, and goes to pilates a few times a week. She's incredibly badass.

I thought it was going to be a surprise when I told people I wanted to keep coaching. Didn't fool anyone. "I knew it!" was a common response. There were also the eye rolls from people who see the utter joy on my face as the sun rises over the track during a morning workout. This cancer thing isn't going away anytime soon and I'm pretty sure I'd drive Calene crazy if I hovered over her every minute of every day in my attempts to meet her every need. This morning, she even told me to stop talking about not coaching.

I keep wondering if there's a book in all this, but there's not. It's just life: cancer, coaching, and the constant search for hope.

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THE NEW "C" WORD

Saturday night at the Great Park. America's biggest cross country meet raced under the lights. Arrived at 1 pm and stayed until almost midnight. Usually, the Woodbridge Invitational competes late to avoid mid-September heat. This year, the weather was cool and damp enough that I put on a sweatshirt at 3 and kept it on until the bitter end. As those who know me will attest, I will find any excuse to wear a sweatshirt.

Thousands of competitors from more than a dozen states. So many spectators clogging the pathways that I felt I was at the LA Coliseum watching a college football game. The Santa Margarita squad ran well enough that the training was validated. Woodbridge is not my favorite meet because it's flat as a drag strip and the racing is just as scorching. I like real cross country, with hills and dust and tactics instead of a three-mile sprint (yes, there is such a thing). But it's great for procuring data because every team that matters in our state division shows up. I get to see who's fast and who's not. Helps me calibrate our training, which is why the first thing I did this morning is find online results and start comparing apples to apples with other teams. We're fifteen weeks into a twenty-four week season and last night it just got real. The Trabuco meet was for busting off the rust. Hawaii was a team-building getaway. But from now on I know what it will take to win State.

I printed out First Pass from Taking London yesterday before driving the ten miles to the meet. Brought my Yeti chair so I would have a comfortable place to sit beneath the team canopy and edit pages between races. I am good at shutting out the world when I work on my writing, so taking a pencil to the manuscript with the sounds of a race announcer over the loudspeaker, runners showing up for their races, questions from team parents, and the hubbub of a major sporting event don't bother me at all. I mentally transport myself back to London 1940, look for word repetition and sentences that make no sense at all (how did I miss those in the first place?), and the occasional chance to take a mundane bunch of words and turn them into something that makes my heart happy. There is no cognitive dissonance. Coaching cross country and writing books are something I do every day. Granted, writing is in the mornings and coaching is for afternoons, but combining them at a meet is no big deal.

The reason is competition.

I love to compete. I compete at everything. I compete even when people don't know we're competing — though I think they do. I wouldn't coach if it just meant showing up and being enthusiastic. I write because I love it but also because I want to be my best. I did a Zoom call with a book club out of Atlanta last week and they got me talking about writers I admire. I mentioned a few (John le Carre, Amor Towles, Jim Harrison, that author who wrote Lessons in Chemistry). But once we started talking writing I couldn't help myself. I talked about reading books and catching writers taking shortcuts, something that I only know about because I take the same shortcuts myself. Catching myself in the act, then discussing it out loud is like the sacrament of confession. Which can be very much a form of personal competition.

I once called competition the new "C" word because it scares people so much. And I still think that's true.

But at Woodbridge I watched normally laid back men and women scream at the top of their lungs for their child to run faster, to be their very best, as if their words could coax those young legs to run like Jakob Ingibritsen's. It made my night to see this primal human emotion and then the joy on the faces of parents and runners when they reunited afterward, one quite sweaty and out of breath, the others glowing with pride that their child had just pushed their limits. Not because their runner won, but because they dared. I assure you our runner who broke thirty minutes for the first time pushed himself into the unknown as much as the guy who went 14:20. Competition brings out the best in us all. Nothing to be scared of.

I got home at midnight. Calene waited up. We watched a little TV but I wasn't much fun, silent and exhausted, thinking about the pros and cons of the meet, while also thinking about a turn of phrase on page 102 of Taking London that needs to be sharper. It's a mystery I'm trying to unlock. Just like concocting the proper cocktail of workouts for my runners, I'll take those sixteen words and rewrite them until they say something special. It's the first time I've ever used the word "retinal" in a book, a technical term that can be ponderous but which I'm trying very hard to sound cool enough that it brings the reader straight into the moment. Look for it next June and let me know if it works. Most people don't think sixteen words out of 400 pages matter, but I'll know if it's not all it can be. Just like I know that a kid who runs fifteen minutes for three miles can run thirty seconds faster if I give the training enough love.

I tell my runners all the time that it's the little things that matter: sleep, hydration, stretching; making "retinal" sound cool AF, seeking out word repetitions, helping a clumsy sentence find its way, turning it into something as compelling as Clapton's "Layla" guitar lick.

So say three Our Fathers and two Hail Mary's and don't fear the new "C" word. Competition can be life-changing, one challenge at a time.

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THE NOTEBOOK

Flying home from Oahu.

I'm on the aisle. Callie has the window, eyes closed, wrapped in a blue United blanket. Somewhere in my carry-on is the notebook I bought in Edinburgh ten or so years ago. I can't remember which book I was researching. Might have been Killing Kennedy, but it was definitely a Killing book. Between 2010 and 2020 I didn't write anything else.

The plan on that trip was to land in Scotland, take the train down to the Lake District for a couple days hiking in bitter cold winter weather, then ferry over to Ireland for a swing-through research stops for the book. Yes, that means it was definitely Killing Kennedy, which would have been 2012. Because we spent a couple nights in Galway visiting the sites of a JFK visit he took months before his assassination. We pushed back to Dublin after that, swinging south first to sleep in Dromoland Castle during rainy February weather. I remember one particularly harsh day we ran on the golf course in a downpour then retreated to the castle's bar for an afternoon before a roaring fire, reading books, and eating an early dinner. Crab claws in a garlic broth. The fireplace was so near my clothes smelled like wood smoke the rest of the trip.

At the start of the trip, in Edinburgh, we visited a museum where I bought a cool spiral bound notebook. I have it with me now. It has an elaborate cover illustration of an old map of Italy, with the British artist Turner's journey in the nineteenth century highlighted. To make it more durable, a clear plastic piece protects that map and thus the entire contents of the notebook. I bought it because I love Turner's paintings, visiting his works at the National Gallery whenever I'm in London.

But the notebook is more than a cool souvenir. I decided to make it the repository of all my travel writing for that journey and every trip I have made since. Each page has a date and location, then description of how we spent our travels.

Sometimes it's exciting, like the Killing Jesus research in the Holy Land. My guide drew a map of where the old City of David was in comparison to the modern Jerusalem, which is still there on the page. Sometimes it's a nice description of a long walk in a cool place or some other romantic memory with Calene. A show. Lots of talk about food. Weather and smells. Sometimes I forget to write in the notebook while I'm actually on the trip, so I backfill when I get home. You can spot those sections pretty easily, because they're more of a summary than an in-the-moment description.

Sometimes I even forget to write about a trip at all, to my utter disappointment. More than any book, those journeys are the touchstones of my life. I go back through those pages now and then, picking a memory at random. Then I'm there, in an instant, the mood and the emotions and sights and smells and sounds of a trip brought come rushing back.

Wi-Fi is spotty over the Pacific, so checking Fantasy Football scores is out of the question today. So, once I finish this missive, I'm going to slide my laptop back into my new Thule backpack and slide out that dog-eared notebook.

I'll write about this week on the North Shore, running on the thick green golf course grass and sweating buckets in the coastal jungle that was once an Army Air Force Base in World War II. I'll write about the SS Bowfin on display down in Pearl Harbor, and my amazement at how small the inside of a WWII submarine felt. There's yesterday's race at the Hawaii Country Club, where my teams finished second (boys race and girls race), and one of my guys powered to an outright victory in the individual standings. The rain squall that came and went in sixty seconds while we lay on the beach yesterday. Sunsets, so many sunsets. And the 4:30 solo drives to Kailua, Calene staying behind in our bungalow while I drove the thirty-five miles to where the team was staying in Airbnb’s with the other coaches. Window rolled down. Utter darkness of a simple two-lane North Shore farm road with no streetlights. Live recording of Springsteen's August Wrigley Field concert blasting on the speakers — but not too loud, because something about volume seems to interfere with the other senses, blocking those tropical smells and how warm and humid the predawn air feels. Orion in the Southern sky a surprise, because I was unsure whether the belt would be hanging in such a low latitude. Then, after conducting that 6 am morning workout as the sun rose, hot black coffee from a roadside shack and then the two-lane road back in the other direction, that lovely blue Pacific which I had heard but could not see on the outbound leg lovely and waves whispering on my right.

I don't think I'll forget those drives any time soon.

I have no plans to publish that notebook, or return to those notes and craft some larger story out of them. It's just nice to know they're there. The notebook is only half full, those empty remaining pages reminding there's a lot more of the world to see.

And write about.

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ALOHA

Heading to Hawaii Tuesday.

North Shore of Oahu. My goal is to run every day on the jungle trails along the beach. Slow AF. Lots of humid tropical sweat. I'll set up my writing space at a table looking out at the ocean, like when I worked on Survivor. Something about the sound of breaking waves helps the writing process. Then I'll grab a book and spend the day reading. I won't wear shoes all that much.

The team is heading over to race an invitational. That's the excuse for going but this isn't what I'd call an important race. Just a great week of training in the tropics, a fun competition in paradise, then a Sunday flight home. The course is different from last year, when we raced in the valley where Jurassic Park and about a million other movies were filmed (Google: Kualoa Ranch).

I should also add that I'm researching Taking Midway, next up in the Taking series. You heard it here first.

Boarding the dogs. Dropping them at the kennel this afternoon. I'd rather wait until tomorrow but Wags n Wiggles isn't open on Labor Day. I'll miss them sleeping in my office when I write tomorrow. There's something about having a couple big dogs sleeping under the desk that brings a nice calm to the work.

Here's the rub: I don't really feel like taking a vacation. It's always like this. Calene gets into vacation mode the minute we step onto the plane. I need to get four days in before I start relaxing in a beach chair. I'd be lousy on a cruise. I don't know why I'm so bad at vacations. But I just am.

And yet, there's something about Hawaii. It's magical. Once I settle in, I don't want to leave. I start eyeing property, thinking a second home in the islands would be a great investment, knowing all the while that my family has a condo in Mammoth I barely use anymore. I actually go to London more often than Mammoth. But it's nice to dream about an easy getaway with waves, warm breezes, and an inspiring place to write. Some of my best book ideas have come on Hawaiian beaches.

Which is why I need this vacation. I'm reading a very good history book right now as research for Taking Midway. I like it a lot. I'm turning the pages. It makes me want to be a better history writer, which is the highest compliment I can pay a book. The level of research is amazing. But it's also typical "tell don't show" history, an assemblage of intriguing facts that doesn't put you in the moment. I prefer the action to be up front, drizzling in the facts as a by-product of good story. All of which is my way of saying that maybe a week on a beach thinking (but not thinking) about how to write a better history book is what I need right now. The best problem solving takes place, in order, on: 1) a run; 2) in the shower; and, 3) on a beach, preferably with an umbrella rum drink in hand.

Rest in peace, Jimmy Buffett. That last one was for you.

So it's settled. I'm going on vacation. I'll let you know how it goes.

Aloha.

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BOOK REPORTS

I get emails asking for writing advice. Everyone has a book in them and they want to know how to put theirs on the page. My response is always disappointing. There's no pixie dust. Just tell a story. If you get stuck about how to start, begin with "once upon a time." Write one page a day and in a year you've got a book.

But I never tell them about the book report.

I read a Cormac McCarthy quote after his recent death, something to the effect that his writing day started with a determination to be the best in the world but within an hour he knew he was falling short. I know the feeling. I'm still in the fun phase of Taking London, selecting photos, figuring out where they go in the manuscript (instead of a photo insert, we're placing them in the text), and generally letting the design people at Dutton do their magic. There's a lot to be done between now and the May 7 publication date but the actual writing of that book is over.

Instead, the McCarthy reference is relevant to the new project. There's a momentum to writing a book — a slow going for the first 10,000 words, followed by the ticking off of word count milestones: 20,000. Then 30,000. Then 40,000, which marks the downward slope to the finish. Most of my books come in at 80-90,000 words, but 40k is always halfway to me.

I'm at 20,792 on the new book. This is when the writing feels most workmanlike. The goal each day is to make progress. The writing is functional. This is what I call the "book report" phase.

Book Report is a Sisyphean time. It's when a lot of writers set a project aside because it feels like being stuck. Running in place. I find myself easily annoyed during the book report phase. I don't feel creative. The days feel repetitive. My comma placement and word choices lack inspiration. It can feel like typing, not writing.

I spice things up by changing locations, working out on my back porch instead of in my office. Whenever we have a cancer appointment, the laptop comes with me, too. The hospital Wi-Fi is weak but I can still do a fair amount of research. Sometimes I print out a bunch of pages and edit them over a beer at Board n Brew. Some people see me and ask if I'm a teacher. One guy assumed I was a lawyer. No one thinks that a guy with a stack of pages and a pencil, crossing out words and writing in the margins, is a writer. I have no idea why. Maybe we're a rare sighting, suburban snow leopards.

I was pretty average when I first began doing this for a living. Day by day, year by year, writing millions of sentences, I learned a craft. The process continues.

The "book report" may feel mundane but it's just as vital as the heady first ten pages and the frantic deadline crush. Soon enough, the book report turns into a book.

Then it's time to go back and start again.

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CHRISTMAS IN AUTUMN

Yesterday was the day.

There's a moment once a year when the sunlight shifts from hard direct brightness to a cool orange pastel. You have to know it when you see it. But from that instant forward the seasons begins turning from summer to fall. This year, the first sense of that shift came yesterday morning, down in Trabuco Canyon. My runners were making their way up Holy Jim Canyon on the fire road, a cluster of blue and white shorts and t-shirts.

Something in my senses detected a change in the landscape. I realized it was the way the sun hit the canyon walls, and with a start, a sense of happiness and anticipation came over me. That little bit of autumn light was gone in just a few seconds as the sun continued its rise — it's still August, after all — but the change has begun. My heart soared all the same, because now it's just a matter of days.

The turning light that marks the coming autumn means that cross country season is just a couple weeks off. I call cross country "Christmas in Autumn" for the daily dopamine hit. I like track but I love cross country. The season can break my heart while also delivering soaring moments of complete happiness.

The changing sunlight wasn't the first indicator. Big garden spiders have been weaving their enormous sticky webs in the orange groves and in the Japanese maples of my backyard. That web spinning doesn't take place until autumn. Don't ask me why. The start of the school year was another, less subtle, indicator. So is the change in our training — less aerobic and the first cautious tiptoe into VO2. Strength plus speed equals success. A runner can succeed on aerobic work and a daily hit of neuromuscular speed. But there's something about a good VO2 session that brings out next level competitive speed. I call it November speed, for championship season.

If you have a child who runs cross country or have ever attended a high school cross country meet, you have seen the emphatic cross country t-shirts: "Our Sport Is Your Sport's Punishment" and "No Substitutions, No Halftimes, No Time Outs." Those are a bit too on-the-nose for me. The taunt of a petulant child. For me, the sport is enough. It needs no justification. The purity of watching a swarm of highly-conditioned racers charge off the line at the crack of the gun is intoxicating. You see each of the four muscles of the quadriceps defined clearly in each lean runner. The focus on each face, all wearing a different mask of pain. I've been telling my runners since June that summer training is where autumn races are won. But we can't duplicate everything: They won't dip into the utter mental, physical and emotional commitment needed to be a great teammate until their first race in two weeks. For the returners, it's the jolt of a hard memory they've kept at bay since the end of last season. Even during track in the spring, the milers and two milers know that the challenge of three miles over hills and mud and thick grass is unlike any pain a measured oval can provide.

For the new runners, that first race will be a barrel of Arctic water splashed across their face. Whatever their reasons for joining the team, there will be a moment when they will decide whether or not this sport is for them. And if it is, then let's burrow deeper into the pain cave.

For me, cross country season is an inspiration. It's a return to my high school and college racing days, a time when I ran with a desperation no marathon or triathlon in my age-group days could ever provide. I get to relive my own successes and failures, helping my runners become better than I could ever be through the process of planning the daily workouts and roaring my encouragement on race day. I don't know a single coach who feels any different.

The bond with our runners is complete, a journey undertaken each time we grab hold of the stopwatch. Our pain is not their pain. Their success is not our success, for they earn each and every accolade all by themselves. But to witness their triumphs and failures is to experience the very best of life itself — the ideal of pushing beyond mediocrity to touch greatness, if only for a moment.

And that's an enormous gift. That's Christmas in Autumn.

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BEST SHOT

Taking London is the best thing I've ever written.

These past two weeks making one final edit were like Christmas. I'd literally wake up at 3 a.m., eager to find better ways to tell the story. Then I'd force myself to go back to sleep, reminding myself a rested edit is a sharper edit. I'd dream about the characters, letting them tell me more about their arc.

I did a line edit on the entire book one last time, moved chapters, added chapters, deleted lines, added suspense (it was a lot of revision. I think my wonderful new editor got a little concerned when I told her about all the changes).

You spend your whole adult life writing books, then suddenly all that acquired knowledge presents itself in the form of professionalism. I had no problem deleting beautiful sentences that didn't work. I found that adding a single word can be as powerful as a poetic paragraph.

With just hours to deliver the third version of the manuscript I had 100 pages to look over one more time. Part of me said why bother. Part of me said you're never getting this chance again, so I read those pages one last time. I found at least 50 things that needed fixing — among them the suspense and pacing required to drive the reader all the way through to the end. When I finally sent the entire manuscript to New York I was so thrilled with the final outcome that I felt like a celebration was in order. Being 10 a.m., I didn't break out the champagne. Instead, I sat in my office with a goofy grin on my face, feeling like I'd just written something very special. My 25-year-old self would have been amazed by its depth and complexity. Trust me, I don't get this way very often.

In short: I feel like I wrote the book I really wanted to write.

The sense of satisfaction I carry now is complete. A finished book can leave me restive, knowing I let a few things slide for the state of brevity or to avoid confusion. But the total high is still coursing through my veins two days later. Research on the next Taking book is already ongoing, with a trip to Hawaii and a visit to London on the agenda for next month.

But the fact that I was able to write a strong rough first draft for Taking London, then the good fortune to go back and dive in two more times to elevate the story makes me wish the book could be in stores tomorrow so you could read it and see what I'm talking about. Very coincidentally, Dutton, my publisher, announced the book this week. The gorgeous blue cover with an iconic image of Winston Churchill is now up on and all the other online stores. Pub date isn't until May 7. Hoping to put an excerpt on line sometime between now and then.

So what happens next? Well, my new editor will weigh in with her opinion. I have a feeling she'll nudge me to tighten the story even more. This makes me very happy. Then it's "production," that process of First Pass, Second Pass, and all the other little steps leading to the final typeset manuscript heading to the print house.

And a lot of waiting. The gestation period between now and May 7 is a long forty-week pregnancy. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Valentines Day, St. Patrick's Day . . . lots of stuff happening between now and then. My oldest son is getting married. Springsteen will be in Southern California. Cross country season starts in a couple weeks and goes through Thanksgiving. In the meantime, I will write something new and wait.

I've been reading a collection of non-fiction stories by John le Carré about his career. I sense he had a more purposeful sense to his writing than I do, a belief that his words would be parsed for a long time after publication. For some reason, these vignettes gave me the courage to imbue the final version of Taking London with the same sense of gravitas and taut storytelling. Save the date for May 7 or go online and pre-order your copy now. I am not a fan of self-important writing but I am a fan of great storytelling. There's a fine line. I know this sounds odd, but almost thirty books into this literary career, I don't feel like a pretender anymore. Can't put my finger on it, but there's something very different about Taking London.

I hope you feel the same way when you give it a read.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The revisions on Taking London are coming along well.

Thanks to my copy editor, I have learned that I am fond of using a dangling modifying phrase. I did not know this. In fact, I will admit that I have no idea what constitutes a dangling modifying phrase. I was never good at diagramming sentences. There's a myth out there that writers are master grammarians, but I think the truth is that most of us stumbled upon this career because we like to read, do not play well with others, and quietly wondered what it would be like to live the writing life.

The very last section I write for every book are the Acknowledgments. I like short thank yous, just a sentence for the people who make a book happen: editor, agent, my sons, my wife. I usually add a mention of someone important in my life during the project who had nothing to do with the writing. Again, since I write the acknowledgments last, it is usually at a point in the book when I am mentally ready to let it go. Thus, the brevity. I am also of the belief that laborious acknowledgments lose their impact.

But I forgot to write the Acknowledgments when I first finished Taking London. The copy edited manuscript came back with a page reserved for this purpose, with a simple instruction:

"AU, please provide."

AU meaning author. I love how copy editors talk to me during this process, these impersonal requests and queries. No need for an email or a text. It's all lemon juice on the manuscript page, soon to disappear like invisible ink.

So I sat down and began writing my Taking London Acknowledgments. And for some reason, I just couldn't stop thanking people. The gratitude list literally goes on for pages. I think we've all rehearsed our Academy Awards speech, wondering who we would thank if we ever received such an honor. For the first time, I realized that I had that opportunity with this book. I signed contracts for Taking London shortly before Calene's diagnosis. Then I took a six-month break from writing because I was too numb with shock to even dream about creative thoughts. Then financial reality set in and I began writing.

Along the way, so many friends came out of the woodwork to not just offer love and support, but to carry Calene and I. Sometimes that was as simple as getting together for a beer. Sometimes that was a bag of good books. Sometimes that was simple acts of grace, like the time I completely forgot about attending Tough Guy Book Club on the night that the book being discussed was my very own Taking Berlin. The guys gave me a lot of shit about that one, which I deserved. But sometimes that's what friendship is all about.

I will maintain a little suspense about those Acknowledgments. May 7 is my pub date and I'll probably find time to add a few extra names to the list by then. But here's a sneak peek: As with all my books, this is the last name I mention. Right now, she's sitting five feet away from me.

“And finally, to Calene. It’s been a long time since I stole a Tom Petty line to tell you that if you held on to me there’d be magic when I held on to you. I had it all wrong. It’s you who brings the magic.”

What's your gratitude list look like?

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EDITORS

Most writers don't love editors. I do. Back since Beth Hagman at Competitor Magazine told me to tell stories in the most linear fashion possible ("the horse pulls the cart over the trail by the fastest route"), the notion of editors crafting a story has been in my head. Through Jason Kaufman, Geoff Shandler, Gillian Blake, and Brent Howard, these wonderful people have made me better.

And don't get me started on how much I love copy editors.

This gushing deserves an explanation. I'm just back from Mammoth training camp. It was a monastic week, my time divided between coaching, running, writing, and reading. Calene wasn't with me so it felt like just me and the mountains. There were the visits to Roberto's and Mammoth Tavern, though always with a book and always just long enough to eat my dinner and get back out onto the condo deck, where I'd read until sunset. I'd fall asleep to raindrops on my phone, the voice of a guided meditation the only sound I'd really paid attention to in hours.

But into that lonely (and I will admit to feeling alone, an unusual sensation for the lone wolf I prefer to advertise. Being without Calene for a week in such a quiet space became a reminder of how much I depend upon our cues to navigate the day) routine was a week of surprise, satisfaction, and calm that made it the most memorable week since I began taking teams there to train eighteen years ago.

The fun moment came one night, watching the Netflix series Quarterbacks. Episode Six features a moment when Kirk Cousins of the Minnesota Vikings asks a Barnes and Noble clerk if she has my books in store. He mentions me by name. Which, by the way, is very cool. I always thought I wanted to be a famous writer but now I know how much I dislike being recognized. I just like to write. But I love those moments when my name comes up in media, like the couple times I've been a Jeopardy question and that moment in Quarterbacks. It's one of those things that validates a lifetime of hustle in a most unusual way.

Somewhere, in some small studio, a very kindly editor let that moment make the final cut. I'll bet he even said something like "let's stoke the shit out of Martin Dugard by keeping this moment in the show."

He did.

And then there was the writing.

I've written before about the need to "break up" with a project to emotionally commit myself to the next. My novel has already gone by the wayside because I'm not ready to love the characters as much as they need to be loved. Their time will come. That book is already outlined and ready to be discovered. And while I have some non-fiction calling to me, the going has been slow so far. Taking London has been "complete" for a month but it nags at me. I read The Wager while I was up in Mammoth (also finished Dennis Lehane's Live by Night and Tom Vitale's Anthony Bourdain piece) and had this moment that I thought TL was a pretty solid work — but could I do better? The writing is pretty good, the research is sharp, but could I do better? Could I do better? Could I do better?

And then I had this moment when I realized Taking London could be better than The Wager. I don't have a New Yorker pedigree but I can write the shit out of history. Then I admitted TL had a few holes — holes I really need to fix. Nothing a reader will pick up on right away, but omissions and logic gaps that might leave all of you demanding more of my storytelling.

And in those moments, sitting alone on the condo porch under a canopy of pines, watching the setting sun bounce off Mammoth Rock, I wished for one more chance to fuss with Taking London. But that wasn't going to happen. It's done. "In production," as they say in publishing. I've had my last chance to play marionette with the words on those pages.

But wouldn't it be cool to make it right? Not right: Perfect. Or as perfect as I can be right now.

The next morning I got an email. Big changes were underway at my publisher and I had a new editor. She loves the book but has some issues. She was wondering if I could make changes to Taking London. Surprise, surprise. And her changes were the same ones I'd been longing to carve into the manuscript. Oh, how I love a challenge. So it's on like Donkey Kong. Taking London comes out in May 2024. Read it and drop me an email to let me know if I've stepped up or not.

Got home yesterday. Five hours and change. I'm at the point in life where my boys are grown and I miss the dogs most when I'm away. But Sadie and Django, after an enthusiastic homecoming, turned their backs to let me know they were a little upset I'd gone away at all. So I finished the Lehane book out on the back porch as the sun set over Dana Point, then rose early to pick up Calene at the airport. Damn, it was so nice to wrap my arms around her. She makes me a better man.

The monastic week is over. But it set the tone for the next year. Ch-ch-ch-changes. That's what editors do. Bring it.

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RESTLESS SOUL

The first run is always hardest in Mammoth.

I arrived Saturday morning after dropping Calene at the airport. She's headed east with her sister Cate to see cousins in South Dakota. The journey from Orange County to Mammoth is an empty speedway at 6 a.m. I made it up here in five hours despite a short freeway shutdown and a stop for Starbuck's in Adelanto. The family condo is a great place for solitude and writing but I'm in a restless mood so I've spent most of the past two days running, hiking, and finding a spot in town to sit alone in the shade and read. Distant Brewing worked just fine.

The solitude ends in about six hours. This is Mammoth Week for the cross country team I coach. I've been doing Mammoth with my squads since 2006 and I look forward to the bonding that will transpire. Everyone thinks Mammoth is a training week — and it is, big miles at 7,000 feet can't help but inspire an aerobic response. But it's really more about getting the runners to work together, see each other outside the normal school and practice environment, and do a little good natured suffering.

So as I sit here alone in the condo, a perfect view of the meadow outside the sliding glass door that is cracked just enough to let in the smell of pine, I am making a list of all the things I want to do by myself before twenty teenagers show up eager for six glorious days, with all the personnel management that implies. A lot of wonderful things come out of Mammoth Camp, but I've dealt with enough crazy parents and spent a little too much time in the Mammoth Hospital ER to know that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.

It was yesterday when I did that first solitary workout. Navigated the meadow under crisp blue skies, barely able to breathe from the altitude. I used the time to clear my head. I'm a man who likes a schedule and I had to remind myself that it was OK to have nothing constructive planned for the day beyond a run and a matinee. A little voice inside my head said that unless I wrote a couple thousand words the day would be wasted. I'm well aware that I'm becoming something of a bore, finding time for little in life beyond writing and coaching. Too much of a good thing can lead to an unrelenting determination to do those things better. Or it can lead to restlessness.

And restlessness makes a man do extreme things. Which explains my insane desire to cram Springsteen's Europe Tour into my schedule. I did it again this week, planning a trip to Munich for the second-to-last stop. I bought an aftermarket ticket, booked a flight, reserved a hotel room. As with my previous hope of seeing a show one month ago, there were severe schedule constraints. In the case of Munich, this meant not driving straight to Mammoth Saturday morning. Instead, I would go into the airport with Calene, fly to Munich, go see the show, fly home this morning. Then drive six hours to Mammoth at 6:30 this evening (after fifteen hours of air travel) so we could start Mammoth Camp on time with the first workout tomorrow morning at 7.

Honestly, if the concert was one day earlier or Mammoth Camp was one day later, the whole thing would have worked perfectly. But there was no margin for error.

The drive to Mammoth was the only thing that concerned me. My brother Matt is an ER doc and often drives up after an all-night shift to spend a day skiing. When I told him my plans he got very serious, telling me about all the times he'd almost driven off the road falling asleep at the wheel. So I talked it over with Calene, who had her own doubts about trying to squeeze this adventure into such a tight window. So I cancelled. Bruce comes to Southern California in December and I will be there with bells on. Three shows. Can't wait.

Then I got an email from the concierge at my hotel — which I had forgotten to cancel. The ticket broker had sent my ticket to the hotel by DHL. It was a very good ticket, in the pit right in front of the stage. There was no way I could use it. What a shame for it to go unused.

I don't know the concierge. Not his age nor music preference. But I told him he had my complete permission to open the envelope and use the ticket.

I really wasn't sure how that would go over. He could have been a techno fan, or a Smiths fan, or just not into music at all. But he wrote back saying that he had actually planned to listen to the show from a hill near the stadium, not being able to get a ticket for the sold out Springsteen "gig,"' as he put it. The concierge would be more than glad to use my ticket.

He also cancelled my hotel reservation free of charge.

I woke up this morning and checked email. There was a message from the concierge. He said that the Boss was on fire last night and thanked me again for the chance to use that ticket. And he sent this amazing photo, letting me feel like I was there at the concert, too. What a kind gesture.

It made me feel, ever so slightly, less restless.

For now.

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