Still in second in my family: Blueberry Run at Minnewaska

As a quick follow-up to last week's post about getting beaten in a race by my son ... it happened again in Week 4 of the New Paltz XC Series, at Minnewaska. It wasn't even close. Joey beat me by about 2 minutes in the 4-mile (or so, geez, it felt like 40 miles!) Blueberry Run. It's very rare that I am surprised by anything in this sport at this point ... but this course blew me away, in so many ways. You think Minnewaska, you think nice carriage trails, right? Maybe some tough hill climbs, but no technical footing. Yeah. Well. Go run the Blueberry course. That's all I gotta say. Single-track, grass trail with footing that is sure to test anyone's ankles. Lung-busting hills, making you want to beg for mercy. Back where I was in the middle of the pack, I "charged" up the toughest hill on the course with all my might and passed several people. They were walking. I wasn't going much faster. It was that hard.

Did I run this race all out? Sort of, but not really. I had done a hard 6-miler in the morning, and I am preparing (I guess?) for the Kelley 11.6-miler on Saturday. So I did not want to kill myself out there. I went easy on the downhills (I stink at them anyway) and hard on the uphills ("A" for effort, "C-" for speed). But was this an easy run? Yeah, right! Joey beat me, fair and square. It's over. He wins. He is faster. As astute commenter Steve said of my previous post, now he's gotta start chasing the Old Man's PRs. God willing, I will be there every step of the way, holding a watch in one hand and a coffee in the other, hoping he can do it.

Munchy Marathon on Flotrack

Check out this link to an excellent video on the excellent track site about the aforementioned Munchy Marathon ...

Munchy Marathon: Results you can "sink your teeth into" as Marist runners excel

Thanks to Bryan Buttigieg (Gregg) for the photos and results from Saturday's Munchy Marathon V on Long Island. As you can see by the shirt, the Munchy Marathon involves a highly questionable mix of unhealthy dietary delights mixed with healthy aerobic activity, culminating in an out-and-back 5km run (note to Tino: the key to an out-and-back is knowing where to turn around ... the rest of you will know what I mean when you see the results provided by Gregg). Without further ado, here are the results of Marist runners:

Zach Toner 2nd place = 18:54

Pat Rynkowski 3rd place = 18:58

Justin Tampellini 4th place = 19:14

Bryan Buttigieg 6th place = 19:29

Bianca Luparello 2nd place women's (22nd overall) = 23:59

Mark Valentino 25th place = 24:25

Top 6 places both men and women are considered All Munch-ican (basically All American honors). Gregg added that he was a member of the Munchy Team Champions, that included himself, race winner Chris Reilly of Adelphi and women's winner Emily Marchini of Coastal Carolina.

The Marist Munchers: Gregg (Bryan Buttigieg), Tino (Mark Valentino), Bianca Luparello (incoming freshman), Pat Rynkowski, Justin Tampellini, Zach Toner (incoming freshman)

So Well, and So Long: When losing feels like winning

He has been ahead of me on race results listings before. But never has my 13-year-old son Joey actually beaten me in a race, straight up, with my trying as hard as I could from start to finish. Until Monday night. Most times lately, I will pace him throughout the race and then he outkicks me at the end. I don’t “let” him outkick me. He just has much better finishing speed than me, which puts my son into the vast majority of runners on this planet. So although he has officially “beaten” me several times, it wasn’t true victory for him and defeat for me. On Monday night, though, over at Minnewaska, the torch was officially passed. He won, fair and square. In fact, it wasn’t even close.

The writing was on the wall, as they say. The past few times I have run with him, it has been noticeably HARD for me. This wasn’t just “fun” running in races with my son anymore. It was WORK. But, I still always had a slight extra gear in there during the race. I still held the hammer. Not Monday. This was the third week of the excellent New Paltz Summer Cross Country Series, and Monday night’s race was an out-and-back 3-miler called Patterson’s Pellet. Nothing about the topography of this race favored the Old Man. I’m a terrible downhill runner. And my strength on uphills can only be garnered in very long races as relatively slow paces. So. This was a short race that started with a steep downhill, followed by a relentless uphill to the turnaround, followed by a continuous downhill, followed by a steep uphill finish. Joey announced his intentions of trying to average 7:00 pace, which I knew I could not do on this course. I told Joey I would take it easy on the initial downhill and try to catch him going uphill. That strategy did not work. He was ahead of me by about 30 seconds at the turnaround, a gap he would maintain throughout the race. He did not come close to his 7:00 goal on this challenging layout, but he ran well and blew me out of the water, so to speak. I have not seen the official results, but on our respective watches we had 23:05 and 23:38. Or something like that. I tried. I tried hard. My breathing was maxed out and labored right from the start of the hill climb. I was dizzy and gasping for air and staggering after the finish – pretty typical short-race stuff. And he beat me. Joey won. I lost. The dynamic of racing “with” him has changed forever.

One team member, in reply to a post-race text, asked if I was more pissed off or proud about what had happened. I admitted to being both. But on that proud/pissed off continuum, I was definitely far more on the proud side. My time has come and gone. I’ll keep plugging along every morning at 5:30 a.m, with my pals. But to quote a Dawes song that I really like called “So Well,” I have a “future much shorter than his past” when it comes to running. Fortunately, I am surrounded by young men and women who have seemingly limitless futures, and we can focus on that. In the meantime, next week’s series race is back at Minnewaska; it is 4 miles instead of 3 miles. Maybe this Old Man has one more rally in his bones …

Birthday Billy: A successful and hot BBQ

Saturday's team midsummer BBQ at the Hudson River went well. The weather was HOT but the forecast severe storms never came, so that is good. We had our team tent for shade, and when it got really hot, folks retreated to the air-conditioned Cornell Boathouse. Above is a cake celebrating Billy Hild's 21st birthday. The cake, courtesy of Natalie Salek (Nick's mom) was truly awesome, one of the best cakes of any sort I have ever seen. And it was very tasty! Thanks to the Saleks for their great support, and to all the guys who helped with setup and breakdown of the BBQ. Faculty mentor Dr. Greg Sand even made an appearance, and we appreciate the effort as Dr. Sand lives on Long Island. In all, a good time was had by everyone.

Me and the boys: A memorable wedding night

One of the joys of being a long-time coach is bearing witness to your boys growing into fine young men. On Friday evening, we were at Pat Driscoll's wedding down in northern New Jersey. A great evening with the Class of 2002 (emphasis on CLASS). Most proud of the fact that the men in this group have gone on to become coaches, teachers and fathers (five children among them, with two more on the way shortly ... is it too early to be recruiting them?). From left: Brian Perrella, Gilby Hawkins, Pat Driscoll on his big night, Some Old Coach, Mike Nehr, Joe Scelia. Note to Panebianco: This is what I look like dressed up, with a shaved head and without a hat. 

Cool photo on an insanely hot day: Tino and Deedy at Yellowstone

Thanks to Mark Valentino for sharing this picture of him and Pat Deedy, ice bathing in the Yellowstone River on their recent vacation. Since it's about 190 degrees out currently, the sight of two distance men shivering in a chilly river is appropriate indeed.

Anger and social media: The case FOR blogs

A recent column by Joe Nocera in the New York Times caught my attention. Nocera is one of many excellent opinion writers at the Times. David Brooks is my favorite, but Nocera's pretty good too. It should be noted that Nocera had the guts and gumption to stand toe-to-toe with the NCAA in a series of scathing reports and columns in the past. In his recent column, he wrote about Twitter in an article entitled “My Case Against Twitter.” I am not on Twitter, but I probably will have to take the plunge into that medium at some point -- in order to stay relevant and current in the coaching ranks. Many of my brethren (including Coach Chuck) can be seen Tweeting updates at meets and elsewhere. It makes sense. That’s the way these things work, deny then succumb: In the past, I said I’ll never text, now I text a hundred times a day. I must evolve into order to survive in a young person’s world. There were a few lines in this recent Nocera column that intrigued me. One was an off-hand reference to a Tweet that said “blogs still exist?” The other was this paragraph, from near the end of Nocera’s column:

What I object to most of all is that, like other forms of social media, Twitter can be so hateful. It can bring out the worst in people, giving them license to tweet things they would never say in real life.

Amen, brother. Professional athletes and entertainers and politicians routinely get in trouble, get demoted, get fired or otherwise sully their reputations because of their impulsive 140-characters-or-less Tweets. Listen: Anything that we put out on the Internet is for the world to see and is for keeps, even if we take it down. However, Twitter and Facebook – with their brevity and instant gratification – can be particularly dangerous when you Tweet or Post without thinking thoroughly or without a self-filter. The same, I suppose, can be said for blog posts. But I’d like to think that with blog posts, maybe there is less of a chance to say or do something regrettable. The blog format’s longer form (more than 140 characters ... most of the time, anyway) tends to take a bit more forethought and maybe even writing and rewriting. You know, that old-fashioned stuff, for which apparently our society has little patience.

So, I’ll keep blogging in a world in which blogs seem to become less and less relevant. No promises, but I suppose at some point I’ll probably be Tweeting too. Don’t hold your breath on that one. I will cave in only when necessary, or when told to do so by my superiors (which has been threatened, and may well happen soon). In any event, keep checking here, please. I’d like to think I’ll keep the longer form going for a while as well.

In a Subjunctive Mood

In the “what am I doing during summer vacation” department … For the past several summers, I have worked as a teaching assistant in a College Writing (now called Writing For College) class here at Marist. My role in the class, as throughout the year, is as a proofreader; I correct grammar and punctuation. I won’t go on a rant here about the death of proper syntax among college students, for fear of seeming like an old fuddy-duddy. However, there is one aspect of grammar that seems to be lost on many writers under the age of, say, 40 years old. And that is the subjunctive tense or subjunctive mood. The thing about subjunctive is that, unless your ear is trained for it to sound correct, it sounds incorrect.

Example:

The correct subject/verb agreement in the following sentence is this: I was going for a run earlier in this brutal heat.

However, in the subjunctive, it goes like this: If I were going for a run in this heat, I had better stay hydrated.

In the second sentence, “I were” sounds wrong … unless you know it sounds correct.

While it is foolhardy to turn to rock ‘n roll for grammar lessons (“I ain’t got no satisfaction” ??), the following song lyrics below from Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) called “Penthouse Pauper” is an excellent lesson plan for the subjunctive. It played on my sweaty iPod shuffle this morning …

Now, if I were a bricklayer,
I wouldn't build just anything;
And if I were a ballplayer,
I wouldn't play no second string.
And if I were some jewelry, baby;
Lord, I'd have to be a diamond ring.

If I were a secret, I never would be told.
If I were a jug of wine, my flavor would be old.
I could be most anything,
But it got to be 24-karat solid gold.

If I were a gambler, you know I'd never lose,
And if I were a guitar player,
Lord, I'd have to play the blues.

If I were a hacksaw, my blade be razor sharp.
If I were a politician, I could prove that monkeys talk.
You can find the tallest building,
Lord, I'd have me the house on top.

I'm the penthouse pauper;
I got nothin' to my name.
I'm the penthouse pauper; baby,
I got nothing to my name.
I can be most anything.
'cause when you got nothin' it's all the same.

Of course, there are plenty of other examples of bad grammar in this song (I wouldn’t play no second string … ??). But the subjunctive shines through here. By the way, it’s a GREAT song, listen here if you want.

Class dismissed.

It's not the heat ... well, yes, actually, IT IS

Gonna be hot, hot, hot for the next week or so. Runners of all shapes and sizes, please be smart. Run early and run late. If it is extreme, break up your mileage into shorter runs. Drink, drink, drink -- sports drink, water, anything that is not dehydrating. In the meantime, above is a photo from this morning's Hilltopper Half Marathon in eastern Dutchess County. We call ourselves the "Middle Aged Machines." Well, the middle aged part is accurate, anyway. From left: John McKee (celebrating his 49th birthday), Davey O (David Osterhoudt, who ran every step with the Tube Socks Guy even though he is much faster); Neil Grencer, Mr. Bucket (put on a shirt, will ya?), Some Old Coach celebrating his 18th wedding anniversary to the most beautiful woman on the planet. It was hot, humid and hilly, but we got through it. We are "machines" after all. Or something like that ...

Run. Rehydrate. Rehydrate. Rehydrate. Rehydrate. Run Some More.

Team midsummer BBQ next Saturday

All are welcome to attend our sort of annual team BBQ. Here are the details:

Date and time: Saturday, July 20, 4 p.m.
Site: Marist Riverfront
Food: Usual BBQ stuff. We will try to organize among captains so that we have enough for all
RSVP: Let us know if you are coming and how many are coming with you
Cost: We may ask for a small amount of money from each person to cover the costs of food and drink

Look forward to seeing many of you next Saturday at the river.

Rainbow coalition, part 2

The past two mornings, my jogging routine was changed a bit due to the international conference being held at Marist College. There were more than 1,000 counselors from more than 80 countries represented. It was a BIG DEAL to be sure! I was asked to organize a group run from campus at 6:30 a.m. I recruited team member Billy Hild to lead the pack, while I trailed the pack. Marist Running Alum Adam Ritter helped out on the first day as well, and Director of Admission Kent Rinehart ran with the group both days as well. We did an out-and-back run over the Walkway and back. Our track background came in handy, when conference attendees arrived and asked "how many kilometers" would we be running. No worries. We deal in kilometers. For those keeping score at home, most who did the run covered a little over 8 kilometers. Among the countries represented on our morning jogs: South Africa, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Canada, Guam. There were more, to be sure, but that's what I remember. It was an honor and an experience to host our international guests.

Rainbow coaltion, part 1

On our recently completed vacation, it rained every day. Bummer, right? Well. Not really, when you are treated to this sight from our perch lakeside. This is an actual, real-life photo and not a painting. Beautiful.

Getting up early for a different reason

After a fun and long vacation, followed by a long car ride and a fun alumni wedding, I arrived home last Saturday night tired but in a good mood. On the ride home from the wedding, I made a mental note that I would sleep in on Sunday, a rare treat for me and something I probably would not do for quite some time.

Scratch that idea!

Heidi announced that she would be getting the house up at 5:15 a.m., so we could go to the Walkway and see the hot air balloons launch during the annual Balloon Fest. Getting up at that hour is normal for me. But I'm not used to having company in the house. It was well worth the trip to the bridge on the sultry and humid morning. Balloons everywhere! On the way home, at 7 a.m., we even saw a balloon land in the Home Depot parking lot. Pretty cool.

Sleeping in is overrated.

Foxy finish

Love this photo of rising junior Justin Tampellini, who is crossing the line in first place at a local 5k in Long Island. Justin is flashes the "Foxes" simple with his hands. Justin had a rough go of it in track, but we believe he is rarin' to go for his first love, XC. Nicely done.

Gimme Swelter

OK! We are back from our Lake George holiday. In all honesty, I wish I were still there. Why? Lots of reasons, not the least of which is that it is REALLY HOT and the lake is REALLY COOL. Good enough reason, yes? Hey. It's July 7. It's hot. Not exactly breaking news there. Highlights from vacation? It rained every day. Every single day! But no worries. It did not dampen our spirits. Hah! My first public pun in weeks. Bet you missed that. Also, I shared an Adult Beverage with my favorite Bro, Marist Running Alum Luke Shane, who was visiting family in Bolton Landing. Good stuff. Luke is training hard for the Philly Marathon.

Speaking of puns ... the title of this post is a takeoff on the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter." It remains one of my top two favorite heat-related Tabloid Pun Headlines Ever, with the other being: "It's Not The Heat; It's The Stupidity."

Stay cool. Run. Rehydrate. Run some more. Especially the Rehydrate part.