Night Swimming

I heard it playing on the car radio today - the song by R.E.M. - and the memories came flooding back. 35 years ago, in the summer of 1972, night swimming did not mean Thursday Night Stroke Improvement Classes with Coach Aaron, did not mean multiple laps in the Y pool, brick drills and melt downs. There were no hand paddles or swim fins, and there was no worry about which swim suit would produce the least drag. In fact, there was no equipment, no pool - and no suits and therein lies the tale.

I was 24 years old that summer, and I had been out of college almost 2 years. I was living at home then, in the Assistant Deputy Warden's (my dad) house, located on the grounds of Sing-Sing Prison, just outside the walls and in the shadow of the SE corner tower. I had worked for the last two years, first waiting tables in a Howard Johnson's, then working on the grounds of Sing-Sing helping to build a power plant - a hard-hat job with a pick and shovel, and finally as a Correctional Guidance Counselor at Bedford Hills Prison - on the hill, the men's side, not on the valley side, which housed the women. My dad had gotten me the last two jobs, as I couldn't seem to find a job that paid decently on my own. I wasn't particularly good at any of them. I was bored, I was fat and I smoked. I hated my job and I pretty much hated myself. And then I had an epiphany.

I can't remember what prompted me - probably self-disgust - but I quit smoking, and joined Weight Watchers. Then I quit my job, packed my MGB convertible (not exactly Kerouac's bus) with essentials, and drove to Holland, MI, where I had graduated 2 years earlier from Hope College. I had friends there, living in a rented house on College Ave, and they had an extra room. In retrospect, we were an odd bunch: Eric, an artist nick-named "Wino" for his taste for Ripple and Boone's Farm; Sky, a high school buddy who had never been to college, and who had drifted to Holland after his tour in Vietnam, because he had heard me talk about it; and Fred, Jennifer's older brother - I dated her during my senior year, until one evening at her apartment her roommates all disappeared and she told me she wanted to take a walk, during which I got the "You're a really nice guy, but" talk.

Fred was a couple of years older than me, and while I had been dating Jennifer, he was married to a nurse. I guess they got divorced, because he was sharing the front bedroom with a girl named Cathy by the time I drifted into town. He was planning to attend scuba diving school in Florida in September, to learn how to do underwater salvage work. Which brings me to swimming in the day time.

Fred needed to become a better and stronger swimmer by September, so every day, he would drive into the woods about five miles outside of town, to a small pond, owned by a local manufacturing plant. The pond was shaped like a barbell, quite narrow across the middle, but widening out into two circles at either end. If you swam around the perimeter, you covered about a half mile. Every afternoon Fred would swim a lap or two around the pond. One day, he asked me to go with him. Having nothing much else to do, I went.

Although by this time I had quit smoking and had been losing weight steadily for a month, I was in terrible shape. On my first attempt, I made it across the "handle" of the barbell to the other side - about 50 yards - rested and then swam back. And went home and took a nap. But I kept at it, and after a couple of weeks, I could breast stroke once around the perimeter, while Fred was arm-over-arming it around twice. By the end of the summer, I could do two laps easily, although I never relinquished my beloved breast stroke.

There were girls there that summer, too. In addition to Cathy, there was Mary, a beautiful girl who was working as a teller in the local bank that summer; her sister Kathy, a music major who was as plain as Mary was stunning, and who later came out; Jo, 19, a blue-eyed gorgeous "townie" whose father was the principal of a local junior high school and whose older sister was a theater major at Hope that we knew; and Margaret, who was on the five and a half year plan at Hope - I can't remember why because she was smart and a good student -, and who was living in Holland and taking courses that summer. Margaret's father was the president of a Re-Insurance company and they were well-to-do. She had grown up on estate in the rolling hills of the New Jersey country side, where she owned several horses, rode daily, took lessons and became a licensed riding instructor - English-style - some time before the summer of '72. Her red Irish setter, Shannon, was one of the most beautiful - and stupid - dogs I have ever known. That summer,we all hung out together.

The summer nights were hot in Holland, and none of us had air-conditioning. One evening, after an hour or so of beers and joints on someone's porch, we decided to go swimming. We drove into the country side, to a small lake one of the local girls knew about - not the one Fred and I swam in, but nearby. We parked the cars off the road, behind some trees, and walked down the dark path to the lake to go swimming - night swimming. Because of my day time swimming, I was comfortable, and relaxed, but not for long. Before I knew it, every one was taking off their clothes, and I was, too. I had never been skinny dipping before, at least not since I was a kid at boys camp, and certainly never with women, and beautiful women at that. I remember what I felt: I am fat and ugly and awkward, and I am glad that I take my glasses off with my clothes. Maybe if I can't see them, they won't see me. I want to see them - I do- but if I do, what will happen? I think I know, and I am mortified at the thought.


I run to the water and dive in - it's warm - and I meet Sky, who is thin and fast, and we swim to the middle, where we tread water for a while and talk. I am too afraid and self-conscious to mingle nearer to shore with the others. After a while, most of the group gets out of the water, dresses, and heads up the path to the cars. When they are mostly gone, I head in and do the same, putting on my glasses, losing my cloak of invisibility, so I can again see and be seen.

I walk back to the car and get into the back seat, waiting for the others who are still outside, talking. Margaret gets in the back seat beside me. I tell her it's ok, she doesn't have to sit in the back, but she says she wants to. It takes a moment, but it finally sinks in - she wants to sit in the back seat because she wants to sit with me! She has seen me in all my imperfection and still, she wants to sit with me. I am astounded, but manage to talk with her without babbling too badly. I still have no recollection of what we talked about, but I knew for certain that she was "interested" in me and I mean interested in "that way". I couldn't believe it, couldn't understand it and certainly didn't deserve it, but she was.

The group went night swimming several more times that summer, and I got more comfortable with it. After a while, Margaret and I became a couple and after that we never went swimming with the group again. On Sunday mornings she would get up early, put on her riding clothes, get her horses and drive into the Allegan Woods, where she would join other members of her club and "ride to the hounds." I would stay in bed until she came home and went riding again. She was good to me, but I was a shit. I lusted after beauty and fell in love with Jo, who was her roommate that summer, and I stopped seeing Margaret.

A few years later I ran into her at the wedding of a mutual friend. She was over me and we talked easily, and she invited a group of us to her father's house, which was nearby. We spent a comfortable afternoon, and I saw where she grew up and first rode. I never told her about Jo and me, but I suppose she knew. I heard later that she had gotten married and then divorced. I googled her a while ago - she is a very successful veterinarian now - no surprise there - living in western Michigan and still single.

It's been several years since I thought about her - until the words took me back 35 years to night swimming,and the first time I learned that someone could see me as I was, and still like me - a powerful and liberating discovery.

An excerpt:

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.
Im not sure all these people understand.
Its not like years ago,
The fear of getting caught,
Of recklessness and water.
They cannot see me naked.
These things, they go away,
Replaced by everyday.

Nightswimming, remembering that night.
Septembers coming soon.
Im pining for the moon.

Some People Move Our Souls To Dance: Jackie Stack, August 20, 1948 - November 15, 2007

My road from Couch Potato to 46'er and Triathlete began with many small steps - 4 inch steps, in fact, and each step was set to music. For 5 years, these small steps were patterned and guided by Jackie Stack, a five-foot tall dynamo who led me and my classmates through 45 minutes of Step Aerobics twice a week.

Our first classes together were on the second floor of the crumbling armory at the corner of Washington and Lark Street. The room was large and the ceilings were a good 12 or 15 feet high, but Jackie never needed a microphone to be heard over the music. It was amazing how much volume and energy could come out of such a small package. And there was never - ever - any question as to who was in charge.

This is not to say she was a tyrant - far from it. She was a leader, and she lead, and inspired, by example.

Jim Coyne has bought and re-habbed the armory, which now houses the latest version of the Albany Patroons, and various concerts and other events. But we used the armory long before there were any improvements. It had air-conditioning, of course, as long as you opened up the giant windows and kept them propped open with the sticks stored on the sills. And that was in the winter time - it got pretty hot in that room with 20-25 of us all trying to keep up with Jackie, especially if you were in her second class of the morning. (Yes - she often taught back to back classes and she was just as dynamic in the second class as she was in the first)

In the summer, she turned on two giant fans - which looked like they had powered Everglades’s air boats in a past life - in the front of the room. We still didn't have any trouble hearing her. Those fans really didn't cool us down too much - only a bit and only if the breeze made it to a bare patch of your skin and evaporated some of the sweat she'd forced you to earn.

The armory had running water, too. The shower downstairs in the locker room worked most of the time. Of course, the water wasn't necessarily warm - this was especially true in February when there was no hot water and your choice was to go back to work as either a pig or an icicle. If it rained the night before a class, you had to look sharp - both down to see if there was water or crumbled pieces of ceiling tile on your step and up - to make sure another one wasn't going to fall on your head.

Jackie made step aerobics a wonderful place, self-contained and all embracing. I loved going there. When we were there, we were in our own special world. My friend Ellen said it best:in Jackie's classes, it felt safe to try, and she never felt intimidated. All of us felt the same way.

I spoke at her retirement party, and kidded that this was the first time I had ever seen most of my classmates with their clothes on, and that I still didn't know anyone's last name.

Jackie knew everyone, though. And she knew what they did, and she knew their children and she knew how things were going for them. Pretty amazing considering we only met twice a week for 45 minutes, and there was the little matter of learning and mastering the routines.

She knew what kind of music everyone liked, too, and she did her darnedest to incorporate it into her classes. So, while lesser teachers relied on canned, 32-beat “step-aerobic" music, we had the real thing - Bon Jovi, Huey Lewis, John Cougar Mellancamp, Journey, Hank Williams, Jr., Gloria Estefan, Leane Rimes, Cher - it went on and on. Made it a lot tougher for her to choreograph the routines - I remember talking with her about "caesura's" - in context with a line from "Eddie and the Cruisers" - and about how real music was much more interesting to dance to but it was it tougher to choreograph because when she was creating her routines, she had to account for the eccentricities of real songs, which had things like caesura's.

Her routines were wondrous. She worked really, really hard to create excellent routines. She thought about every detail, from picking out the music, to fitting it together, to making the routines interesting and fun and challenging. We all looked forward to the new sessions, just to see what she had come up with. She went to
workshops, too, to make sure she kept up with the new steps and that she incorporated them into our routines. Every class had to have a warm up, followed by stretching, followed by the routines - starting slower and then building to a heart pumping, muscle building climax, and then slowing down, cooling down and finally, for those of us who wanted it, floor work - sit-ups, push-ups, and even some Pilates
moves - my favorite was the "dead-bug". And everything was perfectly set and timed to music - wonderful, dance-able, sing-able real music. It was a marvel.

She encouraged everyone to work at his or her own level - she stayed after to work with the rookies so they could master the basics, and she loved teaching us veterans the more complicated variations. Truth be told, she stayed after class with some of the veterans - ok, it was me - when I couldn't seem to master some
combination or move. It always seemed a lot simpler after Jackie took a minute or two to work with me.

For the last three years of our five years together class was held in one of the dance practice dance rooms beneath the Egg. It was a much nicer space - but a little claustrophobic. The seasons were reversed, too. Because of the HVAC, we were cold in the summer with the A/C and hot in the winter, with the heat. We bought fans for the
front and back of the class - the big ones from the armory never made it over - used them mostly in the winter.

The room had mirrors all along the front wall - except for where the pillars were. Jackie danced with her back to the class, but she could see us all in the mirrors. Except me - I almost always screwed up at least one step during the class, and I didn't want her to see me do this. So, I positioned myself in the back of the class, right where she couldn't see my reflection because of where the column
interrupted the mirror. Of course, this didn't work if she put some kind of reverse step in, which she often did, so I was facing the back wall and she was looking directly at me. Didn't work if I tripped over the step and made a lot of noise, either - I mean, she wasn't hard of hearing, believe me.

Jackie attracted quite a crew to these classes. Some of us were together for years, and we got to be good friends, even though we rarely saw each other outside of class. Jackie promoted such warmth and good fellowship that this was a perfectly natural thing to do. We would tell stories and gossip and share information and rumors. I marveled at some of the women who could sing the songs as we were
dancing, during the toughest parts of the routine (across the top,lunge, straddle!). They knew all the words, too. Me, I was maybe good for a chorus or two, if I had enough breath to get it the words out. Usually I didn't, because I was working hard just to get enough air into my lungs to make it through the routine.

Truth be told, I guess I was the class clown. I tried to get everyone, including Jackie, to laugh, or at least smile and I usually succeeded. Jackie was great and I got away with a lot. I was careful not to step on her toes, though, and mostly I didn't. If I did, I knew it right away and immediately shut up. I didn’t make that mistake too often, though.

I remember these classes and my classmates and Jackie as a part of the best experiences of my life. After 5 years of Jackie's classes, I was no longer a couch potato and I had the heart, lungs and legs to begin climbing the High Peaks of the Adirondacks - I could never have done that without her. And I had wonderful friends
and memories. It nearly broke my heart when Larry, the head of the Healthy State Program and Jackie's boss for years, retired and Jackie decided that it was time for her to do the same and to move on to other things in her life. I suppose I really knew it was ending when she gave the steps away to my classmates who wanted them - yes, those wooden classics had made their way over to the Egg, too.

Jackie organized a couple of luncheon reunions after that - but it got tougher and tougher to get together as time went on and other commitments intruded. I saw Jackie from time to time: in the park with her granddaughter; or driving through Albany in her dark green convertible; once I even saw her and her granddaughter at the Prime Outlet Mall in Lee, MA. The last time I saw her was in Washington Park in September - I was jogging with a friend and she was driving by and recognized me. She beeped,waved and yelled out a "Hi, Ron" as she drove by.

I have never gone to another step aerobics class. People who know how much I loved Jackie's class have encouraged me to go, but it wouldn't be the same - it could never recreate that magical confluence of time and place, of music and friends - and Jackie.

Jackie died about a month after she was diagnosed at age 59 with pancreatic cancer. A classmate attended the funeral with me and we were reminiscing about Jackie after we touched her casket and said good-bye for the last time. Sue pointed out that Jackie was one who wasted no time, who got things done once she made up her mind. So, she continued, it was fitting that Jackie learned that she was going to die, accepted it, crafted her own funeral, said good-bye to her family and loved ones, and then went, all within a month. She would have wanted it that way. I believe that's true: passing suddenly would have given her no time to do the things that she knew needed to be done, and lingering was just not her style - she was a women who got
things done.

I cannot give you a full portrait of this remarkable woman who was my teacher and my friend. Her obituary, written by those who knew her much better, can be found in the Times Union. I only knew her for a short time, and only in a limited context. But she was a huge presence in my life. Every time I hear Cher singing "Do You Believe in Love after Love", Brian Adams talking about "those were the best days
of my life...”, or especially, Jon Bon Jovi telling us he did it his way, "Just like Frankie said", my feet move and I remember the steps and the patterns, and I think about Jackie - and miss her.

Turkey Time Tales

Here are three true stories. They have absolutely no relationship to athletic endeavors of any sort, but I thought you would find them amusing.

Betsi's Big Bird
My friend Betsi's husband Pete, and his good buddy Bobby, decided to raise turkeys this year - 10 of them. Mind you Pete and Betsi live in the suburbs, but Bobby lives someplace up in hills of Berne. He's not a farmer at all - works for the City of Albany - but apparently has enough land so that they could pull this off. Given Pete's lack of success deer hunting the past two years, I guess he figured this was a surer bet than trying to shoot one. Apparently they were successful, because a couple of days ago, Betsi was trying to give the turkeys away and asked us if we wanted one - a 25 pounder. We had no room in the freezer, and sadly had to turn her down.

I guess Pete and Bobby were really successful, because I heard today that Betsi cooked a 39 pounder! When asked how she got it into her oven she said, "I stuffed it in." Brings new meaning to "oven stuffer" for sure.

Speaking of stuffing, Betsi, who is an educator in the Health/Nutrition field, refuses to cook stuffing in a turkey, so she makes it on the side. This means that she took a 39 pound turkey and a full complement of stuffing to her mother-in-law's house for Thanksgiving, where they were feeding 13 people. On the other hand, her mother-in-law absolutely loves stuffing which has been cooked in the turkey. Solution? She cooked a 17 pound turkey at her house, and stuffed it, meaning 13 people, 56 pounds of turkey and two complete sides of stuffing.

And a final tidbit - Bobby's turkey? 47 pounds! I don't know what they did with their stuffing and I don't know what happened to the other 8 turkeys.


Gail's Cooking With Gas - Not!
My friend Gail had 8 people over for Thanksgiving this year - and her husband decided that this was the year they were going to deep fry the turkey in oil. He went out to K-Mart and bought a rig, and for good measure, consulted with their daughter's boyfriend Steve, who had a rig of his own and who had successfully deep fried a turkey before. Gail, being a cautious type - could be from working with me for the past 25 years of so - decided to cook a turkey breast in the oven, just in case.

Turned out to be a good move. No - they didn't burn the house down, or endure any other such catastrophe. Nope - quite the opposite. For reasons known only to the gods of cooking and things mechanical, it took them 4 hrs before they finally got the oil up to temperature - something stuck and by the time they got it unstuck it still didn't work because something else had been overheating for 4 hours, and they ran out of propane anyway. Boys and their toys.

I guess if it everything had gone correctly, the bird would have been cooked in less than an hour and been wonderful - or so they say. Gail says they had enough turkey breast to go around - but no leftovers.

She also says they had to leave the turkey in the rig until the next morning, when the oil was cooled down. When they took it out, it was 14 pounds of perfection - golden brown all over, just like in the TV ads. Yup, they had the best looking, best smelling trash in the entire neighborhood!

Is It Cold in Here? Ron Has a Brain Freeze
We had a good gathering Saturday, 10 people, very relaxed. As is usually the case for holidays, I did the core cooking - turkey breast (we down-sized this year for the smaller gathering) , Oscar's ham, creamed onions, mashed potatoes and stuffing, supplemented by appetizers, drinks and desserts from my friends and family. Everything tasted pretty good.

I usually make giblet gravy, too, but was thwarted because there were no giblets with the turkey breast - if you get the breast with the wing attached, it will usually come with a packet of giblets, but we couldn't find one of those this year. And, oh yes, there is one other reason. In wonderful type-A fashion I try to wash the pots and pans as I cook to maximize the space available and minimize the mess. This year I was so efficient that I took the turkey out of the oven, put it on the platter to set up, grabbed the pan with the turkey drippings, threw it into the sink, and scrubbed out every last speck of drippings before I realized I had just killed the gravy. I guess my family and guests knew something was wrong from the loud "Oh, sh**", and because my response to the cries of "What's wrong?" was "There will be no gravy!"

Since it was not the actual holiday, the Hannaford was open and we sent my sister and son out for bottled gravy. This created its own variation on a theme, because my sister - who believes there is never too much food- bought 5 jars, but not until my son, in his inimitable fashion, dropped a jar on the floor and smashed it, leading to a call on the P. A. "Wet clean-up on aisle 2". I felt bad for the poor kid who had to work on Thanksgiving and clean up that mess, because when I was 17, I worked in a Grand Union, and I was that kid.

All in all, a very minor blip on the radar, and an excellent day. Besides, we now have gist for years of family stories, at my expense. I just want to know how many more times I am going to have to listen to my friends and family screwing up there faces and bellowing, "There will be no gravy!"

Hope you and yours had a wonderful holiday, with memories and stories of your own. Share them with us if you are so inclined.

Walking on the Bike Path - Thanksgiving Afternoon

It is our tradition to celebrate Thanksgiving with a meal, and to go for a walk after that meal. However, it is not necessarily our tradition to celebrate Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving Day. That's the case this year, and Saturday will be the day for family and fun and feasting. We did have lunch and a walk today, after our morning delivering meals for Equinox. Lunch was nothing special - a bagael with cream cheese and a cup of coffee at Dunkin Donuts - but the walk was on the bike path, and it was.

Today was mild - I was comfortable with a flannel shirt over a cotton tee shirt - and overcast: the sky was mottled, with alternating gray and white swirls. If you looked hard enough at the white parts, you could almost see a hint of blue behind them. The river and inlets were so still they mirrored every leaf and branch.

We walked west. The first thing we noticed was that there were no birds to be seen - no Great American Egrets like on our last walk, and none of the ubiquitous Canada Geese. If we stopped and listened hard, we could hear twittering, but at first we could not see any birds. That changed later in the walk.

There were a surprising number of people on the path at 1 pm. The first person we saw was a Back of the Pack jogger coming towards us. Though the side to side pumping of her arms was not efficient and her strides were labored, her pace was steady and determined. I loved her immediately, and clapped and cheered for her and wished her a Happy Thanksgiving. She smiled as she passed, and I know that smile.

We saw a family of people, probably eastern Europeans, three generations. The two women wore what looked like traditional scarves over their heads. The men wore black. There were two small children, a boy and a girl. They were walking, but the dad of the boy was pulling a little scooter. Later the boy stood on the scooter, while his dad pulled it, and him, along. We wished them all a Happy Thanksgiving as we passed, and they returned the greeting.

We noticed that the ground was clear and free around the four-foot high grave stone shaped marker, engraved with "S9" - nine miles to Schenectady, a remnant from the days this bike path was a railroad track. Two years ago it had become so overgrown that during one of my walks, I carried in clippers and a pruner and cleared away the brush. I noticed that after that, it pretty much remained that way.

Just beyond the marker and just before the orange bridge at the one mile marker there is a small inlet on the left. The ripples in the water caught our attention - they were being made by a beaver. He glided over to a point of land and up to a downed sapling, where he stripped off a small branch. He swam with it to the middle of the inlet, dove down, and disappeared. We waited for a while, but he did not resurface.

By now, we could see, as well as hear,chickadees and bluejays. Just beyond the bridge on the left there is a small stream flowing through the grasses. We noticed three young women peering over the bank, and one of them was taking pictures of something in the water. When we got to the spot and looked over, we saw about a dozen mallards, male and female, swimming in the stream, and moving in and out of the grasses. The males were crowned with vibrant green, while the females wore more muted browns.

Two bicyclists passed us, one on a mountain bike, the soft tires humming on the asphalt, the other, long and thin and lycra clad, speeding by on a road bike.

We turned around at the cabbage patch, about a mile and a half from the start. We both stretched, the joints on my back cracking, and my hamstring protesting just a bit against the cold. While I was bent over, a gorgeous white and brown English Setter came over and did with his nose what dogs do. He was on a retractable leash and his owner, one of a group of six, quickly reeled him in and assured me the dog was friendly. Any friendlier and we would have to get married.

By now we were warmed up, and the walk back was quicker. We noticed that a beaver had joined the mallards, and could not tell if it was our old friend or one of his kin. Close to the finish, we spotted a large whitish mushroom on the trunk of a tree about 5 feet off the ground, shaped just like a bun. Closer inspection revealed that it was, indeed, a hamburger bun, stuck over a small branch. Maybe a new kind of bird feeder?

Back where we began, we saw that the picnic tables had been removed for the winter, with only their anchors remaining. There was a vine wreath tacked to the frame of a window of the old train station, the vines interlaced with seasonal orange and brown leaves and fruits. We knew the season was over when we saw that the bathrooms were locked and the entrance was chained. Not so bad for men - not so good for women.

The bike path is a marvel to us through all the seasons and today it gave us as fine a walk as we have had all year. We had our 3 mile walk, and we had our river and our sights and our wildlife, and we did not have our big meal, so our waist lines and hearts are the better for it, in many ways. And I did add 270 fit points to my Fitlinxx account. Can't ask for a better day than this one.

A Little Walking, a Little Talking, and a Little Good Cheer Thanksgiving Morning

My wife called me at work at about 3 pm on the day before Thanksgiving. She wanted to deliver meals in the city of Albany on Thanksgiving morning, and more importantly, wanted to know if I was willing to go along with her and drive. We had done this before, and my dance card was open so I didn't object- I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to have to get up in the middle of the night. So I asked her"

"What time would we have to be there?"

"Not until 8:30"

"That's not bad - O.K. - I'll do it."

"Great! I thought you'd say that, so I already called and signed us up!"

Which is how I ended up downtown at the Concourse at 8:30 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning, waiting in line for two hours with several thousand other like-minded people. This was Equinox's annual Thanksgiving Day Community Dinner, and we were a small part of a huge process resulting in meals delivered to over 7,000 people in the area. Quite the undertaking.

Even though I did a lot of standing and a lot of walking, and even though I was at it for over three hours, I couldn't log it in my Fitlinxx account. And even though it wasn't an athletic event, I was still way at the back of the pack by the time I arrived.

It was a varied crowd, mostly families, ranging from couples with young children to grandparents and maybe even a great grandparent or two. So, I did what I always do - talked with the people around me - you didn't think I was going to stay quiet, did you?

Kids
Lots of kids there - some were sitting athe the tables the organizers provided, coloring. A lot of them were on the loose - the alarms around the art work lining the halls went off continually, mostly as kids got too close to the wires and tripped the sensors. There were kids zipping around on "wheelies", too,exhibiting some pretty amazing control and grace as they zipped around, turned, braked to a stop and sat down, all without missing a word in their conversations with each other. My favorite sight, though, was the parents who had their young son sitting in a stroller, with a portable DVD player balanced across the frame. It which was playing a Sponge Bob Square Pants video, and the kid wasn't making a peep.

Considering how small many of the kids were, and how long the wait was, most of those kids were remarkably well behaved. There was one, however, who was not so good - I suggested what they could do with her if they happened to run out of turkeys. Kathy chuckled at first, but then she shushed me - didn't want to alientate any of the parents around us.

On-Line, the Old-Fashioned Way
I talked to a man about my age wearing a SUNY Albany basketball sweatshirt and a SUNY hat. I asked if he was an alum or if he had a son on the team. Actually , he said, I'm a Siena grad, but I help out with the SUNY Lacrosse team. I told him I wasn't so sure about a sport where your opponents get to whack you with sticks.

"Mostly" he said, "they try to hit you on the arm, between the elbow and hand, to jar the ball loose." That didn't change my mind about trying the game.

I identified a Tufts grad by his sweatshirt. 2002 grad, he told me, the semester before Jon started. He, too, had worked at the Tufts Daily, and knew about the ancient mismatched furniture cloistered office where the newspaper staff labored. I told him about Jon's travels to Hong Kong and China and India, and about the classmate who tapped him on the shoulder while waiting in line to see the Dali Lama. As an undergrad, my new friend told me, he had not been very adventurous, had not studied abroad during his junior year. He was now doing post grad studies in physics at SUNY Albany, and most of his classmates were from abroad. He loves listening to them talk about their homelands and travels, and envies them. It's never too late, I told him. Besides, if he knows people who live around the world, as Jon does, do what Jon does - consider them the owners of very inexpensive places to stay!

There was a young couple with three small children, a boy and two girls. Dad and the children were all dressed in Scouting uniforms. The girls were brownies. The boy, a second grader, was a member of a Cub Scout Pack at his elementary school and his dad had stepped up and become the Pack Master. Because the elementary school which sponsors the pack only has an enrollment of about 160 kids - in Albany, the charter schools are really siphoning off students, especially from the elementary schools - it was hard to find kids interested in joining the pack and even harder to get their parents involved - he partnered with a nearby Montessori school. He reasoned that parents who had apply to a school to get their kids enrolled would tend to be more involved in their children's lives and activities - and he was right. He also partnered with the Boy Scout Troop from the St Andrews Episcopal Church , a very active congregation, again expanding the experiences open to the boys in the Pack. We admire the programs - Jon is an Eagle and Em earned her Silver Award, so we talked with him about scouting for quite a while.

A woman ahead of us was a third grade teacher in the Albany schools, so the dad talked with her a bit about what to do to help prepare his son for third grade. Read, she said. Later I talked with her about Em, who is an Elementary Education major at Boston College. She wanted to know if Em would go right on for her Masters - we don't know at this time. She also recommended that Em get a good grounding in special ed. We agreed.

Getting to the Tables
After about 90 minutes we got to the tables - the ones holding the "packets" Each table had a placard with a zip code on it. By the time we got there, all the outlying zip codes - Watervliet, Cohoes, Menands, etc, were gone. That was ok, since we wanted one in the city -12206 had a lot of packets left and that was perfect. Kathy is a case worker and has responsibility for a shared-aid building on Central Ave, and sure enough she found a packet for there - out of the 11 meals to be delivered, 10 were going to people in the same building.

Drivers Wanted
We could only pick up one packet - there were still a lot of people behind us and the organizers did not want to run out of packets before they ran out of "drivers" - interesting problem in logistics, actually. Last year they were short on drivers, so they advertised heavily - and successfully - this year. In fact, Kathy noticed that they were dividing the packets into smaller groupings, so more packets were available. I guess they were worried that if the people behind us didn't get a packet after waiting in line, the word would get out and next year there would be another shortage of drivers. Interesting problem indeed.

The Meals
After we picked up the packets, we waited in line again for about a half hour before we got to pick up the food. They let us go into the cafeteria in small groups of 5 or 6, so as to not jam up the pick-up area. When we got into the cafeteria, a volunteer gave us a large cardboard box - the experienced "drivers" had brought along their own wheeled coolers, or wagons or even hand trolleys. Then we made 11 pick ups at each "station" First, foil wrapped containers of turkey, ham, sweet and white potatoes, stuffing and vegetables - each packet had been assembled ahead of time and frozen, so the food would stay cool and safe for the delivery process. Then Kentucky Fried Chicken takeout boxes stuffed with a couple of desserts - mostly pieces of pie - a roll, celery and carrots sticks. Then small plastic containers of gravy. Next small plastic fruit cups - they were short on those, so you could only get one cup per household, no matter how many meals were going there. Finally, a loaf of bread, or a package of rolls or muffins for each household. There went into a separate smaller box to carry.

Of course, the next problem was how to carry the big box, which was a little heavy, and none too sturdy, to the car, which was at the other end of the concourse and down two levels. Fortunately, the organizers has thought of that, and there were assorted wagons, flatbed carts and other wheeled conveyances available. They also had volunteers down in the garage to bring said conveyances back up to the pickup point - pretty clever.

The Building
It was pretty amusing watching a lot of people from the suburbs try to read the little printed maps which were provided to try to figure out how to get to multiple addresses in the inner city. No such problem for us. As a case worker, Kathy knows every street alley and building in the city and in the northern part of Albany county - and most of the people who live there, too. Townsend is "her" building - she is the only caseworker assigned to it - and of the 150 people who live there, she is either the case manager or involved in the cases of 45 of them. No big surprise that when we got to the building, all the people sitting in the lobby knew her and started talking with her, and she knew almost everyone by name, regardless if they were her clients or not. She had organized the tickets in the packet by floor, to make it easier for us to deliver them. Knew right where most of the apartments were, too. We had also taken some recyclable shopping bags with us and had re-packed some of the dinners in them, especially if we were delivering two meals to one apartment. Made the deliveries easier, and it sure made the big box I was lugging lighter.

Of course, since meals had been ordered for all 150 residents, there was a steady stream of people carrying boxes, trying to get into the small lobby, and backed up in the lobby as they waited for the two very overworked elevators. Since the building has about 16 floors above ground and three below, it would have been tough to deliver all the meals without them.

The president of the building association was a big help: he asked everyone which floor they needed to go to, and then used his key to hold the elevator at each floor while the deliveries were made, making sure the elevator was there when the "drivers" got back. He had also arranged for the meals which could not be dropped off, since the residents were out, to be collected in the community room, where they could be picked up later.

The residents were very happy to see us and thankful to receive their meals. They all talked with Kathy, too, some about the meal, some about her last visit, some about their health. One woman had recently fallen and hurt her wrist, which she held up and showed Kathy. A very different world for me, and pretty amazing to watch.

We had one last delivery, to Elk Street, a street which winds and snakes its way through Albany, mostly parallel to Central Ave, but stopping and starting, turning into a street of a different name for a while, and then reappearing. But, Kathy knew the twists and turns and short cuts, and stayed on the Elks trail just like a bloodhound and we found the apartment and accomplished our mission.

By now it was after noon, breakfast had been a long time ago, and the talk and smell of all that food made me hungry. Since we were not going to have our Thanksgiving dinner until Saturday, we did the same thing after finishing this run that I do after finishing a 5K - we headed off to a Dunkin Donuts, for a toasted whole wheat bagel, salmon cream cheese, and a cup of coffee.

Another Brick in the Wall

Who knew that my most frequent swim partner would be - a brick? Yep - Aaron was at it again this week with the bricks. As in all well structured classes, we get to build on the lessons of the past. So we repeat an old favorite: we pair up and Aaron tosses two brick into the deep part of the pool and side by side, we go fetch. And we get to do the drill twice because - actually, I don't know why we get to do it twice - maybe "two" is Aaron's lucky number?

Dodie and I are the couple of the moment, so we go do as we are bid and fetch the bricks off the bottom of the pool, flip over on our backs and otter them back to our Master. He promptly flings them out again and gives the command. This time, though, I have an idea to goof on him a little. I am wearing the sparkly red shoes, so I tap my heels together three times - oops - wrong fairy story. I am wearing the red zoomies, so I feel strong, like Aquaman. I convince Dodie to let me get both bricks, to see if Coach notices. I am not totally sure I can do this, so we concoct a back up plan - if I can't handle both bricks, I will drop one and Dodie will casually go down after it and bail me out.

I easily go down to the bottom and pick up both bricks, one in each hand. But it's not so easy getting back to the surface. I have to get both legs on the bottom and shove before I get enough momentum to surface. Once there, I roll to my back, and let the zoomies do their thing. Still, it's tougher than I thought - even with the flippers I have to kick hard and concentrate on keeping my head back and chin up to keep from going under. When I get to the end of the pool, I hand the two bricks up to coach, one in each hand. He says's, "That's great! From now on, I'm going to duct tape them together and you can do it that way all the time!" Ooops.

By the way, since my second run has used up all the time alloted for this drill, Dodie gets a free pass and doesn't have to do her second fetch, so she thinks this has been a fine stunt all the way around.

Keeping Our Heads Above Water
Turns out we are not done with the bricks yet. Coach had devised new torture.

Every week we tread water, first using just our arms - I feel like a big buzzard flapping my wings during this stage - then using just our legs. We repeat these cycles, 20 seconds for each stage, until we complete three minutes.

Sometimes during the arms only part, I cross my legs at the ankles, to make sure I don't use my legs, and also because it feels feel pretty awkward with them just hanging out there. Coach sees this and thinks it's a good idea, and asks Mike and Dodie and Kelly to do the same, which they do. When it's time to switch back to the legs part, Kelly, who has been quietly giggling over in her corner of the pool, says, "Coach, can I uncross my legs now?" Like this drill wasn't tough enough for me without a lung full of water?

Anyway, after "fetch", Coach takes us and the bricks down to the deep part of the pool and tells us we are going to tread water again - with the bricks. Being the nice guy he is, he gives us two (there's that number again) choices. We can hold the brick out of the water with two hands and use just our legs. Or we can hold the brick with one hand, and use the other arm to help keep us afloat. Being Coach, there is a catch - if we hold the brick in just one hand, we have to extend our arm until it is totally straight up in the air. We are going to do this drill - wait for it - twice.

Kelly goes first. She grabs the brick in both hands, starts to kick and immediately begins to sink. This is not a surprise, since she has no fat to help with buoyancy, and the brick is about 20% of her body weight. Coach mentions that last week she only lasted 6 seconds, and is astounded when she is still going after 30. Of course, her head is totally under water and she is not breathing. She later tells us all that she has taken a deep breath as soon as she grabbed the brick, because she was bound and determined to break her record and who needs air anyway? No competitive drive there.

We all take our turns in round one, and we all use two hands. This is a hard drill for Mike, because two weeks ago, Aliens landed on his knee and then drilled for oil. I know this because he has three very neat little equi-distant craters atop his knee cap, and a scar in the middle of it. I've seen enough episodes of the X-Files to know what causes marks like that!

In round 2, we all decide to use only one arm for the brick. Dodie does great - she has very strong legs and is a powerful kicker. She has that brick so far out of the water I think she is trying to touch the ceiling with it. And then, just to show off, she changes arms, without losing a stroke. Next thing I know, she uses her free hand to grab the other brick, and starts pumping the bricks up and down like they are pom-poms. Wow - I guess once you're a cheerleader, you're always a cheerleader!

I can hardly wait until the next class to find out what other perverse things Coach has in store for us and the bricks.

Sometimes God calms the storm. At other times, he calms the sailor. And sometimes he makes us swim.

I returned to swim class Thursday night, after missing the previous week's session to be with my family in Florida, due to the death of my father. It had been a tough week and a half, and I was physically tired and mentally drained, and did not want to go. But it was good to see Dodie and Kelly again, both of whom have been very supportive, and both of whom hugged me. Good to see Aaron again, too. And it was really good to get back in the pool and work. It was very tough to work hard and laugh at the same time, especially in the water, but we managed. Seeing my friends and working through the drills with them tired me out, but washed away my exhaustion.

Theodore Francis Schubin October 30, 1914 - November 4, 2007

Theodore Francis Schubin died Sunday, November 4 at the age of ninety - three in Boca Raton, Florida. While we mourn his passing, we celebrate his long and active life.

Mr. Schubin was born October 30, 1914, in Newark, New Jersey. He was a veteran of both the U. S. Army, serving as a corporal in the infantry, and U. S. Navy; serving as a naval gunnery instructor, First Class during World War II in Newport, Rhode Island.

Mr. Schubin joined the New York State Department of Correction as a prison guard at Wallkill Prison in 1937. When he retired in 1975, he was the Superintendent of the Ossining Correctional Facility, formerly known as Sing-Sing Prison. Mr. Schubin was a prison reformer, bringing diversity to the correctional staff and increasing educational opportunities for inmates.

He had a life long respect for learning and education, earning a G.E.D., and attending special courses at Colombia and New York University during 1939 and 1940. At the age of 55, he graduated with honors from Dutchess Community College in Poughkeepsie, NY with an associate's degree in correctional administration. While at the college he served as Chairman of the Evening Division Student Association.

After the Schubin family moved to Florida in 1975, he and his wife traveled broadly, both throughout the United States and the world, visiting not only countries in Europe, but also Egypt, Russia, Thailand and China, among others.

An avid and excellent ballroom dancer, he met his future wife Doris at a USO dance in 1943. He won several dance competitions, and was a instructor for Arthur Murray Dance studios. He and his wife danced together regularly for over 60 years.

A versatile athlete, he swam, ran track, and played football and basketball in the service. Later in life he enjoyed golf, once scoring a hole-in-one, and winning the Mainlands Golf Club President's Cup in 1979 and 1984.

He was a member of the Elks, the American Legion, the Poughkeepsie Youth Board and the Coconut Creek Power Squadron. He was a deacon, and President of the Men's Brotherhood of the Arlington Reformed Church in Poughkeepsie and deacon at the Calvary Presbyterian Church in Coconut Creek.

He had a quick and agile mind, and an outstanding memory. He loved telling jokes and solving crossword puzzles -in ink.

He loved music, and had an eclectic collection of CDs, which he freely shared with his friends.

Mr. Schubin is survived by his wife of sixty years, Doris Wood Schubin; his son: Ronald T. Schubin of Albany, New York; and his daughters: Deborah G. Peterson of Melbourne FL; Cynthia A. Walker of Pawling, NY; and Tammy L. Schubin of Tallahassee, FL. He is survived by six grandchildren: Jon and Emily Schubin; Robyn and Sarah Walker; and Keva DuPont and Kiera Ansbro.

A memorial service was held on November 9 in the chapel at St. Andrews Estate South in Boca Raton. Contributions in his memory may be sent to the Good Samaritan Fund, St. Andrews Estates South, 6045 Verde Trail South, Boca Raton, FL, 33433-4476 or the Hospice of Palm Beach County by making a gift to the Spectrum Healthcare Foundation, 5300 East Avenue, West Palm Beach, FL 33407.

Hairy Gorilla Half Marathon and Squirrelly 6 MIle Run

After 6 triathlons in the last year and a bunch of 5K's in the last two months, I have discovered a few things about runners: there are lots of them; and they run for all kinds of reasons. They run for fitness and they run for thin-ness; they run to outdistance age;, they run to socialize and they run to compete; they run to have something to talk about and if they are good, something to brag about. And every now and then, they run just for fun.

That would be the Hairy Gorilla Half Marathon and Squirrelly Six Mile , held once a year in beautiful, but decidedly not downtown, Thatcher Park. On this late October morning the Helderberg Mountains were dry and the air was clear and very brisk. The frost was not on the pumpkins when I arrived, but it must have just left. I was dressed for the cold in fleece and wool, from head to toe. But a bunch of the runners were dressed for - Halloween!

The Albany Running Exchange, sponsors of the event, had turned the entire pavilion area,and the surrounding fields and trails, into one giant out door Spook House. The hosts, runners and spectators were very much into the spirit of the day. A hockey-masked Jason burst out of the woods and terrorized the kids - and me - with a very loud and scary chainsaw - until I noticed there was no chain on the saw. Multiple gorillas mingled with giant bananas, the by product of King Kong, Carmen Miranda and "Nightmare on Elm Street".

Everywhere you looked were terrifying girlies, ghastlies and ghoulies, oh my! If you don't think girlies are terrifying, you haven't seen a six foot tall belly dancer wearing a two piece harem outfit over a hairy chest. The pirates were lusty - and given the fair maidens, it was totally understandable, even if one of them was covered with tiny cereal boxes and all the fixings. Donna was a refuge from Sadie Hawkins Day and Deanne was a black cat with sharp claws, but a very pretty kitty.

You might have thought you had stumbled into Fantasia, and the Flight of the Bumblebees - but they were really the Boo-Bees (Fair Maidens and Fair Maidenforms?)- and they were being chased by the Boo Bee Keeper. His net was strung with a huge brassiere which looked more DDDD than B-sized.

My buddies Dodie and Kelly were there, too. Dodie was running, as was her friend Holly. Kelly was there with her kids and her parents to cheer on her husband, Craig, and her brother, Chris. Chris won the 13 mile event in the past, but while he was fresh off a terrific 10:32 finish at the Kona Ironman, his legs weren't, and he "only" finished 4th this time. Craig of the sore knees was 8th and Holly, training for another marathon, finished with a very good time. Donna and Deanne finished together - they would have been under an hour if they hadn't veered into left field - literally - before crossing the finish line, losing time as they circled back. Dodie made this her first post-achilles run, and finished very respectably. I cheered loudly for them all.

The runners, over 270 of them, took off from a graveyard and ran past several more of them along the way. Each tombstone was "en-graved" with the name of a registrant. Jamie liked his so much that when he saw it, he made a quick left turn off the trail, bent over, ripped it from the ground, and made it his running partner for the rest of the race. You can see the pictures here. To keep the runners on their toes - or on backsides if they didn't step lively - the trails were strewn with bananas. To keep the race interesting, as if the bananas, woods, terrain, rocks,hills and mud from the previous days' rain didn't make it interesting enough, Jason and other assorted beasties and nasties periodically leaped out at the stalwarts along the way. As if their hearts weren't beating fast enough!

Since it was a race, there were awards for the runners - but there were also awards for Best Costumes, Best Pumpkin Carvers, Best Gorilla Impersonation and Most Bananas Carried (remember them? 7 was the winning number). Hey, even a Back of the Packer like me would have a shot at winning one of those!

There was hot chocolate at the end of the race, and the traditional bagels and bananas(of course) But there was also a marvelous cookout, and I understand you could get your burgers just as rare as you liked!

I had a lot of fun. Next year I may have to don a costume and enter. Maybe I'll pretend to be an athlete!

Flipper Re-Surfaces!

About a month ago I re-connected with an old friend at the Teal Ribbon 5K - he had organized a team in remembrance of his sister, and I was honored to participate.

As old friends do when they reconnect, we got talking about what we had been doing. He knew I had been participating in triathlons and I mentioned that I had started blogging about my experiences. He expressed interest, so I immediately promised to send him the link so he, too, could be subjected to my ramblings.

The first piece he read was "A New Kind of Brick" with its mention of Flipper. Proving that it is a very small world, he told me this in his next email:

You made a reference to Flipper. I have a connection to the show. The older brother on the show was "Sandy". The actor playing Sandy was Luke H... Luke is a distant cousin, but unfortunately I have never met him. However, growing up in the 60's my family watched the show religiously and we were always proud of our cousin, Luke.

Will future anthropologists note that in the 20th and 21st centuries, the bond uniting Mankind was - TV?

Zoomers

"Stroke Improvement, The Next 7 Weeks" began last night. Aaron and the Band-Aid are back, so are the bricks and the drills, along with a wonderfully sadistic new one called "Melt Downs". But that's the topic of a future post. Dodie and Kelly are back, Al is gone, and Mike and Jessica have joined us. But they also are the topics of a future post.

Last night's drills were divided into NSF and WSF – "no swim fins" and "with swim fins" and that's what I want to talk about – swim fins. I really like using swim fins. They compensate for my notoriously poor flutter kick, make me go faster, and allows me to increase the cycle speed of my arm strokes. I definitely work harder and I know I am increasing my VO-2 Max. Good stuff. I want a pair of these to use during my practices so I can get all these benefits more than once a week. Besides, I haven't bought any new "toys" in at least two weeks.

I wanted to know more about these marvels, so I did what any modern athlete does – I Googled them. Up popped Triathelete Sports and there they were – Zoomers!. (They are probably called this because they allow you to "zoom" through the water, and based on my experience, the name is perfect.)

I clicked on the picture and learned that for $24.95 – on sale now for $23.95 - I could purchase this amazing product which:

• uses a "patented short fin technology"
• would "promote a shorter, faster kick"
• would allow me to "work harder without overloading the muscles"
• meant a "high level of intensity can be maintained for a longer period of time"

I was beginning to get excited. Then I learned they came in blue and red, the red ones being "designed for advanced, competitive swimmers."

And, get this:

• "5-6% stiffer"!

My interest was really rising now. I read on and learned that for merely $8 more, I could get the newer, better "Z-2's" with

• A "patented angle and quick response technology"
• Which "supports a higher body position and better body roll across" a lot different strokes
• And that the size and shape "offer greater ease of movement, comfort and safety "

And here's the kicker: They allow anybody, of any ability "to transition the full power of their legs into the water."

Wow! By this time, I was really excited and breathing hard. Two thoughts zoomed through my mind: "Had I stumbled onto an XXX- rated site by mistake?" and "I have got to get me a pair a pair of those!"

You Never Know When the Lord Is Handing You a Blessing

For months, a colleague has been training really hard for the NYC Marathon. Last year he ran it in just over 4:30, and I know he really wanted to be under that this year. He has trained steadily, and run regularly in distance races, like the Boilermaker 15K and assorted half marathons to stay sharp.

A few weeks ago he was 19 miles into a 20 mile training run - and he fell, hard. He got up and finished the race, but the damage was done. He cracked a rib and collapsed one of his lungs. An air pocket formed outside the lung, and it was touch and go for a while as to whether it would dissipate on its own, or whether he would require surgery. Turned out it dissipated, just like all his hopes, dreams and plans to run that Marathon at all, let alone in under 4:30.

Those of us who know him, especially those of us who train and compete, felt really bad for him. Most of us who enter races or triathlons have performance goals and we know that to reach those goals we have to log a lot of hours - on the road, in the water, in the gym - and that we all have to overcome the inertia not only of physics, but of our own minds. And most of us have been injured badly enough at some time so we could not race, could not train, and had to sit while inertia crept in again. So, we empathized with him, and wished him well and cursed the fates and his bad luck.

Then we learned this - while the doctors were treating him and trying to assess the damage from the fall, they happened to find a small spot on one of his kidneys. Yes - it is cancer. Since they found it early and since it is small, he has a number of treatment options, including radiation, laser and surgery, and the prognosis for a full recovery is very good. He had no symptoms, no idea that there was anything going on. If it had hidden until there were symptoms, his course would have been much tougher. There are no guarantees in the races we run, but in this arena, I bet we'd all rather be running a 5K than a marathon. We're pulling for him to win his.

You never know when the Lord is handing you a blessing.

We All Get Along Swimmingly!

Been a while since I have blogged here - work, weddings, family illnesses and competition for the keyboard have all taken their tolls. It's a quiet Saturday morning now - the steady rain is keeping me inside, and the competition for the keyboard is either sleeping, out or in Paris (that would be my daughter who is abroad this semester). This morning it's just me and the laundry (behind on that, too), so I thought I would try to catch up.

We have finished all 7 weeks of the Stroke Improvement Class - I made it to 5 of the classes. I like going - I like the teacher, I am getting a good workout each week and getting better in the water and, of course, I really love getting together with my friends and tri team mates each week. We have all signed up for the next session. Before the next session begins, I thought I would share some observations about this one:

Aaron
Let's start with the teacher - we call him "Coach". Aaron says he has been teaching this class for 5 years now, and I think he does a good job. He used our first session - which I talked about in an earlier entry - to figure out what we could do, and who we were. Over the next weeks, he worked from solid "lesson" plans, but also managed to individualize for each of us. That's pretty impressive. Because we are all older and pretty self-motivated, we all talked to him about what we felt we wanted and needed from the class and he always listened and responded positively. Case in point:

You Show Me Yours.....
We all noticed during our fist session with him that Aaron has a piercing through his left nipple. The second time I saw him, Week 3 since I started during week 2, I noticed he had a bandaid over it. I asked him about it and sure enough, he said he was afraid someone in the class might see it and be upset. I don't know if one of his bosses had said something to him or not.

I have seen covered piercings before on young working people, and was pretty sure that's why Aaron had his covered. By the way - it is actually kind of an interesting insert - it's two small bars, one on either side of the nipple, rising up in a gentle curve and capped at each end with a small sphere. Kind of reminded me of the deely-boppers on a snail - a little different than your standard circle or straight through pin. Kelly and Dodie and I all said we didn't mind at all - with the women speculating more on the fact that it was probably painful having it done - for obvious reasons.

We notice that after that, Aaron just wears a sleeveless red lifeguard shirt during the lessons - piercing doesn't show, but he doesn't have to rip off chest hair after each session that way.

I had something to show him, too. No - not a piercing - a rectangular bruise, shaped just like a brick, located below my right boobie. Nope - it's not what you think - I did not get it the previous week's "brick" workout. I got it doing wall pushups on the side of the pool. If you are Kelly and are strong and have like 0% body fat, you do the pushups the way you are supposed to - straight up and down. If you are me and not that strong and have a bit more than 0% body fat, you kind of lean forward a little as you go up and down, and certain, shall we say, protuberances rub up and down on the gutter with each repetition.

Anyway, I told Aaron that I didn't think I should do anymore pool pushups, and that I didn't think I was benefiting from trying to swim on my back with the brick using just a flutter kick - and he was fine with it. In fact, he pointed out that he told us last week that we didn't have to do the brick, but Dodie and I, being good Type A's, not only did it once, but insisted on doing it again! Which was true. So - kudos to Aaron.

The Brick - Part 2
True to his word, no more bricks for me and Dodie. Until week 6, when we all learn that Aaron can be a little sneaky. During the week 6 session, Aaron brings out two bricks. Dodie and I are puzzled. I mean, Kelly has been doing the brick thing all along and is as seriously awesome bricking in the pool as she is out on the road. But come on - how is she going to cope with 2 bricks at the same time? I mean, two bricks together weigh about as much as Kelly does, soaking wet.

But, no - this time he tosses them both about half way up the length of the pool and tells me and Dodie that we are going to get them. But before I begin to seriously think that he has lost his marbles or his memory or both - he confesses: this time he wants us to use the back frog kick to get them in, not the flutter kick. In fact, he says the drill has been designed that way, and that everyone he knows prefers that kick, except Kelly, the Queen of the Flutter Kick.

Dodie and I like Aaron and trust him - sort of - so in we go and do our best Golden Retriever imitations and"Fetch" And sure enough, it goes pretty well. Then he tosses them in again to the same place and we go get them again. Only this time I bend over and pick mine up - not too tough since I am only in chest deep water - say, "Oops" and toss it out deeper. After I go out and get it and bring it back, Aaron says, "I thought you were afraid of the deeper water." I say, "No - only when I have to try to swim on my back with a brick using my crappy flutter kick and I am pretty sure I am going to get to know Davy Jones up close and personal."

I don't mind diving into the deeper water. In fact, one summer when I was a teenager working at a YMCA summer camp, the chef, who had been a diver in the navy, introduced me and some of the other staff to SCUBA diving. I liked it a lot. I spent most of my free time that summer snorkeling in the lake, and got where I could easily go down 30 ' and hold my breath for 2 minutes. Can't do that any more, but I would really love to get certified and go reef exploring some day - maybe in a couple of years after I retire. It's on my life list.

Different Strokes
Aaron pays a lot of attention to his lessons. We warm up, then we work on different skills and strokes.

Sometimes we isolate on the legs, either with or without the kickboard. Aaron: "Kelly, go fetch that brick, using just your legs." Kelly, "Ok, coach - but how am I going to get it off the bottom?" Aaron: "You have teeth, don't you?"

We also do sets of the crawl, the backstroke, the elementary backstroke, the breast stroke and the side stroke - either working on each stroke individually or in combinations. It's funny - each of us has our favorite stroke - and each of us has one that comes hard. For me, it's the backstroke. I have to remember to keep my head back and chin up, or else I inevitable get water up my nose when I rotate my hiops to the side for each armstroke. Usually I am able to breathe through my mouth and keep the back of my nose closed so I don't swallow the water, but it results in a lot of disgusting snorting and blowing when I get to the end of the pool.

For Dodie, it's the breast stroke. She says it tires her out. I guess she has never really done the stroke, and like everything else she does, she works really hard at it when that's the stroke of the moment. I find it a very relaxing stroke, but I was taught from an early age to count "Glide, two, three" at the end of each sequence, and I'm all for anything that let's me goof off a little. I think that resting is against Dodie's work ethic. Her frog kick has really improved since she started - Coach tells her this, too, but she is hard on herself. Here's a confession - last week when we were doing combination sets, Dodie and I were doing the breast stroke side by side, and I had a hard time keeping up with her - and it's my best stroke.

I'm not sure about Kelly - I think she is not too fond of the backstroke, but you wouldn't know it by the way she powers through the water.

Here's another confession - last week Kelly and I were side by side during the crawl stroke - just for jollies I tried to keep up with her. I went as fast and hard as I could - she was just gracefully stroking along - and I couldn't even stay close for one length.

I Love Flipper
Not the TV show that featured a dolphin (you old enough to remember that - or are they doing reruns on Cable's TVLand?) Speaking of dolphins, used to be you could eat dolphin at restaurants (poor Flipper!). Actually, dolphins as in "Flipper" are mammals, and a protected species - dolphins on the menu are fish - not the same species at all. You can't order dolphin in restaurants any more - they apparently got tired of explaining the difference and renamed the fish mahi mahi.

Flippers as in swim fins. I absolutely love them. Aaron introduced us to these during some of our legs only drills. Man, what a difference. My flutter kick is awful - my ankles are rigid I tend to compensate by bending my knees- which produces a bicycle kick and makes me go backwards. But, with the fins, I am Aquaman! We get to use little shorty fins and my favorite, the long ones SCUBA divers use. I can go so fast with these I create a wake! The great part about using fins during the drills is I get to strengthen my legs and go forward in the water.

Wrapping It Up
The 4 of us survived the session - oh, I forgot to mention - someplace around week 3 or 4, Al joined us. He's a pretty good swimmer and often gets paired in a lane with Kelly during the drills. He doesn't say much - well, it's really more likely that Dodie and I talk all the time - but I remember this: the first time he came and got a look at Kelly swimming he said, "What's she doing in this class?" And all four of us have signed up for the next session.

It's good to have it on the calendar, to know that no matter how tired you are, you are going to get a good work out and going to see your friends. We laugh a lot. Tough to do when you're in the water, but we manage.

Last week was open house for the aquatic programs, and a couple of people stopped by to watch. I admit to being selfish, but I like this group a lot and like the individual attention we can get from Coach, and from each other, so I am kind of hoping no one else joins.

I am pretty sure that Dodie and Kelly feel the same way - after last weeks class, my hair was taking a walk on the wild side, my face was red, and my goggles were askew and I guess I was quite a sight. Dodie said, "Take a picture of him." Kelly said, "Yeah - we'll show it to people who are thinking of taking the class and it will scare them away!" And it was one of the best compliments ever - I think!

Hard Core Bikers

Jill
Jill emailed me and asked me if I had some time after work to go for a bike ride. I confessed to her that I hadn't been on my bike since the Pinebush in July, but she was ok with short, flat and slow. We agreed to meet on the bike path at Lion's Park after work on Tuesday. I was looking forward to seeing Jill again - we had trained together for last year's Pinebush, and I hadn't seen her since last August. Jill is a lot of fun to train with, another social athlete, and she is pretty inspirational to me. She runs 11 minutes miles - but she runs a whole lot of them, back to back to back. I cheered for her in June of 2006 as she ran and completed the Lake Placid Half Marathon, and not only did she run up that beastly finishing hill, she was smiling while she did it. I like Jill.

Rich
I asked my friend Rich to join us - he had gotten a new hybrid for his birthday, but hadn't had much opportunity to ride. We have done a couple of rides together, including up and down Blatnick Hill, and the 15 miles Schenectady Community College loop which goes down the bile path and back Rt 5 over the Scotia Bridge. Rich is definitely not a Clydesdale, and he was a pretty good athlete in HS - he was recently inducted into the VI Sports Hall of Fame for track. He's got bad knees know, but he ran 4:45 miles in HS - pretty good. We kind of look like Mutt and Jeff together. Jill thinks he'd make a pretty good triathlete.

I finished work at 5, and because we didn't have a lot of light left, I changed in the men's room before I left. Rich lives about 3 miles from downtown, and but it took me thirty minutes to get to his house because of the traffic. After I inflated his tires to max, he put the bike, his helmet and his backpack into the back of the CRV. and we headed for Niskayuna at quarter to six.

It's Got to Be the Goin', Not the Gettin' There That's Good - Nah!
We made good time until we got to Rosendale Rd, only to find it barricaded with a detour sign. No problem. We went down a block to turn at the Reformed Church, only to find another barricade and detour sign. At Mohawk Rd, same deal. It was now past 6, and I did not have Jill's cell phone number. I swung around and headed east on Rt 7 again, going all the way to Buhrmaster Rd and was relieved to find it open. We went down the hill turned left on River Rd, and back to Rosendale - only to find more barricades.

I couldn't see any reason for the barricades - and I was within50 yards of Lion's Park - so I snuck around the barricade, and turned into the lot at about 6:10. Jill was waiting for us on the path, sitting at the table in front of the old train station. Since she drives home that way every night, she knew about the barricades, and knew enough to ignore them, but couldn't call me because she did not have my phone number either. Apparently the barricades are up because they are doing a lot of tree work farther down Rosendale, towards the turn off for the Lock. The barricades are to keep traffic away from the chippers. (No - this is not Cali, so the CHP's http://www.chp.ca.gov/ and Poncherello have nothing to do with this story).

Back in the Saddle Again....
Given that it was a little later than we wanted, and given I had run a 5K on Sunday and swam, and jogged and swam on Monday, we decide to call this a "recovery ride", meaning we headed east, away from Blatnick Hill, and rode on the flats. Good call. We averaged a rip roaring 10 mph, stopped both coming and going to look at the magic-hour sunset vistas on the river which open up 2 miles up from Lion's Park, just after you cross the wooden bridge, and we turned around 4 miles out, just before the path headed down to the road and barricades in the stretch before the twin bridges. Meaning we did no (zero, nil, none, zippo) hills.

We talked a whole year's worth of catch-up during those 8 miles, and we never once put our heads down and hammered. And, miracle of miracles, we did not feel compelled to jump off our bikes at the end and do a brick. We will probably fry in Triathlete's Hell (uphill both ways, into the wind both ways, and HHH), or at least Purgatory, but I don't care. It was nice to remember that, in addition to doing the 2nd leg of a triathlon, my bike can also be used as a recreational vehicle. We had a really nice time. We are going to do it again.

I Am Really Slow

How Slow Are You?
Yesterday I was out jogging with Donna and we took a short cut across a parking lot. I am so slow that the attendant came out and made me put a quarter in the meter!

A New Kind of Brick Workout

When I Signed Up for Stroke Improvement, This Wasn't What I Envisioned
Last week Dodie, the "Fat Tire Flash", emailed me and told me she had signed up for a stroke improvement class at the Y and that I should come join her. At first I begged off, but after some thought, I remembered that triathletes participate in 3 sports, and that swimming was one of them. Since I had not been in the water since the Pinebush in July, and since I wasn't exactly setting the water on fire during that race (how's that for a mixed metaphor?), I reconsidered.

Which is how I was sitting on the bleachers at the shallow end of the Y pool at 7:25, listening to the nice young man tell the member that no, he could not swim in the closed off lanes, because he, Aaron (the nice young man) was scheduled to teach a "stroke improvement class in 5 minutes. But, since no one was there, and if no one came, he would open the lanes. Now, I know I am invisible to women, but ......... I may be invisible, but I can definitely be heard , so I spoke up and said I was the stroke improvement class he was waiting for. He looked at his clipboard and said, "You're not on my list" I explained that I had signed up and paid on Sunday, but he still didn't seem convinced. Then I said the magic names" "Dodie emailed me and and encouraged me to join" and "Kelly told me she might be here after her open house" Wow - worked like a charm! Wrote my name on the clipboard and everything.

He had me get in the pool and swim a lap using the breast stroke, while he watched. After I finished the laps, he said my arms were fine, but that I was lowering my left hip on the kick, and that my right leg was lifting up as it was going out, instead of remaining level in the water. He suggested that I try keeping my knees together as I brought them up to my chest, and to concentrate on starting both legs out at the same time. Great observation and great tip - it really helped and I'm going to work on it. (I do have to say that when I visualized his description of what I was doing wrong, I thought I should maybe be looking for a fire hydrant or a bush or something...)

Same deal for the crawl stroke - up and back, while he watched. He noted that I was crossing my right arm over, and that hands were entering the water on an angle that was a little too steep. He suggested concentrating on placing the right hand in straight, placing them into the water on a shallower angle, and on really extending each arm stroke. These were good tips, too, and I will be working on them.

And then the fun began. He said that in addition to technique, we (Kelly had finished with her open house and had joined us in the pool - he didn't look for her name on the clipboard! Dodie was still at her open house but will be returning next week - probably won't look for her name on the clipboard, either) needed endurance. Reminded me of the punchline to a joke about the wedding night conversation between a woman and her minister husband.

Anyway, to get this endurance, he has some drills for us - boy did he have some drills for us!
Who knew you could do pushups on the edge of a pool? And they are tough, too! We did laps with the elementary backstroke, and between laps, we did wall pushups. Then we did kick drills - on our faces, then on our backs, with the board and without the board. And - you guessed it - between drills we did wall pushups. Then we treaded water in 20 second intervals - first legs only, then hands only. We did this for two cycles and on the third cycle, a special treat, legs only and hands straight up out of the water. (Note - along with downhill on a bicycle, treading water is one of the few times when a little excess body fat is a good thing - good for Ron - not so good for Kelly, who has, like, 2% body fat)

But, my favorite was when he said we would do "bricks." As a triathlete, I know a "brick" as two disciplines back to back, especially bike to run. Since we are already in the pool, I'm wondering if we are now going to run or bike or what. No! When he said brick workout he meant we were going to work out with - bricks - 10# rubber- coated bricks, one for each of. I'm thinking maybe we are on the set of the "Sopranos" and he is going to tie it to my ankle.

I won't swear to this, because I was pretty tired by this time and I had a lot of water in my ears, but I think Kelly asked which one was heavier. To be fair to her, she probably had water in her ears and didn't hear him say that they were both 10#'s. Given our relative sizes and buoyancies, probably would have been fairer if I had the 10#'s and she had 10 oz.

No - he had an extra special treat for us. First we walk, with the bricks, to the middle of the pool. Then we each put a brick on our chests, and cross our hands over the brick, keeping our arms tight against our bodies. The he tells us to lean backwards into the water and kick, until we reach the wall. He neglects to tell us that leaning over backwards with a 10# brick on your chest means that your head immediately submarines to about 40 fathoms under the surface, and that about 38 of those fathoms immediately rush up your nostrils, making it very difficult to breathe. His solution was I should push my upper lip against my nose to seal off the nostrils - I can tell you that bit of contortion was not the solution that sprang to my mind. What's next - eyebrow licking?

He also tells us to lift our legs up close to the surface while we kick, neglecting to mention that getting the angle too steep means that you are propelling yourself not to the end of the pool but to the bottom. After 8 rounds of kick, sink, snort, resurface, blowhole and breathe, I reach the end of the pool. (Kelly struggles a little, but does really well and makes it to the wall long before me)

He says that he normally has the class do this several times, but taking note of my stellar performance - and the advancing clock - he says we (mostly me) don't have to do this again. Guess he didn't understand the masochistic nature of triathletes - even if they are SFT's like me. So - we go out to the middle, grab the damn brick and do it again. This time, it only takes me 6 cycles to reach the wall. Wow - 25% improvement!

At 8:15 he tells us class is over. We mention that he had done an hour last week with Dodie. He says yes he had, but then Dodie told him class was just 45 minutes, which it is supposed to be. I ask if he is ok with going the last 15 minutes. He is game and says he is leaving at 8:30 anyway, so, why not? So, we work on the mechanics of the back crawl, learning new ways to snort water, feel graceless, and torment new muscle groups.

When it is all over, he tells us if he has done his job right we will be sore tomorrow, and that the sorer we are, the better he will feel. Does that sentitment seem as skewed to you as it does to me? Kelly and I both thank him and say goodnight. After, we go to the hot tub - Kelly to soak her sore calf (from the backstroke kicking) and me my sore hamstring (I strained it during the first 3 blocks of my noontime run today) and we both decide that this was work and that we will be sore - and that we both like it and will definitely be back next week.

Time after Time

Donna, who is my colleague, friend and training partner ( and likely triathlete next season) runs in a lot of 5K's, at least one every week, frequently two in a weekend, and every now and then, two in one day. She is strong and fit, regularly runs in the high 20's, and seems to thrive on them.

But our conversation after last Sunday's Teal Ribbon 5K http://www.caringtogetherny.org got both of us thinking that maybe she should cut back just a little.

Donna: The timing people here today are the same people who timed the DARE Race in Niskayuna yesterday

Me: You recognized the people at the finish line doing the timing?

Donna: Sure. And I thought I passed their truck on road when I was driving over here this morning.

Me: You recognized their truck, too?

Don't know about you, but the only thing I see at the finish of a 5K is the big clock and the numbers, and I'm trying to make it in under some arbitrary number, like, say, 90 minutes. I am usually aware of the chute, because there is usually one there, and I am vaguely aware that someone is prompting me to slow down (ain't that ironic ) and trying to steer me into the tangle of ropes and tiny little flags. But as far as I'm concerned, the voice is disembodied, and I have no clue who or what it belongs to.

When I get to the end of the chute, somebody or several somebodies want me to stop so they can rip the tag off my race bib (Maybe if I do this long enough and get really, really svelte and fit, someone will want to rip my shirt off - but that's more along the lines of a hallucination than a fantasy) At this point, I am trying to remember how to breathe, and trying really, really hard to keep it together enough so that some well meaning volunteer isn't going to say to me, "Sir, are you all right?" in a tone that means "Should I get the paramedics over here, stat?" Gees do I hate it when they call me "sir"

And I am trying to stand up straight and put my hands over my head, as opposed to bending over, grabbing my knees and begging my lungs to start working again, because my running companion Nick L told me what he'd been taught: that I finished the race, that I am a winner and I should act like one and not slump over like a loser.

Given all that, Jessica Alba and Jessica Biel could be in that chute and I would neither recognize nor remember either one of them.

So I am amazed that Donna not only sees the people, but she recognizes them, calls them by name and asks after their kids. Next thing you know, she'll be putting them on her Xmas card list. At that point, she really should cut back a little on her 5K's!

A Lot of Running Around, but No Running

Brenda Deer, Sort Of
I planned to run in the Brenda Deer - really, I did. But, Emily wanted to get to Boston on Saturday to see her friends before she left for Italy, and she wanted to go to a BC football game, the only one she would get to this year. So, I did a lot of running around on Saturday morning, while the final packing and preparations were being taken care of at home, and off we went. In other words, nothing runs like a deer, but I didn't run in the Deer.

But, our very own Kelly the Quick, and Jenn B and Donna C did. Kelly the Quick took a first in age group and 4th overall (women)! Jenn B said the weather and pace made it a very hard race for her, but she toughed it out and finished in a very good time. Donna also told me the 3 H's made this a tough race: hot, humid, and THE HILL. She also had a good time and finished just a few seconds behind Jenn. You can find the results here: http://www.albanyrunningexchange.org/results/searchResults.php?Race=../results/csv/2007/0908brenda5k.csv

By the way, Kelly, Donna and Jenn are all training for longer races later this season - half marathons, Stockade-athon. etc. Good luck to them - but given how hard they all work, we know that their success will have very little to do with luck.

Guess What They Have in Newton, MA? (No, not figs)
While we were waiting to get Emily on Sunday, we stopped in Newton, MA, just down the street from the BC campus in Chestnut Hill. A quaint and lovely town, with public gardens, complete with sculptures, sidewalks and the kinds of shops where you can spend both the whole day and the entire contents of your wallet. We ended up in a pizzeria for lunch (2 slices of sundried tomatoes and caramelized onions for me) Gives you an idea of the kind of training I got in last week. But - even if I was not running, I was thinking about it.

Bill's House of Pizza sponsors a 5K! Who knew? And you know what everybody gets after the race? Not bagels - PIZZA! Wow - I may just have to check my calendar and make the trip. If BC is playing at home that day, it could be the perfect trip. If you are going to be in the Boston area at the end of October and want to check it out (the town, the race, the pizza or all three), here's the link: http://billspizzeria.com/

Coming Up Next....
Up next, the Teal Ribbon 5K, a benefit for ovarian cancer research. Donna will be there, and Kelly's husband, too. If you have the time, come on down to Washington Park and cheer on the runners and support a great cause. Here's some additional information: http://www.cbs6albany.com/onset?id=23523&template=article.html

Everything Hurts, And If It Don’t Hurt, It Probably Don’t Work

One of the great things about coming to 5K’s and triathlons at the age of 57 is that I haven’t spent the years beating up my body with the stress and pounding of training and racing. Nope, I’ve beat it up the old-fashioned way, with sloth and gluttony, leading to way too much weight and way too little muscle. Now that old age is working hand-in-hand with gravity, I get to have (remember the old Doublemint ads?) two – clap, two - clap, two times the fun! So, let’s do a little inventory and then reflect a bit.

Hearing
Whadja say? .

Vision
Can’t see far and I can’t see near. Given me and mirrors, that’s not necessarily a bad thing – except when shaving.

Shoulder
I’ve got a bum rotator cuff in my right shoulder. Probably caused by eight years of coaching baseball, accelerated by the last two years. Jon wanted to learn to pitch guess who his personal coach and catcher was?. Took way too long before I figured out that if I was throwing back each pitch, I was throwing as many pitches as he was. He was 12 – and I wasn’t. The solution was to buy two dozen balls and a bucket but, like I said, it took me way too long to figure it out.

Now every now and then if I stick my arm out just right, the shoulder “freezes” and I walk around with my arm out sticking straight out, just like Boris Karloff in “The Mummy”.

Left Knee
Has been “popping” a little when I move just the right way (wrong way?) for years. Kind of figured I needed to do something when the knee went out and my left leg collapsed 3 times during a single slow walk on the bike path. After the x-ray and MRI, I learned there wasn’t too much cartilage in there (the horseshoe- shaped gaps representing cartilage that are supposed to show up on each side of your knee in an x-ray looked more like lumpy pancakes), and that the only thing surgery would do would be to clean out the knee to make it nice and neat before they replaced it. Not going there yet.

So, I got a brace and 6 months of therapy to strengthen the muscles around the knee. That was pretty much weighted ankle-cuff exercises for the 4 major thigh muscles, step-up and step downs, ring around the rosy on the treadmill (forward, sideways and backwards walking ) rolling around on the BAP platform, machines and stretching. Stretching was my favorite part – especially when the therapist kneeled on the table with me and tried to put my left foot in my left ear. A little kinky, but fun.

Seems to have worked – I don’t wear the brace any more, unless I am out hiking in the mountains, and my knee hasn’t buckled since then. Gets a little twingey every now and then when I am walking up hill, and a little puffy after a tri – but I’ll take it.

Back
When Walt Whitman talked about “I Sing the Body Electric”, I don’t think he was talking about that little electric zing that I felt cross my lower back about 15 years ago when I bent over to pick up a surge protector. Now I’ve got “Rice Krispies” back – every time I move it goes Snap! Crackle! and Pop!

Was in bed for days after that first little zing, not moving except when I had spasms - they were fun - not getting better. Needed to get seen by a doctor to get some muscle relaxers to start loosening up – but I couldn’t get out of bed. So, they came and got me and took me out on a stretcher. Don’t know if it was more painful for me or the poor slobs who had to lug my corpulence down the stairs and out of the house – probably for them.

Foreign doctor on call at the emergency room was going to give me a shot – then he got a good look at me, commented that I was “a thick fellow” – and doubled the dose in the syringe. I learned that muscle relaxers do two things: 1. Make you weepy 2: Lower your IQ about 50 points. But, they did get me moving again, and let me get to therapy.

Back is pretty much ok most of the time now, unless I stand too long, sit too long, ride in a car too long, pick up anything heavier than a toothbrush, sneeze or turn the wrong way – which could be any way at all. Lots of mornings the back causes the left leg around the knee to go numb. Most days this happens at work. To fix this, I bend over and try to stretch out my lower back and hamstrings, while keeping my legs fairly straight. I try to do this discreetly, as to not give the idea I am mooning someone, which could cause me to get brought up on sexual harassment charges – or propositioned.

The Cure
I’ve gotten lots of advice – stretching, strengthening exercises, tai chi, yoga – most of which I ignore. Who’s got time for all that? Besides, if I could stand up and put my head on my knees while keeping my legs straight – I wouldn’t have any need to have to do that! Sort of a Catch-22, don’t you think? ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22 Scroll down to the section labeled “Concept” for an explanation. )

I have found out that if I move just the right way sometimes, I feel a little "click" in my lower back and I feel ok again. If I can't find the magic click, I’ve discovered the miracle drug: Vitamin I Yes, that’s right, all I have to do to overcome the rigors of old age and bodily deterioration is, ta-da, take 3 ibuprofens before and after exercising. Did you know they are a lot cheaper if you buy them at Wal-Marts in bottles of 500?

An Example
So, how do all these aches and pains and maladies affect my day-to-day life? Consider the following: I keep my key ring on a magnetic holder attached to the side of the refrigerator (too much crap on the front of it to put them there). Every now and then – ok, often – I miss the hook and drop them down into that too narrow space between the counter and the refrigerator. First I hear them drop – sort of. Then I try to see them. Can’t get my head in the right angle with my glasses on and can’t see anything with the glasses off. Then I have to try to get down to a kneeling position – remembering which is the good knee and which is the bad knee.

I reach in as far as I can, craning my neck to get every last inch of extension I can. The keys are too far in, and reaching out too far causes my shoulder to freeze up. I try to pull back, which tweaks my back, causing it to start complaining. I try to get up, but now my knee has gone to sleep, and grabbing the counter doesn’t help too much because my shoulder is also snoozing. I usually end up grabbing a broom and trying to sweep the keys toward me, hoping I don’t push them under the refrigerator. I now know why my parents have those gizmos (apple pickers?) with the grippers at one end and the squeeze handles at the other all over their apartment.

Back to the 5K’s
So, since I’m such a wreck I should quit doing the 5K’s, right? Nah – consider this. At the 5K, they have stuff to eat and drink. They give you a bib, to keep stuff off your shirt when you are eating and drinking, and it has your name on it, in case you forget. They tell you where to go and when to start. At the end, there is a big sign so you know when you have finished, and there are people cheering for you when you do. To get from the start to the finish, all you have to do is put one leg in front of the other. So, the way I figure it, getting through a 5K is usually a whole lot easier than getting through the rest of my day!