Race Report: Give N' Gobble 10K

Thanksgiving morning was unusually cold for this part of the world, so close to the ocean that our temperature changes are very modest from one part of the year to another. But it had even snowed a tiny bit the night before! I wondered when I woke up if the course would have any slippery spots.

I had everything ready, or so I thought until I dug through my workout bag and couldn't find my gloves. It was 31 degrees outside and I really wanted to keep my hands warm. With less than 45 minutes before the start of the race, I got in my truck and headed back home just to get my darn gloves.

This diversion cut into my planned warm up time. It was my race strategy to start off the line rather aggressively so I wanted to warm up for about 10 minutes before. Warming up before a race isn't something I usually do, but with the cold weather and early fast pace planned, it seemed a good idea. That opportunity lost by being a dunderhead, instead did some jogging around the Sherwood High School where the race was starting and then headed to the start line.

Randy was running this race with me. Initially he wasn't going to be able to because his family was gathering out of town for the holiday, but his son's football team had made the playoffs so the two of them were staying home. We walked right past the line of runners already in the chute and boldly took a position right at the front of the group. I looked up and saw a sign that stated "5 to 7 min runners here" and backed up a full step. I looked behind and saw another sign for 8 minute milers and eased into an area between the two. Randy, true to form, never gave up his position in the very front. I turned on my Garmin and kept an eye on it as it acquired satellites just a moment before the start.

Off we went. Somehow, and this always happens, it seemed like there were way too many runners ahead of me. Didn't we just leave and I was at the front? Where did all these people come from? I told myself that the first 500 yards does not a race make and let these guys go out too fast. I had a plan. Stick to it.

I spent a lot of time watch watching in this race. It's a short race and if you fall asleep and don't track your pace the whole time there is little opportunity to make it up later. My overall pace needed to be 7'14" to meet my goal of a sub 45 minute race and in the early going, which was supposed to be aggressive, I did a 7'11" during mile 1 and 6'55" on mile 2. So far so good.

But the early speed and spirited downhills took their toll on my quads right away. Before mile 3 I felt my legs fade away on one of the last of the rolling hills on this back stretch. By the time I got through mile 4 I had used up nearly all of my early cushion of time. Later I would see that my heart rate was maxed out during almost the entire race, averaging 175 and hitting 185 at the end. I was working hard and I was conscious of my labored breathing. I had run with or ahead of Randy up to now but at 3 miles to go he was just ahead of me.

During my early exuberance I had shouted back at him "This is our house!" in an encouraging way of reminding him that other runners had come to run in our town and we were about to enter Brookman Road, our favorite training route in town. Defend our course. But that zeal had ebbed quickly and I struggled just to push on down the road. A road so familiar to me. I run it at least once a week and is my favorite route from my house. The horses, cows, goats, llamas, orchards and barns are all old friends. This was our place and we needed to run well.

The group I ran in remained constant nearly the entire race. There was a lanky guy about 30ish who seemed to lope along effortlessly and woman about the same age who seemed very fit and was able to rear back and hawk one off to the side with extreme confidence and skill. I'm always impressed by that, maybe because I'm so lousy at it.

The plan was to "race" the final mile and a half. It seemed reasonable before we started but now I wasn't so sure what was going to happen when I tried to push. I thought I might be able to pick it up just a bit but I was feeling pretty spent and was laboring to keep up. We made a right turn off the street and onto a bike path that runs along a green way.

That turn seemed to help. The narrower route, change of scenery, and knowing we had just one more mile to go gave me a boost. At one point, when I sense him drifting, I even managed to be able to ask Randy to speed up as we hugged the left side of the trail, walkers from the 5K now on our right. I was also finding inspiration from my watch that showed that we were a full second behind the pace. Doesn't sound like much, but it really does translate into meeting the goal or not. Not much route left to make up the lost time.

At the end of the path there are a couple of short but very steep pitches to be dealt with and then we popped back up onto the subdivision roads. The high school was just a few blocks away.

This confines of the path were gone and now had room to sprint to the finish. I gave it everything left...so did everyone else. We made one last turn back into the school yard where we had started and ran for it. I crossed the line and someone reached for me and tore a tag off my bib and handed it to the timekeeper as I clicked the stop button on my watch: 44'51". Nine whole seconds to spare!

I actually felt kinda sick after this one. Maybe I hadn't eaten very well beforehand, maybe I'm just not a speed guy, but I felt a little queasy and the right side of my face around my mouth felt sort of numb. It all went away quickly but this type of thing for me is more typical after a marathon, not a stinking 10K.

I wandered over to the football field area where the snacks and drinks were being given out and talked to some people that I knew about how I did. I walked back to my truck to get a bag of food I had brought and put it into the back of a U-Haul truck, this is a charity event after all, and headed for home.

The next day the results were posted on the website: 38th overall (ain't ever going to catch those kids), 31st man (got chicked 7 times!), 1st in my 50 to 54 division and set a 10K PR.

Not bad for an old guy on a cold Thanksgiving morning.

Race Report: Columbia Gorge Half Marathon

I had no idea what to expect. One the one hand...I had been running over 30 miles a week for some time, but on the other hand I still had the memory of the torturous Helvetia Half swirling through my pea brain, but back on that first hand I had been concentrating on base work and lost some weight, but then back to the other, this was in the gorge and the course very hilly.

Lynda and I gotten up way before the sun and headed toward Hood River, which is over an hour away. I had my running clothes in a bag and a couple of Jimmy Dean "D~Lite" turkey sausage breakfast sandwiches wrapped in foil for the ride up as my pre race meal. I had eaten one of these before the CIM so now I fuel up with them before long runs and races, partly for the protein-salt combo, but partly for the superstition of it. I also ate a banana.

After dawn we arrived at the park where the race festivities were set up and were there in plenty of time. I wandered over to the big white tent on the grass and picked up my race packet and bought a shirt, a knit cap was the clothing that came with registration. I went back to the car and got dressed. I tried pinning my bib to several different spots, front of my shirt, front of my jacket, and eventually settled on the right leg of my shorts where it wouldn't matter if I shed an upper layer.

The full marathoners started to gather on the green a half hour before my own start. I got out and help see them off to a raucous ovation as they poured through the beginning gauntlet amid shouts and smiles. No sooner had they disappeared down the road then the half marathoners started filling the chute and I made a final short trip to the car to grab my water bottle and diaper. Not far to the west hung a drapery of dark clouds. They reached for the chop water of Columbia like dementors in a Harry Potter movie and they were moving our way. A thin rainbow suddenly appeared brilliantly nearby and added to the glory of the morning.

I got into the crowd and twisted and slithered my way closer to the start. I've gotten more aggressive about my placement at the start over the years. It's not my way to be pushy but if you're there to get some good numbers it just makes sense to get past slower runners before the clock starts ticking.

The clock started ticking. I swear the same guy announces every single race! It's like airline pilots, the same one flies every commercial jetliner and speaks over the intercom, or at least it sounds like the same guy to me. So no sooner does he get us started but the wall of rain slams into us as if on cue. Perfect! The wind whooped up and the skies just poured down with an icy rain. But it was awesome. Surrounded by fellow runners, amid a shared experience, I couldn't have wished for a better place to be in that moment. As we splashed into unavoidable mud puddles on the unpaved road through the park the guy in front of me shouted "[mother nature] is this all you've got!"

The downpour didn't last and in a way it was refreshing, even baptismal. For a moment I regretted not bringing gloves but that quickly faded as I warmed up. The path took a hard right and the pack pinched a bit as we began a short traverse over a small suspension bridge. Several of us commented to each other about the strange sensation of our feet not meeting the bridge surface in the same place they left it as the span undulated in response to a multitude of stomping.

We followed cones and the direction of volunteers as we snaked through the old buildings and shops of downtown Hood River, Oregon. This part of the course, like most of the early part, was mostly uphill as we ran away from the river and up into the foothills of the gorge. The road becomes so steep after leaving the town that it resorts to a series of sharp switchbacks to hasten it's ascent.

It was in this section that I had the most dread. I had bombed in Helevatia after the early hills there and I didn't want a repeat performance here. I started the climb remembering John Ellis's words "steady going up and attack going down." I found a good rhythm and a nice stride and got comfortable, enjoying the feeling of powering uphill and being able to stay into it. The road eventually leveled off some and then gave way completely to become the Historic Columbia River Highway State Trail, always closed to vehicle traffic.

At this elevation the world I ran past changed from one of an open conifer forest to a drier one of scant pine and small oak with rock bluffs. The scene around me, and refreshing itself continually, was so amazing that I almost felt propelled through it. Even in that moment I was ever aware of the beauty of this place. The incredible vistas of the gorge and river, the iconic white guard rails of the old road and the fall colors. Everything was perfectly placed it seemed.

This is where I found my race pace. Here among my kindred and here in one of the most beautiful scenes imaginable, I found my rhythm and a grace. My legs had carried me up and now I was able to flow along the edge of the chasm with relative ease. Mindful that it was still early in the event, a sudden lower extremity failure was still a possibility as I contemplated the halfway mark, but for now I just motored ahead feeling great.

Just before the M6 marker the road pitched down and wound toward the turnaround cone 3/4 mile ahead. This gave me a huge lift. If I could climb this hill on the way back and feel good at the top, I should be golden. I attacked the down grade, got my first sight of the race leaders already heading back home, and after a few minutes could see the entrance to the tunnel ahead. Up to this point I had been using my Garmin to keep track of my overall pace. But as I went into the tunnel it gave me the loss of satellite alert and from that time on the pace data was no longer accurate. The autolap feature would still give me mile splits based on where the watch thought it was, but it no longer matched the mile markers along side the road. No matter, I still had a good idea of my pace and as it turned out I didn't really need to worry about pace much after the tunnels anyway.

The turn around point was just on the far side of the tunnel. It struck me that this was only the 1/4 point for the full marathoners, the race I had initially thought about entering. I rounded the cone, politely declined water from the volunteers at the table and headed back toward the tunnel. I glanced down at my watch: 52 minutes. I was on pace for a 1'44" finish. I started back up the only long steep grade left on the course and while I still felt fine, it was much longer than I expected. When I finally crested the top, I tried to remember-was there another hill later on? Could I recall any type of significant downhill on the way out? No, I don't think so. It just might be that that was it. It could be gentle hills and downhill all the way now! Awww man, let's do this! Stay steady and get ready for the downhill. Runners were still trudging up the hill in the other direction.

There was a little hill to climb at M9 and then IT hit. The road to Hood River bowed before me. Attack! Attack! Attack! I raced what was left of the course doing sub 7 minute miles on average all the rest of the way. I told myself that the only thing that could go wrong would be some type of stress fracture from hitting the black top so hard. I picked people off one by one occasionally giving an apologetic "sorry, gotta go" or just a "hey".


I flew through the switchbacks like a Ferrari and made the last sweeping turn before coming back to civilization and flats of town. Flaggers were stopping traffic for me at a four way stop when I saw Lynda on the corner with her camera. I smiled and waved my diaper as I ran across the road and coasted toward the final mile which would be winding through downtown once more.

Gone were all the other runners and now I had this sinking feeling that I might f--- up and take a wrong turn. Shirley, I mean surely, this was the way we had come from the under the Interstate? Wasn't it? Yes, I can see someone up ahead and they had to have come this way. Yeah, I remember this underpass with it's dripping water.

I went back across the suspension bridge which was much more stable this go around, took a hard left and pushed to pass a much older gentleman who I was quite shocked to see ahead of me. How? What? Where did he come from and how in the world could he be ahead of me and moving so slow now. No matter, he has to be passed and we'll sort that all out later.

At this point in the course you can look over just a short way and see the finish line, but the route takes you back out toward the river before doubling back and entering the chute. When I got there I gave it a little gas and crossed the line with my fingers on the stop button of my watch. Finishing time of 1'41". Not a PR but not bad either.

They handed me a finisher's medal while I stood there immersed in my post-race euphoria. Not a metal medal, like my others, but a ceramic one, brown and rectangular with a embossed imagine of the gorge, with a guard rail in front. I slipped it on and grabbed a bottle of water. I had worn my Ultimate bottle filled with a diluted Gatorade mix but only took a few sips during the race. I looked over and saw Lynda near the big white tent and walked over.

One of the advantages of finishing this early was being the first to eat the much touted food. No line yet for the Taco Del Mar meal and a hot bowl of home made black bean soup. Lynda wasn't hungry but she sat with me while I ate in the nearly deserted tent, steam rising from me and from the delightful soup. Afterwards we went back to the car while I discretely changed into dry warm clothes. It started to drizzle so I added a rain coat at the last minute.

We milled around for awhile watching the others come in. Eventually the first marathoner came across which brought about clapping and shouts. It started to get cool and we likely would have left had I not thought that I might have placed somewhere in my division. So we waited, standing mostly just inside the tent. Eventually they did post the results on a nearby wall and I patiently waited in a short line to take a look. And there I was...42nd overall, 36th male and 1st in the 50-54 age group. My first trophy!

Well not a trophy but a half-dollar sized blue disk framed with a funky bike chain with the race info etched on it. But my first one none-the-less. I waited around to get it by way of standing on the highest section of a podium-- which was kind of embarrassing. I shook hands with the second place guy but third place decided not to hang around to get his bike chain ribbon.

I hadn't known what to expect to be sure, but in the end it turned out to be a pretty good day.

Root, root, root!

In 1984 I became a die-hard, life-long Chicago Cubs fan. It was easy. They were on TV every day when I took my lunch break, they wore all-American red, white and blue uniforms, were storied with an adorable history of mediocrity and they had a marble mouthed old announcer in WGN's Harry Carey. Their product marketing hooked me, I bit down hard and eventually passed the frustration of being a Cubs fan onto my own kids, you know, to make the suffering a family affair.

There was another team on TV every day back in the mid 1980's. The Braves were the other "Super Station" team forcing themselves into our living rooms and they even dubbed themselves "America's Team". I could have just as easily become an Atlanta fan I suppose, but I went the way of the Cubs and have successfully resisted the allure of closer baseball markets like the Mariners.

A few times each season the Cubs and Braves would play each other and of course the games were then available on both super channels. One day I decided to flip over and see what the game looked like on TBS. After all, Harry's son Skip was the announcer for the Braves.

Oh my god! What was this? I was shocked at how one sided the coverage was! The Braves this! The Braves that! The wonderful freaking Braves! And whenever there was a close play or anything that was at all controversial, these idiots always sided with the rotten Braves! It was so unfair, so biased and so blatantly pro-Atlanta I couldn't stand to watch. How could they be so stupid, so blind and never ever give credit to the Cubs? And their fans! Those mindless morons with their ridiculous tomahawk chop and incessant chant -- over and over again! I couldn't take any more and quickly flipped back to channel 9! Ahhh! There. All is right with the world again. Good old Harry. He understood. He saw things the way I did. He made it feel right, even when we were losing, even if we were wrong, Harry could show it to you through the eyes of a Cubs fan. But Harry, how could your own son be such an unreasonable and such an obvious purveyor of pure trash? How could your own flesh and blood see things so wrong?

This bias is worthy of some contemplation I think... but of course it is just baseball.

Medicare costs alone are going to bankrupt our country in less than 20 years and the damned libs want to e x p a n d it and make it bigger not smaller. Worse yet, they want to give it people who sit on their asses all day while I get mine up at 5 am and go to work -- and I still run out of money between pay days -- because these jackasses are better at pulling money out of my wallet than I am. Not only that but most of these lazy freeloaders they want to give my money to weren't even born in this country and probably came here just to hop aboard the run away government gravy train that is Obamacare.

Crack pot ex-lobbyist Tea Baggers were just installed by into the US house of representatives courtesy of an mass investment in huge big lie propaganda techniques funded by corporations with resources in the financial, insurance and oil industries. You see they stand to lose a great deal of that wealth of theirs if the current policies of eliminating their tax breaks, fucking with their insurance scam business practices and switching to alternative energy are allowed to continue. They are business MEN and putting out the big bucks to sway the ignorant masses was a simple investment. After all, that's why they bought up all the radio and TV media over the last many years, to control the message and perfect the delivery. C'mon guys repeat after me: "Laurie Dhue, we love you"! Oh wait, she's not on there anymore. Too bad. She was a good one.

Oh it's all so confusing! Which channel should I watch? It's so much work flipping back and forth and trying to figure out who's lying and who's telling the truth. It's so much easier to just pick one and leave it there. Look! There's breaking new flashing across the screen! My god, what's happened now? Another terrorist attack? Another pregnant woman killed? You know those women, the weaker sex after all, they're either getting pregnant and then come up missing or they're looking hot and reading news stories on TV.

They sure don't remind me of Walter Cronkite. Or Eric Sevareid or Daniel Shore or even Bob Scheiffer. Stuffy old white guys, which is a good thing, but when they reported the news back in the day, they at least tried to be objective. Didn't they? Now don't get me wrong, I don't believe for a second that at any time in our history the press has ever been totally objective. But I do believe that there was a time when reporters prided themselves on at least attempting that purpose. They felt a sense of honor and pride in trying to understand the news in Washington DC, and the rest of the world, and trying to explain it within the limits of a nightly half hour newscast.

Some of these guys even thought of themselves as the "fourth estate". A necessary overseer of the three branches of government. A free press as advocated for us by none other than Thomas Jefferson, to watch closely the doings of our elected representatives and report back. A responsibility to watch over those in power and provide yet another check - an independent check. This was the news our fathers listened to and after a lifetime of reporting, one these old time newsmen was even dubbed "the most trusted man in America". A TV news guy!

Well all those people are gone now and things are quite a bit different. Today the media creates the news and gives no pretense at objectivity and many times concocts the days talking points which are then read by their corresponding politico. The tail wagging the dog. No fourth estate and no trusted men.

So let's find someone to blame for this mess. How about the politicians! We know they all suck and have no real interest in truly representing us. They're going to go right along doing what they have always done and that's the work of those that installed them. Make no mistake, you gotta play the game back there or you're out. Think you can actually get to Washington and go rogue? Absolutely not. You'll never get on a committee and you'll certainly never get any financing unless you play ball with the big boys. You learn that on your first day. And we just keep going along with it because they sometimes call in the cameras and come out and one more time and give us the canned crap that we want to hear: they're for smaller government-- or they're going to stop the ice caps from melting. Whatever feels good to you. Whatever issue you want to adopt and rally around, they have plenty of them to choose from. Pick a side. Choose a team. Adopt a mascot.

We can also blame the so-called media. We all know that MSNBC and Fox News are nothing but 24 hour brainwashing machines funded by those with a lot to win or lose. They know exactly what graphics to put up on the screen, how long to stay on one story before your attention starts to wither, what type of stories to run and how to space them, who looks good reading them and which way they should part their hair, all so you'll keep watching and getting your daily dose of bullshit. It's all very calculated and it works very well.

But I'm not going to blame them either. I'm not going to blame the media-- or the politicians who work for them. I blame all of us. Because we're lazy, because we're too busy to pull out our own old tax returns and look for ourselves to so see if our taxes really do go up under one party or another. Or don't really want to admit to ourselves that we've been duped all these years and maybe our team doesn't really lower the deficit like it claims or produce more jobs or influence the stock market to help my retirement 401k. All that type of real information and more is readily available to us but how many of us take the time to look? How many have the guts to look? In the end all we have time for is watching a our little channel during dinner or maybe before going to bed at night.

But I'm counting on us being smarter than this in the long run. I'm sure that just about everyone, not just me, sees the futility in this pick a side, back and forth every 2 to 4 years, absurd cycle that we're in. I'm simple enough to think we can turn this whole thing around and stop all the wasted motion, while the fat cats sit on top of the fence and watch us fight amongst ourselves down in the alley and become poorer and poorer. Divide and conquer. It doesn't get any simpler than that.

But we have to have the courage. The courage to seek out our own truth, whatever the truth is, even if doesn't fit what we believe now. To become our own fourth estate. The courage to be the type of person that passes along that truth and doesn't take part in the spreading of lies. And if you don't want to know the truth and want to continue to be told what to think, why don't you at least stop spreading the propaganda? Whatever happened to self respect and your own honor? How can you be someones lying little email bitch? How can you stand being their monkey?

The real answers are there. No media outlet needed. No political ad required. Just real information that smart caring people have access to and can ponder and make real decisions. It takes a little effort. Now I'm not smart enough to know where a little truth could lead. Maybe it would just make our broken system better. Maybe it could lead a truly empowered party of the people. Because in the end, despite what we get told every day, we all pretty much want the same things. We just have to have the courage to find that out.

Because politics isn't baseball. Politics matters. But hey, I'm just a simple Cubs fan and as we all know the Sox suck and the Cardinals take it in their Pujols.