Vicki’s Death March

Shenandoah National Park, VA

November 23, 2012

This year’s Vicki’s Death March was graced by a rare guest appearance by the long lost Brian Greeley, who departed last August to begin a PhD in neuroscience at the University of Michigan, much to the chagrin of a Sean Andrish, who is a loyal Ohio State fan and who misses his Twilight Zone watching buddy in the WUS house.  Our Wednesday night runs are decidedly emptier without Mr Greeley, who adroitly defused the skirmishes between Mr Andrish and myself over a range of topics: eg, whether I was going to drive Sean to Korean BBQ that night in Adams Morgan where you’re less likely to find a parking spot than to find Sean cooking a cassoulet in Kerry’s kitchen.

I’ve been nursing a left IT band that was banged up by the Baltimore Marathon and a sore right hamstring that has been over compensating for it, but when Brian announced he was showing up for VDM, I realized I had no choice but to show.  Back in 2010, in the days before wussiest.net, Brian and I had our first iconic VDM with Keith, Amy, Bobby Gill, and John Cassilly.  Between the boulder climb up Old Rag, the sweeping vistas, the fun group and mix of characters, and the perfect post-run burger at the Griffin Tavern, VDM was a run for the ages.

But the decision to run VDM this year came down to the wire.  First I had to get through my Thanksgiving Day 10k Bethesda Turkey Chase without flaring my IT band or hamstring.  Then we had to feel out Thanksgiving night the acceptability of Aaron and I taking off all day Friday instead of spending time with his family, including his brother and fiancee making a rare visit from Los Angeles (they work in the film industry and have intense, chaotic travel schedules that rarely allow for planned visits).

I more than survived my turkey trot, setting a 10k PR in 37:11 and winning $125 for 4th place, despite the nag in my hamstring.  Aaron also ran his first 10k race in years, sign that his Achilles is really coming along.  And with Thanksgiving dinner finally winding down, Aaron and I got the go ahead to run our little hearts out and just meet up with the family on Saturday.  At 10pm I texted Brian that we were on!

We had a lovely run: Keith, Aaron, Brian, John Cassilly, and I all ran together (except when I lagged on the uphills — they had a good system of switching off who had to walk in the back with me).

With Brian, you could not see him for 10 years and it would be like nothing skipped a beat.  At the sight of the mountains, Brian was like a puppy let off leash (Michigan is flatter than a 12 year old gymnast).  There is no better way to catch up on the last five months of the Life of Bri than a seven hour jaunt through Shenandoah, and the miles whizzed by as I listened to his crazy adventures in India and Nepal (I had warned him about the leeches!!), his new nutty landlady (ain’t no Kerry Owens), fun with MATLAB, and attempts to compensate for Michigan’s shortcomings in elevation by jacking the treadmill up to 15% grade (Brian’s becoming the Wardian of U-Mich).  Brian brings an enthusiasm and loquaciousness* to these long runs that I’ve dearly missed, and I had no choice but to join the chase when Brian called on us to Open it Up! for the final six mile descent.  We were all hurting pretty damn bad by the end, but who can resist when there are Griffin Tavern burgers awaiting?

With the balmy weather, the parking lot party was particularly indulgent, with Doug, Kerry, Q, Tracey, Gary, and Torstin having already fired up the party by the time we arrived (another advantage of VDM and our add-on of the Old Rag part is that the fast folks don’t have to wait around all day for the party to start).  Fortunately the cops seemed more interested in awarding parking tickets than in Gary’s Knob Creek.  After a second thoroughly enjoyable day, it is time to afford VDM the status of Official Thanksgiving Tradition.  See you next year, Brian!

*’loquaciousness’ is not really the right word here.  i find it culturally interesting that most the words describing people who talk a lot have a decidedly negative connotation (‘verbose’, ‘garrulous’, etc.). if anyone knows a term that conveys wonderfully talkative, let me know

 

Aaron and I had vastly differing opinion’s on last year’s Global Warming winter.  I would unquestionably throw the proverbial snowman under the bus if it meant that I could run in shorts in February.  But last winter’s dismal lack of snowfall in Canaan Valley had decidedly sunken even Aaron’s sunny spirit.  Yes, even Aaron ‘still smiling at mile 80 when my left leg feels like it’s been quartered and my head bludgeoned’ Schwartzbard can frown when the white promises of winter fail to come to fruition.  As if to make up for last winter’s climatic letdown, Superstorm Sandy piled three feet of snow in the valley before November even hit.  With temperatures climbing into the high fifties, it was a sparkly winter paradise that had both of us blowing kisses to the weather gods.

If you have not yet had the pleasure of cross country skiing or snowshoeing at Whitegrass Resort, it’s time to start cozying up to Mr Schwartzbard (or his girlfriend, who also gets a vote) in the hopes of winning an invitation to the Chophouse.  Because I am not a big winter sports aficionado (except for the kind where the chairlift hauls your sorry ass up the mountain and all you have to do is glide down), and even I dug it.  The biggest perks: (a) the views of the valley at the top, (b) the cheapy rentals ($10 for snowshoes), (c) the 1950s euro atmosphere of the ski lodge with friendly staff and GREAT FOOD.  Aaron certainly got a little help from the warm sun and blue sky, but I have been completely won over.  I even put snowshoes and xc skis on my Christmas wishlist of stuff I buy for myself (also on the 2012 wish list: Neil Young’s new CD Psychedelic Pill, ski poles, the new posthumous release of David Foster Wallace essays Both Flesh and Not, and a pony).  I’ve been putting Pony on the xmas wish list every year since I was 8.  I’m beginning to believe that Santa’s got something against equines.  Explains why his sleigh’s driven by bloody reindeer.

One of the great perks of my job is my periodic assignment to host glamorous Italian guests, like Alice (pronounced AH-LEE-CHE) Fusaro from Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie (essentially a regional veterinary diagnostic lab outside Venice).  Many of you remember Alice and Isabella from the WUS Italiano last June where Keith and I wore adorable matching green Catawba shirts and red shorts in honor of our Mediterranean visitors.  Isabella is currently busy finishing her dissertation, so it was just Alice and myself this time.  But what many of you don’t know about Alice is that she has seen the light and taken up running!  And no, Alice is not some casual jogger, as Aaron can attest Alice is quick!  At WUS Elezione last night she dropped the Joe-Doug-Art group behind within minutes of entering Melvin Hazen.  Despite the fact that Potomac Heritage was her first trail run ever, Alice already showed mastery of the dark/roots/rocks/leaves/hills Tuesday night.  At this rate, Alice will soon be taking the running scene by storm.

Last time, our visit to New York City got a little wild, so we opted for something a little tamer like…..New Orleans.  We made the most of our days at the Molecular Epidemiology and Evolutionary Genetics of Infectious Diseases (MEEGID) Conference, and by that I mean taking in our fill of New Orleans cuisine and live music.  That city has soul!  We knew that we were in for a night of good food when we walked into Coop’s and one of the patrons squashed a giant cockroach under their shoe right in front of us.  I know I could never live there — it’s even swampier than DC — but man is that a great place destination for a long weekend.  It comes with my highest recommendation — but don’t go to Bourbon Street where all the tourists go, go to Frenchman Street.

Alice had never run on trails, never run a race, and never run more than 10km, but when I told her about the Potomac Heritage  run, she announced enthusiastically she was game.

Like the influenza virus Alice and I study, Alice rapidly adapted to her new environs, skipping over rocks and roots and leaves like an Italian ibex and readily adopting WUSsie customs, including humoring Gary, running farther and up bigger hills than she ever had before, and even being unfazed but what became a wilder version of the post-run party at Kerry’s house (we departed after the second raw egg downing because Alice needed a picture of a panda at the National Zoo for her husband back in Italy, who is apparently fond of the Chinese bear).

Hooked on the newly discovered  joys of trail running, Alice even came to WUS the next Tuesday for WUS Elezione.  CPB&G was overrun by a party of election watchers, so Alice didn’t have a chance to partake in the famed Aaron special pizza.  But good Vietnamese food is harder to come by in Italy than pizza, so Nam Viet made a good alternative.  It took time to explain to Alice how the US electoral system works, why my father was so grumpy about Obama winning, and why the US doesn’t allow for three days of voting like Italy does so we all don’t all have to stand in line for two hours.  But god it was good to see Obama take the pie.  And yea for gay marriage in Maryland!

It was very sad to see Alice go.  But at least I have the consolation of knowing that in late February I’ll be going out to visit her in beautiful Padua when we hold our workshop there.  We have plans to go skiing in the Dolomites!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tussey MountainBack 50-mile relay

Draft Challenge Relay (DCR)

State College, PA

October 21, 2012

Link to Jamie’s Famous Captioned Pictures

A major theme of this year’s Tussey MountainBack DCR was to honor our fellow DCR runner Ed Thompson, who tragically died of a heart attack along Leg 8 at last year’s MountainBack.  At the transition zone between Legs 1 and 2, where Jamie snapped this picture of Ed (to the left of the rock) as he began Leg 2 last year, we held a group ceremony for Ed that included Ed’s family.  It was a beautiful and moving tribute, and I think highly therapeutic for all those who remain affected by the trauma, particularly those who were there with Ed trying as best they could to help him as he slipped away.  All the DCR teams wore purple armbands in honor of Ed and incorporated his name into the DCR shirts we made.  Although the DCR was certainly competitive as always this year, there was an additional sense of camaraderie and an awareness that all of this is so precious and fleeting.

This year’s DCR had 7 teams of 7 runners.  I drafted my team by phone since I live in DC, a challenging enterprise given Tom’s tendency to put his phone in his pocket while I was trying to recite my picks.  Since I was running the Baltimore Marathon the week before MountainBack this year, I desperately had not wanted to be a captain, but the DCR Commissioner, infamous for his intransigence, could not be swayed.

I ended up picking five runners who have been on my team before: Jamie Volkert, Mike Martin, Joe Montenegro, Rob Peterson, and Joel Nieman (Joel was my killer last sleeper pick) and one guy who seemed really fast but was an unknown: John McGraw.

The other things my team had going for it (other than personality) was (a) Mike Martin is the State College beer distributor so we’d be sure to be cruising in the fully stocked Nittany Beverage beer van, (b) Joe Montenegro is one tough m-f-er who would be able to run the brutal captain legs (4-11) since I’d be a post-marathon invalid.

 

The theme this year was ‘Dr Suess’, resulting in the worst year of name-picking in DCR history.  I’ve ranked the team names from worst to best (Every year to make up for my lack of running prowess I at least bestow upon my team the best name.  This year we also had far and away the best shirts, thanks to Aaron’s nifty graphic design):

We Can Run With Our Eyes Shut

DCR Thing 6

Fresh Legs, Quick Legs, Twelve Legs, Sore Legs

The Who

Can You Lick 7 Tigers Today?

Herndon Hears a Who!

Green Kegs and Damn, I Love Hills (my team)

 

The Green Kegs had a damn fine day.  I’m eternally indebted to Joe for running Legs 4 and 11.  My IT band was still screaming from all that weaving at the Baltimore Marathon and there’s no way I would have been able to run those steep downhills on Leg 11 at the end of the day.

But it was such a beautiful sunny fall day and we had such good times all around, it was worth gutting through some tough stretches where my knee made it very clear it was displeased with my course of action.  As expected, Joel Nieman was my sleeper 6th pick and he passed a We Can Run With Our Eyes Shut on Leg 7 to bring us out of last place, a proud position we held until the end.

The Commissioner was displeased with the Green Kegs because when it came down to priorities, ours was getting our teammate a cold beer as soon as he finished his leg, rather than keeping his splits, resulting in gaping holes of data in our stats report and angry engineer number-crunchers whose models will go haywire. Our professional beer connoisseur Mike Martin recently introduced me to Yard’s Philadelphia Pale Ale, my beverage of choice for the day.

My post-race picnic of free food and beer by the lake was a bit delayed this year because all the Old Men of the DCR were drooling all day over this hot ultra runner, Sonja Hinish, and all were waiting to see her finish.  Some of the women of the DCR expressed a desire to be spared from the old-man-slobber, but I’ve run with these guys long enough to be entirely inured to such behaviors.  I only protested that some chick, wearing a sports bra with arm warmers no less, was getting between ME AND MY SANDWICH.  I finally rolled my eyes and headed to the lake with John McGraw, the only civilized male of the lot (or maybe he knew that letting a hot female competitor get between me and my grumbling stomach was surely tempting one’s fate).

But it was great to catch up with so many from the old days at Penn State.  When Greg Fredericks, US Olympics qualifier for the 10,000m for the 1980 Moscow games, asked me after MountainBack whether I have ever considered running the entire 50 miles at the Tussey MountainBack, I answered so definitively that I had that for a moment he thought that I meant that I had in fact run the 50.

But what I meant is that I had considered it so deeply, that I get the itch so badly to run the 50 every year, particularly this year. (This year Connie Gardner won again, and some guy named Zach Bitter won the men’s 50).

But as bad as that itch is, as soon as I remember what I’d be missing out on, all those hours bouncing along in the van with all those goofy people, witnessing all the great drama of the DCR unfold over the day, I immediately dismiss the idea of running the 50 as absurd.

 

Well, I’ll leave it to the stats folks to crunch our falsified numbers during the Great Tussey Post-Game Debriefing.  Tom Cali, as is often the case, will go down as the Sandbagger of the Year.  I was nominated, as I was still able to run quick even with my IT band pain, but I decreed myself out of the running since I didn’t even run the captain legs — and I’m sure Joe would heartily agree.  Tom insists that his bio was accurate and attributes his fall surge to his purchase of a new white Porsche in July.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happiest picture ever.