Makin' Thunderbirds

Bobby Great Lakes sings to the Water Wonderland's recent, glorious past. Paul Ingrassai's Crash Course details how the Big 3's hubris and the UAW's vanity share equally in ruined American automobile industry.

Makin Thunderbirds

The big line moved one mile an hour
So loud it really hurt
The big line moved so loud
It really hurt
Back in '55
We were makin' thunderbirds

We filled conveyors
We met production
Foremen didn't waste words
We met production
Foremen didn't waste words
We were young and proud
We were makin' thunderbirds

We were makin' thunderbirds
We were makin' thunderbirds
They were long and low and sleek and fast
They were all you ever heard
Back in '55
We were makin' thunderbirds

Now the years have flown and the plants have changed
And you're lucky if you work
The big line moves but you're lucky if you work
Back in '55
We were makin' thunderbirds

We were makin' thunderbirds
We were makin' thunderbirds
They were long and low and sleek and fast
They were classic in a word
Back in '55
We were makin' thunderbirds
We were young and proud
We were makin' thunderbirds
We were young and sure
We were makin' thunderbirds

Stitt was our 10th grade gym teacher. He was built like a fireplug with a crew cut, drove a T-Bird, and had cool guy/tough guy attitude that comes with being a short guy who could you the hurt on you in a heartbeat. Back in the day, wrestlers came in two flavors: scientific wrestlers and rule breakers. Stitt straddled the chasm that separated the two flavors like a pair of wrap-around shades. Our class nicknamed him "Sunshine."

Stitt hearded our class out to high school track on the first near-Spring Michigan March day and told everyone to run a mile. We'd been inside all winter. Sure, some guys played baseketball and some guys wrestled. A few guys were on the swimming team. As a group, were all pale, a little doughy, and sun deprived. It was cool being outside. It sucked to have to run a mile. We didn't run distances. Never had. A mile could have been a marathon.

Gym class was supposed to fun, right. It wasn't physics. There wasn't homework. So, what the hell are we doing running four laps around the track. This was work. Stitt made us do it every day, weather permitting, until school closed for the summer. When we finished our mile Stitt made us do 50 push-ups. And, so it went. Everyone had to run a mile and do 50 push-ups in order to pass the class. By summer, we were nearing decent shape.

Stitt had a decent sense of humor for a wrestling coach. He'd grin as we sang songs while circling the track. Our favorite, "You Are My Sunshine," was a layered serenade and, when Sunshine Stitt was out of earshot, we boldly chanted "70 minutes of Shit from Stitt." I tink he heard us and liked it.

Anyway, I hadn't run a mile since Stitt's class until I broke though that barrier last month. Funny how stuff rattles through your mind while running. I couldn't help but think about an old friend who recently passed. He was chantmaster while we ran around the track for Stitt. He was a trendmaker, a wit, and a bon vivant. But, black water roiled below the surface. Within a few years his wit turn to choler, and lonliness, bitterness, heroin, and cruelty coursed through his veins. He wandered about the world fooling friends and taunting everyone. He left us broken and toubled. So long, dude. We'll always miss your best. We'll always forgive your worst.

Ran 2.1 miles non-stop the last two runs. The distance was verified when I followed my route by car. Keeping one foot in front of the other. Loving where it takes me.

Runner's Den 5K

My take away from the Rock 'N Roll 1/2 was to build strength and pace. I've employed Jeff Galloway's Miracle Mile training drill to do just that. Galloway's Miracle Mile consists of:

• 4-5 minute walk


• Jog an 880


• Run 1 minute / Walk 1 minute


• 4 Acceleration Gliders (Run for 15 seconds at regular pace; increase speed over next 15 seconds; then glide from the momentum built during the run


• Run 1 mile at a fast pace


• Repeat as a cool down

I've done the Miracle Mile drill on two Sunday mornings at the Scottsdale Community College track. Beautiful running surface, mountain views, and solitude make the perfect training mix.

The Runner's Den 5K winds its way through the neighborhoods of North Phoenix. Heavy rains on Saturday night cleared near dawn. The sun esacaped a batch of renegade clouds that followed the storm minutes before race time.

I started near the back of the small band of runners who showed for the race. I am guessing these are the folks who'd run regardless of the conditions. My plan was to start at a slow pace and keep it as long as I could.

Most folks broke quickly from the start, and, soone enough, I was at the back of the pack with the very slow walkers. I kept plodding along. I began passing the faster walkers and then the fast walkers. I felt strong and kept going and kept going turn a corner on the course and passed the 1.5K sign.

I had never run that far before. Never found the pace or thought I had the strength to do it. I began passing runners who'd started quickly and lost their wind. My thighs started to ache and then came the 2.5K sign. Uncharted territory!

I stopped at the water table and grabbed a drink. From there to the finish I ran one minute and walked on minute. During the one-minute runs I used another Galloway technique; I counted how many times my right foot landed. I tried to increase the right-foot landing count on each one minute run.

I finished the 5K in 36 minutes and change: a full two minutes plus a few seconds better than my last 5K time.

I am lucky. I know it. I am not fast. Never was. I am gaining strength. I have new goals. I am a finisher.

The Rock 'N Roll 1/2

Anyone who has set a stretch goal and then met the stretch goal knows this process:
• I can’t.
• Maybe I can.
• Yes, I can.
• I did it.

The Pat Tillman race was an adventure. Training for, entering, and finishing the P.F. Chang’s Arizona Rock ‘N Roll ½ Marathon was one part Quixotic and one part renewal.

I was in my doctor’s office last week for an annual physical, and we were talking about the race—I took my bib number for the race in to show him—and he asked how many people with significant arthritis finished the race? I told him that I didn’t know there were thousands of people on the streets. Then he said to me, “I know that you don’t consider yourself disabled, but there are very few people in your condition who would try to do what you did. Congratulations. I am proud of you. Now, let me feel your prostate.”

The Pat Tillman saga, described in another entry, led to an e-mail from a longtime friend who challenged me to the ½ marathon to be held in January 2010. He told me that if I trained, he’d come to AZ to run it with me. It was around Memorial Day that I took the challenge and began training.

I’ve counted Chris LaReau among my closest friends the better part of 5 decades. His story is a good one, best told by him. He’s run 5 marathons, 2 in France, one that wound its way through French vineyards and had rest stops at Chateaus where wine was dispensed and race participants danced to the music provided. Sounds civilized, right?

Anyway, Chris’ marathon stories are terrific. He and his sister, Valerie a marathoner in her own right who’s qualified for and finished the Boston Marathon, used the Jeff Galloway Run-Walk-Run method to train for, compete in, and finish marathons. Their stories of training in the dead of a Michigan winter beg retelling. Courage, dedication, and strength of character are run thick in the LaReau Family tree. Chris’ and Valerie’s parents are two of most genuine folks walking the planet.

The Galloway Method allows people like me, those who’ve tossed in the towel , to get off their kiesters, put one foot in front of the other, and get out the door. I took Chris’s challenge, bought Galloway’s book “Half-Marathon: You Can Do It,” and created the training schedule outlined in the book. It was Memorial Day. A full six months until the Rock ‘N Roll ½ marathon.

Galloway lays out a plan for people to gradually build distance over time. He teaches runners how to build endurance and to go farther and farther without hurting themselves. It was the perfect system for me. It would be crushing to begin training only to find that my body wouldn’t support the work or distance. I didn’t need that as an outcome. Galloway tells beginners to be careful. Find a pace that is comfortable for them, and so, armed with this advice, I began a slow, steady climb through the distances.

By football season I was into the nine mile range. Around Halloween, I did 10-miles. From Thanksgiving through New Years I was out doing run-walk-run training sessions for 12, 13, and 14 miles. Sunday mornings would find me out before dawn doing the 3 to 3.5 hour training sessions required for that week. I designed my training course so that I would be running east as the sun rose over the McDowell Mountains. Each Sunday there were two dawns: one actual and one metaphoric—a new day for Scottsdale and the dawning of much good stuff for me.

I can’t generalize about why most people run. The literature is full of theories. Everyone knows about endorphins and all that, but my favorites are the stories that running fires the deep corners of our molecular and evolution biology where running is tied to our very existence. I do know this, after not running for decades, running stokes something deep within that smoothes the bumps life’s loopy, lumpy road. In many ways, I have cashed a lottery ticket.

Chris lives in Savannah, GA with his lovely wife Catja. They flew into Phoenix on the Friday before the race. We would be joined on race day Mary Jo, a golfing buddy, who’s run before but never the ½ marathon distance. MJ wanted to experience and conquer the challenge, too.

We spent the weekend with Chris and Catja, having dinners, laughing, going to the pre-race expo, laughing, riding the new light-rail mass transit system, and laughing some more. Time stood still. Old friends being old friends together.

I was confident in my training, but as clocked ticked closer to the appointed hour, doubts crept closer, too. Dark voices from deep inside started spitting flames of doubt: “Who are you to think you can do this? You’ll quit. You don’t have the strength. You’re body can’t handle it.” Perhaps the most insidious were lines like: “Nobody will mind if you don’t do it. You have a million excuses. Make a good show and melt into shadows.” Then I reminded myself to shut up. I had trained. I was confident that I could conquer the distance. The Galloway System’s slow, steady climb through the distance was my shield. I knew I could cover the distance. It worked. Chalk up another victory.

The morning of the race broke crisp with broken clouds. Perfect running weather everyone said. And, after a few transportation hiccups, we found our place at the start of the race. Runners are divided into corrals by best guess of their finishing times. We’d all guessed 3:00 hours and so we were put in Corral 19. It took us approximately 30 minutes from the starting gun to make the starting line. Music blared, this was, after all, the Rock ‘N Roll Marathon, and when Kiss’s “Rock and Roll All Night” hit the speakers, everyone sang along. What irony! We sang even though everyone knew that the party was 13.1 miles in the distance.

Chris took over once the race started. Since we had three rookies and one veteran marathoner we agreed on a one-minute run and one-minute walk pace. This pace would get us through the race in about 3 hours. Chris watched his watch and called out the run walk sequence to our group of four. He navigated us through the maze of runners and walkers. He sang. He shouted encouragement to everyone who’d listen. He was loving every second of it.

The back of marathon is an interesting place. Those runners built for endurance and speed were well ahead. The back of the race is composed to people of all shapes, sizes, ages, genders, and ability. There is no archetypal back of the race runner. The back of the race is about community not competition.

There’s a significant difference between training for distance and being in the race. I trained by myself. I had a stopwatch and a pedometer. I knew I had trained for the distance, but what I hadn’t done well enough was make sure that my pace at the end of the race was somewhere close to my pace at the beginning of the race. For me, the race feel into three parts: part one: An easy gait and a light step; part two: tightening thighs and a gentle alarm that miles aren’t passing as quickly as I hoped they would; and, part 3: the grueling home stretch where doubt devils carpet bombed me between the ears.

Chris managed us through the race like a master. He knew what was going to happen to us as we wound our way through fellow runners. He knew that we’d be ambushed by our bodies. He knew that soon enough we go from being cavalier about the distance to long distance grinder determined to finish. He expertly led us into the marathon’s maw knowing that while each of us would follow it would take individual guts and determination to finish.

I am still confident that I would have finished without Chris’ expert guidance, but the experience would not have been as genuine or as rich had I gone it alone. Honestly, by mile 12 I had fallen a hundred yards, or so, behind my friends. The others waited for me to have our picture taken at Mile 12. We stopped again at Mile 13 for another picture. We were gassed at Mile 12 and did our best to run keep our last mile and to be running when we crossed the finish line.


Chris and I ran together toward the finish line, and, as we approached, he grabbed my hand and we crossed the finish line together holding hands. That summed the whole experience. He knew what it meant for me. That’s the kind of man Chris is. He always has been that kind of guy and always will be. I will never forget it. “That’s one you cross off the Bucket List,” he said as we gathered our balance, our wits, and our breath in the finishing area. Then it was off to get our medals and a cold beer.

Forgot to mention. We finished in 3:14. Not bad considering we stopped for pictures and a couple of visits to the port o johns.

Rock On!

Day dawned a bright, dry 80 degrees. The staging area was at a nice picnic area at the base of South Mountain. I don’t' know what the f*ck I was thinking, but I was a bit surprised when I saw that the road, which was the course, wound its way up the damn mountain.

I made my way to the back to be with others who'd likely be about my pace. There were about 600 or so runners, and I let most of them pass before I started moving for the front. My chip beeped when I crossed the timing line; I was off.

I had a little trouble finding my pace running with the pack. The steady sound of feet set the beat and I tried to follow. Soon enough, the pack was strung out as the ascent began. I forgot to bring a personal timing device, so I let my wind be the judge of run and rest breaks. I was a little disappointed at how quickly I started to huff and puff, but then I haven't run uphill like I was today. Soon I found a pace and a small pack who were close to the same pace.

The elite runners had covered 2/3 of the course by the time my pack was completing the first 1/3. From then on it was a steady two-way stream of traffic until my pack finally made it up the mountain to the water station. We rounded the turn and headed back down much to everyone's relief. Ii was at this point, when started heading back down the course, that I started enjoying the vistas, the landscape, and the mountains. On the way up, I was fixated on the ascent focusing on not much more than the backsides of the group that was in front of me.

Going downhill was better from an effort standpoint but required enough control to keep from careening off into desert or into people in front of me. As we were running down the course, a few of the elites were going for a second lap and they yelled encouragement to us as we worked our way down the hill. Work being the operative word here; the elites are fine-tuned machines. My pack was working on guts and determination.

I came to the finish line as the clock turned 40:00. I know I didn't start at 0:00, so I don't know my exact time, but, to my surprise, I was close to my 12:00/mile pace because I felt like I was going much slower. I'll chalk my perception up to a good, difficult for me course, the excitement of running with other bodies, and the fact that my body just must like the 12:00/mile pace.

I really liked the experience. For me, the race was well organized, friendly, and another challenge met.

What's not to like?

Race Post-Mortem

Here's my official time.


38:58 for 5K makes for a 12:31/mile pace. Gotta start somewhere. I am proud of the opportunity. The value of grasping opportunity and rising from the bottom isn't safe in a time when big government wants to mandate outcomes. That has to be a bummer for those who run 2.5x faster than me. Poor bastards.