Introducing Team "Hooligans with Halligans"

A friend from the Gilberstville Fire Department here in PA and myself have formed a team...Hooligans with Halligans.  Hooligans is an all firefighter team that will be doing athletic events big and small.  In a short time, we have a roster of more than 20!

The good news for our Bataan ambitions is that we have four of the five Hooligans needed to create our Bataan team, and have already started team training for 2012.  We have a fifth that wants to go, but is not yet sure she can commit due to potential conflicts next spring (she goes to a military university).

If you're a firefighter and you're interested in events like Bataan, Tough Mudder, Spartan Race, Superhike and that kind of thing and want to work with a pool of other firefighters to put teams for these events together, contact me and I'll get you hooked up with the group.

Next Year: What we're up to

Don't have solid plans for next year's Bataan, other than the fact that we are planning and training for it.  For Bataan 2012, my son Brian will be participating for the first time, planning on the full course in the Light Division.

As for myself, there are a couple of possibilities.  As of right now, we have four of five needed members to put together and all firefighter team, which if we can come up with the fourth will be a Co-Ed Light Division run.

If that doesn't pan out (can't come up with the 5th member), then I will either run Light Division with Brian, or make another go of running with the pack in Heavy Division.  Stay tuned on that one =)

Medical DQ

Back home now...with some unfortunate news.  I ended up with a medical disqualification on the course, with a "possible partially detached Achilles tendon".

I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I have a guess.  I believe I committed the classic mistake of letting the adrenaline of the event get the better of me, and started out too fast.  I passed the 8 mile mark at a pace that would put me at a sub 6 hour completion, which if you've been reading along the past few months would know that I was hoping for a 6 hour finish but expecting more of a 6 and a half to 7 hour finish this year.  So I was faster than I should have been for at least the first 10 miles.

Then comes the FiveFingers.  As the doctor on the course explained, I was absolutely right that the FiveFingers will do a lot the way I'm using them to offload much of the stress off my knees, which is why my tests in the past have had such positive results in distances I can run without knee pain in them.  The problem as she pointed out is that all that extra stress has to go somewhere, and if you think about it, much of that would be directly on the Achilles   I didn't run into Achilles issues while training because I was training for a more moderate run time.

So I'll let all this settle in for a week or so and figure out what I'm going to do about next year.

Hah, not working out is hard!

Have a workout tonight, the first for a week...boy am i missing the regular workout schedule.  This happened last year too...get all antsy because I'm not blowing off steam at the gym/on the trail like I normally do.

A little more than a week to go.

Sponsorships and Maintenance Mode

I am now officially in “Maintenance Mode”, with the only stringent workouts planned for the next few weeks to be my Thursday night workouts with Morgan at High Voltage Gym, plus weight training several times a week.  The next long run I’ll do will be on March 27^th =)  I’ve done all of the preparing I’ll do for this year, and am looking forward to seeing how all the hard work pays out in the desert.

If you are inclined, please consider sponsoring my run this year with a gift to the Trappe Fire Company.  Donations can be made at the fire company website (http://www.trappefire.org/content/donatefire/) or by mailing a check made out to Trappe Fire and mailed to Trappe Fire, 20 West 5^th Ave., Trappe-Collegeville PA, 19426.

Bataan 2011 This Month!

Whelp, it’s finally March!  The race is upon us, and I’m just about as ready as I’m gonna be.  I have one more solid week of training, then two weeks of light maintenance before the event.  I’ve done “take two weeks light” before an event ever since 1997, when I trained hard for nine months for the Marine Corps Marathon only to end up twisting my ankle the week of the run while out on the tank trails at Camp LeJeune.  I missed an important milestone that year as I had really wanted ever since I joined the Corps to run its marathon before I left active duty.

I wanted to take a few minutes here in the month of the Big Run™ to talk about what it is that I’m doing, and why.  I’ve been thinking a lot about that why part lately, mostly good, some bad.  The bad comes at about mile 14 or so of a pack run.  39ish pounds starts getting pretty damn heavy by about that point.  The good is pretty much present at all other times…good for my health, for doing something important (at least to me) in honoring real heroes some of whom are still with us, to help raise much needed funds for my local fire department, as a role model to my children, and finally simply because sometimes it’s good to embrace your crazy and go with it.

If you’re just finding the blog (lots of new readers the past several months) or haven’t gone back to the beginning and read up on what this is all about, here it is.  In April of 1942, US forces in the Philippines were surrendered to the Japanese.  No one truly understands why the brutality that followed happened, but I read last year that some historians had traced several of the Japanese units involved back to the pre-US involvement in the war days on mainland China, where fighting had been going on for years.  The units that had served on mainland China had become extremely brutal there, as you may have heard.  Apparently that mindset came to the Philippines with them when their units transferred for the invasion.

The US and Filipino forces on the Bataan peninsula had held off the Japanese advance for months, against the odds.  They were poorly supplied, had no medical care and for all intents and purposes were “forgotten” as far as how we think of military logistics.  They greatly slowed down the Japanese advance in the beginning of the war, to the point where the Japanese had to send extra forces to the Philippines from Japan to complete the invasion, forces which were slotted to fight elsewhere.

Unfortunately this heroism wasn’t the most that was to be demanded of these guys.  With the delaying tactic successful, the forces remaining were surrendered to the Japanese in the hopes that they would simply live out the remainder of the war in prisoner of war camps, relatively safe.  Their duty, it was thought, was done. 

During the surrender of the forces, the Japanese commander was asked if the US and Filipino prisoners would be treated humanely.  The response was, “We are not barbarians.”

What actually happened was that the Japanese found themselves with a logistics problem.  The main destination camp was 61 miles away, and they had very few trucks.  The 68,000 Filipinos and 11,796 Americans, who were all suffering from starvation, hydration, beriberi, and other diseases were forced to walk the 61 miles in the tropical heat.  During the march, Japanese forces shot, stabbed, beheaded and ran over (with trucks) anyone who fell down or lagged behind.  Marchers were randomly pulled from the marching line to be executed in front of other marchers.  Others died of their diseases, dehydration, or starvation.  As best anyone can tell, up to 21,000 died during the 4 days of walking.

And that wasn’t even the end of it.  The survivors of the march were forced onto railroad cattle cars, packed so tightly that when they died in the cars, they wouldn’t fall down until the train reached its destination and the cars were unloaded.  Those that survived that suffered through prisoner of war camps, prisoner transport ships (some of which were sunk by submarines), and still more prisoner of war camps once they reached their final destinations.

Pretty horrible, huh?  That’s why what they did needs to be remembered.  They gave more for their country and their brothers in arms than most people can imagine.

So this is the kind of thing that people like me tend to latch on to.  We like doing things because they’re hard, because of the challenge.  When we find something that lets us get our crazy on AND has some level of personal meaning behind it, well, that’s just icing on the cake =)

Down to the Line for Bataan 2011!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Getting excited, we’re getting close to Bataan 2011!

Weather has been a real issue for training for a while now.  We’ve once again had heavy snow this season here in Eastern PA with the added impact of a couple of ice storms.  This has meant that the Perkiomen Trail, our favorite training environment, has been off-limits for about 2 months now.  Not good for training.  In substitute I’ve been doubling down in the gym, focusing hard on the strength and conditioning based personal training, and the weights.  This overall means a slightly moderated expectation of what I’ll do at Bataan this year…I’m pretty certain I won’t be able to run the entire distance, but that’s okay.  I originally wasn’t supposed to do that until next year anyway so what I do do will be gravy.

I did end up learning the hard way that a treadmill is not the right place to try to do distance work, especially with the pack.  I took last Tuesday off of work, grabbed my stuff and hit High Voltage figuring on a 16 miler and hoping for 18.  I figured that the around 65 degree temps in the gym would at least be good for some temperature acclimation.  I ended up fizzling at under 12 miles with real pain in the ankles and knees.  After a talk with Morgan, it seems that the treadmill is simply too much repetition of the exact same footfalls in the exact same places…plus the treadmill (non-intuitively) replicates pavement especially with the extra 40 lbs. on my back.  Out on the trail (and at White Sands), footfalls simply won’t be as repetitive.  There’s significant back and forth, moving aside to pass others, moving aside to make room for someone to pass me, things to step around, etc.  This engages the secondary muscles much more, spreads the wealth some.

In the next week or so, I will begin requesting donations/sponsorships for The Trappe Fire and Ambulance Company.  As I’ve mentioned before I am dedicating my run this year to my local fire department for new and or upgraded gear.   Hopefully I’ll be able to make some minor impact there.

I feel good about the conditioning work I’ve done over the past year.  I expect to be able to outright run at least 18 miles in heavy division here in 2011, whereas last year when we started with the pack runs I could do no more than three.  It has been a significant amount of hard work, and there’s a lot more to come to continue down this road.  Barring injury I’m excited about it and determined to see it through for at least another year.  

Ultimately I want to place in the top three in my age bracket for heavy division.

My primary goals have progressed quite well.  Shoulder, back and leg strength is way up.  Secondary and support muscle strength (reserves and anti-injury) is way up.  Excess weight is way down.  Endurance is better than it ever has been (I couldn’t run 16 miles with forty lbs. on my back in my Marine days).  I’ve figured out my body’s cues to needing water and energy over an extended period.  I’ve got gear composition down pat, knowing exactly what I need and how to pack it and have really drilled down on exactly what works and what doesn’t (if you’re just coming across the blog now and are interested in the gear angle, go back and check out earlier posts).

Basically, I’m ready to do what it is I’ve set out to do, now it’s a matter of going and doing it.