COMMERCE CITY — Running has become a daily ritual of regeneration for Rapids coach Pablo Mastroeni. When practice ends and his players head for the cool air of the locker room, the passionate second-year head coach goes for a run on adjacent land reclaimed from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal.
When he’s fired up about something, he goes hard and fast. When he’s in a reflective mood it’s slow, even lethargic. It is always therapeutic.
As any runner knows, the rewards are physical, mental and emotional. Sometimes he will review the day’s training session in his mind or try to evaluate how well he is communicating with the team. Sometimes it’s about emptying his mind and releasing stress.
There has been plenty of that. His team is 2-4-8, and it recently that began last summer.
“From a mental perspective, it allowed me to just disappear for a bit and get lost in thought and not think about the running,” Mastroeni said. “As a player, you knew you were running for a goal, which was to get fit. That was the hardest thing for any soccer player, to run for running’s sake, just to get fit or even for pleasure. You don’t do it (as a player). You run 6 miles a day in training.
“It became a getaway for me. It became fun, and it became something I looked forward to.”
Mastroeni was a fiery player, and he still burns hot. Running allows him to let the fire burn down a little.
“It’s a great way to reflect upon my growth as a coach, all the hardships I’ve endured, and keep enduring (with) the mental attitude to keep fighting and keep believing in yourself when no one else does,” Mastroeni said. “Running for me is like a metaphor of where I want to go with my career, where I want to go with my life. It allows me to take everything head-on, not really seeing any obstacles along the way.”
Mastroeni discovered the therapeutic benefits of running when he was forced to sit out most of the 2012 season because of postconcussion syndrome caused by a clash of heads early that year. That’s when he was diagnosed with “generalized anxiety” resulting from a childhood tragedy: when Mastroeni was 5 years old.
That anxiety had been part of him for three decades. The concussion exacerbated it.
“One of my natural prescriptions was exercise,” Mastroeni said. “Being that I stopped playing and wasn’t getting that every day, I had to find a different outlet.”
Mastroeni tried to come back the season after the concussion, played seven games for Colorado, got traded to the Los Angeles Galaxy and played nine games there. He retired after that 2013 season.
When he runs now, there is no finish line.
“It’s about being better today than you were yesterday,” Mastroeni said. “If that’s the mind-set you have, you become a better person, a better father, a better coach. More important, you’re not living in the future. You’re living in the present. Living in the future is where anxiety lives. Running helps keep me present and keeps me focused.”
John Meyer: jmeyer@denverpost.com or twitter.com/johnmeyer
