nugget #21

Manly Yesteryear vs. Femanly Nowyear

By Bill Donnelly

            I know I have already hinted at the fact that runners had better race times Back in the Day partially because we had more manly names then as compared to now.  A recent episode made me think more about this phenomenon, and made me rethink my whole hypothesis.  In so doing, I realized I was on to something, and so through much careful scientific and Intelligent Design type thinking, I have expanded on my theory (although it seems so logical one can hardly call it just a “theory” but rather “fact”) and share my amazing findings with you, the reader.  I offer you this in the Checkers Chatter because all the major scientific journals turned me down cold.  Pompous numbskullheads!

            So first, back to the incident that triggered my amazing brain towards tackling this observable fact.  Early one morning a certain someone, who of course shall remain anonymous, but whose initials are Diane McGuire, was using a Q-Tip to clean her ear (you should have seen the ball of wax that came out of that portal, could of polished my car with it) and I noticed that she was holding it as if she were holding a tea-cup while eating crumpets with the Queen of England.  You know, holding it delicately between her thumb and forefinger, while keeping the other three digits in an upward position as if she were at the local watering hole and ordering three “Sidecars”.

            I, trying always to be helpful in a constructive way, pointed out to her what a femanly way it was that she was holding the cotton swab.  She, being the wit she is, replied: “Oh, and I suppose Back in the Day the manly thing to do was to push the thing in one ear and out the other ear!”  I had no answer, because I couldn’t hear her.  You see, Back in the Day I used to clean my ears in the manly style by pushing the Q-Tip in one ear and out the other ear.  My ear drums are shot, but fortunately there was little brain damage. 

            She repeated herself, and once I was able to read her lips, I had to start the thought processes that eventually gave me quite a headache, but also led me to my “MANLY Theory”.  The letters in “MANLY” stand for “Most Are Not Like Yeti”.  I know it doesn’t make much sense, but my manly mind was so tired from all the thinking I had to do, it was it best acronym I could come up with to spell out “MANLY”.  Don’t you just love acronyms, they take such creative thought.

            Back in the Day, everything we runners did had to be Manly.  Even the cleaning of our ears, as I have already pointed out.  Now for you kids out there, listen to Mom, and never stick anything smaller than your elbow into your ear.  My lack of hearing is the perfect example of why not to do this.  However, listening to his Mom proved to be a bit of a tragedy for one local Manly runner, Douglas Macarthur Kabibble.  A fine runner who always followed Mom’s advice, he tried to be too manly and he tried to clean his ears with his elbows, and unfortunately, both elbows got stuck permanently.  There was nothing the doctors could do to help him.  He managed to get by until one day in 1983 he tried to pick his nose with his big toe, and you can guess the rest.  That’s right; the old toe was stuck tight.  On a family trip to Maine the next fall, while he was hopping through the pine forest, he was mercifully put out of his misery by a young hunter named Dick Cheney who mistook Douglas for a one-legged moose (or was it a giant deformed quail?).  Anyway, it was a Manly way to go.

            On a lighter side, I do believe that the more manly way we dressed Back in the Day was directly responsible for our faster times.  No girlie-man tights or femanly new-age fiber tops for us.  True, they didn’t exist back then, but tut, tut, no matter, we would have worn only clothing made of manly cotton anyway.  It was just the manly thing to do.  And boy, did it help us improve our times.

            You see, as I have pointed out before, most of us would wind up running together around Delaware Pare on any given day.  I have mentioned in past articles that we rarely followed a running program, but when we ran together we invariably ended up going faster and faster, basically ending up running a pace run almost every day, and getting in great distances at the same time.  The more I thought about my MANLY Theory, and the more I tried to make the facts fit the hypothesis (this is where the Intelligent Design concept comes into play), I came to realize what part wearing manly cotton played in our daily speed workouts.

            Simply put, nothing says manly like stinky, sweaty underwear, and that is what we ran in.  Cotton shorts and tee-shirts, and in the winter, many layers of cotton.  We would sweat tremendously during the run, then go home and drape our running duds over lamps, chairs, and shower rods to let them dry for the next day, where upon we would reactivate the sweat already there while adding to it.  This UMASS (our acronym that stood for Unmistakable Manly Attire Sweat Stink) would build until wash day, which for most of us manly runners was the third Saturday of the month.  Unless of course it was February, and since it was such a short month, we could skip wash day altogether for that month.

            Now, when we would start gathering during our runs, UMASS would start to kick in.  Running alone, one doesn’t notice ones own sweat stink, but once our species starts to gather in gaggles, that stink starts to kick in.  No girls, I’m not saying that we manly men ran faster because the UMASS triggered our testosterone in some manly competitive manner.  No, what I’m saying is that we manly men realized we had to run faster and faster in order to outrun the STINK!  Another acronym we had (we thought acronym to be rather manly Back in the Day), and this one stands for Sweaty Thick Icky Nasty Krapp (we stretched it at times).

            That STINK was like a living, breathing thing, and the more of us there were together, the bigger, nastier, and faster the Stink was, so of course, the faster we ran.  There used to be a permanent path around the park where we ran.  I always thought us few runners wore the grass away, but now I realize how wrong I was.  The Stink residue killed the grass.  Why else are there still parts of the path exposed where no grass grows to this day, even though no one runs there anymore.  Why else did the Parks Department cover the rest of the old path with cinders and asphalt?  I believe they are trying to hide the “Brown Field” that lies under it.  Just beware when it rains heavily around here, you may notice the oozing, bubbling puddles of stinky goo seeping through the cinders.

            Of course wearing smelly cotton wasn’t the only manly thing we did that made us faster.  We also ran 80 to 100 mile weeks on a regular basis.  It’s amazing how far one had to run before the STINK grew weary and gave up.  But the “100 mile per week” program was actually sponsored by the U-Ride-Em Motorized Wheelchair and Scooter Company.  The company, which I believe was a subsidiary of Runners World of Pain, the first magazine just for runners, hoped to capitalize on the running boom going on.  Actually, I believe they hoped to capitalize on all the manly runners who would need their product several years down the road.  Talk about patience.  The company does make some manly looking motorized wheelchairs, or scooters, and many of my past running buddies do use them.

            As an example of a typical manly runner from Back in the Day, I give you Irv Frawley.  A sub-2:40 marathoner and all-around good guy, Irv was sometimes manly to the extreme.  I once did a training run with Irv, who was just over ten years older than me, and we ran on the sidewalks of

Delaware Ave.

from Delaware Park downtown and back.  When coming to each intersection, Irv would man-up and, without slowing down or looking both ways, speed across said busy intersection.  He figured it was up to the motorists to avoid him, for as a manly runner, he had the right of way.  I only did one training run with Irv.  He was just a bit too manly for me, and I didn’t want to be the hood ornament on some Ford Mustang.

            Not surprisingly, Irv was an ex-Marine who carried the manly Marine lifestyle over into his family life.  I remember seeing a feature on him on the local six o’clock news in the mid-seventies.  It was about the ex-Marine/marathoner/manly guy and how he lived his life.  They showed him and his family enjoying a picnic.  His three young kids were off playing while he supervised his mess-sergeant, err, wife who was doing the cooking.  When it was time to eat, out came his whistle, and two shrill blasts let the kids know to come running immediately, and I mean now!  He explained to the reporter that the kids’ whole daily routine was set to a code of whistle blasts (I think five blasts meant time to go to the bathroom).  Anyway, I believe I heard that two of his kids now live on a commune in California they helped start, and the other lives in a Shaw Ling monastery somewhere in West Virginia.

            Irv’s true manliness is shown in the way he celebrated the Bicentennial of our country on July 4, 1976.  Seems he and Fred Gordon were training together in late June of that year and wondering how to celebrate the approaching big day.  Remember, Fred is the one who started the tradition of the New Years Eve run in Delaware Park, a tradition that lasted many years, and rumor has it a couple kooks, err, “dedicated runners” still celebrate the night by running around Delaware Park at midnight and then trying to find out who broke into their cars.

            So it’s not surprising that these two “dedicated runners” decided it would be neat to celebrate the 200^th birthday of the US of A by running 50 miles.  How does that fit the holiday you ask?  Why, they would do it on a quarter mile track.  Get it, 200 laps, one for each year.  YOW!!!  So bright and early on that hot, steamy Fourth of July, Irv and Fred met at a local high school track and proceeded to count off the laps.  Now, Fred was recovering from an injury and could only accompany Irv for the first 40 laps.  He then sat himself in the stands and dutifully counted the remaining 160 laps, one by slow one, as Irv manly completed his own personal tribute to our founding fathers. 

            I do believe that it was Benjamin Franklin who wanted the Declaration of Independence to say “Not all men are created equal, for some are more manly than others.”  He was thinking of Irv. Fortunately, cooler heads among our founding fathers prevailed.  I haven’t seen Irv in more than twenty years, but if you ever do see him riding along in his U-Ride Em Motorized Scooter, give him a manly wave.

            I could come up with many more examples of how manly we runners were Back in the Day, but I think the example of Irv Frawley says it all.  We were a manly bunch.  I know the title for this article leaves a lot to be desired, but it was the best I could do.  I wanted to use an acronym, and I had one in mind, but I’m just too tired to put the right words together. 

            Hey, maybe all of you could help me.  My title was going to be the acronym that spells out IRISH SPRING.  Get it; remember the motto for that product, as a beautiful babe says: “Manly yes, but I like it too.”  So if all you guys and gals would work on this, maybe we could come up with a great acronym.  Just put your ideas on the Checkers’ Forum.  I’ll get my brother, Tom, better known as Bill Donnelly’s slow little brother, to be the judge, since he never has anything to do concerning the club.  The winner will get an original signed copy of this article.  Second place will get two copies.  Wow, this could be great, but remember, try to keep it manly.       

           

               

               

                  

nugget #20

I moved to the Cleveland area towards the end of the 70s, and then moved back to Buffalo in 2002.  The following is my view of the two cities.

Bufland vs. Clevefalo

By Bill Donnelly

            Away Back in the Day, before I even began road racing, I remember watching a Monday Night Football telecast.  Yes, they did have television before I started running, I’m not that old, but we didn’t have remote controls for the TV.  I either had to sit one foot from the TV so I could easily change channels, as most Manly Men like to do, no, need to do, or I could bribe my little brother Tommy to sit one foot from the TV and change the channel at my order.  It just took promises of one M&M per channel change, and he was mine to command.  Now mind you, this was back when there were only about four channels that came in, and of course one from Toronto on a good day, so it didn’t take a lot of M&Ms. 

            Anyway, back to Monday Night Football.  Tom may have been busy studying for his mid-term in Beginning Russian (this probably was the third year he had to take Beginning Russian) so I was sitting one foot from the TV, hand poised on the channel changing knob (yes, we had such knobs back then) when Howard Cosell made a statement that sent shock waves through half the civilized world.  I believe the game had to be the Buffalo Bills playing the Cleveland Browns.  I’m not positive, but once you hear his statement, you will understand why I believe this to be true.

            The announcers were talking about the two cities and Howard said: “Buffalo is just a smaller clone of Cleveland!”  Why, I never!  You can just imagine the outrage felt by us Buffalonians.  Turns out Clevelanders were just as outraged.  Our local papers were talking about it for days, and it turns out the same was happening in Cleveland.  ABC apparently had their phones ringing off the hook by outraged citizens from both cities.  The nerve of that Cosell dude.  Neither town’s citizens wanted to be compared to that other bucket of rusty bolts of a city because they were just the butt of jokes and putdowns all the time. 

            Well, I’m here to tell you that he actually hit the proverbial nail on the old head.  You see, I had grown up in the small town of Moose Kabibble Falls, Minnesota (at least that’s the name that comes to mind), but moved to Buffalo, NY in 1964, and came to really like the city.  I then moved to north-east Ohio in 1978, and lived in Cleveland itself from 1990 until moving back to Buffalo in 2002.  And I came to really like Cleveland as a city, and let me tell you, Cleveland is just a bigger clone of Buffalo.  And I mean this in a good way.

            Why, even their start to great cityness was quite similar.  Yes, I know cityness is not a real word, although it sounds like a femanly type of malady, if you know what I mean, but I can make up words like this because I’m me and you’re not.  HA HA HA YES!  Back to the point, Buffalo became the major city in the area when it fooled enough officials into believing that it was the perfect terminus for the Erie Canal rather than Black Rock, even though the latter was better suited for the end of the canal.  Thank god for small favors I say.  We could otherwise be rooting for sports teams such as the Black Rock Bills and Bisons, and the term Black Rock Wings just doesn’t make it.  Anyway, in much the same manner, Cleveland, the very next year, beat out the town of Ohio City for the finishing point of the Ohio and Erie Canal ( built by the same fine drunken Irish who cut their canal constructing teeth building our more famous Erie Canal), and the rest is history.  Maybe I should write a history book!

            The two cities grew to be very similar.  Both dependent on the Lake and the Canal, they became blue-collar cities with pockets of immigrants making neighborhoods into their own.  Both had their giants of industry, Cleveland with its Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, and Buffalo with its Donnelly Design Tee Shirts.  And let’s be honest, in the early seventies, both cities were the stuff of jokes on the national level, Cleveland because their river caught fire and so did their mayor’s hair, Buffalo because of President Millard Fillmore.  No, he wasn’t still President when I was younger, in fact, I think he was already dead, and he still is.      

            Having lived in both cities for quite a while, I came to see how similar they both were, and I will say that being similar is not a bad thing.  But I must say there are two main differences. 

            The first is how the two cities are divided.  Yes, both cities had their ethnic sections which were clearly defined.  Areas where only Italians, Irish, Blacks, Poles, or what-have-you lived, and these areas had their own delicious flavors and feel.  In both cities these pockets of singular types have been eroded as our great melting pot finally starts to melt, err, lots of ethnic folks move to the suburbs, but some of the flavor remains in street signs, restaurants, and those too old and poor and stubborn to move.

            But Buffalo was always and still is looked at as divided into four sections, north-side, east-side, south-side, and west-side.  This is where one difference lies, Cleveland has two sides, and two sides only.  The east-side and the west-side, and never the two shall meet.  I mean, these are two halves that shall not be brought together, and some joke (but almost are serious) that you need a passport to travel between the two sides. 

            The sides are divided by the Cuyahoga River (which means “crooked river”) that formed a valley, the bottom of which is now called “The Flats”.  Once the industrial center of Cleveland, most now know “The Flats” as the entertainment district of Cleveland, their own version of our “

Chippewa Street

.”  Well, I guess to be fair, “the Flats” came first, plus it is about seven times as big as “The Chippewa” and has a neat crooked river running through it that divides it into two sides.  Water taxies get you back and forth, and there is nothing like being slightly zonkered and seeing a huge ore-boat being maneuvered through this very crooked river.

            So the people of Cleveland are very proud of being either east-siders or west-siders, and constantly point out the advantages as to why one should live on their side of town.  Some examples:  The east side has Severance Hall where the Cleveland Orchestra plays; the west side has the Zoo, where the animals play.  The east, the Cleveland Art Museum, the west, the Great Lakes Brewing Company which has a very good restaurant.  In fact, I recommend it for its food, and history, as this building near West 25^th and Detroit has bullet holes inside created in the thirties when Elliot Ness led a raid on the place.

            The east side lays claim to some great hospitals, such as the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospital, while the west siders declare the West Side Market is just as important.  Believe me, as one who spent too much time at the Cleveland Clinic; the Market is much more fun, and right next to the Great Lakes Brewery.  East side – Case Western Reserve, west side – did I mention the Great Lakes Brewery.  East side – Jacobs Field, west side – that beer is so good, and you can get it here in Buffalo, on tap, at the Sterling Place Pub at Sterling and Hertel.  Our own Kathy Andolsek cooks up a mighty fine fish-fry every Friday at that pub.  East side – Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, west side – lots of neat animals at the Zoo.  East side – Cleveland Browns Stadium, west side – try that Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter.  East side - Downtown, west side – did I mention the beer?

            So anyway, you get the picture, don’t you?  I actually lived for a good time on both sides of Cleveland (being from Buffalo, they considered me an immigrant so I didn’t need a passport) and I liked them both.  I mean, it may sound like the west side had more going for it, but I guess the east side had more different things.  You see, when I lived on the near-west side, I was close to the Great Lakes Brewery, so of course I liked that side of town.  You see, I like beer, and that brings me to the other big difference between Buffalo and Cleveland, as I see it, and this one involves running.  About time I got to the running.

            When I moved to Ohio, which I did, as you know, so my slow little brother Tom (too many M&Ms) could get out of my shadow, I was still running, and I did not notice too much of a difference between the two areas.  Then in about 1981 I stopped running (the reasons will be a future article – oh no, not more you say!) and didn’t take it up again seriously until January, 2000.  I started running competitively in the Cleveland area, taking part in many races.  I had run a couple races in Buffalo as a jogger in the 1990s, such as the 100^th running of the Turkey Trot.  I also started running races here after I got back to competing, and boy, did I see the difference between the Buffalo’s racing scene and Cleveland’s.

            Now, Back in the Day, I was a Belle Watling, and we searched high and low for races, as there were not that many, especially early on in the decade.  You see, we used the races as a reason to party afterwards.  Our motto was “run hard, party hard”, and we did both.  Races didn’t usually provide beer afterwards, so we would bring our own.  But those races that did have beer, why, they were tops on our list.  And a lot of other runners started to follow our example, especially the Canadians, who always put out the welcome mat for us Watlings after races north of the border.

            Now, back to the future.  Every time I have run a race in the Cleveland area, there was never a beer to be seen after a race.  I swear on a bible, never even one drop to be found.  Imagine my joy on visiting Buffalo for a jaunt and finding beer seemed to be a requirement for a race to be successful.  And now the Canadians come South of the border for our races because we have the beer.  It makes such a difference in how one enjoys the event.

            In Cleveland, they have plenty of fine, dedicated runners, who go all out in a race.  After the event, they visit for a bit, eat a crumpet or two, gather their hardware and it’s off to home and a nap.  In Buffalo, after the race, it’s: get a beer or two in you, visit with friends, have another brew or two, eat a hot dog, more beer, more visiting, beer, dancing in the middle of the parking lot with that dame who beat you two hours ago, another hot dog, oh more beer please, brew, someone gives you your medal you didn’t hear them announce, or not, that calls for a beer, say so long to your friends, why say, I didn’t see you here, how bout a beer, better get home for a nap, been up since seven for this 10 o’clock race, nap, heck, one more beer and it’s home to bed since it is past midnight!

            Ah yes, Buffalo’s runners do know how to enjoy a race after training hard all week.  I don’t know if it’s because of the influence of the Belle Watlings from Back in the Day, or because many of those drunken Irish who built the Erie Canal didn’t go on to Cleveland to build the other canal after all.  They stayed in Buffalo and sent their sober clones out west to that crooked river.  So maybe it is Cleveland is just a bigger clone of Buffalo, and they were just not lucky enough to get all the good genes.     

                   

                    

                                                 

nugget #19

I know I took up running Back in the Day so I could eat and drink all I wanted.

Neanderthal Carbo-loading

by Bill Donnelly

            I recently attended a presentation at the Runner’s Roost by Jennifer Hulme of “Quivering Lips” fame.  Her topic of course was nutrition and the modern runner.  Well, being a runner firmly stuck Back in the Day, I thought it would be interesting to compare what I remember about how we ate and practiced good nutrition back then to her silly thoughts about how athletes should conduct themselves now.  So I went with a totally open mind to hear her talk.  Yeah. RIGHT!

            Boy, I was so glad I ran Back in the Day when we could run and eat and drink in ignorance of what was good nutrition and moderation.  I mean, we practiced to the best of our ability good nutrition, but most now would call it simple excess.  Well, maybe not simple excess, rather humongous excess!  But at least we can say we didn’t know better, and boy, did we have fun.  We also ran pretty darn well.

            Let’s start by comparing why we took up running Back in the Day as compared to why folks take it up today.  I’ve heard it said that runners in the 1970’s were class “A” type people, those who are very competitive at whatever they do, and since we were running, we pushed that endeavor to the limit.  Runners today, the theory goes, get into running for the healthy lifestyle it helps provide.  This would explain why so many runners were at Jennifer’s presentation, although I looked around and noticed quite a few male runners were there just to see if her lips really would quiver if she got nervous.  Guys, she’s a professional, and the “QLs”, as Fred Lew calls them, only happen when she’s had too much coffee and is late in getting to the starting line of a big race.

            Anyway, back to the theory.  This idea is put forth to explain why the original running boom created so many good runners while the bigger running boom of today does not produce the same results.  As a quick example, in the1975 Boston Marathon, a time of 2 hours and 30 minutes was good for 115^th place out of 2000 runners.  The same clock time this year, with 22,000 runners and ideal conditions, as they were in 1975, was good for 38^th place, and there were no Kenyans running in 1975.  So maybe this hypothesis is on the money, although I think it is a bit too simplistic to explain it completely. 

            One problem with this premise is that it does not take into account why any of us took up running Back in the Day.  Yeah, I know, of the 2000 runners in the 1975 Boston, there were probably 2000 different reasons they took up running.  But I do think that if you take the little idiosyncrasies of each individual out of the equation, the reasons come down to one idea.  And that was so we could eat and drink whatever we wanted without getting fat!

            Why else would we be out there, rain or shine, hot or cold, whatever Mother-Buffalo-Nature threw at us, running 80 to 100+ miles per weeks, week after week.  Personally I had been a three sport athlete at Riverside, cross-country, swimming, and track, and I did learn to eat well during those years.  I ran some in college, and then my running days were over in 1970.  Unfortunately, my eating habits from high school were not over, and so from 1970 till 1973 I put on a pound or two.  Well, to be honest, my skinny high school competitor self was trapped inside some sumo wrestler from Japan, and brother, did the skinny-me want to get out.  Problem was, he didn’t want to change his eating habits one iota.  What to do?

            And then Frank Shorter won the Marathon in the 1972 Olympics, and all became clear.  After the race, as this skinny guy is being interviewed on national TV, they alluded to the barely-malt beverage he was drinking from a plastic cub, without saying exactly what it was, but Frank made sure we knew.  This was an epiphany for me.  Here was a guy drinking my favorite beverage, who probably got to eat whatever he wanted, and he weighed in at the weight of a wet mango.  He was doing something right.  My hero!

            Well, I was driving taxi at the time in Buffalo (putting that masters degree to good use), which requires driving 12 hours per day, six days a week.  No running for me.  I only lasted six weeks at this endeavor, during which I gained another three chins, and then it was winter.  I waited for April 1, 1973, for my road-racing career to begin.

            Since my cardiovascular system was in great shape from my previous life as an athlete (and spending my kidhood riding everywhere on my bike), it didn’t take long to start building up the miles.  Lo and behold, the pounds started to disappear despite no changes to my intake of food and drink.  What a wonderful thing.  Who cared the Kentucky Fried Chicken, followed by a couple Big Macs and a Whopper, were not nutritionally sound.  I burned it off, and that’s all that mattered.  I’ll drink to that, and I did.

            Six months later I ran my first marathon in New York City, even though my longest run was only 16 miles.  It hurt, so I upped my mileage, and kept on eating, drinking, running, and racing.  Skinny-me was back and feeling groovy, as we cool types used to say.

            My idea of the food group pyramid was: five pounds of deep-fried red meat on the bottom of the pyramid, with four pounds of pasta on the next level, followed by three pounds of vegetables, preferably French fries and potato chips, with two pounds of ice-cream on top of that, and topped with one pound of whipped cream with a cherry.  And this would be all on one plate. And this is just lunch.  Followed by a tankard or two of root beer to wash it down with.  And for dessert a brisk 16 mile run so everything I ate could settle so I would have room for dinner.

            OK, so maybe I exaggerate just a bit, but eating a lot was important since we needed the fuel for all that running.  We just didn’t know or want to know that there were healthy foods out there we should have been eating, and in moderation.

            Now, what we ate for meals before a big race (which was usually a marathon – we did nothing special if the run were under 19.1 miles) were pretty loopy, a smorgasbord of foods based on ideas from the past and what we wanted.

            My dad was a top miler and cross-country runner at Notre Dame in the late 1930s, and training meals for these athletes the night before a big race was steak, and plenty of it.  By the time I was running in high school and college, this thinking hadn’t changed much, and it was still around when I started road racing.  Of course, all the coaches from the time of the first Olympics also preached no you-know-what for the athletes (preferably during the whole season).  If you don’t know what you-know-what is, I’ll give you a hint.  It starts with “S” and rhymes with “rex”. 

            I of course always followed Coach’s advice, mostly because I like red meat, and I was an excruciatingly shy guy who never had a girl friend, so “rex” was out of the question anyway.  Even when I was with Eleanor (of Belle Watling Beaver Pin Award fame) I was just too shy to suggest we try “rex”.  What a numbskullhead I was.

            The idea of pasta as a pre-race meal eventually did start to enter into our thinking and onto our dinner plates the night before a big race.  Loading up with carbohydrates made sense, and I was all for that since my all time favorite food has always been spaghetti, and plenty of it. 

            Now that reminds me, when Jennifer Hulme gave her presentation at the Roost, she had these great visuals.  I walked in and thought, oh neat, she has Hors d’oeuvres for us to eat, she was just missing the toothpicks.  Then, horror of horrors, the food turned out to be plastic, no treats for us.  And then horrorer of even more horrors, these bite size morsels each represented a total portion one should eat at a meal of said food.

            BAH! I say!  Where’s the sense of it all, where is the justice, why, where is the humanity, not to mention the piles of yummy food?  Why, that charlatan lip-twitching imposter quack of a registered dietitian, who happens to be a babe, would have us starve just so she could laugh at us as she runs over our skeleton-like bodies littering race courses across Erie County on her way to more ill-gotten race medals.  Cripes, that representation of a single portion of spaghetti looked about the size of an Egg McMuffin, only without the McMuffin, or the McCheese for that matter.  One twirl of the fork and I have that much spaghetti ready for eating.  I tell you people, eat before she destroys us all!

            But back to what we used to eat.  For breakfast before the big race, why it was a tall stack or two of pancakes with all the fixins, which for me would include eggs and plenty of sausage and homefries.  Some shied away from the fixins, but I always had a cast-iron stomach, and I could literally run a marathon an hour after such a meal.

            Back to the Roost.  Someone asked Ms. Hulme about the carbo-loading diet one could do before a marathon.  Now that I knew about, since we were doing it back in the seventies.  But after she described how to do it, I realized what we did was a good deal different.  The way we learned to do it was thus:  If the marathon you were running was on a Sunday, on the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before you would do the depletion.  This meant basically going on what is today called the Adkins Diet, but what we in the early seventies called the meat and water diet.

            I had done this diet a few times before I started running, and would usually last two weeks of eating nothing but meat, cheese and eggs with plenty of water.  I would lose more than a pound a day, but I would soon be dreaming of bread and pizza.  As soon as I went off the diet, I just had to satisfy my need for carbs, and would put the weight right back on in, oh, about three hours.

            With the carbo-loading training diet, during the depletion stage, we would keep running regular miles (we never tapered before a marathon) and do a final depletion run of about sixteen miles Wednesday night.  You can imagine how hard that was, what with no carbs left in our system.  Talk about depletion!  Then came the fun part.  No more running till the marathon, and one would just lock himself in the kitchen/bathroom with mounds and piles and mountains of carbohydrate-laden food surrounding one with the mission of making it all disappear before the race.  Piece of cake.

            First time I did this training diet, I had a pretty good marathon, but not my best.  Next time I tried it, by the third day of depletion I developed a terrible cold from being so worn down.  Never did it again.  Seems like the way Jennifer described how it should be done makes more sense then what we were doing.  But what did we know. 

            Hmmm, maybe this Hulme dame aint such a fraud after all.  I sure could stand to lose a pound or two.  I’ll have to talk to her next time I see her at a race, that is, if she hasn’t had too much coffee and is late getting to the start.  Quivering lips make me nervous.            

             

nugget #18

I know Christmas is just over, but here is a number for those still in the Christmas spirit.

Miracle on the Mean Streets of Cheektowaga

By Bill Donnelly

            Back in the Day (my, what a lovely way to begin an article) we rarely ran with a program.  We would do our many miles during the week and our long runs on the weekend.  Our speed workouts were mostly the short races (10ks and longer), and we were always training for a marathon. 

            But we did usually run with at least one other runner, more often than not with more, because we all, as a rule, ran around the Delaware Park golf course, so you just about always ran into someone, no pun intended.  These runs turned into real gab-fests and the more runners together, the more tales were told. These get togethers almost always ended up being pace-runs, for as we talked and our minds would be off the running, we would be slowly picking up the pace until the conversations would almost cease and we would realize we were going near race pace.

            Would that realization make us slow down?  Cripes, we were a competitive lot, and no one would dare suggest we should slow down.  Besides, we had gotten to that point without thinking about it, so we would just go with the flow and fly around the park, still picking up speed.  We had some great workouts without even planning on it.

            We also told some great stories and tall tales, most of them forgotten in that fog known as getting older.  However, some runners were particularly good at telling stories that became unforgettable despite my advancing age, and they were usually about other runners.  One such runner that could tell a yarn that would literally knock me over was Hamilton Ward, but we called him Ham.

            Now Ham was a great lawyer, and therefore very good with words.  He was a Belle Watling, one of the older crew whom I thought was ancient, somewhere in his forties.  A good runner whom I believe ran a sub-three hour marathon, Ham got into running late for the same reasons many of those old Watlings did.  Change of life!

            Something better to do with yourself than just drinking, and Ham had liked to drink Back in his Day.  He quit the booze and took up a hobby that was good for his health.  He still stays active, but two knee replacements made him give up running, and now you will find him riding a bike competitively, and doing well in his age group (the old-coot group).

            I remember the day Ham told this particular tale quite clearly, for it was one of the more memorable runs I ever did.  It was a beautiful summer day for running (what day isn’t a beautiful day for running in Buffalo) for it was not too hot, yet the sun was shining; the sky was blue and the air clear of humidity.  I was running with Ham and my usual running buddy, Norm Schwendler.  Norm was a character himself, worth an article just on him some day.

            The tale Ham told involved another runner who happened to be a Belle Watling, Bob McDonald, also a good marathoner whom I thought ancient.  Now back in the early 1960s, Bob was a member of the Army’s precision parachute jumping team, and his unit would travel about putting on shows for civilian audiences.  One horrific day the plane carrying them to a show crashed in a fiery ball on take off.

            As military rescuers are want to do, they grabbed the ones first who were most likely to survive, and Bob was rescued last or there about, as he was badly burned over most of his body, and he was not expected to survive.  Bob showed them, and after being in the Houston Burn Treatment Center for two whole painful years, he was back, with a few scars and a new wig from the Army every year.

            Not surprisingly, Bob also took to drinking intoxicating beverages in too great a quantity, and like Ham, he quit the stuff, took up running, and was soon a Belle Watling.  He and Ham were card carrying members of the non-partying party. 

            Well, back to the tale Ham told Norm and me on that beautiful summer scamper.  To put it simply, in December of 1969, Bob was hired by a store in Cheektowaga to parachute out of a small plane dressed as Santa Claus, and on the way down, release a bag full of ping pong balls with numbers on them.  The kids waiting below would scramble for them, and get gifts that corresponded to the balls’ number.  The store forgot to get a permit for said event, the Cheektowaga police were waiting, and in front of hundreds of horrified children, they arrested Santa.  (This event actually made the Stars and Stripes publication and the ticker on the front of the New York Times building in Times Square.)

            Ham represented Bob at his trial (yes, there was a trial) and got him off.  And that’s the story, but I could never do it the justice that the telling of it deserves, for only Ham could do that.  I think it took two or three laps of the meadow for him to tell it, and I swear that by the end, Norm and I were literally rolling on the ground gasping for air from laughing so hard. 

            No, I could never tell it with the pizzazz that Ham told it, but I decided to make it into a movie script, which, believe it or not, I will now share with you.  This is my first attempt at a script, so just remember that when I don’t seem to know what I am doing.

            The scene: a cramped noisy interior of an airplane.  A disheveled looking man in a red suit and red cap, and with long white hair and a beard that is obviously a wig, takes a swig of courage from his well worn hip flask.  Bob McDonald (to be played by Mel Gibson) is playing Santa Claus, just another in a string of jumps he does to try to make ends meet, or at least so he can afford that next bottle of Wild Turkey.  Bob mutters “This wouldn’t be so bad if I weren’t so afraid of heights!”  Just then he drops his flask, and as he reaches for it, the plane banks to the right and out the door he goes.  Trying to grab something to stop from falling, he luckily gets hold of the red bag full of ping pong balls he in being paid to drop.  The camera shows the bag going out the door, and then quickly zooms in to the identical bag that he almost grabbed, which is seen to be full of bowling balls.  The audience will get it and breathe a sigh of relief that Santa wouldn’t be dropping the wrong balls on the unsuspecting kids below.

            The scene: The mall below, filled with children and their parents, faces lit up with anticipation of the excitement to come, little realizing how close they were to being scattered like so many bowling pins.  The camera zooms in on one particularly handsome young man, holding the hand of his little brother, whom he brought because he was always looking out for him.  The man is a young Bill Donnelly (I’m writing this, so I can be in it-to be played by Brad Pitt) and the boy is Bill’s little brother, Tommy (to be played by Bart Simpson).  Tommy in not interested in the gifts he could get, he just wants the ping pong balls.  As the balls start bouncing off the pavement and young Tommy’s head, he exclaims “ping pong balls are round, and they are pretty!”

            The scene: A relieved looking Bob, thankful for once again surviving a jump, lands on top of a Cheektowaga police car, its top light spinning.  Two police (played by Barney Fife and Gomer Pyle) immediately apprehend the startled looking Santa, handcuff him, throw him in the back of their car (while the song that’s the theme song of Cops, “Bad Boys”, plays) and quickly drive off. The scene becomes chaotic as parents faint and children cry.  Even young Tommy, who has five ping pong balls in his mouth, spits out four of them in astonishment of what just happened.  He swallows the other.  The children, fearful that Santa may end up in jail for Christmas, start collecting whatever nickels and dimes they have in their pockets in order to bail out the old gent. 

            The scene: The usual spinning newspapers coming at the camera and suddenly stopping to reveal a headline.  The first is The Stars and Stripes with the headline “Santa in trouble with the law”. Then comes The New York Times with “Cheektowaga arrests Santa, Christmas Cancelled”.  Next The Buffalo Evening News says “Plans for New Peace Bridge well on the Way”, Followed by the Courier Express’ “Bills plan on winning many Super Bowls in next Few Decades”.

            The scene: The Cheektowaga courtroom is packed as Ham Ward (played by Dustin Hoffman) is about to defend poor Bob McDonald.  The judge (played by Harrison Ford) gavels for order.  In the crowd we see Bill Donnelly with young Tommy and Bill’s current girlfriend (played by Scarlett Johansson).  Later, for the mandatory love scene between the two, I will fill in for Brad Pitt.  On the stand is Officer Barney Fife.  Ham: “Officer, would you describe the man you arrested on December 13^th.”  Officer Fife: “Well, he was wearing a red suit with a red hat, sort of a stocking cap.  He had long white hair and a full white beard.  And he had a big stomach that shook like a bowl full of jelly.”  Ham: “That will be all officer.”  Ham to the judge: “Your honor, I would like to enter into evidence this letter from young Tiny Tim of Lawrence, Kansas.”  His Honor: “Let me see it.” He reads aloud the letter:  “Dear sir, attached is a quarter, all the money I have. Please use it to help free Santa Claus so we can have Christmas this year.”  With that the judge strikes the gavel and cries: “Case dismissed, Santa is free to go.”  Pandemonium hits the courtroom, Ham and Bob shake hands, Scarlett and I embrace in a long passionate kiss, young Tommy pops a ping pong ball into his mouth.

            The scene: Bill’s bedroom, Scarlett and I are still passionately kissing.  Due to the graphic nature of the scene, and this being a family newsletter, I cannot include all of it now.  Needless to say, it goes on and on and concludes with an obviously exhausted but happy Scarlett saying: “Oh Bill, you have just ruined me for any other man.”  Fade to the credits with Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” playing.

            And most of that is basically the story Ham told us, with a bit of poetic license thrown in for good measure.  The kids did collect their money to bail out Santa, Ham did have the police officer describe the man he arrested, and the judge threw out the case after reading a letter from some kid who taped a quarter to it.  And to this day, young Tommy hangs ping pong balls on his Christmas tree instead of ornaments.           

  

             

                

                         

nugget #17

Back in 2006 I had a wonderful experience in dealing with bricks, and so I wrote about it.  Nothing to do with running away back when.

I’ve Got Gas

By Bill Donnelly

            Here’s a concept for you.  How about an article that has nothing to do with Back in the Day.  In fact, I promise you this story has little to do with running at all.  Sounds new and exciting to me, so here goes.

            As I’ve mentioned before, I now work for the company that provides natural gas to most people in Western New York.  Since I don’t want to use my writing talent to promote companies that make huge profits, I will not mention the name of the company I work for; I’ll just say its name rhymes with Irrational Fool Class.

            That’s right; I gave up the very rewarding life of teaching special education for twenty-three years for the life of working with gas meters.  As I tell people who wonder how I could make such a change and be happy, meters don’t talk back to me.  Let me explain, I did teach kids who at the time were called Severe Behavior Handicapped.  Gosh, I miss those darlings. 

            I’ve been working for IFC now for just over two years.  I started at the bottom as a meter reader, and that is where the running part of this story comes in.  You see, at first all the walking I did was great for my running.  Meter readers get a low base pay, and to make more money one has to really hustle.  For every meter we read, we get an incentive of a whopping twenty cents.  Wow, be still my heart.

            Actually, if one really pushes it and does a couple routes a day, the incentive adds up.  Being in good shape from running, I was able to do this, and I was getting in ten to fifteen miles a day walking.  This, along with my running was giving me 100 mile weeks for the first time since Back in the Day.  I guess I just had to slip a “Back in the Day” in here somehow.

            Anyway, this proved good for my running, and I was very pleased with my time in the 2005 Boston Marathon.  But then my times started slipping, and I was slowing down.  My legs were feeling like lead weights were attached to them, and there was no kick left.  I knew it was from all the walking I was doing for IFC, so what was I to do.

            Well, fortunately, last December I was promoted to serviceman in training, and all that walking ended.  My legs were so dead, my running fell apart, and I had to decide to skip this years Boston, and I took a couple months off from running.  I’m just getting back to it, and my legs feel somewhat alive again, it’s just hard to get back into shape.

            So now I’m a certified serviceman, and although I do not get the same exercise from walking, I do get some other nice perks.  The money actually is not as good, since I get no incentive, but it’s a better hourly rate, and I do not have to beat myself into the ground to make it.  I also get to spend more time in those wonderful, scary, nasty basements as I turn people’s gas on or off, and relight all their gas-fed equipment.  Let me tell you, there are some scary basements with scary equipment in them, owned by some very scary people. 

            But there are good perks to my job.  I do get to meet some wonderful and/or interesting people while working for IFC.  There was the little old lady who had several pictures in the basement.  They were of her with some famous movie stars back in the early 1930s.  When asked, she explained she had won the Miss Buffalo title back then, and her prize was a trip to Hollywood and an audition for a movie part or two, and she got to meet all these famous stars.  Unfortunately for her, she was born too soon and didn’t get to meet the really great super stars like Paris Hilton or Ryan Seacrest.  Well, at least she got to meet me.  

            Then there was the other little old lady who just got back from shopping and asked me if I would carry two huge jugs of vinegar down to the basement for her.  She still did her own pickling.  She told me she was 94, and used to be much spryer, though I thought she was still in pretty good shape.  Then she showed me the two silver medals she won in the tryouts for the 1940 US Olympic team.  She got them in what was then called “apparatus”, (now gymnastics), and in the sprints.  Of course she never got the chance to partake in those never held Olympics, thanks to World War II.  There seems to be a story or two for each basement in Buffalo.  Some you don’t even want to know.

            But the best part of my work with IFC is the free things I often get from grateful customers.  I’ll give a couple of examples. Back in April I was telling a customer that I would have to shut off his gas if he didn’t pay up his gas bill.  Next door was a young man working on his house with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth, and after I was through dealing with the deadbeat, err, customer, his neighbor with the cigarette asked me if I could do him a favor.  Seems he and some friends of his thought they smelled gas in his basement.  He wondered if I could check it out.

            Not being certified in handling leaks, I said “Why sure.”  I figured I could see if there was a leak, and if so, call it in so someone qualified could be sent to fix things up.  I got my trusty GasTrac, a device that can detect the smallest amount of natural gas in the air.  Unfortunately, it also detects the natural gas that emanates from a person’s behind when one has had too many bean burritos the night before.  Too many the time I had to tell customers they had a gas leak when in truth I had eaten at Gramma Mora’s the night before.  Sure, they had to deal with the hassle of thinking they had a gas leak, but that was better than them knowing it was I who had the gas leak.  How embarrassing would that be? 

            But back to cigarette man.  I checked out his basement with the GasTrac, and as my stomach was in fine shape, I detected no gas.  I did find a table with what looked like hundreds of tiny pot plants growing under a grow light, but they turned out to be two hundred tomato plants the guy was starting.  Seemed he was really into gardening.

            He was so happy with me taking the time to check his basement, he gave me three of the plastic cups, each with a tiny tomato plant in it.  It turned out these were the only ones of his plants that survived to this day.  You see, later that very day, as the guy was lighting another cigarette while watering his big gaggle of plants, his basement mysteriously blew up.  Fortunately, he survived with only minor damage to his hair and cigarettes, but his plants were all destroyed.  IFC settled out of court (just kidding).

            I took my three survivors home and put them in my kitchen window box, where they thrived and grew tall.  Now I had the problem of having to plan a garden.  I once had a garden in Cleveland that I had built of used bricks, making a boxed brick wall that I filled with dirt and plants.  I thought I would do the same thing here, so I started to price used bricks.  The best deal I found was used bricks for 45 cents a brick, along with an $80 delivery charge.  As I figured I would need at least 800 bricks, that was too much to spend.

            Now my next free perk.  In early May I was turning on the gas for a customer who had a big old house on

Laurel St.

, near to E. Utica and Jefferson.  His name was Jerome, and I noticed a tarp covered pile of bricks next to the house.  Seems he had taken down his whole chimney since it would cost too much to repair, and he guessed there were a couple hundred bricks there.  I asked how much he wanted for them, and he said they were mine for the taking if I would just get them out of there. 

            Well, this was just what I needed, so the following Saturday, Diane McGuire and I rented a truck from the RentaTruckforMovinganythingbutBricks Co. and we headed over to

Laurel St

.  A couple hundred bricks “My Donkey”, as Anne Reif would say.  We spent six hours and two trips loading and unloading what turned out to be over 1500 bricks. Late in the hot afternoon we got the U-HaulOhMyAchingBack Co. truck back to them and then we collapsed for the rest of the weekend.  But with gas and rental fee from Don’teverRentthisTruckbecauseithasaBadAxle Co., we only spent $85 for the bricks. 

            Now I had to build the garden, and since I had so many bricks, I built two big gardens.  Talk about back pain, and after a couple weeks of after-work labor of digging up grass and hauling bricks, and two destroyed wheelbarrows, I had my gardens put together.  Now for top soil, since the soil in North Buffalo has the clay consistency of Gumby.  I ordered three cubic yards of top soil that, with delivery charge, cost over $135.  Delivered in one huge pile that was, oh, about 278 yards from the gardens, or so it seemed.  My new wheelbarrow and my poor back had just enough left to get the soil all the way back and into the garden, and now I was ready to plant my three free tomato plants.

            But wait; now I had two big brick gardens with three cubic yards of top soil in them, and my poor tomato plants looked so lost and lonely.  That’s right, now it was out to a garden store or seven in order to purchase many dollars worth of plants to fill my gardens with, and all the wonderful tools and manure needed to show my plants I really care for them. 

            By now I figure my three free tomato plants had better yield 1,237 tomatoes each just for me to break even.  Either that, or I will need to set up a roadside stand and sell my tomatoes to make my money back.  Of course, I will need to sell each tomato for, oh, let’s say $33.17 to be exact.  Then those three free tomato plants will actually have been free.  And that is not even counting how much I have had to pay my chiropractor for his six months worth of treatment I will have to have, nor does it cover the special back brace I had to buy.

            Well, I had better end this tale of what wonderful perks I get from working for IFC.  I have to go to the Biggie Mart to purchase a couple miles of hoses so I can water my free tomato plants.  But in a month or two when I have that first BLT made with my free tomatoes, boy, will it be all worth it.

            So now my legs are in better shape for running.  Once my back heals up, I’ll really be able to give running a go.  Until I can really get back into running, I guess I’ll have to spend my spare time weeding my gardens and writing more stories about what running was like Back in the Day.  Cripes, those perks just never seem to end, do they?