The All American

The state of Kansas has a history of producing some quality milers and distance runners. Fans of the sport know the likes of Glenn Cunningham, Wes Santee, and Jim Ryun. Hardcore fans will know John Lawson, Randy Smith, and Christian Smith. Occasionally one of these distance running gems will escape the clutches of Kansas, Kansas State or Wichita State like Steve Fein who went to Wisconsin before heading to Oregon or Dwight Davis who landed at Tulsa.

Then there are the kids who saw talent and potential in high school but lack the credentials to go to a Division One school. I saw one such youngster run a couple of times his senior year at Free State High School. One race in particular I remember watching Mujahid Hassaballa run was four years ago at the 6A cross country regional. He chased Tim Testa from Junction City for most of the race but came up short.

Hassaballa is originally from the Sudan. He came with his parents to the United States in 1999. While he was a very good high school runner, Mujahid was never a champion. I don't think he ever broke 4:25 for the high school mile.

Like a lot of good Kansas high school distance runners that the big schools turn there nose up at Hassaballa ended up at Pittsburg State. The Gorillas are better known as a Division 2 football factory but more than a few quality track and field athletes have landed at the school located in the southeast corner of Kansas. Turns out Mujahid is one of them garnering All-American honors this spring in track. He ran the metric equivalent of a 4:07 mile. That's a pretty darn good time... and it makes him a runner that both Kansas and Kansas State would be more than happy to have on their team.

Its athletes like Hassaballa that may speak to why Kansas fired its distance coach. Doug Clark was first rate at turning very good runners into great runners. But he was having a heck of a time recruiting kids like Muhahid Hassaballa to KU. The Jayhawks have always had a problem recruiting in state with a few notable exceptions. Here's hoping that the new coach doesn't let kids like Hassaballa slip away.

11 miles and many, many years ago

It's a run that has always stayed with me. It's a run I will never forget. I had just gotten the boot from the K.U. cross country team. For reasons I can't recall I made the trek over the hill from Memorial Stadium where Coach Bob Timmons had just delivered the bad news to Lawrence High School where I had graduated just four months before.

I found my young acquaintance Jon Blubaugh aching to go for a long run. Though he was just a freshman in high school, I knew him by reputation as an up and coming 800 meter runner. That run would cement a lifelong friendship. One other older guy joined us that day. He was the new Lawrence High basketball coach. His name was Bob Frederick.

We went 11 miles that day sharing stories and enjoying each others company. I can still remember Coach Frederick's shock near the end of the run to my confession of occasional marijuana use. It drew a pretty shock rebuke. For some reason I was offended my his words but instead thought that here was a serious, upright, kind of guy.

What's sad now is that both Bob and Jon are dead. Jon was a state champion, an outstanding student leader at Kansas, who drowned in a hot tub after a night of serious partying in 1988. He wasn't even 30 years old. It's a death that took me years to get over. Jon and I shared many incredible runs and adventures together.

Bob Frederick's life went on an incredible arch. I covered his first year as the hoops coach at LHS doing the games on radio. It was an undersized team that overachieved. Coach was on a career path to overachieve eventually becoming the athletic director at Kansas and was directly responsible for the complete restoration of Kansas basketball to national glory when he hired Roy Williams.

I'd see Bob running from time to time or at the Kansas Relays where we would exchange pleasantries. Injuries finally left Bob to just one athletic outlet, cycling. Unfortunately he had a habit of getting into some bad wrecks. One last Thursday on the streets of Lawrence took his life.

I still miss my friend Jon and the community at the University of Kansas will miss Dr. Bob Frederick.

Neil Young overload

I was like a kid on Christmas morning a couple of days ago. A big box arrived and within it was a long promised treasure. Since the early 1990's my favorite performer Neil Young had promised to begin releasing his archives. Young has dozens if not hundreds of unreleased treasures that serious fans trade amongst themselves. The only other artist that compares in terms of the quality and volume of unreleased jewels is the master himself, Bob Dylan.
So the first of five promised boxed sets arrived on my doorstep. It's overwhelming. There's a book, ten discs, and a download card. The set covers the years from 1963 to 1971. This bounty comes with a catch. It's on Blu Ray. I don't even own a Blu Ray player.

There is method to my madness. Sure I could have bought it on traditional DVD or CD but the Blu Ray boxed set comes with the aforementioned download card. This will allow me to download all of the material onto my PC and I can make my own CD's or put them on my mp3 player. The other wonderful thing about Blu Ray is it's upgradeable. Neil has promised that when he finds material that belongs to that archive set, you'll be able to download it to your collection. In fact he's already got the first download ready to go. Now how cool is that?

The set is a game changer. Other artists with vast catalogs looking to cash in on the buying habits of their loyal fans are going to have to take a serious look at what Neil has put together. The collection includes files full of personal photos, video clips, and in the instance of this set, a complete movie that he filmed back in 1971.

I plan to start downloading the music this weekend. The Blu Ray player will have to wait. In fact, I may buy a PS3 which is even better because then I can play games, but don't tell the Czarina!

The Rematch

The trash talking started innocently enough in our hotel room on Sunday night. My son-in-law and I debated whether I could beat him at a longer distance. The week before he had destroyed me at 5K. The Czarina interjected herself claiming she could take both of us. It didn't take long before we were on Google earth sizing up a suitable race course at an abandoned car race track in Riga.
But before we could race it was off to Jurmala, a resort town on the Baltic Sea, renowned for its spas. Much to my displeasure we were going to spend a night there in celebration of birthday for one of the Czarina's friends. That meant non-stop Russian for the next 24 hours. I was tired, road weary, and ready to return to the U.S.A.
I believe for the Czarina, it was a chance to share with me a part of her life that she remembered with a lot of fondness. Each summer she would spend a month at a small dacha with her friends having what amounted to one big party. Unfortunately I wasn't in a party mood.
I managed to be on my best behavior around her friends. But I was quite boorish in private. It didn't help that dinner had taken about three hours to be served and consumed. I had simply run out of steam which is ironic because we spent Tuesday morning in and out of various steam rooms, salt baths, etc;.
I was in better spirits Tuesday afternoon. We landed in our last hotel, a beautiful spot right next to the U.S. embassy. It was time to get ready for the challenge of a match race, approximately seven miles around an old grand prix track.The race went down at 5 p.m. The son-in-law, the Czarina, and myself would circle the mostly shaded course which offered a couple of small climbs five times. Lap one went about as I expected, the son-in-law was 100 yards in front of me a half mile into the run with the wife in between. It wasn't long before he was out of sight.Somewhere around two miles I moved past the Czarina. About a half mile later I finally caught sight again of the son-in-law. Slowly, methodically, I began to cut down the distance between us. Just after lap three, about four miles into the race, I caught him. I could hear him fighting to stay on my tail and that only made me dig deeper to put him away. The sound of footsteps disappeared before the end of four laps.Then something strange happened. Just about a mile from the finish I started thinking about the little Princess. She was on hand with her mother rooting on the son-in-law. I thought she might be disappointed if daddy didn't win. The thought went away but resurfaced with about a quarter of a mile ago. I looked back and saw the son-in-law a good 150 yards behind me and stopped. I waited for him to catch me and when he did I said Masha should see her daddy win. He sprinted away with a 100 yards to go. I felt pretty good about it.
The Czarina on the other hand got pretty mad. She wanted me to win I guess. The son-in-law understood and appreciated the gesture. I had run pretty good, made my point, and best of all, I was leaving Riga for home in less than 12 hours.

Riga Redux

An early morning ride with Andrei Firtich deposited me at Pulkovo terminal at St. Petersburg's airport. Pulkovo has to be the ugliest terminal in the world. It offers up a cold, gray, exterior. Across the tarmac sits a sparkling new terminal but it's for domestic flights.

Going through security produces something of a knot. In Russia you need a visa to get in. When you arrive you fill out a confusing card that goes into your passport. Plus, I needed proof that I had stayed in a hotel, which I didn't. Nevertheless, I had all of the proper papers and got on the plane headed back to Riga.

The Czarina, the stepdaughter and the little Princess were all there to greet me and it was off to our second hotel of the Riga leg of the trip. We stayed in an massive old mansion that the Communist had taken and used as a composer's building. Now it was a very European hotel and we enjoyed a massive suite for only 85 dollars a night!
The little Princess enjoyed jumping on the bed and running around the room making sure to stay just out of arms reach of Grandpa.
The Czarina had promised that this would be a day of rest in an email earlier in the week but she changed the plan. We were off to her college for a massive reunion, just for a half hour I was told. It was a transportation school that covered all phases of travel. It was a big crowd, well over two thousand.
It was a regular hen fest with a lot of her good friends in attendance including a couple from the United States that I had met three years before. The husband came up to me and spoke to me briefly but he was anxious to hang with his buds and just as quickly slipped away.
The half hour quickly turned into 90 minutes including a sweltering hour in a packed hall. A group of notables including an old Cosmonaut dressed to the hilt in his military uniform adorned with tons of medals talked our ears off. Of course every word in Russian.
I finally got a reprieve from the Czarina and we headed out to a taxi because she planned to stay behind for the party. The cab driver had this insane look about him and when it quickly became clear that he had no clue as to where my wife wanted me deposited I bolted out of the cab and made way for the tram.

That was a trip in and of itself with me almost falling on my ass when the tram took off with a jolt. By the time enough old ladies had exited I sat down next to one Bobka who looked me over and started speaking to me in Russian. I said "American" and she said "Thought so!" We both chuckled.The wife made it back to the hotel after a mere three hours later. Riga was beginning to wear thin. It was now Saturday and I had wanted to return on Monday, Memorial Day, but the Czarina had other plans. The ante on this Russian fun fest was about to go up.

St. Petersburg Redux

January 2008 offered a once in a lifetime opportunity when the U.S. State Department invited me to speak to college students and a group of smaller market Russian television journalists about American TV news.
It marked my first trip overseas and I landed across the street from one of the great treasure tr oves in the world, The Hermitage.
I spent a week in this beautiful city visiting museums and churches, all in the dead of winter.

It was something of a wake up for this resident of Southwest Florida but I was spared any truly brutal weather.Besides the college sit downs I visited one of the local channels TV 100 and toured the home of the Russian national channel. The contrast was striking. TV 100 was spartan but very modern. The national channel was Stalinesque with a face life here and there.Ironically my wife was visiting her family in Riga at the same time and couldn't join me in a city she had visited as a teenager. Fast forward to February 2009 and not more than a week after booking our first trip together to Riga, the State Department came calling again wondering if I might be interested in sitting down with TV 100 (www.tv100.ru) this May to do a little story telling workshop. My trip to Riga and their worked out perfectly.
I even made a return visit to the college to meet with students just beginning their studies in journalism. That event was a huge success.Now here's the truly interesting part. The plan called for Andrei Firtich to pick me up at the St. Petersburg airport. That happens to be my stepson's name. And I was going to stay at Tatyana Firtich's apartment. That was my wife's name prior to our marriage.

Now before you assume that Firtich is a common Russian name think again. It's quite rare. As it turns out the St. Petersburg Tatyana and Andrei are related to my wife and stepson. My wife's late husband Boris had a half brother. One he never met. That's a long story not worth going into. The half brother Georgy Firtich is a relatively well known Russian composer.

Gregori has long since divorced his Tatyana. He has no interest in his American/Riga branch of the family. The same cannot be said of his ex-wife and his son. Tatyana and Andrei were both excited to hear about their relatives. It was wonderful return to a fabulous city. It was a shame my wife did not join me.

The rest of the trip went just as well. Unfortunately I forgot my camera and my friends at the State Department haven't seen fit to email me their pictures. This time instead of staying in a five star hotel I called a small Soviet era apartment home. It was on Basil Island, about two miles from the heart of the old city. I learned to negotiate the St. Petersburg Metro thanks to my new friend from TV 100, Evgeny.

The trip went so well that my contact at the U.S. Consulate wants a follow up visit sometime in the near future. I guess it's time to make an effort at learning to speak Russian!

Running Riga

For the Czarina, it was a dream come true, returning to her home to run a marathon. I'm sure growing up she never envisioned that she would run 26.2 miles in the beautiful city that she used to call home. Nordea Bank had taken over sponsorship for the race and even offered some decent prize money which attracted some top level talent the last three years.

The race also featured a half marathon, which I had planned to run until a leg injury had curtailed my training. Marathon fever had also infect the Czarina's daughter and her hubby. Since the arrival of the little Princess a little over two years ago, both parents had packed on some pounds. So they trained for the 5K fun run which I decided was safe to run. A little side wager with the son-in-law of 10 Lats (20 Dollars) only added to the fun.The only negative is that the organizers did a horrible job of controlling the start line. Five thousand participants were on hand for the 5K and at least a couple of hundred costumed buffoons were up front. I wiggled my way up to within 20 feet of the start line, positioned just below the city's historic Old Town along the Daugava River. My nemesis was a good hundred yards behind stuck in the masses.The gun went off and I felt pretty good as did the leg. But just before the mile mark the son-in-law went striding by. I tried to keep pace but to no avail. He steadily pulled away hammering me by almost a full minute. The son-in-law was 190th out of the 5,000 plus runners, I came in at 296. The course was nearly two-tenths longer than a true 5K.
It wasn't long before the step-daughter made it in happy that her ordeal was over.
The little Princess was happy that both parents were back.The marathon started some 15 minutes after our race with perfect temperatures and overcast skies. We waited for the Czarina and she came by looking full of run, moving easily. The goal was to break four hours. I went back to the hotel to clean up and went back out to the course just a couple of blocks away. The race wound through the heart of the city taking two loops. I saw her again at about 18 miles. She looked tired and was in desperate need of a pit stop. Unfortunately the port-a-potties were occupied by spectators so she lost a couple of minutes before departing again.

We waited near the finish... and waited... and waited. Finally the Czarina appeared... looking worse for the wear. But she managed a smile and motored through the final mile.The time was about 4:20. The lack of water stations and stomach problems had done her in. It was that free breakfast at the hotel she would later claim. I think it was all the walking around the Old Town the day before. I had told her she needed to rest. In the end it wasn't nearly as catastrophic as we had feared. The Czarina had captured her age group title which helped make up for a disappointing time.But there was no rest for the weary runners. I had a plane to catch to St. Petersburg, Russia.