See Me? Hear Me?

One of my friends had a "close encounter of the motor vehicular kind" last week.  At first glance, the entire scenario appears torn out of the middle pages of one of my favorite running novels, John L. Parker, Jr's. "Once A Runner."  His post-encounter commentary - with a few minor edits - follows:

"Dear Rogue Driver:  Thank you for taking the opportunity to play 'will my insurance cover this?'  You chose to run through a posted four-way stop intersection and only look to your left.  I, on the other hand, approached from your right.  Even though I was decorated more like a flashing Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center, you somehow failed to notice me.  Your failure to notice me initially cost you a size 11 dent in your hood, as well as the loss of two windshield wipers and the driver's side mirror."
"I appreciated your creative use of expletives as you drove angrily next me over the next several yards; you failed to appreciate the possibility that I might have been sufficiently prepared for such an encounter.  I was physically warmed up, as well as mentally and emotionally-charged as a result of the very angry music to which I was running.  I could gladly accept my failure to cleanly evade the initial obstacle outweighed your failure to exhibit your mastery of the English language.  However, your effort to compensate for my greater level of failure by cutting me off, then climbing out of your car to take a swing at me was a big mistake.  In my humble opinion, that was definitely unacceptable."
"I sincerely hope the hospital trip to seal your lip and stitch the cut under your left eye serves as an object lesson:  Just because a man wears short running shorts does not necessarily mean he lacks the ability to loosen a load of rubbish out of your skull should you attempt to run him off the road.  In order to save your face and motor vehicle from any further damage it would be wise for you to, at the least, look both ways before violating traffic laws.  Sincerely, M.J."

I know M.J.'s actions are likely going to make life more difficult for the next runner "Rogue Driver" encounters.  And, as always, it is impossible to glean the salient details of a runner-meets-angry-motorist story from the point of view of the runner.  But we perhaps can take away a few points:

The three most important qualities for safe running near motor vehicle traffic are "visibility, visibility and visibility."  Well, only if you're a realtor.  The two qualities other than visibility might be "hearability" and "communicability."  Light-colored clothes, reflective gear, lights; all of these items ought to be part of the runners' wardrobe, and especially during the winter months. 

I'm not going to beat the "music headphones are evil and should be destroyed" drum, but please find a way to keep the volume - if you're going to wear them on the run - low enough to hear what is going on around you.  Runners tend to listen to music in order to dissociate, get away from the messages being sent to the brain.  Sometimes getting away means not getting the important message that an auto or a person are approaching. 

Lastly, if you have to defend yourself physically, make certain (as Parker wrote) you can control "the preliminaries."  A means of exit that a car cannot follow is good; a means of collecting information for the local law enforcement is better.  It doesn't hurt to carry a smart phone with you.  Those little cell phone cameras do things which exceed documenting your friends on Saturday night.

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...