Saturday’s have always been a day of cooking down the fat. As a young guru I worked at a meat processing plant and my weekly chore was to render lard. I would climb a step ladder and dump 5-6 fifty pound tubs of pork fat into a 400 gallon cast iron, natural gas fired cauldron. The next several hours were spent constantly stirring the fat as it melted and then finally skimming the “cracklins” out and squeezing the last drops via a hand operated wooden press. The clean up was the worst part, all told it was an 8 hour job. There’s no wonder I’ve been called a pot stirrer every since then.
Saturdays remain a day to cook the fat. Long runs are a staple of any distance runner’s regimen and are usually conducted on Saturday. The gentle aerobic pace of long slow distance teaches the body to more efficiently use up our fat stores for energy. For the last several years I have hosted Saturday morning long runs from my house, most of the time followed by breakfast prepared by my two angelic daughters, who are as capable in la cocina as their proud papa. This post run breakfast not only serves to re-fuel, but to build camaraderie as well. Those that eat well together compete well together.
As we kick off this year’s marathon training programs I’ve expanded the Team Nebraska tradition to include our Omaha Endurance Group. If my West Bay Woods neighbors were a little alarmed in previous years it should be a hoot to see their faces peering out over their coffee at 20+ gaunt, chilly, early morning risers stoking the fires of fat burning endurance.
We’ll leave from my house at 8:00 tomorrow morning to tour the Scenic Sarpy Douglas County hills, one of my favorite routes of all. Distances and paces varying according to ability, Everyone Welcome. Breakfast won’t be served until I get a good feel of what the turnout will be like but the camaraderie and sweat will be in abundance.
As a favor to Brian Wandzilak’s request:
“With the upcoming trials I was hoping you could do a post on the time standards for the trials. With your personal knowledge of this process, I’d be curious to your thoughts. I am wondering why not keep the standards a bit slower and allow more people in? Won’t the top dogs still be motivated to train hard to qualify? I understand the argument of raising the bar, but isn’t it better for the sport to give more competitors, their family, friends, hometown folk a reason to watch. Thanks man.”
My response: It is true that during my 7 year tenure as the Women’s Long Distance Running Championships Chair I was a strong advocate for constantly raising the bar for the Olympic Trials qualifying standard. When I took the reigns of the Champs the standard was 2:50:00. (As I left in 2009 I was advocating for 2:45:00 as the B standard and 2:35:00 for the A standard). The 2:50:00 did allow for several hundred qualifiers from around the country and to some degree did engender some recognition of local athletes that had hit the mark. You must also understand though that the 2000 Olympic Games were the absolute nadir of American distance running. Only Rod DeHaven and Christine Clark had qualified for the USA Olympic Games Marathon in Sydney, Australia. One result was the genesis of the USATF Elite Developmet Club program. Another was the growth of the Athlete Development Program. My work with both of those programs is well documented and indicative of the direction I, and others, thought we need be going. But it wasn’t any single person or administrator’s motives that led to the tightening of the standards. In our WLDR general session at the 2002 USATF Annual Meeting in Kansas City the question was put to the female athletes in attendance (back in those days the meeting would consist of 100-150 involved women from around the U.S.). To a person they supported the notion that training would rise to any level the bar was raised. They acknowledged that the purpose of the Trials was to select the Very Best American Marathoners. And they realized that by making the qualifying more difficult, that pool of the “very best” would grow in number. And that the Real Point of the Olympic Trials was to select athletes that would be Competitive For Olympic Medals. To be able to compete with the best in the world.
2004 Olympic Games: Deena Kastor, 2:27:20, Bronze Medal. Meb Keflezighi, 2:11:29, Silver Medal.
I’ve never been one to shy away from stirring the pot or throwing some fat onto the fire. Cracklins are the remains of rendered, squeezed pork skin and are delicious too!
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