Dusk Before the Dawn

The Scholastic Book Club was a huge fetish of mine during later elementary school and middle school. Every six weeks a pulp magazine of their latest offerings would arrive. I’d check off the ones I wanted, then work to persuade my mom and dad to get me some subset of the list.

That was how I read about Bart Starr and the Green Bay Packers.

In January of 1967, and again in January of 1968, the Packers, champions of the National Football League, defeated first the Kansas City Chiefs and then the Oakland Raiders of the American Football League. Winning those first two Super Bowls made legends out of many of the Packers players and, of course, of their coach Vince Lombardi.

One of those players was Bart Starr, subject of the Scholastic published biography by John Devaney. I devoured that book, and was then handed a copy of Jerry Kramer’s Packer Diary, Instant Replay which I also absorbed. Though I was in Texas, the Packers became my team. Stories of the Ice Bowl and the two Super Bowl wins, of Lombardi and the great Packers of those times, made them instant favorites.

Shortly after this, the Packers made the playoffs again, in 1972. This would start a pattern of testing Packer fan resolve for a decade, making the playoffs again in 1982, and then again in 1993. There were consistent playoff participants thereafter; but it was a LONG wait for us Packer fans…nearly three decades, until January of 1997, for the Packers to return to prominence and win another Super Bowl with Brett Favre at quarterback. They came close the next year, losing to Elway and the Broncs.

Unless you’ve been living under certain rocks, you’ll know that the Packers under Aaron Rodgers are reining Super Bowl Champs, and are currently undefeated.

I have never seen the Packers play. My wife did win tickets to the Super Bowl in a contest, so we’ve been to Super Bowl 41, in February of 2007, watching her favorite Peyton Manning and the Colts defeat the Bears.

That changes next Sunday, November 20, when, for my 50th birthday (still a few weeks away) my wife takes me to sit in the 5th row of the LeapZone at Lambeau Field when the hopefully-still-undefeated Packers play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Stay tuned….

The fourth running of the Texas Independence Relay is in the books, as is the first participation of the mighty Most Likely to Secede team (for background on the TIR, see their website and my previous post). If you are a runner and can put together 8 to 12 people for one weekend, I highly recommend that you give this a try. The lack of sleep, unpredictable weather and roadkill dodging are minor inconveniences to the shear magnificence of running in the dead of night under the Texas stars, bonding with people you barely knew before and pushing your body to do something it has probably never done before. Our team  rose to the challenge, and blew through our predicted pace, and had more fun than I think any of us predicted. We averaged an 8:37 pace over the 203.3 miles, for 26th out of 75 teams in the Open Mixed category. For a race that was logistically challenging, it was incredibly well organized; kudos to all the volunteers and especially Jay and Joy, the race directors.

HISTORY
These things are always Bert’s fault…or my brother’s, it’s really hard to tell. Bert and I tried to get a team together to run the 2010 TIR, and with his brother, brother-in-law and my brother and nephews, we were close…but we ran out of time. (more…)

GO SHARKS!

When the Rockets lost to the Western Conference worst Minnesota Timberwolves at home a few games before the All-Star break, it isn’t hard to imagine Les Alexander and the powers that be saying “Trade for Carmelo or blow up the season.”

And here we are. Carmelo went for the bright lights and the contract in NYC. A Rockets defense that sucks mightily (ranked 24th overall) just traded their defensive stopper for a project center and a draft pick. That Shane Battier’s contract was up at the end of the year and the Rox may have ended up with nothing if they had held onto to him until then is small consoliation. Best of luck to a class act, wish he would have went to a contender.

Brooks was toast as soon as he chose to walk off the court that day, and his contract was expiring as well. Perhaps with these two contracts, Yao’s and the draft picks, there will be something exciting in Rocket’s basketball next year.

The Rockets had an outside (okay, I’m being optimistic) shot at reaching the 8th seed in the playoffs, mainly due to Utah and Denver submarining themselves with trades. But they are four games out with Phoenix and Memphis also between them and the playoffs. And by throwing the towel in, they save me from the humilation of watching my ex-hometown Spurs annihilate them (the Spurs were my team when I was there, with the Ice Man, Larry Kenon, Artis Gilmore, the Whopper, etc….but not after I drank from the fountain of The Dream!). The remainder of the team is not Clutch City, they would stand little chance against the rejuvenated Spurs.

So, thanks in large part to Yao Ming’s feet not being built like Shaq’s (how does Shaq survive for so long?), I’ll just be glad that the San Jose Sharks rebounded from a poor first half, just in time for another wild ride at the playoffs.

GO SHARKS!

The Texas Independence Relay (TIR) is a 40 leg, 203 mile relay race with 8-12 people, from Gonzales, Texas to the San Jacinto Monument. It should take us (we hope) less than a day and a half of straight running, starting the morning of Saturday, March 5 and ending with what I am sure will be a well-beered celebration mid-day Sunday.

This is obviously all Bert’s fault, since he was the one who got me doing my first half-marathon (SA Half, 2009); or maybe I can blame this on my brother, the doctor and marathoner, who’s run Boston a couple of times and frequently extols the virtues of running.

As Bert knows due to my complaining after we pass mile ten, I still feel there is no good reason to run a half-marathon. But he still talks me into them..and into the TIR.

Our Team, named Most Likely to Secede, consists of twelve runners (more…)

After three gorgeous weeks of low temps and low humidity, the Houston weather returned to its norm: humidity off the Gulf and temperatures above average.

Just in time for my first attempt to run the Houston Half-Marathon, an adventure in the making. Bottom line: I did not beat my PR but I did finish in under two hours, not bad considering the weather (results are here).

The Lead Up (driving the Texas triangle is not the best warm up). After training for most of the summer, including my first ever 100 mile month (hey, I’m a late starter into this running thing), the week before the run found me driving the Texas triangle for work. Wednesday - Houston to DFW. Friday - DFW to San Antonio. Saturday - San Antonio to Houston. Driving is not the best activity to keep your legs relaxed and loose, but you gotta do what you gotta do. The other challenge was that my running buddy Bert had “kiddies interruptus” and could not run with me. Bert was big on motivational techniques like telling me he was going to put lipstick on me if I started walking (which I am sure that he didn’t mean as an insult to all those female runners that habitually blow by us). So I was going to need to motivate myself by the thought of a couple of cold ones at the finish line.

The Course (I preordered a path in the shade). (more…)

Unknown to me living way out here in the ‘burbs, the HARRA (Houston Area Road Runners Association) has been holding a Tour de Bayou for several years. The Tour de Bayou is a series of runs in the parks and bayous of Houston, with the tracks laid out to create hills (which, if you’ve been to Houston, is a neat trick). The runs are free, and my hat is off to HARRA and the volunteers who set these up.

I’d taken a break from running in February and the first half of March to let my knees and my IT Band un-swell, and this seemed like excellent punishment to get myself back into it.

For those of you that don’t run in Houston, it is one of the flattest places to run (which I imagine is one reason why the US Olympic Marathon trials will be held here) and in April it starts to warm up. At the 6pm start time for these races it was upper 70s or lower 80s.

My notes on each of the legs are below. Bottom line: it was a lot of fun, a great way to visit some of the parks around town and I will certainly do it next year, hopefully in good health.

Stage 1: Spots Park; 3.1 miles; 28:40; 9:15 pace
79 OverAll; 42 Masters Men
Theme: Show up, sign up, run up and throw up (more…)

Though lighter on the Rugby (disappointing for this former and now occasional rugby player) than on the subject of Mandela, Invictus is an entertaining movie covering Nelson Mandela’s backing and support of the 1995 South Africa Springboks rugby team, and their efforts in that years Rugby World Cup (the third most watched event in world sports, for my uneducated American friends). Up to that point, the blacks hated the Springboks as a symbol of white supremacy, and Mandela threw his weight behind the team as a symbol of unification.

Invictus (see the poem at the end of this post) is directed by Clint Eastwood (which is reason enough to go see it), and stars Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon. Morgan Freeman plays Mandela, and his performance ranks right behind The Shawshank Redemption (IMHO) in a long line of excellent work. Damon plays Francois Pineaar, captain of the South African Rugby team. (more…)

The race is over, the soreness is gone (well, almost), and my first ever half-marathon (at the San Antonio Rock and Roll Marathon) is in the past. Bert and I crossed the finish line at 1:56:57, an 8:56 per mile pace, beating our 2 hour goal and finishing about 2,000 out of 20,000 half-marathon runners. Congrats to my friends Everett and Michael who also completed the run, and all of the other participants. As someone who has in the past played sports like basketball and rugby (i.e., sprint, stop, sprint, stop…or, as one of my so-called friends called it, sprint, stop and watch others, sprint, stop and watch others) running 13 miles was a daunting event.

So what did we learn from this latest undertaking, this latest accomplishment struck so resoundingly from the bucket list:
- San Antonio cops never change; the starting line was in Breckinridge park and the exit at Hildebrand was backed up two miles. I suggested to John, who was dropping Bert and I off, to pass the line and pull over on the freeway, and we would walk down Hildebrand. But one of SA’s finest motorcycle cops pulled John over, telling him he was going to write him a “big ole ticket”. He motioned Bert and I back, telling us to get in the car or we would all get tickets. “Go down to St. Mary’s exit, there’s no one there, you’ve done this before.” We hadn’t done this before, but he was right…there was no one at that exit, and we two plus several hundred others walked part the ever-tempting Bombay Bicycle Club bar to the 40 some odd starting corrals on Broadway. (more…)

There are so many double entendres I could use, but I leave that for the comments.

We’ve had a team (Komen Get It) for four years in the Houston Komen run. My wife started it with Sue whose lost her mother and a cousin to breast cancer, and my son has run it with me for the last three.

Times change. Sue moved to Denver, my son is off to college (but still doing work for two charities at UTA), and Audrey is out of town.

Solution: my wife says it is simple:
- Larry runs 5K Houston Komen run with running buddy Bert (should be dog slow since we’ve been training for the SA half marathon);
- Larry flies to Denver, meets beautiful wife;
- Larry and Lee do 5K Denver Komen run (should be dog slow since they have like mountains and stuff up there), Audrey, Sue and a cast of others do 5K Denver walk and gab;
- Larry et al celebrate with many adult bevvies.

I signed up too late to have an online Houston Komen page (perhaps it wasn’t as simple as originally planned, but if you would like to donate, Click here to visit my Denver Komen page or you can donate to the Houston Komen at running buddy Bert’s page.

“Grammy says you are too old to play Rugby,” my nephew, who had a short college Rugby career of his own, tells me.

“She’s probably right,” I reply, “but I’m still playing.”

Master’s Rugby players get a lot of grief from friends and family, about why they are still playing (note the timely Sunday Mother Goose and Grimm (4/10/09) comic my wife found for me right before the tourney).

Last weekend, New Orleans played host to the 2nd Annual French Quarter Masters Rugby Tournament. The Texas XXX’s showed in force, along with teams from Memphis, New Orleans and part of a Birmingham team. Undoubtedly, the economy kept this year’s tourney from being as successful as the first one, but we got in two good matches and lots of bourbon street.

Master’s Rugby is for players over 35 years old. The rules are modified to protect older players, but what happens in reality is that the team captains meet before the match and decide on the restrictions. (more…)