One Toe Over The Line...

I went out and ran my first 5K road race in many months a couple of weeks ago. I needed to run a test 5K to assess my fitness level & adjust some of the training intensities, & the weather was just beginning to feel less like Florida. 'Why not?' I said to myself. I didn't perform anywhere near as well as I hoped, but it proved some things I already knew:

A four-week training vacation at the beginning of the summer is never a good idea.

Ten excess pounds does add an extra minute of time to an estimated 5K race performance.

Change...and inertia...can coexist.

Over a cup of coffee & breakfast with my wife & Walter, a local running friend, I took a thirty-minute analysis of what needed to be adjusted in my training & began to make a few small repairs (some of which are in earlier blog posts).

While running a tempo workout the other Wednesday, I passed an old friend. He caught up with me at the bar where we meet after the run & complimented me on how well I had been running lately. Randy loves racing 5K events; he'll not hesitate to jump in his truck & drive an hour so he can run for 25 minutes, then drink light beer for two hours.

From Labor Day to Thanksgiving, here in the Panhandle, there can be anywhere from one up to to three 5K races for a nearly unbroken string of weekends. It then eases off a little into the holiday season & kicks back into swing just after New Years' Day. Randy asked me where I planned to race this weekend. I had to tell him, 'nowhere, my friend.' Not that I don't like racing 5Ks.

When I first started racing, a 5K road race could leave me napping in the recliner for the remainder of the day. As I've matured...all right, aged...I've become more functional. Slower in my walk, but more functional.

About five or six years ago we had a large group of guys & gals who would meet to run at 6:00 a.m. on Sundays. The first mile usually would be kinder & gentler; most of the group were still waking up during that time. Inevitably the pace would pick up a little by the first incline. You could sometimes tell who had raced the day before. One of the guys, a fellow by the name of Gary, once told me it was not good training to race the day after a race. He used to tell me, "Mike, the day after a good race I like to go easy. The day after a bad race I like to go easy." Gary's "easy" the day after a race was often tougher than his race pace. Looking back at that statement & the source; it was one of those "things that make you go 'hmmm...'"

Once the guys (and the occasional chick!) forgot we left our bib numbers on the coffee table the previous afternoon & would begin to string out the group, my coach would have to remind me to not get "happy feet." It was a historical inevitability the front-running pace would eventually slack off. The group always reformed before the water stop at 40 minutes into the run.

Racing, when done right, is painful business. Even if you don't have a number on your chest.

What is it about pinning a bib number & toeing a line with a herd of runners that makes otherwise sane persons suddenly become brain-dead about how hard they need to run? I've often warned my athletes an "easy effort" on race day is almost impossible unless they're truly disciplined. Too many good potential 10K, half-marathon or marathon performances have been spit-canned by jumping into a 5K "just for fun."

The occasional race is a good thing. It serves as a social outlet, sharpens up a runner's skills, & lets them know exactly where they stand in the grand old pecking order of runners. But sometimes too much of a good thing can be harmful. My friend Betsy decided to run four...or five...marathons in a year about two years ago. When she asked what I thought about her running the fifth one that year I had to take a very deep breath and stifle the urge to shriek in horror: "Are you out of your mind!?"

There are several rules of thumb which ought to be followed, more or less, when it comes to recovery or hard training after a race:

1. A day of non-impact exercise or rest - I prefer rest - for every hour of racing.

2. A day of easy training efforts for every mile raced.

If you have developed a good base of training & love to do half-marathon distance races, you can probably segue into a 12-week cycle after a week or so. Marathoners can probably segue into a new 12-to-16 week cycle after two to three weeks.

As always - like Jiminy Cricket - let your conscience & your body be your guide.

Because it will tell you when you aren't following the rules.

Who...Or What...Do You Love?

The missus & I had another chance to get away from it all...here, taking the kids & grandkids to New Orleans. I had to teach a seminar on Friday, so driving over on Thursday afternoon was naturally out of the question. However, it also provided me a few hours of my Friday afternoon with nothing better to do than point my trusty Scion xB in the proper direction, listen to some of the tunes I'd recently downloaded to my iPod & think deep thoughts.

It occurred to me I had not talked to my father in five weeks (his seventieth birthday), & it was not like I was going to be disturbed by much at that particular time...might as well burn a few cell phone roaming minutes, no? After a healthy dose of touching base with him, & getting safely past the casinos along Mississippi's Gulf Coast, one deep thought led to another & I wanted to know what some of my New Orleans friend/s were doing.

They had been on a cruise ship for a week with two dozen or more of their closest relatives. What had me marveling even more was the fact they were able to make it through that week without throwing anyone overboard...or consuming adult beverages. I knew they had cut back during the spring in Central Florida, but didn't know they had made the decision to cut back in that drastic a manner. They have their reasons, which are quite valid (even if I disagreed, validity is in the mind of the beholder), & I strongly applaud them for it.
The ramifications or the rationale for such decisions hadn't quite hit until I was driving on the trip home...Then I began to think about it all: You see, we didn't drink anything around the family because being (at the least) loose around the children and grandchildren didn't seem like a good example. There were enough people on the streetcars & on the major thoroughfares who were loosened up during the weekend, right? We went out for a bite to eat & to walk around with some of our friends after the kids drove home, sufficient opportunity to loosen up and enjoy some of the more adult-oriented venues we occasionally enjoy. And while I was loose enough to not feel major pain I couldn't help but see some of the really loose denizens of the place/s we visited, most notably the crowd in one of the city's most popular karaoke bars. Believe me, there are way too many people who think they sing well. Add an abundance of adult beverages & it's a Capt'n Fun Happy Birthday Song Audition Night, minus the cake (Robin Williams' 2002 routine about Japanese men in a karaoke bar after a couple of shots of Jack Daniels' says it best.). When you see them you begin to think to yourself, 'dude, is THAT what I look like when...?'
Right now I can say I do not have a drinking problem. There was a time in my life when you could probably say I did, but I think age & a beer-related accident (I thank God no police were around to see!) a long time ago (as well as a recent beer-related accident where we were the victims!) converted me from the quantity drinker to the quality drinker. That means I still spend the same amount of money on beer at 48 as at 18; I share/enjoy the six-pack of microbrews more than I did bogarting a case of Lone Star. I like beer a great deal, & there are days when there's nothing more wonderful after a very hot run or workout than a very cold beer. Of the friends I have, the ones for which I would say I would go through hell in a gasoline suit are very small; & the vast majority of them drink probably the same amount, give-or-take, that I do. I have many colleagues & acquaintances, however, who are perhaps one (stumbling?) step to the left or to the right of the classic hash house harrier definition: a drinker with a running problem. Love 'em, but it's the truth.

And THAT'S where my worried mind begins to operate. I know a person's character can be molded & shaped by the people they spend the most time with. Think about it: Influence of Others -> Thought -> Decision -> Action -> Habit -> Character -> Influence on Others. I've told folks on more than a few occasions we are what we consume, spiritually as well as physically. So, can you control your own cycle? Or would you rather smash the mirror?

'Beer commercials usually show big men, manly men, doing manly things: "You've just killed a small animal. It's time for a light beer." Why not have a realistic beer commercial, with a realistic thing about beer, where someone goes, "It's five o'clock in the morning. You've just @*#d on a dumpster. It's Miller time."' - Robin Williams (1986)

The REAL Priorities

One nice thing about taking a vacation, especially in a place much different than where you live, is the opportunity to look critically at things without having to deal with them immediately.

There you go again, Bowen, failing to make sense.

What I mean is that it gives you a chance to put things into (a more proper) perspective. You realize what is important, what needs to stay unchanged, what cannot be changed, and what must be changed. Oh, and you figure out what isn't so important, too.

While looking at what could be tweaked and what needed to be tossed, I started to read a little more from an Endurance Nation coach. Pat McCrann posted on his blog Five Fit Life Commandments (You don't have to be a tri-geek to appreciate his common-sense approach to training. If you're a time-crunched athlete his ten-hours-a-week approach to endurance sport may save you some grief around the house or the workplace.), which I want to touch on in brief. If you want the details, go to the link I posted above.

#1 — Plan From The Ground Up - Right off the bat, McCrann tells me to toss my copy of Triathlete's Training Bible (at least for calculating annual training hours and trying to divide time over mesocycles) off to the side. There are all those things we are (son, husband, grandfather, worker, friend, coach, race director, course measurer, national organization rep, and so on...) and do outside of the 9-to-12 hours a week (for me, that much; for you, perhaps more...or less) we've set aside for running, cycling, swimming, cross-training. Training for my unsuccessful crack at IM FL last year I found the undivided support of my wife, my friends, and not a small amount of understanding from my boss, to be elemental to me making it to the starting line. I got beat up during the swim and melted down, but I learned what it takes to get to the starting line (and I'll be smarter next time!). Take away the five hours in the emergency department, and I can say it was an enjoyable week with my wife...I believe she would say the same.

#2 — Focus on Fun & Challenging Activities - I had 70.3 NOLA already on the 2010 schedule, and hadn't started the 2009 IM assault. Not the wisest idea looking from the forward, but it was probably the tonic I needed after IM FL. For me, a 70.3 is challenging, and fun; definitely an achievable distance within the constraints of my training and abilities. My wife told me she wanted to start running half-marathons again, and asked whether I would help her prepare for a half in New Orleans. Since the half was six weeks out from the 70.3, I figured it was the perfect training run/trip for me too; we have close friends in the area and it's a two hour-ish drive from our home...close enough for comfort, not so far we have to draw a major itinerary. For giggles, we did a 9K about seven weeks out from the half, also in NOLA. The road and climate conditions were great preparation for the half...and it served as a great excuse to get out of town after the holiday season. We're runners; we like these kind of trips...they beat her business travel.

#3 — Create A Basic Training Week - There are certain things etched in stone; work schedule, runs with other groups, swim practices. Oh, then you have real life, too. After a couple of years, and a year of experimenting with some other activities, I finally have a week laid out that I can accomplish, training-wise, consistently across a year regardless of seasonal and external commitments. McCrann mentioned that this is a baseline - something which seemed obvious. However, he mentions the idea of personal/social/professional capital stored since training has not been a constant drain on other areas of life. Deja vu Stephen McCovey's emotional bank account.

#4 — Integrated Nutrition & Recovery - something I've had a difficult time in learning, but getting better as I age...and recovery takes longer and is more necessary. I might love beer, but I also realize the alcohol in it hampers the development of human growth hormone, and makes me feel like I've been beaten about the head, shoulders, and upper torso with a big stick the next morning. Funny, I did not put this calculation together until the other morning; awakening on a Saturday after Friday night's (beer-free!) dinner with the daughter-in-law and grandkids...and feeling good. Changing my training schedule to place the lower impact activities in the morning and the running in the afternoon also lets me balance work with recovery.

#5 — Well-Organized External Commitments - Changing the workout a couple of mornings a week allows me to shower at home, rather than dragging my work clothes and shower items to work, worrying about where to store the wet, smelly shoes, and - worst of all - forgetting the shoes/socks/belt/skivvies/brush and feeling miserable about my appearance the remainder of the work day. Usually, the first 60 minutes of the day is taken up with e-mail and electronic posting of stuff which lands in my personal in-box and is forwarded; I'm already checking e-mail for work so this is giving me a second read. I spend less time punching up stuff on the computer on my time.

Of course, when you leave vacation world and come back to the real world, you have to execute the plan of action you drafted in your mind, or scribbled on a napkin at Cheeseburger Waikiki, or typed up on your laptop during that (seemingly) endless flight from Honolulu to Atlanta. There's where the trial/error/trust thing comes in. Give it a try...make certain to give enough time to see if things are really working...and adapt accordingly.

Easy Days

Sounds like the kind of place I want to spend some time in this time next year. Ah, but that will depend mostly on the wishes of COMNAVWIFELANT, also known as "Mrs. Java," "Coffee-Mate," or..."she who must be obeyed."

Fortunately for me, this years' endurance challenges smoothly segued into:
1. a reasonable level of training, namely the building of a right solid base, and
2. my wife's wish to run another half-marathon after a year's hiatus from systematic training.

So, I took the challenge of being husband and coach all at the same time...again...and got her back into the run training regimen she had a couple of years ago. Suzanne's strength is the ability to (like the Energizer Bunny) go for a consistent pace over an extended period of time. Brute, blistering speed is not her forte.

The biggest challenge for her, unfortunately, is the fact she is one of the few at her ability level who enjoys doing what I like to assign (to my athletes); moderate-distance training sessions of up to an hour two-or-three times a week, with speed work once-or twice a week. Oh, yes, don't forget the run of at least an hour once a week. That means she spends a lot of time doing her workouts alone. At least I can find someone within 30 seconds/mile pace to run with me...most of the time. However, since the middle of last month I've made a conscious effort to run easy with her at least once a week.

Don't know how many of you have ever tried to run a minute-to-two minutes/mile slower than your average training pace, but it can be a little painful. Especially after 60 minutes. I dreaded the prospect of those first runs at such a sedate pace, remembering vividly the damage I did to myself along Waikiki a couple of years back. All right, I have to admit part of the problem had to do with the fact I was in very old running shoes...and had recently done damage to my achilles at the beach half-marathon.

But once I figured out how to do the right thing - run for a period of time/distance, then turn and run back to my wife - everything went well. As it was, she was never really more than about two blocks back from me over the course of a single mile, so I could gently jog back. It also allowed her to know the exact route which we were going to use for a six-mile run, or an eight-mile run, or what the route for the distance she needed to cover was going to be (GPS plus Google Maps equals a very good estimate of how far you've gone.).

This particular attitude persisted over the last month, with other runners who are a little faster than my wife also benefiting from the small change in my training regimen. As they've come out they've had the opportunity to learn the loop we train on & build their confidence.

So, what has it done to my speed? Well, I ratcheted up the pace the other night on the beach, doing a 6.2-mile loop. The first mile or two were in the 7:30/mile pace, after that the splits started to come down between 5-and-7 seconds a mile, until I was running the last two miles in the high-six minute/mile range. Yes, it hurt. But it was a good hurt. I hadn't been at that particular pace for about two, or maybe three, months. But I also hadn't done any real speed work since September, either.

So, if you want to develop speed you need to learn how to run comfortably at speed. But once you've learned how it feels, you can't be hurt by emphasizing the runs which maintain base fitness.

One Excuse...

"...is as good as another on any given day." - Coach Fox, multiple times between 2002-05

Every once in a while I have athletes who decide to engage in 'summer,' a strange season of the earthly year, a time filled with many outdoor entertainment activities, including a very strange concept called vacation. During this vacation, the athlete gets into an automobile & drives for several hours to a place where they spend the majority of the money they saved over the previous year on lodging, food & the exact same outdoor entertainment opportunities which they could have enjoyed at home had they decided to stay.

Also, during this vacation, the athlete usually makes a conscious decision to do NOTHING. As a result, they return back to the track on a Tuesday evening after one of these vacations having lost every bit of the hard-won fitness we attempted to develop from their previous vacation, during the period between the autumnal equinox & two weeks after the winter solstice. Following that vacation, they stepped on their bathroom scale & realized they weighed much more than they suspected...as if their jeans couldn't have told them the same message some time in late November.
How these athletes became conditioned to believe a vacation was meant to exclude exercise is beyond my understanding. If you were to ask every single one of them what they used to do throughout their summer vacation as a child, I would wager nine of every ten would tell you they were involved in some sort of unstructured physical activity, like swimming, bicycling, walking, hiking, climbing, & all that good stuff...on a daily basis.

So, how did we go from doing stuff on vacation to not doing a thing on vacation? Mind you, one or two of my athletes actually perform physical labor during the week, so for them, physical exercise is probably more fun than chore. A vacation for them would probably not be harmful. However, the rest of you (myself included) are still on the hook. If you're going to go on one of those vacation things, there's a very good reason for the "take half the clothes and twice the money" advice provided by every travel consultant...it's so you can add at least one pair of running shoes & three outfits, silly. Your employer will thank you. Your co-workers will thank you. And yes, your coach will definitely thank you...not nearly as much as you will, though.

During this time of the year, it's difficult to get fired up about food. Well, unless it's fired up on a grill & sitting beside a cold beverage of choice. Otherwise, most indoor dining is boring. Hardest part about being a person in training at this time of the year is this: You need to get nourishment back into your body, at the least some nourishment within 30 minutes of finishing a workout, but other times during the day, too.

But when the day is divided up into workout, clean-up, commute, work, commute, workout, clean-up, sleep (with a few other small pieces in between), it's a challenge to get the right food in the right amounts into you...especially if you're one of those people who hate eating first thing in the morning, or don't have a stable enough work schedule during the day, or don't have access to a kitchen/refrigerator, or have knucklehead co-workers who raid the fridge. The key is to get what your body needs. Keep it simple.My wife recommended I take a big ol' salad into the office so I could scarf on throughout the day. Nice, but there are days when I'm not exactly sitting in front of my desk doing office things. I could have something a little smaller every so often, though. She made a salad the other morning, which was sitting on the stove next to a couple of bagel halves. I couldn't tell at first what the contents were, so I opened up the lid. Instantly I smelled onions & knew there was no way I could take that in to work.

I don't eat (raw) onions, period. End of story. I can tell if there's one on a sandwich or in someone's lunch across a crowded room.So, I try to get a little something on the way in, but balance it with the wisdom of knowing that eating McBarfle's five days a week is going to make me fat as a pig. My recent screaming about weight & the need to get back down to fit weight made the cartoon above stand out. For those of you who don't know me too well, my dog is below:
...I think you can guess who represents me in the cartoon above. Ah, but it's a temporary phase, one which can be remedied by smarter eating, judicious workouts, & resting as needed.

See you at the track.

The Job Hunt, Redux

Well, my quote-unquote vacation is quote-unquote almost over. If I had the brains the Almighty provided to wooden geese, I would have taken the other two days this week for which I hadn't originally planned. I'm extending it just a little bit longer to include a long weekend of education in Jacksonville; who knows, I might even be a better coach when it is all said and done.

However, I am taking to heart something I heard yesterday morning from the wife of the man who owns our local running emporium. She reminded me I trained under a different system than the one/s to which most coaches ascribe, so (in so many words) adding more bricks to my knapsack might not be as beneficial as I think. Thank you, Mimi. Spoken like the maternal figure you are. I still bow in your general direction.

Since I'm back in the office, the active hunt for a new job goes back into full swing. Ideally, I'd like to stay at about the same income and (40-hour) time constraint. I've got resumes out in the abyss, but I have the sneaking suspicion nothing will come to pass until I have a reduction-in-force notice in hand (which places me on the preferred placement listing). The sooner I'm in a new j-o-b, the sooner I can figure out what I can do as a coach and an athlete.

Christmas, however, is over. It's time to get back on the chain gang. I have my own personal training plan writ large, as well as my goals. That's always a good start. Following that, as always, comes the hard part of charting the path to the goals, then tracking the progress along the path. As I've become what I like to think of myself as...computer savvy over the last few years, I've graduated from ring-bound logbooks to spreadsheets. Some have been more effective than others. One I liked for many years was developed by David Hays, a physician (I believe). His spreadsheet, which I think is called LogRun, is a neat tool, especially if you want a good, workable, editable way of following your progress...especially when it comes to tracking shoe mileage.

You can keep track down to the mile the distance your shoes have traveled over time, which can save you a load of grief, joint soreness and the risk of overuse injury.

I use it in conjunction with a workout tracker program on the Presidents' Council for Physical Fitness and Sports to estimate what my spinning/indoor trainer and swim workouts would have been if it were a run. It's not perfect, but it beats most anything else I've seen out there. You also can keep track of activity in order to qualify for bronze, silver and gold awards. Oh, yeah, there is a platinum one, too, but I suspect it will take me another four or five years (barring cycling incidents requiring six to eight weeks of hanging out in a sling) to reach that one.

So, take time this week to look at what you accomplished last year, what you wanted to accomplish, and what it might take to bring those missed goals to pass.

Wait! Didn't I See This Before?

For those of you who take the time to read my (sometimes) unfocused rants and ramblings, thanks. I've been a little delinquent over the week, mostly because I've little to say. I'd be delusional if I began to think that there are people in this world who wait on my every word. Maybe if I were an elite athlete, a celebrity, or a real writer it would be a different story.

With three months left before the end of the calendar year, I have to take a closer look at my own leave and earnings statements. Scariest part is not so much that I have vacation time, but trying to fit it in somewhere. Since my wife has a nasty tendency to work all those holidays that most government workers (there I go using oxymorons again) it's more a day I can sit at Panera Bread, reading my latest acquisitions from the book store, or Amazon.com...I can feel the caffeine coursing through my veins as I write.

Next week is the closest thing we will have to a vacation before the Christmas holidays; we're going to Dayton to visit my coach and his wife, stay for a couple of days, and run the Dayton River Corridor Half-Marathon. I want to go out for a little schlep the day before in the area around Yellow Springs, Glen Helen Preserve, John Bryan State Park, and the like. There are some wonderful paths out there, as well as some really nasty ones, that put almost everything I've ever run in Florida to shame.

The word is out on the beer mile. According to my business partner/swim coach, the first on-line registrant went through Active.com and did the deed. I've received a couple of phone calls about the event from folks who appreciate the fact the proceeds are coming their way, but a little concerned about being associated with an event containing beer.

Bummer.

I guess most of them never read what Benjamin Franklin was reported to have said: 'Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.' I once stated my belief that coffee was proof of the nature and existence of God, but I think Ben could be right, too.

It's probably much too early to start thinking about Hallowe'en, but I can start thinking about Kona. Next weekend, my friends, is the high holidays for triathletes and masochists; the Ford ^TM Ironman World Championship. My choice for the haku at the end...going to be either Germans Faris Al-Sultan or Normann Stadler, or the Belgian Rutger Beke, with Australians Luke Bell and Chris (Macca) McCormack possible dark horses. Macca can talk trash all he wants, but unless he has THE perfect day it's not possible. I'm going to be massively bummed, because we are in Dayton during the day and I won't be anywhere near a computer with the time to sit and watch the event stream.

Something Money Cannot Buy

Fresh back from a six-day respite in Key West. It was amazing to find out how much money it would take to do anything, from the morning coffee to the evening nightcap. A house that was no larger than my 1,000-something-square foot home, with less than one-tenth the yard space, just up the block from Ernest Hemingway's home, was going for a little over three times what I purchased my place for three years ago. Was it cute? Well, yes, it was a cute little cracker cottage house...enough space between you and your neighbor to hand across a cup of coffee in the morning. So what you're paying for is the privilege of not having a yard to mow. In a neighborhood where the wealthy and the poor live cheek-by-jowl. In a place where you have a big, honking bullseye on you from June 1 to December 1, just daring the tropical storm activity to come.

Since I talked at length about the hefty, hoary, hirsute herd spending $50 a whack, contending for the right to be called Hemingway's nickname, I won't go much further there.

It's pretty simple to understand why, during vacation, tourists wallets become slimmer as their waistlines expand. Especially in a place like KW, where the daytime and evening temperatures fluctuate by only a couple of degrees, and both just this side of infernal. All you want to do is nothing. And even nothing can make you hunger and thirst, which leaves you little choice but to take care of the need. I stepped on the scale this morning after my spinning class and nearly shrieked in horror; I'm the heaviest I've been in nearly 18 months, save for a time right after my first half-marathon when I took a week off and ate like a horse.

In spite of the horror, I realize this is a temporary situation. Consistent training, and not a small amount of dietary wisdom, over the next months, will get me back closer to the weight I was when I was racing well in the spring. Much like Mark Allen's advice to Chris McCormack: 'you need to be fat in July (read: early season), you need to be lean in October, when it really counts (read: Ironman world championship).'

You cannot buy thin. All you can do is be thin when it counts - race day.

Las Vegas Has Elvis Because Key West Picked First

There' nothing like going on a week's vacation...arrive in town to find two hundred portly, middle-aged-to-elderly men who all have worked very hard over the years to look like Ernest Hemingway in his later years. Each years' winner becomes local royalty. For them, it's a good thing; all they have to do is come back each year to this overpriced spit of land out in the Atlantic and judge future contests. No more political campaign-like madness for them, thank you very much.

And it does feel much like a political campaign, when you look at it from the surface. I saw screen-printed t-shirts, fans, placards; heard chants of individual supporters - usually family and close friends - more money raised and thrown about (in the general direction of the Key West High School scholarship fund) over the course of three days. Sloppy Joe's, the KW bar where 'Papa' Hemingway was reported to have written some of his greatest works, appears to be the center of the universe; Capt. Tony's, just up the block heading west, probably handles the overflow handily.

So, what would 'Papa' do?

I had the chance to talk to the preeminent, the primary, and the persistent. On Saturday morning just before a ritual "running of the bulls" finalist parade, a kindly gentleman, one of the more recent 'Papas,' took the measure of my question. He thought for a few seconds, and replied, 'I'm not certain that "Papa" would understand it.' The family member of a first-timer, fervently (and drunkenly) cheering for his Italian-accented, stumbling moment in the spotlight during the second round of 'Papa' wannabes, told me she did not think Hemingway would understand it, either.

They may be right. A man like Hemingway, who wrote much on the dignity of the individual identity...the aloneness of the man on a mission (or fool's errand), would have been confused by the number of men over the past 27 years who have tried to physically emulate him...many of them on their 20th attempt at last count; the organizers provide pins counting the number of years each participant has show up to pony up his U. S. Grant...and then some. The closest one was a local. The farthest one came from Australia.

And it's the elderly, portly 'Papa' they emulate; a young man was prohibited from competing in years past as the young Hemingway, complete with World War I-era Red Cross ambulance driver uniform.

I guess it means something. We - and by we, I mean our society - look at the decadent, white jump-suited, paunchy Elvis; to the paunchy, hard-drinking, hoary and hirsute Hemingway, as our ideal men. Perhaps this has much to do with the lives of leisure they led prior to their tragic departure from this mortal coil. Problem is, we forget how much labor and effort, the ball-busting, blood, sweat, toil and tears they shed in the development of their craft. A Hemingway short story, such as A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, or Death In The Afternoon takes much longer to write than it takes to read. It's the work, and the life experience that seeps into each word, each page, that takes so much longer. All that labor and expense paid dividend in the end, allowing both their aimless, chemical-induced life.

I have more respect for 'Papa' than for Elvis, though. At least he was still able to walk from Sloppy Joe's to his house, with a potty stop at the kapok tree on the way. Hemingway could be content with buying a drink. Elvis had to buy his friends.