2:38 AM

I frequently get insomnia after big races. My legs feel restless, my stomach cramps up, and my mind continually flashes back through the events of the day.

That's why, as my friends and I were driving home from Firetrails last night, we had this conversation:

Friend: I'll bet we sleep well tonight.

Me: I can only hope so.

But alas, it was not to be. So after tossing and turning for a couple of hours, I figured I may as well flip on the computer and report that I ran the Firetrails 50 in 8 hours, 45 minutes yesterday.

The race itself was great, but I'm not quite sure what to make of it yet; in some ways, I came home with more questions than answers about this crazy sport of ultrarunning. I'll start sorting all of those thoughts out soon, and hopefully post a coherent report here in the next 2 or 3 days.

In the meantime, I'm headed back to the bedroom soon, in hope that I can finally get some sleep.

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PSA

A public service announcement brought to you by Running and Rambling:

If you happen to find yourself in the Lake Chabot area or the Tilden Park district of Northern California on Saturday ...

And if you happen to see a guy who looks like this running your way ...

(me at the 2005 Firetrails 50)

Please try to say something nice to him. Because he might like to hear some encouragement in the middle of a pretty long day.

That is all. You may now return to your regular blogging activity.

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Guilt by Association

“And Sally and I did not know what to say –
Should we tell her the things that went on there that day?
Should we tell her about it? Now what should we do?
Well … what would YOU do if your mother asked you?”
- Dr Seuss, from The Cat in the Hat

*
Everyone says that honesty is the best policy … but what if you end up getting screwed by the honesty of others?

That’s the question that faces a handful of female athletes in light of the Marion Jones saga – at least, presumably so. And the answers, as you can imagine, aren’t nearly as easy as we’d like them to be.

By now, nearly everyone has weighed in on Jones’s staggering fall from grace. I’m not interested in exploring the whole issue of drugs and athletics anymore – after all, I beat that horse to death in a series of posts last year.

The angle that intrigues me more is the fate of Jones’s fellow relay runners – in the 4x 100m and the 4x 400m events - who won gold medals with her assistance at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. This week, Jones returned her medals to the US Olympic Committee.


All of which creates a dilemma for her former teammates – as detailed by the Associated Press:

-
[USOC Executive Officer] Jim Scherr and USOC Chairman Peter Uberroth both have encouraged the other Americans to give back their medals.

Jearl Miles-Clark, Monique Hennagan, Tasha Colander-Richardson and Andrea Anderson all won golds as part of the 1600m relay. Chryste Gaines, Torri Edwards, Nanceen Perry and Passion Richardson were on the 400m relay team.

Both Edwards and Gaines have served doping bans since the 2000 Olympics.

“It’s our opinion that when any sporting event is won unfairly, it’s completely tarnished and should be returned. The relay events were won unfairly.” Uberroth said. “It’s very unfortunate, but your result involved cheating, so the result is unfair to the other athletes of the world.”

-

The wording is deliberately vague as to whether the women will be forced to turn in their medals, which means that – at this point at least – the USOC is making an ethical appeal to the women involved. And while it’s not unfounded to believe that the other women on the relay were using drugs, there is also a distinct possibility that at least one innocent woman is being asked to relinquish an Olympic gold medal, more than seven years after the fact.

For just a moment, put yourself in the place of Jones’s relay teammates, and consider the following scenarios you now face:

1. You are innocent of any wrongdoing, and are being asked to voluntarily forfeit the greatest achievement of your career, one that you spent upwards of 20 years working toward. Think of how rewarding it felt to earn your first marathon or Ironman finisher’s medal, multiply that feeling by about 100, and then think of how you’d feel seven years from now if somebody told you that your accomplishment was “tarnished.”

2. You are guilty of doping, but the main reason you did it was to level the playing field because you knew for certain that many of your competitors were doing so – in which case, the result wasn’t unfair to the other athletes at all. The only difference between your team and the Jamacians, Bahamians, Greeks and Russians is that one of your girls decided to finally come clean – even though she never actually tested positive. Forfeiting the gold medal doesn’t by any means assure that it will be awarded to a clean team of athletes.

Like anything else in this drug conundrum, the more aspects you consider, the more complicated the situation becomes. And in the same manner that I finished my series of drug articles last summer, I don’t have any simple answers for the dilemma. So I’ll make like Dr Seuss, and finish with a series of questions instead.

If you were a relay runner, and asked to give back your gold medal from the Sydney Games…

Would you know what to say? Would you tell of the things that went on there that day?

Would you tell us about it? Now what should you do?

Well … what would YOU do if the USOC asked you?

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Rodeo Clown

Here I am, poised and confident, ready to take on the mechanical bull ride at our church’s annual Fall Hoe-Down yesterday.

Here I am, getting thrown from the bull approximately 12 seconds later.

On the surface, a 12-second ride is nothing to be ashamed about. After all, professional bull riders spend their entire careers aiming for an eight-second ride on top of the real thing. So 12 seconds on a mechanical bull seems fairly decent at first glance.

Decent, that is, until I tell you another small detail: the bull was set at level one.

Apparently there are six levels of increasing difficulty on this contraption. Level one is the newbie/baby/beginner level. It’s also the same level that my 3-year-old daughter rode for over 20 seconds, and my 6-year-old daughter rode for over 30. My wife was able to ride it for 40 seconds, then hung on for another 10 seconds after it switched to level two.

To repeat, clearly for the record: level one threw me in 12 seconds. On a related note – it’s hard to tell for sure, but in the second picture above, I’m fairly certain the bull operator is laughing at me.

My performance was so dismal that even my normally-compassionate wife felt compelled to tease me. Which led to the following exchange:

Her: I did a lot better than you on that bull.

Me: I know … but I’m not used to riding anything that doesn’t have aero bars.

It wasn’t my snappiest line ever, but it was the best I could come up with on the spot. But the triathlon analogy may not be too far-fetched – because …

Here I am participating in the cricket spitting contest. Guess how I did in this event?

Truthfully, I did terrible. But in comparison to my wife and daughters, I did great – because for some reason, they decided against putting live crickets in their mouths, and chose not to compete. So score one point for me in the cricket category.

I’ve often said that to be a good triathlete, you don’t have to be excellent at anything – you just have to be willing to muddle through three disciplines in a halfway decent fashion. You can’t let your weaknesses dictate your level of participation. And that's exactly the point I was demonstrating at the hoe-down.

At least, that’s the way I’m deciding to spin the events of the day. It helps me to overlook the more glaringly obvious lesson – namely, that I’ll NEVER be mistaken for a cowboy.

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Visions of Garland

“This city is my jungle gym … “
-Jack Johnson, “Jungle Gym”

Considering the countless times I’ve run through and written about Garland Ranch Regional Park in Carmel Valley, I feel somewhat irresponsible for not posting photos to substantiate my descriptions. It’s like if I were to tell you over and over again how beautiful Minka Kelly from Friday Night Lights is, but never provided a picture, you might think I was exaggerating.

The problem is that I almost never run with a camera. But when my wife and I took our kids on a “treasure hike” (more on that later) in the park last month, I capitalized on the opportunity to capture some of the images that I enjoy at least twice per week.

So at long last, here’s a guided tour through a portion of my hometown playground:

The main entrance sign. Notice that bikes aren’t allowed where horses go, and horses aren’t allowed where bikes go. Which is probably as it should be, really.

The bikers get the short end of this bargain, though, as only a small fraction of the park is designated for bikes. For the time being, it’s plenty of terrain for my 9-year-old son, but pretty soon he’ll outgrow it, and we’ll have to drive about 10 miles away to another park to give him a more challenging ride. I guess that will be a good news/bad news milestone for us.


These are posted just beside the main entrance sign. I call it the “If anything terrible happens to you here, you can’t sue us” sign.


During the summer, this footbridge is placed as an accessory entrance to the park, leading directly to the visitor’s center.


The footbridge crosses the Carmel River, which occasionally turns up on lists of the most endangered rivers in America. Local development has drained its watershed, and whenever there is a significant winter drought (as this past year was), it’s possible to cross the river in several locations without getting your feet wet. It’s kind of depressing, especially when you consider the next two photos …


After crossing the bridge, the lower acres of Garland Park comprise a flood plain for the river. This view looks east from the visitor center; people who have lived here for 30 years or more will tell you they’ve seen this entire area underwater in the past. I’ve lived here for about 12 years, and I’ve never seen the river rise that high.


This is the flood plain looking west. One cool story about this photo: Click on the picture to enlarge it, and look at the ridge of the hill framed by the two trees. You can faintly see an American flag flying proudly.

That hilltop was undeveloped prior to September 11th, 2001. After those attacks, the guy who owns that land decided to develop it just enough to establish an access road and place a flagpole for the Stars and Stripes to wave above the valley. I always feel a bit more patriotic seeing this flag than just about any other.



See this bench? This spot serves as the start/finish area of the Carmel Valley 50K trail race each year. The first 50K I ever ran was here - and after the race, I probably spent a full hour sitting on that bench, resting in the shade of the oak tree, slowly replenishing my fluids while wondering how on Earth I was going to manage walking back to my car. On that day, this was the most comfortable spot in the world for me. I really loved that bench.

Nowadays, whenever I pass by it, I feel like a hospital patient going back to visit the intensive care nurses who saved his life. And if it seems strange that a guy would feel forever indebted to an inanimate object like that ... well, I guess I wouldn't argue the point. But that's part of the charm of this place.


Much of Garland Park was formerly the ranch and dairy property of early pioneers. This dairy barn was built in the 1870s, and is one of the last remaining connections with the old farming days of Carmel Valley.


I could tell you the name of this trail, but it really doesn’t matter; probably 90% of Garland looks like this. Dense oak canopies above, and meandering trails below, combining to form a cocoon of tranquility. It’s been more than ten years, and I’ve never grown tired of this scenery.


Part of our hike reaches this “Siesta Point”, a small rocky outcropping overlooking the valley. This is the view from the Siesta Point looking west.


The view looking east. If you had a super-duper-duper magnified view, you could see my house near the convergence of the two ridgelines – it sits about 4 miles from this point.


Our kids love hiking to this spot: an old homestead site from early Valley settlers. They’re not so much interested in history; as the next photos will explain.


Another view of the homestead. See the small brick fireplace in the background? That’s where our kids inadvertently found a box of toys that were stashed by a geocacher. It’s funny, because …


We were actually looking for a hidden letterbox, which was located at the base of the large tree at right. Apparently both the geocachers and letterboxers thought this would be a good hiding place. So in a park of over 4000 acres, these two “secret” locations somehow ended up less than 50 feet from each other.


This is the geocache. Looks like they mean business, doesn’t it? I’m afraid if someone from the Department of Homeland Security stumbled across this, we’d have a forced evacuation on our hands.


On the other hand … the letterbox folks apparently take themselves far less seriously. Here’s what their stash looks like. I mean … there’s nothing remotely threatening about Tupperware, right?


Returning from the homestead, we hit my favorite section in the park for running: the Buckeye trail. It’s less than one mile long, but it’s one of the most enjoyable places I know of.


One reason I like this trail so much: it’s all single track, but with smooth footing and a gentle grade. When I open up my stride and gently accelerate on the downhills, it really feels like I’m playing around in an oak-strewn jungle gym.


Here’s my best story about this tree: I’m 6’2”, and have to duck my head slightly to dip under the branch across the trail. One of my training partners is 5’4”, and doesn’t have to worry about it. Of course, that doesn’t stop me from yelling “Watch your head!” every time we approach the branch, just as a friendly reminder of who’s taller.

We must have run this trail 50 times together, and I’ve yelled out “watch your head!” all 50 times. Sometimes I’m surprised that I still have training partners.


Emerging from the Buckeye trail, we approach what my kids call the “woodpecker tree”. At just about any time of day, you’ll find the birds pecking away in search of bugs to eat – and if you enlarge this picture, you’ll see the hundreds of holes they’ve created up and down the trunks. Predictably, when I stopped to take this picture, the birds all scattered. I hate it when wildlife doesn’t cooperate with me.

Speaking of which …


Over the years, I’ve encountered just about every kind of native animal imaginable here, with the exception (thankfully) of a mountain lion. Deer, coyotes, bobcats, rattlesnakes, skunks, foxes, and raccoons all call Garland Park home – but on this day, the most menacing animal I could come up with was this cottontail rabbit.

Some days are just like that. Other days are different – either due to wildlife sightings or the weather or the seasonal changes of scenery - which ensures that every run through Garland is a unique experience.

The only constant feature is this: I know that I love this place every time I run here.

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Angels Flight

Over the past five days, I’ve spent a great deal of time watching these guys:

Those would be the United States Navy Blue Angels, visiting the Salinas Valley for last weekend’s California International Airshow. My son and I went to see them on Saturday afternoon, and I also had the pleasure of seeing them prior to the airshow – as I’ll explain a bit later.

But first, a confession: I’ve been a Blue Angels fan for almost 20 years now – ever since they were featured in the music video for Van Halen’s “Dreams” [see the end of this post], which was one of the coolest videos of the late 1980s, and far and away the best song in the otherwise regrettable Sammy Hagar era of one of my all-time favorite rock bands. (I know, that’s a pretty lame reason to get hooked on something - but remember, I was a teenager. I also bought an insane amount of Crystal Pepsi just because they used VH’s “Right Now” song in their advertisements. I was pretty much a PR agency’s dream consumer – but we’re getting off subject.)

However, I grew up an Air Force brat, and was fortunate enough to see many shows by the Thunderbirds precision flight team as a kid. So I’ve always had some internal conflict about liking the Blue Angels.

I mean … it’s OK to like the teams from both branches of the military, isn’t it? Isn’t this the equivalent of drinking both Coke and Pepsi – where both are very good and very similar aside from some subtle differences, and you just enjoy whichever one is available to you at the time? Or is it a more serious offense - like a form of military bigamy, or like simultaneously cheering for both the Yankees and Red Sox? I’ve never been really clear on this. And yes, it troubles me sometimes.

(On that note - If anyone from the Air Force or Navy happens to read this and can give me some sort of ruling on the situation, I’d appreciate it. Otherwise, I’ll move on with the post.)

Here’s my favorite picture from the airshow. It’s a bit blurry, but keep in mind that the fighters are flying in excess of 800 mph, and I'm shooting them with a 3” x 2” camera. The fact that this shot captured anything besides vapor trails is a major accomplishment for me.

Anyway, the show was great, and my son had a blast – but that wasn’t my favorite part of the Blue Angels visit. Rather, the best part of Airshow Week for Salinas residents is the three days prior to the show, when the Angels conduct rehearsal flights above the Salinas Valley in preparation for the weekend’s event.

For my group of swimmers who train in an outdoor pool at midday, it made for some pretty impressive distractions from a couple of tough workouts. During backstroke sets, we saw the Angels buzz over the pool in a tight delta formation. While swimming breaststroke or freestyle, our normal breathing patterns allowed us periodic glimpses of solo fighters doing barrel rolls, or pairs doing inversion maneuvers in our visual periphery.

And for me individually, the Angels’ flights actually helped me get through the sessions more easily.

I’ve written before about how I have a tough time keeping up with the rest of my masters group. I’m frequently the last person to finish an interval, thereby getting the least amount of rest before starting the next one. I usually hit the wall just in time to hear the instructions for the following set, and rarely have a chance to catch my breath before pushing off the wall to keep up with the others.

Last Thursday, the situation was different, and worked substantially in my favor. Instead of me hitting the wall just as the next set was announced, here’s what happened several times:

Me: (touching wall, gasping for breath)

Swimmer #1, simultaneously: … next is 2x 300 leaving on the …

Swimmer #2, pointing: Here they come, from over there!

And we’d all pause as the Angels passed overhead in formation, before resuming our next set. Each time, I would stare toward the sky, savoring the few extra seconds of oxygen, thankful for the intermittent disruptions to the relentless grind of the workout.

The funny part is, it was never discussed – nobody ever said, “Let’s wait a few extra seconds so we can see them fly past.” But unanimously, and without hesitation, we all did. I guess if there’s any way for me to describe how captivating these precision flyers are, that’s the best thing I can say: the sight and sound of them just freezes you in your tracks, commanding your attention away from whatever else it is you’re doing – even if it’s a masters swim workout.

Those extra moments of rest were exactly what I needed to keep up with the group, and those sessions during the Angels’ flights were the best swim workouts I’ve had in several weeks.

It’s a crazy consequence of swimming during Airshow Week in Salinas – one I look forward to every September.

**

Van Halen - Dreams:

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It's the Thought That Counts

Look what my son bought me!!:

The Anthem Advance off-road racer made by Giant, retail price $6300. It’s a totally sweet, aggressive ride – and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

It’s fantastic news, except for one thing: I’m not really getting it.

My son just finished a “Million Dollar Project” for his 4th grade class, where the teacher asked each of them to describe how they would spend $1 million if they could do anything they wanted with it. They then had to document all of their purchases, and write a balance sheet subtracting the dollar amount of each item, until they were completely out of money. Sounds like a pretty cool project for a 9-year-old, doesn’t it?

So he bought me the mountain bike, which he picked out because he knows I need one - and because, in his words, “It was the most expensive one I could find.” Of course, I nearly ruined the moment by listing a handful of more expensive bikes (that I just happened to know offhand, by coincidence) before my wife smartly jumped in and told me to drop it.

He also bought me a $500 Quintana Roo wetsuit, and set himself up with a $600 Specialized Hotrock mountain bike. You know what? I’m starting to think that watching all of those Xterra triathlons is finally having some effect on the kid.

Here were some of his other big ticket items:
· $100,000 to our church, because that’s what the Bible says (Is this really my son?)
· An RV so that we could go camping without having to sleep in a tent (OK - he’s definitely my son.)
· $100,000 worth of Tiffany jewelry for my wife (Hmm ... now he’s just making me look bad.)
· A $200,000 passenger ticket on Virgin Galactic's first spaceline flight scheduled for next year. (How cool is that? No one will ever accuse this kid of thinking small.)

He also bought dolls and toys for his two younger sisters, and he quickly realized that a million dollars is a lot of money to spend. His list has a huge amount of Legos and Star Wars figures, which caused him to do way more balance sheet subtraction than he ever intended.

He eventually figured out that it’s difficult to spend down exactly to zero, so once he got tired of subtracting, he sunk the remaining $137,820.04 into Walt Disney Company stock. I thought perhaps a lesson in a diversified portfolio was in order, but maybe they’ll teach that when he gets to 5th grade. At any rate, here’s how he justified the stock purchase and concluded his essay:

“Hopefully soon, I’ll have another million dollars to spend.”

Very well said. Maybe he’s got a bit of writer in him as well. Unfortunately, if that’s the case … that first million is going to be awfully hard to come by.

But I sincerely hope he makes it big someday - because I could really use a new mountain bike.

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