Mutual Aid

[ Ed. Note: It’s a two-fer. Yeah, really two stories here, and yeah, I really should have split them into two posts for the attention-span-challenged among us (read, all of us). The timing didn’t work out that way. So hunker down and slog your way through; hopefully it’s amusing enough to keep you away from Words With Friends for a few minutes! ]

This weekend a collection of my clubmates will be taking on New England’s famous “Just One Hill” race up the Mt. Washington Auto Road. Sadly, this famed and fabled event often conflicts with summer travel, so I’ve never put my hat into the lottery for an entry, though some day I’ll have to give it a shot. After all, what could be more enjoyable than a race that Dearest Daughter watched from the one-mile mark last year and reported to me that she’d never seen more people looking so destroyed in any race, let alone at the mile mark.

I had a little taste of what my clubbies will be up against during that ten-states-in-ten-days odyssey I mentioned in our last esteemed episode. Part of that ramble involved a couple of days on business in South Carolina (so now you know where that neighborhood was that I railed about), after which I high-tailed it to Great Smoky Mountains National Park because, well, because it was there, or at least near to where I was, and because I’d never been there, and because it’s got mountains, and mountains are what I do, at least when I’m not running.

Since the purpose of the trip was discovery, I’m glad I was in a rental car, since it’s pretty likely that I shaved a half inch off the brake pads while navigating the serpentine route I chose to get from here to there. You can get from here to there quite quickly via the interstate, but really, what’s the fun in that? I opted for an entirely ignored stretch of pavement that gets you from South to North Carolina via an obscure corner of Georgia that most Georgians don’t know exists: Route 28, check it out. There’s no state highway that connects it to the rest of Georgia, just a county road.

Being geographically (and let’s face it, generally) nerdy, and having already run that morning in South Carolina, those ten miles passing through Georgia naturally called for another run. Not that I hadn’t run before in either of these states – I had – but the prospect of running in four states in two days seemed cool, so I detoured to a dirt forest road along a stream, not by any means deserted as there were campers and fishermen out, but certainly not a heavily travelled byway, and popped in a few miles of hill climb before resuming the absurdly curvy roads to Cherokee, North Carolina, my remote outpost for the next couple nights. In theory, I’d awaken the next morning, run in North Carolina – also a state I’d previously run in – and double again with a run later in the day on the Tennessee side – finally a new entry on the states-I-have-run-in list (I’ve been in forty-nine, Alaska beckons, but before this trip, I’d only run in half of those). Thus the plan, four states in two days.

But the next morning with the weather looking iffy at best (and having seen what a fierce Smoky Mountain thunderstorm looked like in the last hour of my drive the evening before) I opted to forego the North Carolina run and hit the trail early to beat the storms. Hours later, seeing what I would run up against, clearly it was a wise decision. After about nine miles of delightful (and rain-free) hiking on the Appalachian Trail, which straddles the state border, I headed to Laurel Falls, recommended by a ranger as a good trail run that met my criteria that it had to be on the Tennessee side. She mentioned it was a hill, but seemed to sense that I wouldn’t freak out if it was REALLY a hill, and thus she left out the details, but I’d caught a glimpse of the elevation profile in her trail guide and had a hint of what I was getting into.

Lauren Falls is one of the most popular hikes in the park. To handle the traffic, the crowded first mile-point-three up to the falls is paved and a decent climb of about three hundred feet per mile, enough to provide a challenge to your average national park visitor but not all that tough. Other than slowing at the falls to avoid knocking people off the trail, I opted not to stop on the way up. Past the falls, I picked my way past a soggy spot and set back to running the next one-point-eight to the first trail junction, which I’d deemed to be my turnaround. The obligatory selfie for Dearest Spouse back home revealed a rather worn countenance.

Well then, hello there. It’s a good thing that the forest was intensely lush and beautiful to offer some distraction. It’s also a good thing that I didn’t see a soul once past the falls, because heavy breathing turned to grunting turned to cursing for a junction that simply wouldn’t arrive. Later analysis on my funky smartphone hiking app would peg this stretch at a rise of six hundred and ten feet per mile, or about twelve percent grade. Though I’ve been training in the high sevens, the best I could muster was somewhere around eleven minutes per mile. And the ride down wasn’t much faster; at that grade, caution – remember, not a soul around to hear you yelp if you go down – dictated a seriously low-gear descent, at least till back on that lower paved section when I could open it up a bit. Truly an inspiring outing, and running state number twenty-six in the books.

But here’s the thing: I struggled up the steep part of that grade for just under two miles. My clubmates this weekend will be heading up the Auto Road which likewise averages about a twelve percent grade, but for them, it’ll last over seven miles.

Whoosh. I wish their cardiac muscles well.

It occurred to me that I was a bit of a fool to have initially planned to start the day with the North Carolina run. The hike and hill-climb run double was quite enough for one day, especially following my South-Carolina-Georgia double the day before. I settled for notching the North Carolina run the next morning, so four states’ runs took three days rather than two, and doubled that one up – third day in a row – with a power hike (most certainly not rain-free) up another significant summit before skedaddling to the airport and home. Successful journey.

But really, that’s not what I came to talk about. That’s just to paint the picture of the abused body I hauled into last weekend’s race (and of course to relate a terrific adventure; abuse often brings that reward). Sure, there were a couple weeks between then and the race, but business travel didn’t exactly make them relaxing, so when Saturday dawned, I had little in the way of expectations.

It’s standard procedure that I anti-trash-talk before a race. My clubmates expect that I’ll groan a bit about what hurts, how I’m not feeling great, and that I’m not expecting fireworks, then the gun goes off and we’re, well, literally, off to the races. Since everything is relative, when it’s a Grand Prix race, all that anti-trash bodes truth once I’ve had my butt thoroughly kicked. But when it’s a local race, not against the New England elite, I rightly take some tongue-lashing about my grousing once I’ve sorted myself to somewhere near the front of the small pond pack.

Saturday, however, things really did hurt, coming off that series of adventures just related, and I really was not feeling great, and I really was not expecting fireworks. Yeah, I know, I know, you’ve heard it before. This time, though, the lower joints were complaining loudly, which might or might not have been enhanced by a different pair of shoes I’ve been using, and I was so out of it that the highlight of my warm-up was a senior moment where I didn’t even recognize my warm-up buddy emerging from his shrubbery stop. Certainly there was nothing in that warm-up that hinted at the ability to move faster than an ungraceful lope. But whatever. I plopped myself into the second row behind the line and once aloft, tried to fire up the engines while what seemed like a far larger lead pack than usual for a local race (mind you, a large local race, but still a local race) rocketed away.

By the first turn, only a quarter-mile or so in, I found myself chatting with Shirtless Youngster, loping much more gracefully alongside. This is not supposed to happen. Not the shirtless part or the youngster part or the graceful part, but the chatting part. There’s an old saying that if you can sing, you’re running too slowly, and if you can’t talk, you’re running too fast, but that’s for training purposes only. In a race as short and fast as a five kilometer, there’s no way you should be, or be able to be, chatting. Grunting, maybe. Chatting, no. But there we were, and it didn’t bother me, since I really didn’t think I was moving particularly fast that day, so hey, chat away, enjoy it.

But a funny thing happened. Wizened Old Goat and Shirtless Youngster bonded a bit. It cemented at the mile mark where the race clock reported a number quicker than I figured I was up for and likewise quicker than Youngster apparently felt prudent. He muttered something I can’t quite recall, but it equated to an expression of one of those “Oh crap” moments. Truth is, the race clock was wrong by about ten seconds – they’d started it late – but my watch revealed that we were still moving quicker than I’d counted on. I found myself almost reflexively falling into Coach Mode. Don’t panic, young Jedi, it’s only a 5K, stay with it. No, I didn’t actually call him a Jedi, but it would have been so appropriate since at that moment we hit a downgrade where I did say, “Gravity is your friend,” but it would’ve been better to have uttered, “Use the Force…of gravity” (groan now).

Bob Seger’s Night Moves lyrics come to mind, “I used her and she used me and neither one cared” (OK, adjust the gender, you get it). Yeah, I was coaching him now, as we picked off a few runners and finally crept past the two front-runners of the State Police recruit team, this being a race in honor of a fallen state trooper whose comrades had come out in impressive force. But I was also drawing off him. The trick in a 5K is maintained intensity. In longer races, you can often find a moment to back off just a hair, catch your breath a bit, and plan for renewed pushes later. No time for that in these sprints; it’s go, go, and keep on going. My best 5Ks have been those where I resisted my body’s natural desire for that back off and instead reminded myself that it will all be over in a matter of minutes. So the fact that I was coaching this kid meant that I had to stay with him as well, at least until the inevitable final sprint came around.

Later I’d learn that he was drawing off me not only from the coaching, which thankfully didn’t annoy him, but also from the fact that being a race run by my own club on my own turf, and by my being the first of my club to appear in the pack, well, it was like Cheers in that everybody knew my name (good thing too, since one of the course marshals was Dearest Spouse, and it’d be a sad day if I looked so bedraggled as to not get her recognition!). Local fame is nothing more than that – local – and for what it’s worth, it’s certainly enjoyable, but to a young guy, this probably seemed a bit like being linked to the town’s Kenyan.

And we were still chatting. During this sprint. Which again, was not supposed to happen. Which does make me wonder, pondering this post-mortem, if there was more in the tank, but that will remain unknown. Meanwhile, just past the two-mile mark I told him that my being at least thirty years his senior meant that he absolutely had to beat me with his youthful finishing sprint, lest I be highly disappointed in his mettle. In the comical moment of the day, he doubted I had thirty years on him, so I quizzed him and found that indeed I was wrong – it was almost forty. A third of a mile from the end, I shooed him ahead on his barely ripened legs and enjoyed watching him put five seconds on me by the finish mats.

He couldn’t tell me his actual personal best, having had racked up his previous times on notoriously inaccurate cross-country courses, but I think he walked away happy. And I walked away a bit amused, having just shaved a few seconds off my season best and picking up another Slightly Fossilized Division win on a day when I didn’t think the engines had the remotest chance of kicking in. And I’m quite convinced that coaching, glomming, teaming, whatever you want to call it, made it happen. So thanks, Youngster; you made it fun and we pulled off a decent outing via our little Mutual Aid Society.

The next day, I should note, my legs were unusually shot, a rarity after a short race. I guess this was the final layer on top of a wedding cake of abuse, so it’s time to back off the racing for a bit and let some cells regenerate.

Handicap

A spate of travel of late, some corporate, some fun, put my feet in ten states in a ten-day span. That won’t win me any awards, though it did push this tale of my latest adventure out a few weeks. And more importantly, it provided an interesting angle on what might otherwise be Just Another Race Story. That angle came to me whilst I was running down a somewhat repulsive in-your-face-display-of-wealth street bordering a ritzy golf club in one of those ten states. That angle was the concept of handicap. It was an intriguing concept, because I absolutely did not win a race a couple of weeks ago. But if running was handicapped, well…

The ritzy and repulsive bit needs to be reported because it was central to making me think a lot about golf, and thus equity and comparisons in competition – which is where this is all going – rather than just run on by as I otherwise would have done. But please, don’t beat me up for beating up golf a bit, as I’ve got nothing against the sport. Sis golfs, her husband golfs a lot, many of my friends and co-workers golf, and decades ago I too golfed a little. Not well, mind you, but I did, and I liked it. Yes, I wish more golfers would walk the course rather than putter around in those electric carts, though I recognize that many clubs, in search of faster play and more revenue, require them. No, it’s not golf that I’m lambasting, it’s that unfortunately, golf is one of those things that elitists use to display their elitism.

Back home I run past a golf course almost daily, a pleasant place surrounded by a pleasant neighborhood of pleasant homes and (mostly, I presume) pleasant people. That’s not the Disneyland I found in this certain southern state. No, this was McMansion after McMansion, completely alike in their attempts to be unique and more impressive than their neighbors. Obscenely in-your-face. A lifestyle so uber-comfortable that many residents lay rubber mats at the entrances to their driveways so as not to feel (horror!) a bump while pulling in the Benz. A collection of estates (I hesitate to use the word neighborhood) so manicured and yet so lifeless that I longed to see a plain old front porch, but alas, that’s just not the culture. I know I digress; that’s not golf, that’s people who think they’re high and mighty, and those people aren’t limited to golf.

But here’s the thing: the whole reason I was running through this neighborhood was because it was the only street of some length near my hotel that was safe to run. This particular area, seemingly awash in money, doesn’t seem to believe in spending money to build roads with basic safety features. Twisty rolling roads top blind rises and hidden turns with literally two inches between the edge line and uncertain unpaved space. The only picture I came away with was a straight and flat version of this rather deficient design, but you get the idea.

And so I found myself on this long and winding road of rococo estates, thinking about inequality, thinking about golf, and thinking about how at least the sport of golf tries to come up with a way to deal with that problem within the game so that it can be a somewhat level playing field for all comers. Golf has something that’s quite interesting to runners: the handicap. It’s the recognition that in this sport, talents, whether honed or innate, vary considerably, and if it’s going to be any fun playing, there should be a way to compare those people of varying talents. It’s an imperfect system, because the calculation of that handicap is dependent on each player’s previous performances, against which their next performance will be judged, and of course each person’s previous experiences differ from the next person. But it does allow the duffer to have a shot to top their local league standings or win a tournament now and then.

Running’s closest match is the masters age grading tables, though it’s not equivalent by any means. Golf uses that person’s actual performances, while the masters tables just count the number of times you’ve travelled around the sun. The masters tables do nothing to make it easier for the mid-packer to ‘beat’ the elite, but they do give the aging runner the ability to compare their performances against both their previous, younger-days performances, as well as those of other competitors, both younger and older. They are an admission that we get slower as we get older, but since we don’t all do it on the same timetable, they’re just a good guess.

Golfing style handicaps would be nearly impossible to administer in the running world, where courses aren’t nine or eighteen holes and aren’t finite in number, so they can’t all be rated for difficulty. And on the flip side, golfers don’t vary quite as linearly relative to age – think of some of the aging legends of the sport, or even that retirees finally get more time to hone their game – so age-grading tables wouldn’t make sense for them. Given all that, we’ll keep our respective systems and recognize that they both have similar goals – comparison across unequal competitors.

So how come we don’t hear more about age-graded performances in races? Certainly most races have age group awards, but really, how did the winner of the masters, the seniors, the veterans, perform relative to the young whippersnappers who broke the ribbon? Did that lady who won the fifties run a killer race, relative to what the accumulated statistics of millions of races by people of her age would suggest, or was she just the only one to show up? That’s where the tables step in.

If you’re not familiar with them, as I hinted, these tables are based on literally millions of race results, statistically analyzed by some method which I do not know. What I do know is that they were developed at least in part by Alan Jones, the same Alan Jones who brought the running world the Jones Counter, the internationally recognized standard for measuring and certifying courses. If you see a pattern from this esteemed gentleman, I can personally attest that you are right. I ran in high school with Alan’s son and knew Alan through the Triple Cities Running Club, where he was putting out race results in computerized documents in the late seventies. Yeah, a little ahead of his time. And as we’d say in New England, wicked pissah smaht.

Alan is my Patron Saint of Getting Older. I’m at the age where my times are inevitably slipping. Without the age-grading tables, that would be the end of the story, and I’d have to admit to decay. But by running results through the tables (it’s easy, do so at this link), you can compare this week’s race against those run years ago. It’s not a perfect system, because every race is different based on the course, the weather, and so on, but in general, it’s easy to see if you’re slipping, holding steady, or improving on how you should perform relative to you some time ago.

What’s wakes up the crowd is when a race director or a scorer applies these tables to an entire race. The first time I ever saw this was in a local 5K I dropped into while on a business trip. Enlightenment! Of course, I wasn’t quite as old then, so it didn’t carry quite so much weight. But still, sure I got beat by some local kids that evening, but based on the tables, did I?

Back in March at the New Bedford Half Marathon, the spreadsheet wizard who compiles the USA Track & Field New England Grand Prix results and statistics did just that. In that star-studded gathering of blazing speed, I justly got my butt kicked, soundly walloped into two hundred and sixtieth place. Ouch. For a guy who occasionally wins a small race, that really put me in my place.

But ranked by age-graded performance, that two-sixty rose to spot number one-oh-five. Yeah, I still got my clock cleaned by over a hundred people, but it was pretty comforting to see that I wasn’t acting my age. Note that’s not one-oh-five against the old folks like me, that’s one-oh-five against everyone, age eight to eight-eight.

All of this was on my mind a couple weeks ago when the results rolled in from the Clinton Tribute five miler, a local favorite that we often refer to as the Hill From Hell race. In truth, there are three Hills From Hell in this brief race, plus another right out of the starting gate, and only one stretch flat enough to allow you to gather your wits. This being my fifth Tribute, I’m ready for those trials; I’ve got a pretty good mental map of the pain to come. And Mama Nature laid out fast racing weather: chilly with the threat of rain (which did roll in around the halfway mark), but nearly windless, so no repeats of Boston’s Monsoon Monday. In short, there were no excuses for this one, just the chance to turn in a decent time.

As Tributes go, this one rolled out with a predictable story line and a happy ending. The usual local kids bolted off the line and spent themselves by the third block of the uphill kick-off, though one, a bit older, and who I’d later hear was a solid local trackster, would hang on through the first mile and run a solid race overall. I couldn’t seem to find my racing gear in the first mile, but that may have been a blessing as I didn’t burn out on adrenaline but instead settled in to crank out what may have been my most consistent Tribute, holding steady splits through the quasi-alpine terrain.

At the second turn, the spot where the field is usually sorted out, I counted nine ahead of me. I eclipsed that somewhat older kid and dropped into the single digit place zone, then took out another pair by the time we topped the first Hell Hill around one-point-five. A mile later, in the midst of that blessed flat stretch, I put on a surge to assure that when I passed what would turn out to be my final victim of the day, he wouldn’t have any thoughts about debating the topic. Being somewhat fond of hills, I didn’t expect any further arguments, and since clubmate Matt – same of last race fame – was far enough ahead to reach the next time zone, there was no chance to close that gap, so I just ground it out for a sixth place finish and another Slightly Fossilized (a.k.a. senior) division win.

It’s worth noting that after the previous weekend’s race, where I looked like Utter Hell in the finish line photo – even worse than my usual Death Warmed Over look – this time I made a conscious effort to try to crack a smile while screaming into the downhill finish, since I knew they’ve always got a photographer poised. On a relative basis, I’d say it worked out; small children probably won’t run from that finish photo.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Tribute knocks itself out for the runners. This event exists to honor the annual Tributes, folks who have knocked themselves out for the community (and thankfully, aren’t forced to subsequently kill each other a-la Hunger Games) and raise funds as well. But unlike many of these events, the organizers haven’t forgotten that it’s a race. The trophies are bigger than Mt. Rushmore, and each divisional winner gets their mug recorded and published in the local paper, which as it turns out, one of my professional colleagues, a native of the town, happens to read and forwarded a snapshot of the page (first pic in this adventure) with a nice pat on the back – thanks! But the point is, competition still matters here, and that’s one of the big draws.

It was on that note that when the results rolled in, I churned the numbers, as my perpetually nerdly demeanor demanded. After finagling for a course measurement discrepancy (how a course I’ve measured as accurate in the past was coming up a tad short was a mystery, and no, it hadn’t changed, but apparently Google had, and this is precisely why you can’t certify a course that way, thank you [Alan] Jones Counter), I opted to adjust my time upward a bit for, let’s call it, personal integrity. Even though this adjustment put this one at a disadvantage compared to my four previous outings on this course (I didn’t retroactively adjust those), to my surprise found my age grade rating still made this my best Tribute, and in fact my best five-miler since hitting my fifties. Who knew? Praise be to Alan.

I took it a step further. I scanned the results and spot-checked the obvious suspects: runners nearly my age who’d beaten me (there was only one in his late forties), and runners older than me who’d come in relatively close behind. My suspicion was confirmed: nobody attained my age grade rating or higher.

So, did I win? Obviously, no, that’s not how races work; this isn’t golf. Was there an award for this? Clearly no (though I have heard of races that do this, but I got a hunk-o-hardware for my division, anyway). Should there be? Probably not. But is there some quiet satisfaction (admittedly less quiet after publishing this column) in this micro-achievement? Of course, he said, grinning. Does a golfer smile when she wins the tournament, even if that win was based on handicap?