Wolves Howl!

Yes, I know that races are held every day, twice on Saturday, and it’s no big deal. But when it’s your own race, when it’s your first full-scale event, it is a big deal. And it was. The First Annual Running With the Wolves 10K went off with a howl, and came off like, well, clockwork Wednesday night, and there was great rejoicing.

Wednesday was an exercise in panic avoidance and bullet dodging. A few items short of a million could have gone wrong, but they didn’t. The Gods smiled upon us. My club-mates and I breathed a huge sigh of relief and a shout of joy when it was over.

First, it didn’t pour. Just not raining at all would be a tall order, the way our weather has been this summer. Wednesday was not only forecast to be the hottest day to date this summer – the first targeted to hit 90, which is pretty unusual for that not to have happened by now – but was, of course, also expected to be punctured by thunderstorms. Some severe. A real Weather Channel kind of day. Live by it, baby.

As of the night before, those storms were forecast to last until…? You guessed it, 6 PM of course, right up to the starting gun. Make me sweat. But no worries, the revised forecast Wednesday morning cleared up any concern over whether they’d wrap up in time. Instead they were forecast to last into the night. Gee, uh, thanks. Yet, as the afternoon rolled along, those menacing green, yellow, and red blotches on the radar formed to our west, approached, and then magically parted and avoided us.

Second, and probably most important, we built it and they came. Between sponsorships and pre-registered runners, we were financially whole no matter what. But if they didn’t come, it wouldn’t be much of an event, now, would it? And that wouldn’t do much for next year. But they came, oh glorious runners, they came! To paraphrase Jackson Browne, “People you've got the power over what we do, you can sit there and wait, or you can come run our race!” They didn’t stay-yay-yay home, they came. And I thank each one of them.

And third, everybody, and I mean everybody, pulled through. Our club is small, but it’s tight-knit, and it’s fantastic. Everyone covered their appointed tasks and anything else they could find that needed to be done. Sure, there were a few comical glitches, like me holding up the start for two minutes trying to get our one-mile splits person back on the phone. But all in all, it was smooth city. The traffic was marshaled. The runners were processed, hydrated, guided, cheered, and awarded. The refreshments refreshed. Even our medical tech volunteers had a customer, who happily was A-OK in the end, but gave us the satisfaction that we’d covered that piece of the plan. The newspaper sent a photographer, as did Jim Rhoades. The city opened up the field for our stadium finish, and even painted us a finish line. Our friends at CMS lent us gear that made our event safer, and look slicker, too. Our on-site sponsor The Karate School opened her business for our headquarters. And our post-race party? Well, not a lot of the runners showed, but at least for us, dinner for $3, cheap (yet good) beer, and two live bands. Can’t beat it.

Our course turned out better than planned. Since it hooked back on both the outbound and inbound, spectators could get from the start/finish onto the course in time to cheer the field. Traffic control at our first rail trail to road crossing was easy – we filled the road with fans! When the smoke cleared, the women’s race was ruled by the seniors who took the top three spots, with Carol Allain of the North Medford Club leading the way, while Julien Dimaria took the men’s race in a smokin’ thirty four minutes flat. We knew it would be a fast course, but yee-haa! We’ve got a mark to target next year!

These individual attributes read like a laundry list, which could go on. But they miss the point. It was a real race. Walking around, it felt like a real event. Small, but real. Falmouth must have started this way. Or the Boilermaker. Happy people enjoying themselves, at least once they caught their breath. We gave one back. We pulled it off. And that felt fantastic.

Change of topic…On an unrelated note, today, August 7th is always a special day in my calendar. It marks the day back in 1981 when I didn’t die, but came darn close (see posting from last year). Twenty eight years later and I have the joy of my wife and daughters and am healthy enough to pursue this obsession we call running. If I hadn’t been running and fit then, I wouldn’t have made it. Nor would I have stood a chance save for my sharp-eyed doctor who had a hunch as to what was going on, was right, and moved fast enough to save my life. Thanks, doc.

Race Eve

It’s a good thing I don’t have many readers. When I go two weeks without a posting, I get no complaints. My excuse? I’ve been absorbed with race planning, which seems simple, except that it’s not.

It’s payback time. For all those races I’ve attended, for all those bits I’ve praised and all those items I’ve groused about, now it’s my turn. And knowing how persnickety I can be makes me want to get it right only that much more. The basics are obvious, but the details perplex, and it’s the execution that counts. You just can’t predict what’s going to happen on race day, and you won’t have much time to fix it.

Let’s back up a bit. My club holds a couple of races each year, but they’re extremely casual. Our Laborious Labor Day Ten Miler and Thanksgiving Tough Turkey Ten Miler (or whatever we call it?) are no-fee races. We collect food for the local food pantries as our entry fee. Along with no fee comes no expectations. No awards other than the honor of victory. Any refreshments are whatever club members decide to bring. It’s all casual. Nobody complains. What, they want their can of corn back?

But now that we’re a real live incorporated oo-fish-ee-al club, well, we want to do some of those oo-fish-ee-al club things. Like expand our outreach – after all, we do have a mission to promote health and fitness through running. Like build up a collection of equipment, like timing gear, to run a little higher-brow events. And so on. Stuff that requires coin.

At the same time, we clubbies have been lamenting the passing of the other-than-5K race. Along with the expansion of the sport from the midpack back – which isn’t a bad thing, mind you – has come a proliferation of 5K races. Several per weekend around here. All for some great cause, some so much for their great cause that I’m sometimes amazed to see what you can pay to run a 5K. Call it the dumbing down of the sport. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled that more people are running, and though the 5K isn’t my favorite – way too short and fast for my tastes – it’s a fine event. But variety is the spice of life, and outside of the major races, variety is fast becoming an endangered species.

Such was born our new race. The First Annual Running With the Wolves 10K, on a weekday to avoid conflicts with other races, in the evening under the full moon – thus the name. A real-live oo-fish-ee-al event with a real live entry fee for a real-live great cause. Us. That sounds kind of self-serving, but it’s not. We’re a tax-exempt charitable organization. None of us profit. All of us want to spread the word and make our world healthier. We’re not fighting one disease. We’re beating back all of them, more or less. You can fight heart disease when it happens, or you can fight to stave it off through fitness. Our charity is the latter.

That being settled, it quickly becomes amazing how much needs to be done to assure a quality event; quality being a requirement in my mind when people are paying money to run, and we want to be sure there’s a Second Annual Running With the Wolves 10K. It takes a lot of people, and we’re a small club. We quickly laid down the law: club members won’t run in this event, they will run this event. Good thing, because it’s taking most of the club to cover all the bases.

I’m not the race director. And I won’t call myself the assistant race director, because that’s not fair to the core members of the race committee. But the amount of involvement makes it feel that way. Some of it is my own fault. As I said, I’m persnickety. They don’t call me “Slightly Obsessed” for nothing.

My number one pet peeve? Poorly measured courses. When I run a race, I want an accurate measurement, so I can compare today to my previous races. My past inquiries about course accuracy have ruffled a few feathers. So it’s only right that if we’re to get any complaints on that score, it should be my problem. Solution: measure it myself (with help, of course). Several times. Which takes quite a lot of time – measuring and re-measuring and marking out 10 kilometers, getting access to the stadium for our finish, and all that. If you, the racer, don’t like it, complain to me. I deserve it.

Somehow I landed the t-shirt design and acquisition task. Again, sounds simple. Not. Twenty seven phone calls and one hundred eight two emails later, piles of shirts arrive. Then there’s the scoring. We don’t own timing equipment and scoring software, so we’ve borrowed gear from our friends at a neighboring club and I’ve written the scoring spreadsheet from scratch. Designing and ordering banners. Handling the funds, of course, as I’m the green-shade guy of the club. And more…

It’s been a lot of time on my part, but it’s worth it – it’s cool to give this back to the running community. And no matter how much it seems, there’s so much more beyond me. Our race committee and general membership have been fantastic, beating the bushes for sponsorships, planning food, water, medical, traffic, marketing, registration, cleanup, awards, the kickin’ post-race party, you name it. Mine is but a fraction of the whole task. This club is awesome.

But it all comes down to a few hours Wednesday evening, and once that time arrives, our ability to fix any oversights is constrained by time. Very, very, short time. I think I’ll be sweating as much as if I ran the race. And there’s that forecast of thunderstorms to deal with, too…

Tonight our crew assembled – about 25 of our 35 or so volunteers – to go over all the plans, stuff goodie bags, and of course, stuff ourselves. We tried to think of everything we haven’t already thought of, and we rehashed everything we have thought of. And we know we’ve probably missed something – something that will appear at the most inopportune time.

I’ve got great confidence in this team, but I’m still sweating.

The Boilermaker - Part 2

The Boilermaker is big. Twelve thousand runners is a lot of people even when you’re used to 27,000-plus at the start of Boston – and that’s just the 15K main event, not to mention a few thousand more in the 5K. I find it hard to comprehend where they all came from and where they all go.

The scale starts to sink in when you stop at the Thruway rest stop 10 miles before Utica and it looks like the starting area itself with so many runners lined up outside the restrooms. Woe to those non-runner travelers who happened to stop in, wondering what hit them. But Marge, where did they all come from? Why are they here? And why do they all look so underfed?

The scale really sinks in until you watch them coming at the finish line. And coming. And coming. And those are just the ones a half-hour behind me, after I finished, after I wound my way through the labyrinth of Utica streets to get the other side of the line to find Sis. There were thousands I missed. And thousands more after I left for the party – the party of planetary proportions.

But, back to the race. After being dropped near the start by Ace Support Team Sis & Phil, niece Kris quickly found a friend (how this happens amongst 12,000 runners is beyond me, but it happens) and she headed off to her “Gray Corral”, not really a corral at all, but the area for the 8,000 or so unseeded runners. I was seeded in the “Blue Corral”, the 500 runners behind the 300 “White Corral” elites. I’d felt a tad guilty since I’d turned in a seed time of 59 minutes based on last year’s pre-surgery performances, not knowing where I’d be by race day, but I quickly found that even my race-day target of 62-64 minutes would have gained me the same corral. Guilt alleviated.

Despite the scale, starting coral organization was excellent, though traffic control a bit draconian with a few over-zealous marshals. Once I found my corral, I headed off for a warm-up, only to be told on return that I couldn’t get back in without circling an extra three blocks and re-entering from the rear. I figured out this was so they could open the white elite corral to an adjoining parking lot for their warm-ups. Nice, but a little frustrating for the rest of us. To be fair, we’d been warned via the map of the starting area, though the map was a little incomprehensible, as was their map of the finish & party area – a simple arrow pointing north would be nice! Whatever, minor gripe.

What a morning! Perfect weather, among the coolest in Boilermaker history, sunny, gorgeous, a bit breezier than expected. Ready to roll on my first real long race since the surgery, Boston having been a purely recreational outing. And speaking of Boston, there in my corral, a few bodies away was none other than Boston Billy himself, Bill Rodgers, the guy largely responsible for my love of the sport. My hero from First Lap days. I’ve seen him at expos, but always behind a line of well-wishers longer than I cared to endure. Here, it was easy. I sidled over, greeted him – nicest guy in the world – and of course invited him to the 10K my club is putting on next month. Yeah, right, I know, but might as well, you never know. Even at my age, it’s still a thrill to have started the race with him. Way cool.

The ropes dropped, we did the surge-forward thing, the gun, we’re off. Uphill. Now, I’m one of these inertial runners who takes a long time to warm up – usually about 5K in a typical 5K race – so I’m not real keen on any start, but the Boilermaker is all uphill for the first few miles as you head south out of the river valley – not big, but noticeable grades. And I noticed it. I felt pretty much awful, like I was running in the high 7’s as opposed to the 6:50 pace I’d stated as my goal or the 6:40 I had in my head as my real goal. Ugh. But mile one clocked in a 6:28, surprise, surprise. I should know better, happens all the time. Well, at least I knew why it felt like an effort!

I forced myself to back off a bit, and dropped the pace for miles two and three to the high 6’s, knowing the golf course – the big hill – loomed at three, but it didn’t help much; it was a struggle, the body just wasn’t happy. And then, our reconnaissance mission paid off. The golf course climb was… nothing. Its most memorable moment? The band hammering Zeppelin as we entered the course. Just one of the seeming bazillions of bands on the course, but later Kris would recall these guys too – serious rockism. Utica pulls out all the stops and does it up in style.

Just like that, we were over the top and screaming down the other side, going sub-6 for mile five, clicking 33 minutes flat through five, 6:36 pace, and suddenly the morning had turned around like I never expected. Sure, I was working hard, but I was ahead of my private target with more downhill than up remaining.

And then, since this was becoming a roller-coaster day, along came mile seven in roller-coaster style. I’d warned Kris about seven the day before. At its start, the city boulevard turns briefly into a freeway. I’d warned Kris that car-scaled roads play games with your mind. You lose the perspective of houses passing by. The crowds thin. The same distance that would fly by on a city street stretches mercilessly. And it did. She later agreed completely with my prediction. But worse, having checked out this part of the course in the car in a thunderstorm, we’d both missed the insidious upgrade that followed the freeway stretch and continued into mile eight. It caught me off guard. My cruise mentality took instant hit points, and minor agony ensued till the summit.

But the eight was another screaming downhill, even screamier than I’d expected. I’m not a strong downhiller; I have to force myself to stride out and take advantage of the hill – more speed, but more work, too. Which made nine, tough already, that much tougher. Nine hands out a slow rise late in the game, a lung-burner, a test of will. I had a good one going, better than I’d hoped for the day, and here was where I’d keep it or lose it.

Over the last top at nine miles. All downhill to the end. The sun was brilliant, blinding, making any hopes of locating Sis & Phil pointless. Lungs screaming, sporting my usual death-warmed-over look (that’s me in green at 9.2). Yet it’s funny, no matter how we’re hurting, snippets of our surroundings stand out. I suddenly noticed the fresh tar over the previously exposed trolley tracks just before the finish. That one was for me, Mr. Faceplant of Wineglass. I’d promised Sis I wouldn’t do it again, and the Gods of the Boilermaker heard me and helped assure no repeats. Cool.

It’s easy to see that this is the biggest event to hit Utica all year. Other races construct elaborate finish chutes, and pull them down by the end of the day. In Utica, the Boilermaker finish is permanent; a glorious cast iron arch that stays all year, reminding the locals that once a year, the world really does come to them. I passed under that sign in 60:37, well ahead of my 62-64 minute target, having turned in an average 6:30 pace and gotten elation in return. It still didn’t feel like last fall, it didn’t feel like a cool easy comfortable stride, but most likely my recollection of what it felt like last fall, before the injury, before the surgery, is unrealistic. Memories can be rosy. I’ll bet it hurt back then, too. Bottom line, I was a happy guy.

And Kris was a happy girl. She made it home right on her target. She’d wanted an hour and a half, and she pulled in at 1:29 and change. Best of all, before we left town, I heard her say she wants to do a half-marathon. Yes, this disease is infectious! Of course, the biggest party you can possibly imagine, complete with more Saranac on tap than you’ve ever seen and a killer flyover, afterburners and all, by the guys out of Rome Air Force Base, didn’t hurt. Nor did knowing that half her classmates ran it as well – and yes, she somehow managed to find them in the sea of humanity – which made an even better event for her. You couldn’t script a promo for running any better.

The Boilermaker - Part 1

If you’d asked me before I started my Second Lap about some of the iconic far-away races I’ve since run – take the Charlottesville 10-Miler and the Stowe 8-Miler for example – I would have stared at you with a blank face. But the Utica Boilermaker? That’s one that’s always been on the wish list since those high school First Lap days.

I feel like I’ve shared a connection to this race. Back in the spring of ’78 I was a high school freshman in Upstate New York, I had just started running, and the Utica Boilermaker was born as an instant hit. I recall my friend and running mentor Cliff extolling it in its early years. It quickly became a big destination for runners in my local crowd. It was one of those talked-about races. And I’d forgotten until I read the race program that I’d had the privilege of having both of its second year champions in my circle. I shared high school track and cross country miles and colors with women’s winner Cindy Girard, and ran with as well as wore the decidedly low-tech jersey of men’s champ Tom Carter’s Lechner’s track club (that’s me in 1980 in the hot yellow shorts and geeky socks running for Lechner’s). Tom was an awesome runner back then, and as of the last time I saw him last year, he still is. Oh, and there was that little bit about dating his sister, too, a truly nice young lady. The Boilermaker. It was cool back then, and who knew it would become world-famous?

But I never ran it. We had our own 15K in town, the Forks XV, site of my fastest long race ever, and still being run today, so hauling off to Utica for a 15K didn’t offer any real uniqueness to me. Being in high school, I wasn’t really in the mode of traveling to far-flung races, though there were a few notable exceptions, stories for another day. It never happened, the First Lap ended, and the long drought descended for that 25-year vacation.

Until one of my running club-mates suggested we organize a club trip to…the Boilermaker! That nascent idea was suddenly thrust into reality. Of course, I’m in!

Well, not unlike last year’s “club” expedition to the Stowe race, which turned into a massive team of, uh, two of us, this year’s “club” expedition turned into a massive team of, uh, three. OK, that was a 50% boost, I’ll take it for what it is. But since the other two had their own family and friend agendas, it turned out not to be a club expedition at all. Call it a club catalyst effect, instead. Ahh, so what, I’m in, and free to pursue my own family agenda.

That family agenda centered on my niece, a recent convert to the mental deviance of running. I’d mentioned in my last post that this was her first race, but forgive me, I lied. She’d run a 5K last fall; this was to be her first long race, at this point for her a challenge purely for the distance involved. Knowing that I share at least a bit of the blame for her new affliction, it was pretty exciting to me to see her bite this one off. We worked out some pretty elaborate logistics to join up, plans made far easier by the interest and help of my sister and her companion Phil, who’d been my Ace Support Team for Wineglass last fall. I had to promise to them I wouldn’t fall on my face again.

I love small local races for their simplicity, ease of logistics, and, I admit it, the chance to score an age group spot or a good raffle prize. But I love the big races because of the magic of assembling so much talent in one place, and the fact that most of that talent is packaged in the most unassuming people you’ll meet anywhere. Unlike typical overpaid sports superstars, elite runners blend into the scenery as normal people, because they are, other than their extraordinary abilities. Kris got a quick taste of this defining aspect of our sport quickly, over lunch at the Subway (after, I note, we’d arrived in Utica 10 minutes apart, having converged from 350 miles distant, not bad timing, eh?). We struck up a conversation with a runner type and her family, only to discover she was in fact an elite master, one who’d shared the vaunted church basement with Kara Goucher & Company at the starting line in Hopkinton, one who rubbed elbows with the fabulously talented top women of America. Yet she was more than interested to chat as any other runner. It’s just that kind of sport, and that’s one of the reasons I love it.

After hitting the expo – somewhat of a disappointment for a race the size of the Boilermaker – Kris and I set off to reconnoiter the course, partly on wheels, partly on foot. We popped in a four miler, looping over the biggest hill on the course where it climbs above the valley through the city golf course. The course profile on the web made this one look like a killer even to me, the “seasoned runner”. Facing the challenge of the distance, let along the hills, it had given Kris considerable apprehension. “Know your enemy,” I told her, and it was a lesson worth learning. We came, we ran it, we laughed. Piece of cake.

The skies poured forth their fury as we scoured the rest of the course (comfortably behind the windshield) and made our way back to Base Camp Syracuse – Kris’s apartment when she’s in school – for dinner with Ace Support Team Sis & Phil. Forces of nature – more storms, and a foolish neighbor loudly unloading lumber late on a Saturday night – staged a conspiracy to ruin our early sleep, but failed to hamper us. Four AM would come too bleeping early…

Next posting: Race day

Delinquent!

Oh my peeps are in distress. Yes, all six of them, if I have even that many readers. I’ve been delinquent in my postings, and I must make amends. Bless me Father, it’s been over three weeks since my last post. Here are my adventures. (What, you wanted sins? Not here, this is a family friendly blog!)

My summer slump arrived, well before any summer weather showed itself. June in New England was utterly pathetic. July, at least until yesterday, hadn’t been much better, though summer suddenly arrived in glory today and the weekend promises spectacular weather. But we’ll get to that in a bit.

In late June, my clan made our annual trek to Acadia National Park and spent an entire week without a clear view from a summit. For the first two days our cottage on the sea endured a storm packing constant gale force winds. Following that came more showers, fog, showers, fog, wind, fog, did I mention fog, and oh yes, it was cold. Ah, summer vacation. The good news is that we saved a lot of money on non-consumption of sunscreen. The other good news is that I’d run mile repeats with my club in a pounding rain a few days prior to our trip, so I was well trained – for the weather, at least.

Weather aside, our week in Maine offers up my version of the Rave Run, concept stolen from that certain over-glitzy magazine. Within a six to seven mile outing I can run from the cottage on the sea through the small village nearby, and be on the forest roads of Acadia. Tacking on a couple more takes me deeper and opens up trail options. Each year I venture a little further, blurring the line between our hiking territory and my running turf. The solitude of these forests is pure joy.

Friday morning found me running on some of our frequently hiked trails, emerging at the south end of Long Pond, greeting a few hikers heading in. Three hours later, showered, fed, assembled with kids, we returned to the same spot to start our day’s hike, only to meet the same hikers I’d seen earlier, now walking out, tickled to see me heading back in. My wife’s comment to them was a classic: “He feels the need to get exercise before we hike for the day.” Now, we vacation actively, so it’s not really the need to get exercise, it’s because – you know this – running is in we runners’ blood, and we crave the chance to run in different and especially beautiful spots. But her comment was still a classic.

Hard to fathom, but on our return leg that afternoon we finally saw the sun. We’d waited all week for that one glorious hour, basking on a lakeside rock. But the cool part is we just don’t care all that much about the weather up there, it’s Maine, it’s Acadia, it’s “The way life should be”, so they say, as opposed to the other bumper sticker we saw which read, “New Jersey, The way life is”.

But the slump? Well, usually I blame it on the heat. But I was feeling it before Maine, I was feeling it in Maine where there was no heat, and I’ve been feeling it since Maine. It’s not summer heat. The body just isn’t quite in the mood. Not feeling strong. Not bad, mind you, just not strong. My theory de jour is that May and early June were about breaking through on pace, getting closer to the training pace I’d left behind pre-surgery, and, having pushed hard to make strides in that direction, the body sighed. So the last couple weeks have been about backing off and working on the base, stretching in a few more miles but taking the pace more comfortably. Listen to the body. Listen to the body. That change of pace has made the last week far more enjoyable. I skipped out on the 4th of July races to keep the intensity down.

In the theme of low intensity, superbly enjoyable was this week’s Whitney Memorial 5K, a casual local race put on by our friends from the North Medford Club. With an entry fee of a mere five bucks, it’s the perfect event not to worry about, so being in low intensity mode, I hinted to my family to give it a try, and they took the bait. Both daughters tossed their hats in for their first 5K, and my wife joined the merriment as well. She prodded along our younger one, while I coached and cajoled our older edition, who managed to come in ahead of more than a quarter of the pack, but more importantly she gained the confidence of seeing that she could run the whole thing, even the hill, longer than she’d ever gone. Nine minute pace never felt so good to me!

But weather, slump, and low-intensity aside, it is summer, and there are big events to try, so I’m off in the morning to the stunningly exotic metropolis of Utica, New York, to step up to the line at one of our sport’s classics, the Boilermaker 15K. While this is a race I’ve wanted to do for a long time, the event is sweeter as I’ll be joining my niece for the festivities; my niece who’s started running in the last year not entirely uninfluenced by her old guy uncle, and for whom this will be her first race. Yeah, pick off an easy one to start off with, I say. Or, just dive into the deep end. First four miles are all uphill.

Maybe that’ll break the slump.

Crawlin’ With Cops

Yeah, it’s an overused joke, but this was no ordinary local police chase race. Sunday saw the 32nd annual Massachusetts State Police Chase, which draws law enforcement from across the state. It’s really quite a seriously excellent event. And for me, it was a heck of a chase. I’ll get to the race in a bit. First a little history.

The Mass State Police Chase – and the accompanying fabulous family fun & food frenzy day – isn’t really a fully public event. The public is welcome, but it’s not publicized outside of the law enforcement community. Fair enough, it’s their day and they deserve it. But one of our club runners is a state trooper, so we’re the thankful beneficiaries of his annual informal invitation, and get to enjoy the day’s hospitality, festivities, and feast. Burp.

But hanging with the Massachusetts State Police isn’t entirely foreign for me. Though none of my immediate relatives are in law enforcement, my wife’s family history makes us fit right in. Her grandfather, Charles T. Beaupre, Sr., was one of the earliest recruits to the Massachusetts State Police. He signed on with the first recruit class of 1921 – according to family lore, the second man to sign up (that’s him on the left of the motorbike squad, circa 1923). His career with the State Police spanned a dozen years and such notable events as breaking up a KKK rally in Sudbury and overseeing security for the famous Sacco and Vanzetti affair. But he also left a bigger mark, highly visible today throughout our fine Commonwealth.

Rising through the ranks, Beaupre was the second man to hold the highest uniformed office, Captain and Executive Officer, taking over from Captain George Parker, the first leader of the force, in 1925. Beaupre held that office until his retirement from the State Police in 1933. During that time the force attended to some of the finer details of their existence, and Captain Beaupre, recalling his fondness of the French military uniforms he saw during his service in World War I, selected the troop’s uniform style and now famous colors, French and Electric Blue. Adopted in 1933, they are to this day the distinctive color, instantly recognizable, of the Massachusetts State Police.

So the next time that state trooper pulls you over in Massachusetts, besides cursing your bad luck (perhaps deserved?), look in your rear view mirror and say, “What a fine set of wheels you’ve got there, officer, and I just love the colors!” And thank Captain Beaupre, a.k.a. Grampy to my wife.

I didn’t marry into a fortune, but marrying into history is much more interesting.

So amidst the antique MSP cruisers on display, after the kids ran their races, about 160 runners lined up for the day’s test. The Police Chase used to be a 5-miler, but like many other races, they shortened it to 5K to broaden the appeal. That decision might have been influenced by last year’s 97 degree heat and the ensuing misery it brought. This year’s course was a two-lap affair, giving us the fun of passing through the police headquarters grounds and the crowds at the halfway mark.

After my nineteen-and-a-half minute run on the hilly West Boylston 5K a week earlier, my goal was to get back below nineteen, the next step of my post-surgery recovery, and hopefully a stepping stone back to last year’s sub-eighteen. Placing and medaling weren’t high on my list of goals, but then again, you never complain if that happens. This race had a twist: there were age-group awards for law enforcement runners, but just one big open category for everyone else. Top five medaled, the rest went home with lunch and a T-shirt. Fair enough, this is their day.

Out the gate a pack of five bolted at breakneck speed well beyond my capacity. With no age groups, the fact that they all looked young, usually a comfort to us old farts, meant nothing. I settled into sixth, working harder than it seemed I should be for the unknown pace – unfortunately, no mile markers for splits – and with the sound of footprints close behind. Again, nineteen minutes, that’s all I cared about. But gosh, sixth is a bummer if there are five medals. But if only one of them is law enforcement…? With no way of telling, I just labored on.

Through the first lap we maintained our positions. The footsteps behind me backed off a bit, and one of the lead packers was lagging, edging slowly closer to me – his slowdown, certainly not my speed-up. I was closing on him, but didn’t expect to catch him, simply didn’t have much more in me, even though he was making the age-old mistake of looking back – a sign of weakness. Then to my shock, at the top of a small rise with less than a half mile to go, he stopped! That’s something you just don’t expect in the lead ranks. And I was past him, like that. But instantly I heard him start up again behind me, and I knew he was a youngster. Trouble.

At my age you don’t win the sprints, simple as that. You win through endurance. You win through strategy. You win with mental toughness. You don’t win in a knock-down drag-out lung-busting sprint to the line. And I knew that’s what I had coming.

Never look back. But I heard the cheers for him closer and closer to those for me. And rounding the last turn, 100 meters to go, someone shouted, “You’ve got company”, which of course, I knew. Here we go, kids.

Now, let’s remember. This wasn’t for the race. This was for fifth place. And yes, the top five medaled, but as I said at the outset, I really didn’t care. Sub-nineteen was the goal, and on the show clock I could see that sub-nineteen was nearly a foregone conclusion. But who doesn’t love a challenge? I couldn’t just let the kid take it without a fight!

Fight we did, mightily, mad dash, exchanging the lead several times, crowds cheering, mind calculating ability for more push versus likelihood of implosion, legs flailing, going on forever through what? – twelve seconds?

And he got me by a nose. Luckily not the same kind of nose effect as last year at Wineglass, just a real live inch or two difference at the line. Beaten fair and square, and not at all unhappy about it, just thrilled to have had the chance to race the kid like that. Wow, that’s living!

Of course, he sauntered through the chute while the race officials rushed to me with that look of, “Oh crap, we don’t want any deaths on our hands” on their faces. Being an old guy and racing like that does that to people. Given a couple minutes of wheezing, I was, of course fine. And happy. Ten seconds below my goal, and sixth place of 160, six months out of surgery. As far as I could tell, places one through five were all open division, no law enforcement, so no medal, but no worries. Had a nice chat with the kid who beat me – a babe of 17 – who admitted he’d screwed up and didn’t realize he had a second lap to go, messed up his pace, and cramped at that small rise. But of course still had plenty on recovery to kick my butt. Ah, youth.

And a funny thing happened later. They gave the winner a trophy, and then gave out five medals. So I got one anyway. And let me tell you, the Massachusetts State Police Chase medals are high quality, customized, extremely cool, simply the best. Thank you, officers.

Fully Integrated

Back in the dark days of non-running, after the foot surgery on Mr. Big Toe, Dr. Foot Doctor told me that it would take six months for the tendon repair to become “fully integrated”. Well, a week ago, June 5th, marked six months since The Big Slice. I am officially fully integrated.

I’m not entirely sure what it means to be fully integrated. Six months after the slice, my lower right appendage has a new definition of normal, which will never be the same as the old. I’ve pretty much given up on curling Mr. Big Toe. Persistent stiffness and mild ache after hard workouts are part of life. But I’m running, and I’m getting back into the neighborhood of the pre-snap-twang-there-goes-Mr.-Big-Toe days.

Being slightly obsessed, I track my “Average Training Pace”, and being the neighborhood spreadsheet jock at the office, of course I’ve got it graphed and analyzed. Call me nuts, but this data has proven very useful and enlightening.

Somewhere around two years into my Second Lap, I pondered the value of this information, built the spreadsheet, and spent a few hours going back through my logs to fill in the historical data. Determining the pace of a workout wasn’t always possible, and some workouts, slow for social reasons, skewed the data, but what emerged was a striking trend of increasing fitness leading to increasing mileage and a steadily decreasing average training pace (the yellow line in the graph, note there is no axis for the pace, it’s just a relative number adjusted to fit on the same graph):


OK, at this point you’re convinced I’m a loony and should be locked up. Yeah, maybe, but perhaps I’m still just a geek at heart. And we all remember that the geek got the cheerleader in Revenge of the Nerds. Right, enough of that, onward…

So I’d been riding this train, faster and faster, when off the side of the trestle we fell, or smacked into the mountainside, or, pick your favorite metaphor. Four and a half months off, reset the clock to zero, and start again. Did you notice I cut off the right side of that chart? Now we reveal, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story.

March was agonizing, and April not much better, save for the joy of the Boston Marathon. My average training pace rocketed up to levels not seen since I started running four years earlier. And worse, despite being slow, those miles felt pretty awful a lot of the time. I wondered if it would take me as many years to work it back down as it did the first time.

But a funny thing happened. In early May my body simply started going faster. It was like a switch got flipped. I wasn’t really working harder – or if I was, I wasn’t noticing it. But that runner’s metabolism kicked back in, and my pace dropped from the eight minute range to seven and a half just like that, nearly overnight. They say it takes 6-8 weeks for your body’s metabolism to adjust, whether you’re starting or stopping a major fitness program. Whoever they are, they’re right. Again, the chart – this time the whole chart – tells the tale:


The pace drop in May was dramatic. Now a week and a half into June, it continues to slide closer to the previous definition of “normal”. I still don’t know if I’ll really get back there, nor will it be a big deal if I don’t – after all, one must get older someday – but it’s nice to be back in the neighborhood.

A week ago I got the 5K back down to nineteen and a half, on a tough course and having turned a speed workout only 36 hours prior (a fact that I truly regretted about a mile and a half in…), and took 5th of the 160-runner field. Nineteen and a half is well off my best last year of a bit below eighteen, but it’s progress.

A couple days after the six-months-since-surgery milestone I accidentally turned a course PR on one of my commonly run training courses. I felt like crap the day after, but it still felt good. It felt like, even though my foot gets uncomfortable, things are working again.

Perhaps that’s what fully integrated means.

On another topic, Shout Out to Chris: I can’t fail to recognize Chris Russell for his ongoing podcast series. I don’t own an iPod, and I’d fallen behind in listening to his work. But my 1100-mile adventure to Belleville and back with a detour to mom’s place in a CD-equipped car (hey, it may be common in your life, but it’s exciting to someone who until a month ago drove a ’96 Corolla with a cassette deck!), gave me a chance to catch up. The interviews were great. The grunting bits while running, a little weird. The comic bits, brilliant. Mr. Obsessive Mileage Man? That one was clearly for me. And the bit about the Equality Race, where talented runners get bogged down with weight belts and are forced to run longer distances, well, I had to play it for my wife when I got home. Great work Chris, keep it up!