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Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah: Summer Camp, Dick Beardsley Style

By Cara Finnegan

It all started on a chilly morning last December when several Second Wind women were running the Mountain Goat course at Kickapoo. I was running with Jan Seeley.

“Dick Beardsley’s going to have a marathon camp next summer,” she said.

“Really,” I replied, huffing and puffing.

“Yeah, and I’m going to be the camp director. You should really think about signing up.”

Jan told me more: great coaches, individualized training, seminars. It sounded great. I was interested, but hesitant. Compared to most of the marathoners in the club, I was (and am) a relative novice — one very slow marathon in Chicago, nearly four years ago. Hardly campworthy. I told Jan as much.

“But that’s not the point!” she cried, “The camp’s for everyone, all abilities, ages, and speeds. No one cares what your PR is, only that you want to improve.”

If you know Jan, you know that she can be very persuasive. Thus, it shouldn’t surprise you that by the end of that 7-mile run, I had committed to signing up for the First Annual Dick Beardsley Marathon Camp.

The Plans Unfold

As the months passed information flowed from Jan’s office at Marathon and Beyond. In the end, 26 campers from 9 states committed to camp. The coaching staff was impressive: Dick, Runner’s World columnist and running author Joe Henderson; M&B editor Rich Benyo; Rhonda Provost (the first woman to complete the Death Valley 300); Mike Dunlap (2:18 marathoner and exercise physiologist); and Bill Wenmark (founder of a successful program for training beginning marathoners in Minnesota). Collectively, the camp staff has run more than 250 marathons — that’s an average of about 35 marathons per coach.

Seven Champaign folks, all women, signed up for camp: Joan Bessman, Sara Latta, Bonnie McElwee, Lynn Troost, Cindy Norris, Sandy Strack, and me. As camp grew closer, we dutifully filled out detailed camp surveys, which asked us about everything from our running history, marathon PRs, and camp goals to our favorite snack foods and whether we snored. Jan used the information to help the coaches get to know us and our goals, to match people with roommates, and to produce short biographies of each camper to be distributed at camp.

Camp would take place for five days in June at Rainbow Resort in northern Minnesota, near Dick’s home of Detroit Lakes. We would stay in large, modern lakefront cabins, meals and other amenities included. Each day would be a mix of running and seminars on various topics related to marathoning: nutrition, tapering, rest and recovery, and gait analysis, to name a few. We would do different types of running while at camp, including a long run, speedwork, and hills. The week would culminate on Friday morning with a marathon relay in which campers and coaches would be divided into teams of three to complete a full marathon.

Here’s a day-by-day account of our week:

Sunday: Arrival day. I have traveled from Illinois to my parents’ house in St. Paul. When I arrived I discovered that Jan had left each of us treats in our cabins, including the foods we listed as our “favorite comfort foods.” By 5 p.m. we are all checked in, 26 campers, a documentary filmmaker, and 6 coaches. The first item on the agenda is a 4-mile “get to know you” run on cross-country ski trails near the resort. The clouds burst rain upon us as we start out, but we are all too excited to care. And too excited to notice that the course, which Dick told us was only 4 miles, is actually closer to 4.5 or 5.

Jan gives us an assignment on the run — she matches each of us with two other runners and our job is to find out as much as we can about the people we are running with. I run with Joan (okay, I know, that’s cheating) and Stacey, a woman from St. Paul who turns out to be married to a man my dad used to work with. A welcome dinner and encouraging words from the coaches follow the run. Joe Henderson, running’s literary guru, has been to running camps before, and he tells us, “You come here as strangers, but you will leave as a family.” After dinner the “Champaign Girls” retire to our cabins to study everyone’s bios and check out their PRs. Nearly everyone, as I predicted, is much faster than I am.

Monday: Long run day! We meet early in the morning at the lodge for a tiny breakfast, then take off at our various paces. Dick’s mapped out an 11-mile loop that people can do once, twice, or something in between. He warns us that the first 4 miles, on a mostly asphalt road leading back out to the county road, is pretty hilly, but that the rest of the route is a nice run along forested gravel roads. He’s right about the hills, but wrong about the distance. And, it turns out, the entire route is hilly, a few hills of River to River quality and length, most of them rolling. Definitely a shock to my flatlander legs. Most of us do one loop of the course, wanting to save our legs for hills and speedwork later in the week. A few tough guys join Dick on what turns out to be a 23-miler because yes, once again Dick has underestimated the length of the course by half a mile. It’s not 11, it’s 11.5. Even Dick is limping when he returns from the run.

The rest of the day is taken up with informative seminars, including discussions of the long run and hill running. People sign up for fishing trips with Dick, which we will take during our free time throughout the week. After dinner it’s the first of two movie nights — tonight, a documentary video and slide show on the Death Valley 300 from Rich Benyo and Rhonda Provost. Rich has done this grueling ultra twice, first in 1989 as one of the first two men to complete it. Rhonda, who crewed for Rich both times, completed her own in 1995, becoming the first woman to do so.

By the end of the day we’re exhausted but already bonding as a group. Best of all, we get the news from Jan that each of us will be assigned to work with one coach as a trainer/mentor, not only for this week but to consult after camp as well. The coaches will gather late at night in their cabin, talk about each of us, and make the matches. I think it’s crazy that such accomplished, knowledgeable people are thinking about me and my running. Maybe I am campworthy after all.

Tuesday: Hill day! Coach Bill Wenmark really gets us moving this morning. He’s a friendly, energizing drill sergeant. We do a mile warm-up to the pre-selected hill, apparently not as far away and difficult as the one Dick suggested It’s a great workout, and as we make our way up and down the hill several times, Bill gives us detailed instructions on good hill technique. I’m trying out a heart rate monitor for the first time today, trying to stay beneath my maximum range so that it won’t go off as I reach the crest of each hill repeat. When we’re finished, Bill isn’t content with a leisurely jog back to camp so we do an Indian run. (For those of you who didn’t run cross country in high school, an Indian run is where the group lines up single-file, and the person in the back [or a small group from the back] runs all the way to the front of the line, then the next people from the back do it, etc. Tiring but very fun).

When we returned from the hill workout, the camera operator for Dick’s fishing show is waiting for us. She is going to videotape each of us running so that Coach Bill can do gait analysis tomorrow morning. Seminars on mental training and speedwork round out our classroom education today. In the evening we caravan 23 miles to Itasca State Park for recreation and dinner. Jan asks us to drive in groups with our coach/mentors. I’m lucky to have drawn Joe Henderson, a great match since we not only have running in common, but writing too.

Although the schedule is packed with running and seminars, throughout the week people are finding other things to do to unwind — canoeing, kayaking, fishing. Sara and Joan are training for their first triathlon, so they use some of our down time to try out open water swimming in the lake and bike the roads near the resort.

Wednesday: When we arrive at the lodge for breakfast this morning, Jan has put a trash can on one of the tables. Taped to it is a sign that reads, “Put your pride in here!” Good advice, for we’re all in for a rough morning — Coach Bill is going to show the video of each of us running (in painful slo-mo) and analyze our gait. What stuns me is the extent to which we aren’t talking about people’s legs or feet. Upper bodies are where Coach Bill spends most of his time. Most of us, Bill says, make terrible use of our upper bodies. At best, we just let everything hang there rather than really pumping our arms and using them to our advantage. At worst, we have a series of habits that inhibit our ability to run strong. Bill has a special little name for every tic and every idiosyncrasy of every runner. For example, some of us are “eggbeaters,” twirling our arms vaguely in circles in front of us rather than using the arms to propel ourselves forward. Everybody, even the fast folks, has something to work on. My gait, I think, is one of the worst. I am accused of “whipping cream” with my right arm, meaning that my right arm flails out to the side like a pastry chef’s. Perhaps trying not to make me feel too bad, Dick points out that I share that particular quirk with Bill Rodgers, which is cool, because I’m pretty sure that Bill Rodgers and I don’t have anything else in common.

After the humbling gait analysis, it’s off to speedwork. Coach Bill gives us lots of reasons why distance runners can benefit from speedwork — something many of us know but don’t practice as we should. I really enjoy this workout because it brings back muscles and a pace that I haven’t really used at all since my high school track days. But I know I’m going to be sore tomorrow.

The rest of the day is full, with a helpful rest and recovery seminar from Joe Henderson and lively discussions about heart rate monitors and cross training. That evening, some hardy folks head off to the local casino while most of us prefer to stay back at the lodge for movie night. The main attraction? Television footage of Dick’s famous 1982 “Duel in the Sun” in Boston with Alberto Salazar. Although the quality of the coverage is terrible by today’s standards, it’s fascinating to see it for ourselves after knowing Dick’s story about that incredible day. By far the best part of the coverage is watching Dick watch it with us — it’s very emotional for him and for all of us. At the end we applaud wildly even though “the wrong guy” crosses the finish line first (though Dick himself would never say that, he believes that day ended as it was meant to end).

Thursday: Today’s run is optional. Some folks head out for a nice easy run, but I decide to heed Joe Henderson’s advice of yesterday: If you want to run for the rest of your life, you have to rest. Today’s seminars are both topics close to every runner’s heart: nutrition and tapering. The nutrition seminar produces a bit of controversy: to gel or not to gel, that appears to be the question. When Rich Benyo suggests that marathoners gel too much, that they get themselves “addicted” to the sugar spike that gels produce, several campers protest “But I need it!” Rich’s deadpan response: “No one ever starved to death during a marathon.” Turns out, like everything else with running, there is no one answer or solution that works for everybody. You have to experiment to see what works for you. What I take away from the discussion for myself is that I don’t really need to gel until mile 10 of a long run or marathon, but after that I should use it regularly enough to prevent the crash that inevitably comes from the sugar spike.

Tonight marks the beginning of our official goodbyes at camp — the final dinner and party. The coaching staff presents each of us with humorous certificates declaring us survivors of the First Annual Dick Beardsley Marathon Camp (mine praises me for “whipping cream with my right arm”). And we campers “roast” the coaches a bit, too. After dinner camper Bonnie McElwee is surprised by a cake and a lively round of “Happy Birthday”; she’s had the good taste to have her birthday at camp. The night is capped off by a chaotic, sometimes bawdy “White Elephant” gift exchange. We fight over the best running gifts: a great duffle bag, a tub of Endurox, several running books, The Stick. We now understand what Joe Henderson told us that first night: we came as strangers, but we are leaving as a family.

Friday: Our last morning. Jan said her goal for the week was to make such a great camp that no one wanted to go home. Mission accomplished! We are all whining about having to leave today, and several folks have to catch planes for long flights home. But first, one last event: the marathon relay. For the marathon relay we have been put into seeded teams of three. On each team, one runner will do 11 miles, one will run 9, and one will run 6. But there’s a twist to the relay: Jan and the coaches decide to make things more interesting by turning the run into a prediction run. That means each runner has to predict how long his or her run will take to complete. There will be no watches allowed, and no mile markers on the course.

Because one of my teammates is tapering for a marathon, I agreed to run the 11 miles.

The run is the same 11-mile hilly course we ran on Monday. On the one hand it’s easier this time, because I know what to expect. On the other hand, it’s harder because I have many more miles on my legs this time around. I spend part of the run with Coach Rhonda Provost and part of it by myself, working on my form and thinking about Coach Bill’s mantra as I place each leg in front of the other up those hills: “Load and fire. Load and fire.”

Because I am one of the slowest 11-milers out there, nearly everyone is there to cheer me on as I cross the finish line. Jan seems particularly excited, and after we all gather one last time for breakfast, I find out why: apparently I have “won” the prediction run, coming the closest to my predicted time of 1 hour, 51 minutes. My official time was 1 hour, 50 minutes, 49 seconds.

Coda: All week long the coaching staff repeated the immortal words of running’s original guru, George Sheehan: “Everyone is an experiment of one.” Each of us experienced that this week. Individually, each of us left camp having learned something important about our running and, more importantly, about ourselves. And even though we have gone our separate ways, we’ve maintained our sense of family. Thanks to Jan, we can now contribute to and receive a monthly newsletter updating one another on our running adventures. And there have been several “camp reunions” already, the first just one week later when several campers ran Grandma’s. Here in town, the “Champaign Girls” are trying to apply what we learned at camp to our marathon training programs. This means some speed work, some hills, and (for me at least), listening to my body — icing and resting when things get tight.

DICK BEARDSLEY CAMP 2004: Camp was fun, organized, incredibly informative, and included lots of personalized touches that really set the tone for the week. It was an honor to spend time with such a knowledgeable group of coaches and such a committed group of campers.

Jan is already actively planning next year’s camp sessions. There are two separate weeks scheduled, and all of this year’s amazing coaching staff will return.

Watch the Marathon & Beyond web site for information. If you want to do something meaningful for your running and for yourself, do Champaign-Urbana running proud and head north to camp.