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The Never Ending Trail

On the recommendation of friend and fellow distance runner, Cara Finnegan, I recently read Pam Reed’s The Extra Mile.  Finnegan and I have individually played around with the idea of trying a few ultamarathon events at some point in the future and Reed’s book, subtitled One Woman’s Personal Journey to Ultrarunning Greatness, seemed to be a great place to start thinking a bit more seriously about it. 

Ultramarathons are loosely defined as any race going beyond the normal 26.2 (and change) miles required by a marathon.  When distance is the defining characteristic, normal ultramarathons are 50 and 100 miles (although there are odd numbers and some are much longer).  When time is the defining characteristic, ultramarathons are normally set at 24 or 48 hours with the “winner” being the person who covers the most distance during that time period. 

There are a number of aspects of an ultramarathon which make it interesting, especially as you get a bit older.  For one, my times in half-marathons and marathons are going down rather than up.  I see no feasible personal records in my future.  As a result, an ultra would give me a different way of judging myself.  Given that there are so many of them of so many different lengths and on so many different terrains, I imagine I would never have a personal standard against which to judge. 

Secondly, there’s just something romantic about the idea of such long distances.  I find myself particularly attracted by the idea of the “timed” race, even if it means going around and around on a track.  I can imagine the brain working in extraordinarily odd ways in such a race, and I can imagine a very strong sense of community between those who finish such a run. 

It was with a mind like this that I approached Reed’s book, then. While I expected that her words would only add to the romanticism with which I was approaching ultras, there are ways in which Reed’s book—and subsequent reading--work against such romanticism. 

Perfect, for the Moment

Yes, yes, I know it's true of more teams than Vanderbilt--including UNC--but no one expected it to be true of us.  And since I may not be able to say this a week from today, I want to say it now:  We're perfect.  16-0.  That's 16 wins.  Zero losses.  Life is so good.

Like You've Been There Before

Of all the sports clichés that I dislike—and there are more than a boatload of them--the one that bothers me most is “Act like you’ve been there before.”  Someone inevitably makes this claim each time a home run hitter celebrates his ball going over the fence and each time a wide receiver makes a one handed end zone catch and celebrates wildly.  That is, every time a player does what he or she is supposed to do, and takes a moment to celebrate it, someone will ask them—or at least ask the player on their television--to act as if it’s a routine day at the accounting firm.

This phrase has never made sense to me, and it makes less sense the more often I think about it.

On the emotional side, it doesn’t make sense because I’m the type of fan, the type of person, who simply enjoys big emotions and larger-than-life personalities.  I want players to celebrate wildly, to physically show how much fun it is to feel like they are the greatest, if only for the moment.  I love big personalities and big moments befitting those personalities.  I’ve never like the accountant approach to sports in which a player is supposed to act as if their great moments are mundane.  Hell, when I have a good day of teaching, or write a good line in an essay, I jump up and down and shout. Why shouldn’t the athlete do so as well?

Tomorrow's Judgment Today

Last weekend, my Bonnie and I were playing Taboo with another couple and their nine year old son.  For those who haven’t played it, Taboo works like this:  one member of a team draws a card and on that card, there is a word you’re trying to make your teammates say out loud plus five words that you cannot use to help them.  For example, if the word is “James Bond,” you couldn’t use clues like “007”, “Sean Connery” “Roger Moore,” and so forth. 

During one round, we had all the males on one team, and I was drawing cards, attempting to get my friend Trey and his nine year old son to guess.  When I drew the word “Steroids,” I immediately said, “Barry Bonds.”  Within a half second, both Trey and his son shouted their first guesses. Trey was wrong with his guess of “home runs.”  But his nine year old son, who will be thinking about Barry Bonds long after Trey and I are put out to pasture . . . well. . . he guessed the word correctly.

Think about it:  a nine year old kid hears “Barry Bonds,” and the word that immediately comes to his mind is “Steroids.” 

Say it ain’t so, Joe.

Marion's Mea Culpa

Marion Jones has fallen from grace. I’m sure we’ve all read the reports about how, after years of being one of the most vocal athletes to defend herself against the armada of allegations assailing her, this record holder and Olympic medalist confirmed everyone’s worst suspicions. Marion Jones cheated. She was doped up. She not only admitted to taking performance enhancing drugs, but of knowing that she was taking such drugs even while she continued to compete, while she knowingly beat multiple drug tests, and while she knowingly denied every suspicion. Sadly, such stories have become familiar this year, which has had many terrible sports stories. She’s just another athlete who did something they shouldn’t have done, denied and lied, and then apologized in disgrace.

I really liked Marion Jones. Witty, easy to listen to, confident, and, of course, an amazing athlete who seemed to find exuberance in every powerful lunge toward the finish line. And I admit to feeling disappointment and anger over her cheating. I’m not willing yet to give in to cynics who can only say, “I told you so.” I still want to believe in athletes and the amazing things they can do. But I also can see the traces of writing on the wall. This cascade of athlete betrayals is making it increasingly difficult to maintain optimism. Nevertheless, there is a spark of difference in Marion Jones’s cheating story that has rekindled some of my belief in athletics and those who compete.

One of the Good Ones

Last Saturday, I ran in a half-marathon in my hometown of Asheville, NC.  The half-marathon is my favorite distance and, while this is not my fastest race given the many hills, it’s perhaps my favorite given the many nostalgic moments I have on the route. Even on this, my fourth time to run it, I had memories during the race of different stories from my youth—roads where friends and I had walked, places where I had worked--that sorta thing.  This time, however, the race itself added a memory that will be added to my stock of stories. 

The story begins the same way almost all of my racing stories begin:  I started out too fast.  My personal record for a half marathon had me coming in at just below 7 minute miles (a 6:59 average in Nashville’s Tom King Classic).  My primary problem is, as hard as I might try to start out at a reasonable pace, I generally begin at close to a 6:30.  On this particular morning, after I hit the two mile mark, I discovered that I was indeed running a 6:35 pace.  As always, the pace felt surprisingly good, so I didn’t slow myself down . . . well, not as much as I should have.

Must have been the flax seed oil

(Thanks to old Army buddy Michael Allen)

Preseason Confusion

Last Saturday evening, Titans Coach Jeff Fisher did not allow starting quarterback Vince Young to play in their preseason game at home against the Washington Redskins.  Young was reportedly being punished for having violated team policy by returning to his home for sleep rather than staying at the team’s hotel rooms.  It was a bit of a disappointment, of course, for fans who attended the game, as well as those who watched it on television (in Nashville, of course, but I would assume also in Washington and wherever it was watched by Young/Titan/NFL fans).

Somehow, Tennessean columnist Joe Biddle has managed to make a column out of this—a muddled, confused and contradictory column, mind you, but yes, a column.  Let’s ignore for the moment the fact that Biddle simultaneously argues that Fisher “did the right thing” and that the Titans “stuck it to their fans” by not playing Young (I mean, Biddle often meanders like this in his columns) and just pay attention to the two main contentions: 1. NFL preseason games are overpriced and a way to “stick it to the fans” and 2. Vince Young should not have been benched because it “disappointed the fans.”

What a finish!

For those of you with lives, here's a report from Stage 1 of the Tour de France, which ran from London to Canterbury (don't ask): Sprinter Robbie McEwen just logged one of the most dramatic stage wins I've ever seen -- and if you take out mountain stages, then this one has to rank among the all-time classics.

The stage was mostly flat (although today's game-within-a-game revolved around competition for the King of the Mountains jersey) and scenic in a very British way, which is to say that the country lanes were narrow and lovely. At least, that is, until there's a pile-up. Today's race featured a big chain-reaction accident late in the day, and it sent McEwen over his handlebars and left him far behind the peloton, limping along with a stiff leg and a sore wrist.

Which is where it got interesting. His team -- Predictor/Lotto -- sent back several of its domestiques to help propel McEwen back into the peloton. Riding as if in a team time-trial, his teammates did the heavy work required to close the gap. McEwen hung tough, recovered from his injuries in the saddle, and conserved his energy despite making a dramatic chase to catch the accelerating main group. Yet with just six kilometers left to the finish, McEwen still hadn't quite rejoined the main group, and his prospects of cutting through all that clutter looked bleak.

Sports Rules

As something of an appendix to his autobiography, You Cannot Be Serious, John McEnroe provides a list of ideas that would make professional tennis more interesting.  Of these ideas, the one I liked best was fairly simple:  A let on the serve does not negate the serve.  That is, no more calling “Let.”  If the ball hits the chord, so be it.  The serve still counts as good if it’s in, as bad if it’s out.

When I was at a bar in Athens, Georgia several years ago, I found myself at a table of patrons engaged in a conversation about baseball.  While I love Major League Ball, several of the people at the table found the game insufferably boring.  When I asked what could be done to make it more interesting, a young woman said with no hesitation, as if she had thought about this a lot, “So, when the guy hits the ball, he can choose to run to either first or third, depending on what he wants to do.” 

While in one case, the idea is a bit more practical than in the other, in both cases, we have very interesting and fun ideas about what could make professional sports more fun, or more chaotic, to watch.  While I previously suggested on Xark that we encourage loud fan behavior at tennis and golf, I’m interested here in ideas we might share that concern changing the rules of professional sports.  While I know Dan’s not crazy about meme-type posts, let’s play with this one.  Ever had an idea about how to make football, baseball, hockey, boxing, soccer (for heaven’s sake) more fun?  I’d love to hear it.

Family Circle Cup: I'm out, too

I'm really sorry about this, but I must today announce my withdrawal from the Family Circle Cup tennis tournament for medical reasons. Namely, I have discovered that I'm a guy, and therefore not qualified to participate.

Listen, if anybody out there really wants to win a professional women's tennis tournament, this might be the one to enter. 

Safe on Third in West Asheville

At this moment, you are reading words written by the worst player ever to wear a glove in Little League Baseball history. I know that many people have laid claim to the title, but I am the one you’re looking for. 

As evidence, I submit: I was so bad that when I was 8 years old—and had already been chosen by Coach Hawkins to play on the 3A Malvern Hills Pharmacy team in West Asheville, NC back in 1971—I ended up being designated the batboy when the Coach deemed that my awkwardness was too much of a health insurance hazard.

I hardly believe this story myself, but I’ve been assured again of its veracity. So, it’s not just that I played right field and only played in the last two innings of the game—that’s the normal routine for a bad player—it’s that for one year, I wasn’t allowed to play at all. It is as the world’s worst Little League player that I offer this brief anecdote to you today, both as a tribute to the maligned sport of baseball and to a long forgotten Assistant Coach for the Dial Finance Franchise of 4A baseball in West Asheville in 1973.

In Asheville back in the 70s, Little League baseball was a big deal. Heck, as a result of Cal Ripken, Sr. coaching the local Double A Orioles team in Asheville (now the Asheville Tourists), I actually played Little League baseball against teams featuring both Cal Ripken, Jr. (an All-Star even then) and his younger brother Billy (no ball player back then was Billy). There were multiple teams, multiple fields and two divisions in each of two different leagues. Kids from 8 to 12 years of age played in either 3A or 4A teams. I don’t know what 1A or 2A signified, but I know we didn’t have teams in Asheville with those designations. In my small town imagination, I figured that was because we were just too damned good to have digits that small.

Tennis: Bring the Noise!

Earlier this week, at the Sony Ericsson Open, Serena Williams was bothered by a heckler throughout her match. In addition to some good old-fashioned obnoxious shouts, the person reportedly also shouted out a few racist remarks and was quite rightly ejected from the stadium.

Let’s face it: this guy was a fool. Not only was he fool simply for being racist, but he was also an idiot for thinking that he could yell at a tennis match and go unnoticed. Given that tennis is one of those “Cathedral” religions in which silence is golden, what kind of moron would shout during a match and expect to get away with it?

Like golf and billiards, tennis fans are supposed to sit quietly while the pros concentrate on their moves. Any noise, any muttering, brings a schoolmarmish, “Quiet please” from the judge (this sounds especially bad at Wimbledon when it’s delivered in one of those snooty upper-class accents). Unlike the “non-thinking” sports, like baseball, football, basketball, and hockey—in which players are expected to play despite the noise--tennis players and golfers are evidently performing a skill too sensitive to tolerate noise. 

I want to suggest here that this Cathedral attitude does not serve tennis well, and, as a result, I would like to propose that we welcome tennis, golf and other sports into the arena of fan participation, into an arena in which fans may cheer, boo, heckle and shout throughout the proceedings. What follows—and I do mean this to be taken seriously--are the advantages which would follow my suggestion:

Awwww... poor Dook

Well.

That was... FUN.

Unfavreable Reviews

Brett Favre's announcement that he is coming back to the Pack has made news, but in a fairly unkind way.  Look at how MSNBC.com chose to headline this news:

The full MSNBC.com article is more positively stated, but I couldn't help feeling a little upset by the headline's negativity: It's news that he is not retiring, suggesting that the expectation would be that he would, in fact should, retire.  Contrast that presentation with my local newspaper's coverage.  There may be, however, some bias in that reporting....

It is certainly true that Favre himself has provided plenty of reasons for thinking that his last game, a glorious victory over Chicago, would be his final game, particularly since he issued the now-requisite, pre-retirement water-works.  But even so, doesn't this 3-time MVP and guaranteed Canton inductee deserve at least the benefit of grammatical doubt?  Can't the press say he "is returning," rather than "not retiring"?  Are Presidents "not defeated" in elections?  Do wedding announcements state that a couple "is no longer single"?  Where's the proactive love?

I am confused by the tone of the negative headline.  In a sporting world where Roger Clemens can drift and out of retirement at will, while holding an average of three baseball franchises hostage to his employment whims, why are some people coming down so hard on ol' Favre?  With his iron-man constitution and even a few decent receivers to assist him, 2007 could the year when Favre sees his name move to the top of many column in the record books.

Perhaps this is the inevitable and graceless public decline that awaits today's sporting legends.  Regardless of their skill, the public cools toward once-great players and loses all patience with signs of their mortality.  A mediocre player can stay in the league for decades without much mention; but a great player can display no mediocrity.  It makes me wonder if we will ever see another prominent athlete given a late-career chance like the one that cemented the great John Elway's, where he was allowed to struggle through mediocrity between SuperBowl's 24 and 32, or if it's going to be like Favre, where the public applauds loudly and sincerely when the greatness starts to fade, but also  clearly ushers the player toward the exit.  It's a short -sighted fan who can appreciate only greatness.

A sports message from Tarwolf

Xark author Tarwolf has only made one appearance around these parts,  and he doesn't have his author account functioning at the moment, but he sends along this thought which I'm posting on his behalf:

Curious, don't you think, that a single brawl in the NBA elicits howls of outrage, much hand-wringing and angst, oceans of media ink and massive fines,while similar bench-clearing brawls in Major League baseball are met with mild reproach and even some boys-will-be-boys indulgence? Could race be a factor here?

Things that make you go hmmmmm...

Low, wide right and foul

Vice President Dick Cheney threw out the ceremonial first pitch at today's home opener for the Washington Nationals, but the crowd of 25,000 didn't stick to the FOX News script. They booed him loud. They booed him long (watch the Quicktime video via ThinkProgress).

How did FOX handle this incoming-reality crisis, this bit of Heartland kitsch theater gone awry? Well, first they turned off the audio. Then their talking head made sure not to mention to crowd's surly response -- at all.

Let's put that in context. It would be like Cheney going to a photo-op at Yellowstone and being mauled by a grizzly, and the FOX New guy just nervously talking about the administration's brilliant environmental record.

Fortunately for us, the FOX producers turned up the audio in anticipation of the cheer that usually accompanies a typical ceremonial pitch -- only there was no cheer this time. Just loud derision.

What's a FOX media lackey to do? Apparently, the solution is to praise the veep's throw, which started shy of the mound and still didn't make it all the way to the plate: