WW2 Heroes

I ran on the Mall at noon today when it was 97 degrees and the heat index made it feel like 117 degrees because of the humidity. The temperature was in triple digits by the time I finished over an hour later.

I ran from my office near Union Station intending to go to Lincoln and back but I only made it to WWI before I turned back near the half-hour mark. I did a lot of walking on the way back. I lost 4 pounds during the outing.

As I ran, I thought of my Dad who fought at Peleliu in WW2 when the temperatures often rose above 115 degrees. Those Marines were tough. I could (and did) quit anytime I wanted. He couldn't. Of course he was 19 then, not 59.

I also thought of my Uncle who passed in April. He was a Marine in the Pacific too, a shipboard gunnery officer. I will be attending his grave side service in his hometown of Winona Minnesota next week, the last of my father's and mother's generation related to me to pass. They're all gone now.

Every man I knew, practically, when I was growing up was a WW2 veteran. The Dads of all my friends had been over there somewhere.

In this frame of mind, on my way back I stopped at the WW2 Memorial. I wanted to tell my cousin, my Uncle's daughter, next week that I stopped in and saw her father's battles etched in stone upon the memorial. When her Dad died she started reading all of his contemporaneous WW2 handwritten notes and sometimes she asks me for context as she knows I know history. He won a bronze star for heroism.

I was glad to take a break from my sweltering run and walk respectfully through the imposing memorial. I asked the ranger why the Pacific column was on the south side and the Atlantic column was on the north side. He didn't know, saying I was the first person who had asked him that question.

I went to the Pacific column and read the battle names carved into the base of the fronting pool. I traced the Peleliu and the Okinawa inscriptions, the two battles where my father fought, and thought of him. I lost him a quarter century ago today, to lung cancer. During WW2 they included three cigarettes in each K-ration pack.

I traced the Battle of the Philippine Sea and the Japan Carrier Air Strikes inscriptions and thought of my Uncle.

I traced the Manila inscription and thought of my Uncle Bill.

I went over to the Atlantic column. I traced the Sicily inscription and remembered my Uncle Bob.

I traced the Battle of the Bulge carving and thought of my friend's father, a laughing man whom I met once before he passed recently. This veteran told a story with a twinkle in his eye of getting a coveted D-Day pin because he was at sea on June 6, 1944, a raw rookie on a troop transport who happened to be going from America to England on that day. He saw the elephant later that year with Patton's Third Army at the biggest battle in history.

Then I ran/walked back to the office. I mostly walked so did I consider my run to be unsuccessful? Not at all, it was a very satisfying, successful run.

More hot hot hot

It only got up to 94 degrees yesterday, but the dew point reading made it feel like way over one hundred. At 8:30 am I was on the lovely Baltimore Inner Harbor walkway, watching some sweat-soaked race leaders in the Survivor Harbor 7 Seven Mile Race go by. The two front-runners were neck and neck; both had their faces contorted with the strain even at mid-race.

I love this scenic race through historic Baltimore, but it is always hot. It runs from the harbor waterfront out to Fort McHenry, around that park along the water, back down to the harbor, past all the ships in the Inner Harbor along the brick-lined Promenade, and out to the Can Company, an abandoned manufacturing center that was converted into a vibrant hub of commercial and residential units.

I just had to do its inaugural running in 2004 because I had never done a 7-mile race before. You know, part of life's checklist, seven-mile race, got it. All of my 10K times except for the first one had been run at a sub-8 minute per mile pace, so I figured I'd easily extend that pace to a 7-miler. Not so fast.

The first year I ran 58:29 (8:21). It was hot. The second year it was even hotter and I was even slower, 58:34 (8:22). The third year the weather finally cooperated a little and I ran 54:17 (7:45). Mission Accomplished.

The race has a 3-Mile Race component, which joins the main race in progress at the Inner Harbor after the race leaders have gone by. I signed up for that this year. (Left: Running along the Inner Harbor in the 2006 race.)

Once again it was so hot that I wilted. I went out fast but didn't arrive at the first mile marker until 7:25. Then my time for the second mile slipped to a 7:45. My third mile time deteriorated to an 8:05 for a 23:15 (7:45) finish, a PW. Notice the steady 20-second per mile downward progression in my pace. My five other 3-milers had all been run in under 23 minutes.

After the race I was wringing wet. I went into a nearby Starbucks for coffee and the frosty air-conditioned interior hit me like a frigid arctic blast. I'm sure they appreciated me leaking water droplets all over their counter as I handed them damp bills from my pocket.

This wonderful race, requiring a 100 mile round-trip drive, has become an expensive luxury in our new times, unfortunately. I think that with gas going from 97c to $4.03 on W's watch, a new dawn has arrived in my racing life. No longer can outlying races be done casually. Good going, Decider and Just-Get-Over-It Tony. (Can you tell that I don't think January 20, 2009 can get here fast enough, otherwise known as BLD, Bush's Last Day?) (Right: Although the guy in blue blew me away at the finish in 2006, he still dragged me along to my seven-mile PR.)

You've got mail.

The t-shirt I won for donating blood arrived (see my next to last post). It's a beauty, too.

Standard white all cotton, size large so it's slightly too large, with the airline logo on the front in whose terminal I donated, and their motto printed across the back, "Safe. Clean. On Time. [Airline name.]" Hmm, this catchy saying isn't trademarked.

Well worth the wait and the worry.

But here's what I truly think. I'm glad this airline, or it's employees, are so well-intentioned and community-minded that they organized a blood drive. Kudos to them.

In other news, I recently received something in the mail from the Chicago Marathon. It was a certificate grandly certifying that on October 6, 2007, I "officially completed The 2007 LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon." [Notice the capital T.] In 4:34:06 at a pace of 10:28 M/M. Ouch. It would have been even worse if my former running buddy A hadn't found me walking the course at MP 24 and brought me in at a trot. (Left: The dog days of summer, or fall, in downtown Chicago.)

They're trying to make nice now, after blaming the runners for a debacle of their own making? What a fraud. That was The Chicago Fun Run. They said so at the time, when they sent uniformed police officers wading onto the course to force runners to walk upon the threat of felony arrest. Now it's back to having been a marathon again? (Right: A kept me barely ahead of the No-More-Running Police in Chicago.)

Track Work

Back to the track, finally.

As I come back from my foot injury, my mileage and times have dropped dramatically, but I did get back to the track for the first time in half a year. After all, the date of the Chicago Marathon remains immutable. It hasn’t changed to accommodate my various ailments.

After my last 5K race early this month, I ran a few miles most days, albeit slowly. My foot was sore from the race. I did four miles with the novice group two Saturdays ago during the Ten-Mile Program that I direct. With half a mile to go, I ran hard back to our end-point so I could break out the fluids for the athletes, and that sprint felt good.

The next day I did a neighborhood mile in 7:35 to keep my hand in, then I did a pedestrian 2.1-miles in 18 minutes at 3 am when I couldn’t sleep because of the stifling heat built up in my unairconditioned house by the record heat wave. Some more desultory runs followed, until last Wednesday.

Wednesday is the day I lead a running group from work at noon. It was 102 degrees. No one showed. I ran two miles up Capitol Hill and called it a day. Umm, actually, that’s not true. At 7 pm I went to my club’s weekly track workout.

It was still 92 degrees but it felt like 99. I did eight spins (400 meters) around the track at varying paces. I saw runners I haven’t seen all year and caught up with them. I was reminded of the totem-pole nature of club running.

Not many people were there. Unbeknownst to me, the wimpy program director (kidding) had cancelled the workout because of the heat. At the track, I latched onto a group of fit-looking women running laps. One was the program director for a long-distance training program that our club puts on. I figured it’d be natural for us to talk since the 10-Mile Program that I direct, and her program, are both winding down.

Although she’s faster than me, I could keep up with her during the laps, which we were running in 1:37s. I tried to talk with her about getting t-shirts for our program finishers, the runner who went from her group to mine, what race she was getting ready for, etc. She wasn’t buying any of it. She motioned for me to stop talking to her until the recovery run. Fair enough.

I joked that if I could talk while running laps, I wasn’t running fast enough. She seemed to agree because she suggested that her group didn’t want to hold me back, so why didn’t I run alone? I remembered that the wonderful program director I had replaced had quit after a run-in with her. This is why I say attendance at track workouts involves knowing your place on the totem-pole. The better runners are there and there is a definite hierarchy.

I ran a few laps with a friend of mine whom I hadn’t seen in awhile, doing 2:05s. She talked with me and it was pleasant. She finished up and I ran my last two laps alone in 1:38 and 1:39.

I went home on the Metro. The commuters on the car looked at me in horror as I stood there in saturated running togs, dripping sweat. What are you gonna do? At least I didn’t sit down next to somebody.

Getting back to the track felt great.