Martin Dugard has chased Lance Armstrong around France for a book, survived the 2-week long Raid Gauloises adventure race in Africa on an hour of sleep a night, hung out behind the scenes on the island of Borneo during the filming of Survivor 2000 and written nine books, the latest being The Murder of King Tut, a non-fiction piece he co-authored with James Patterson, which just debuted at No. 5 on the New York Times best-seller list.
marty in 2008
And you want to know what he told me the best part of his day is? Going down to the JSerra Catholic High School around 2:30 (after a day of writing) to run with his cross-country team.
Marty has been running since eighth grade when, he writes on his blog, he “raced to win because my dad was in Vietnam and nothing was sweeter than writing a letter telling him I had won.”
He began coaching cross-country at JSerra in 2005. Call it a fluke or fate, but he had always wanted to coach running and on the day he was touring the high school where his oldest son Devin had just transferred to, he mentioned to the athletic director that if the cross-country coach ever needed assistance, to call him. Turns out there was no cross-country coach.
The first day Marty held practice, four kids showed up ready to run. And they all quit before the first mile was finished. Now he has 45 boys and girls. And they are ranked among the best in the state. His girls team went to the state championship in 2007 and 2008. The boys are rated No. 5 in CIF. The girls are rated No. 4. 
On Saturday, the boys and girls teams will compete in the Orange County Cross Country Championships at Irvine Regional Park. Then onward to states in November.
Marty runs with them, about 60 miles a week up and down the hills surrounding JSerra in San Juan Capistrano. ”We’ve got an abundance of hills and we believe in suffering. I push them. They work hard every day. They know you don’t get anywhere by wishing.”
When Marty signs off on blog posts, it’s with this reminder: “Keep pushing … always.”
I’m going to write a story about Marty and his various adventures, including his latest: writing a movie script about a lacrosse high school love story starring “Twilight” stars Kellan Lutz (Emmett) and Ashley Greene (Alice), due to hit theaters early next year. So stay tuned.
