I always want to coach them. Relax your hands and use your arms to reinforce the work of your body. Step light as you can, without tensing anywhere. Chin level to keep your airway wide open. Walking breaks are fine. Find a better sport bra, better shoes, better gear all around.

Instead I walk on. They have not asked, these runners on my beach. I do not know them; they are visitors. Only once a novice runner took a puffing break and greeted me. We talked and I asked if she was new to running. [I knew she was.] I asked if she would welcome advice. She did.

Most often, a hundred times, I mutter to myself and wave a greeting.

For a few years I was a cross-country coach. I began running myself because my older son was running with the high school team. I admired the team’s camaraderie. I began running on April Fool’s Day, a bare half mile, and needing walking breaks even so. I built my distance through spring and summer until I could run the six miles north to Cannon Beach. By fall, I ran with the team and then for years after, I ran with them and coached.

The male coaches were most concerned with the boys and I often was left alone to coach the girls. They deserved better. One year I chewed out my team, “You’re running like girls!”

They laughed, of course.

But here is what I mean: hands fisted in front of their breasts, no use of arms which should swing easily with hands relaxed and back nearly to the hip and then forward with each stride.

There is more. Only the muscles necessary to the work are tense. The jaw relaxed, the hands relaxed. A head tipped too far forward or back compresses the throat, the jaw should be level to the ground. “Quiet feet are happy feet,” one varsity runner liked to quip. He was right. Reach out with every stride.

But I keep this to myself.

The runners I see may need my advice but they likely do not want it.

The writers I work with are not so different. I am not so different. What we all want to hear is that we are doing splendidly. Perfect. Powerful.

We also want that to be true. My writing students are like young runners. They need a long period of training and of coaching to reach their potential.

Instead of flabby muscles, their sentences are flabby. They do not proceed with powerful, purposeful strides. They waste energy clenching words they should not be using at all. They do not relax into their pace and look for ways to improve efficiency.

They do not often actually want my coaching at all. They do not all have faith they can carry on faster or stronger. They think they have already reached their potential. But like the un-coached runners on the beach, they have the potential to be infinitely stronger.

Like an athlete, they become stronger by both working and forcing themselves to work beyond themselves. Not to hurt but to stretch beyond themselves.

My young writers need to sweat.