A Different "Army-Navy" Game

Since 2005, I've worked the technical side of running events, laying out and measuring road courses and doing grunt work for triathlon events.  I used to tout them in a 'matter-of-fact' fashion, but nowadays my signature block says, "extensive list of worthless certifications available upon request."  Most of the "worthless certifications" were the result of participating in enough running events to think, after the second beer, then say out loud "I could put on one of these."  

One of my favorite Clint Eastwood lines did not come during the most recent election cycle, but during his 1973 movie, "Magnum Force," where he says..."a man's got to know his limitations."  After one-too-many afternoons picking up aid station coolers and driving the sag vehicle while the event director was drinking beer with the athletes I went back to the technical support side of the running world.  Back to maps, paperwork, phone calls and e-mail from first-year event directors, and looking at the good, the bad, and the ugly of road races.

In the last month I participated in the behind-the-scenes details of two events; a 5K put on by the Chief Petty Officers Association, and a 5K/10K put on by the Special Forces Association.  So, this comparison of good, bad and ugly is a different version of last weekend's Army-Navy game.

Army-Navy has always been special for my family.  In the football-(sub?)conscious Deep South, team loyalty often has little to do with the school they matriculated (I went to a Division-II school.).  The Bowens and their extensions up and down the family tree have almost all been Navy people; my Uncle Billy (Renn) and I the only ones to serve outside of the Sea Service.  (My friend Chuck, a retired Navy Chief, reminds me I've served longer as a Navy civilian than Air Force enlisted.)  

We've all got a short list of what makes a running event stand out from its contemporaries.  My coach, Dale Fox, used to tell stories of runners who would drive to several race locations each Saturday and Sunday morning in the hope of picking up overall hardware...and a hundred bucks.  They knew the pecking order, and would look for the vehicles of athletes they could beat, and those they couldn't.  When I ask experienced racers the things they use to choose one road race over another, most will mention the course, the pre-and-post-race experience, the awards, and the shirt.

Course - Some runners like a scenic course.  Most racers want an accurate distance.  All want to be safe.  ARMY: The 10K was measured for certification after a course change.  However, the race director moved the start point 100 yards.  5K distance not measured for certification after course change.  Both courses had entire lanes of roadway and crossed twice over a bridge.  No intermediate split markers or split timers.  NAVY: Certified 5K course, which had cones laid down the center of two-lane secondary roads and a single lane of a major road.  Split markers and a split timer at the first mile.

Play-by-play:  Army wins toss, elects to receive.  Penalties stymie initial Army drive; settle for field goal.  Navy takes long grinding drive and scores.

SCORE - ARMY 3 - NAVY 7

Post-race - Entertainment, food and beverages; doesn't have to be a full spread, but you got to keep the runners happy until the results are ready.  ARMY:  There was some issue with the keg which never was resolved, but there was cold canned beer, as well as water, fruit, barbecue, live music, and free massages for race participants.  NAVY:  Old bagels, water and fruit.  And an iPod with tunes from back when I was in high school.  I like Journey, Foreigner and Fleetwood Mac, but I'm certain the younger participants would have preferred newer stuff.

Play-by-play:  Army quick-strikes for touchdown, point-after attempt hits right goalpost.  Scores a safety on ensuing kickoff.  

SCORE: ARMY 11 - NAVY 7

Awards - Age-group and overall awards should be both meaningful and of good-quality.  Something you'd post on your "I love me" wall.  ARMY:  Carved wood SFA7 logos all over the place.  Five-year age groups, overall, masters, grandmasters, etc.  Someone inhaled a lot of sawdust.  NAVY:  Ten-year age group (I finish as first runner over age 50 -- heck, age 40 -- and receive first in 50-59 age group) medals; overall male/female, oldest/youngest runners receive painted oars.

Play-by-play:  Good field position leads to Army ball control drive, scores touchdown but leaves Navy time for one more short drive.  Navy scores field goal to close out first half.

SCORE: ARMY 18 - NAVY 10

Shirt - great race shirts are advertising for future events.  Lousy race shirts are car wash fodder.  ARMY:  Black, short-sleeved cotton-technical blend shirt with SFA7 logo and original (contest-designed) artwork on front, sponsors on back.  NAVY:  White long-sleeved cotton shirt with small dog-tag logo on front, sponsors on back, several names misspelled.

Play-by-play:  Navy receives second-half kickoff.  Three-and-outs lead to poor field position for Navy; punt blocked out of end-zone.

SCORE:  ARMY 27 - NAVY 10 

Cause - Runners will support a race for a cause they can support.  ARMY:  Scholarships for children of soldiers killed in action.  Marketing in social media, on-line registration sites, local running clubs.  NAVY:  Rewards leading to prosecution of person/persons who shot and killed an active-duty sailor.  Marketing nearly nonexistent outside of on-line registration; single flyer seen at base bowling alley day before event.  

Play-by-play:  Good field position following Navy kick; return to ball control drive and Army touchdown.

SCORE:  ARMY 34 - NAVY 10

Intangibles - These are the little things which could fall under the overall race experience, but someone is going to point them out to you the week after as you're busy patting yourself on the back.  ARMY:  When I go into the Starbucks around the corner (as an event non-participant) and the racers are there in a line for the bathroom.  

Barista: "Can I do anything else for you, sir?" 

Me: "Get rid of the line in front of the bathroom?"  

Public bathrooms could only handle two men/ladies at a time...1,500 people might have been a little too much.  NAVY:  Porta-johns, about a dozen, for 200 people.  I'm certain they were hoping for closer to 600, but that goes back to the marketing thing.  ARMY:  Race director/staff are/were Special Forces officers and enlisted.  These guys know how to plan, adapt, improvise and overcome obstacles.  NAVY:  Chief Petty Officers, most of whom were/are members of the "three-mile-a-year" club, sans racing experience.

Play-by-play:  And the hits keep on coming.  Army grinds out one more long drive for a touchdown, but leaves enough time on the clock for Navy to kick a desultory field goal and warm up their lungs to sing "Navy Blue and Gold" first...for the first time in about 11 years.

If you're a race director, or you aspire to be one, perhaps some of these observations will save you a couple of wrongly-spent dollars and a couple of nightmares.

If you call me, however, I won't be available.  At least until race day.

Things Aren't Always As They Seem

"There's one guy we don't have to worry about." - Gordon McKenzie, American marathoner, thinking about Abebe Bikila (standing shoeless), before the Rome Olympic Marathon (1960)

The nice thing about sports is it's loaded with irony. The media are not the only ones who tend to get the predictions wrong more often than not (think Bode Miller in Torino rather than Michael Phelps in Beijing), coaches & individual athletes do so, too. While you can make an educated guess as to how well a person is going to perform from the exterior view it's much harder to tell what lies underneath the flesh, dwells within the muscle, bone & nerves of the individual. You cannot measure drive - heart - of an athlete by their physiological data.
One of my favorite training partners in the past five years, if you looked at him before a workout or a race, you would not be a bit impressed. In fact, he always looked more like a misplaced softball player than he did a road racer. I think nearly all my best workouts/races always had something to do with him...and many of his with me. Before a knee injury cut short his career about two years ago, he went on a tear...ended up winning a local half-marathon, ran some great trail ultra-distance races, and such. I miss not having him around to sharpen me up.

Not every athlete exudes what my father once desctibed as bad-ass in three easy lessons. A great case in point can be found in the realm of masters' swimming. A (relatively) slender, cardiovascularly efficient young(er) guy can be on the blocks at a masters' meet next to someone ten years older with a serious case of dunlap disease (the disorder where ones' midsection has done lapped over ones' belt line)...yet the paunchy, hoary one might be the one handing back the @$$ of the younger, relatively svelte, technically less-efficient swimmer at the end of the event. Trust me on this one. I've stood on the deck trying to find a way to graciously stuff my butt cheeks back down into my Speedo after having them handed to me by one of my adipose-enhanced training mates.
Our favorite local beer/bite hangout didn't quite go all-out last night for St. Patrick's Day; they did offer corned beef & cabbage, but we avoided it. It's not that I doubt the uniqueness or the genuine-ness of a place with the last name of O'Brady's, but I knew it would not sit well in my tummy either last night or this morning...especially this morning, in the pool... They did surprise us with some new appetizer items, one of which is a fried calamari, something we don't see much of unless we assault an Italian joint, a place I eat at only under extreme duress. My friend Paul doesn't do calamari, but Suzanne & I will try anything on the menu there at least once to make certain it's not bad. It wasn't the classic overly-chewy squid rings, though. A tad more on the crunchy side, as though they had been fried a little longer than the average bear. However, there was no overwhelming garlic smell/taste (and I like garlic!), nor serious grease...not bad with a side of marinara.
We're approaching the mid-term for our performance system, which means it is high time to do what is better known around here as brag sheets. Unfortunately, with this system, you might be in the walk on water, talk to God realm in all of your duties, but if your duties don't exactly line up with the standards, you are screwed. Yep, you can do all the good things for your fellow employees, your instructors, your courses & the service at large, but if you can't justify it, it's like you did nothing for the past six months but sit on your butt, drink coffee & write blog entries. Oops, I did it again, didn't I?

Is any one else as offended as I by the audacity of big corporations, ostensibly owned now by the federal government (& hence owned by the taxpayer), giving millions of dollars to executives for driving the business into the ground during the previous year? And then, my co-worker tells me some of the executive recipients are people who left the company. Well, I guess that blows the if we don't pay them their bonuses they might leave argument right out of the water, doesn't it?

Oh, & for those of you who don't know the rest of the story: Bikila destroyed the Olympic & world best times for the marathon; McKenzie finished 18th. As Chuck Berry sang: C'est la vie...most days you never can tell...

Night Is Drawing Nigh, 2008 Version

Well, it took a couple of days longer than I hoped. But I finally got my fruitcake. It might sound insane for a guy who values physical fitness, exercise, & prudent dietary choices to like...even long for...something as inherently unhealthy as a fruitcake. However, I'm the type of person who looks at the dietary information posted on the back of the package: 'Hm...if this fruitcake is four servings, and each serving is 400 calories, then I can have...' So, I justify my personal snacking habits as long as my total calories per day, less the number of calories I've burned (boiled?) in the workouts, is right around 2,000.
And my snacking goes in cycles, from good snacking to bad snacking. If I can limit myself to the once-monthly bag of gummi bears, things are fine. It's when I start jonesing after those apple pastries I find near the coffee section of convenience stores I find the chubbiness factor begin to rise.

Suzanne & I spent our Christmas holiday in the "traditional" Bowen manner; sleeping in (a challenge in itself, since the d-a-w-g awakens to the alarm on my running watch), taking a long morning walk, reading, drinking coffee, watching classic flicks on the toob or going to the movies (a doubleheader - Lawrence of Arabia and Marley & Me), and...a recent and new tradition...going out for Chinese.

I almost congratulated myself for getting through this year with a minimum of illness & beat-down, but the holiday @$$ kicking bug caught up with me not once, but twice. I ate something I had absolutely no reason to be scarfing out on at a holiday luau. Enough said. The bad news was it meant two (possibly three) days of no training. The good news was I didn't feel like eating too much outside of very simple foods; half a turkey sandwich here, a bowl of soup there, a couple of bagel chips...blah, blah, blah.

Back to work...not too much excitement around here at the end of the year. Probably will spend more effort blowing excess stuff out of my computer...probably something I should do to the one at home, too. It's amazing how much stuff we accumulate; with computers it's not only paper-based, but also digital. Could someone please slow down the madness?

If You Can Hear Me Shrieking, You're Too Close

Sometimes there are things in life that are more fun than sport. Not much, but they do exist. Sitting on a porch with a cup of coffee and a book, letting the breeze blow your bookmark down the block as you relax from your first real workout in a month...beat shrieking at my state of (un-)fitness, in my humble opinion.

I pulled my mountain bicycle out this morning and went down to the beach so I could participate in the Mere Mortals (triathlon) workout. I was not certain whether getting on a bike this soon, four weeks after taking that stupid topple, was a good idea. Ah, but it did feel so good to get out on the road...at least when the wind was at my back.

At the five mile mark, we could not go any further east. We knew this was going to happen. It was planned to turn at that point and come back to the parking lot, then tack on another three-to-six miles. I saw the flags whipping on the poles at the parking lot; their direction told me the return trip was going to be entertaining, at best. I pulled up for a few seconds to see how far back the rest of the fat tire group were...quite a distance back. At that point, two road bikes came by, and I heard one rider say something about getting in (drafting). I got behind the second road bike and drafted for a while, until I realized we were not going to get in the first bike's draft. I made a quick pass and tucked in behind the first rider, flipped my hands the other direction on the handlebars in order to tuck my arms close to my body. I drafted for a solid five minutes, then sat up, because I knew it was going to be a bad morning if I tried to stay on any longer.

I only got passed by one or two road bikes after that point, and rolled up another fat-tire before the three-mile tack-on. The last 2500 meters...sweet joy! Let the spinnaker loose, we're going to sail home.

Of course, after that I had to get out and run 5,000 meters. It was not pretty in the slightest, especially the first extended run after a month of no real training. I ran a solid 7:00/mile pace for the first eight or nine minutes. I walked for a minute in order to ease the fatigue, then started up again. I stopped again two minutes later, where I made the decision to continue the workout as a 2:00 run, 1:00 walk. Not a bad idea. I got in a little more than 3.5 miles in 30:00. It's enough to make a racer like me shriek obscenities at my slow, fat self.

However...

It's an inevitable part of taking time off. When you begin to train again it's inevitable that you will compare your present "fresh off transition period" self to the sharp, race-ready self you had just a month ago. Best thing you can do is keep things in perspective...wear a heart rate monitor...and resist the temptation to race for at least a month.