The Comeback Kids

The U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials got underway tonight promising an incredible 10 days of action.  The two 10K finals marked a milestone in Kansas City area distance running history.  Matt Tegenkamp and Amy Hastings both attended high school in the metro area.  Both were on the outside looking in coming into these trials.

Tegenkamp has been one of the best 5K runners ever following a great career at Lee's Summit High School and Wisconsin.  A former Olympian, he had become something of an afterthought despite running a very good 10K debut last spring at Stanford. 

Tegenkamp kept his eye on Galen Rupp and Dathan Ritzenheim throughout tonight's final.  When those two began to push the pace Tegenkamp smartly latched on the ride for the last 3000 meters and finished second securing a trip to London.

The bigger surprise came from Amy Hastings.  The Leavenworth High grad who attended Arizona State had finished a heart-breaking fourth at the marathon Olympic Trials in Houston back in January.  She had only one option and that was to try and land a spot on the team at 10000 meters. 

Hastings started pushing the pace after 5000 meters.  Not known as a great kicker she dug deep as first Shalane Flanagan, an Olympic bronze medalist, and then NCAA Champion Natosha Rogers rolled by her on the back stretch of the final lap.

You could see Hastings eyes squeezed tight in determination.  She had a spot secured having run the Olympic qualifying standard earlier in the year.  But she dug deep and raced around the home stretch to an amazing victory over Rogers and the USA's greatest medal hope in the marathon, Shalane Flanagan.  For Hastings the win was redemption for a lot of hard work and a lot of races were she was just this close.  Here's to Amy Hastings, Olympian!

Fargo

I called Fargo, North Dakota home for three years.  It was the best of times and the worst of times.  I'll start with the bad.  Moving to Fargo was the wrong thing to do to my new family.    Hindsight being 50/50 it would have been better for the boy and the Czarina to stay in Kansas City.  The move was especially hard on the boy.

Then there's the weather.  The winter's are long and brutal.  Unless you love snowmobiling or ice fishing it's not the best place to call home.

Fargo is very isolated.  The people there are good, friendly Midwestern folks but unless you're from there, grew up there, they keep you at arms length.  We never felt part of the community, but then again, part of that fault lies with us.

The good far outweighs the bad.  There is no crime.  There is no traffic.  The economy was the best in the country and that's before the oil boom of the last two years that has fired North Dakota's economy up beyond belief.

I went to work for a small group of station's owned by Sandy DiPasquale.  The station had a core group of veteran managers who had worked together for a very long time.  I was the first outsider ever brought in to be a news director in Fargo.  Television news was dull, plodding and predictable.  But the quality of journalism was actually quite good.

It became pretty clear that the corporate bosses wanted me to be a rat.  They wanted dirt on the long-time general manager Charley Johnson, who was anchoring the 6 p.m. news and had been the news director a few years before.  Charley and I clashed frequently about my approach to news.  Charley was very old school.  I didn't like covering meetings and preferred looking for stories about the community and the people in it.  We managed to do a nice mix of both while become the station for live breaking news in the market.

Then just three months into the job corporate ordered a 20 percent station wide budget cut.  I fell on the sword and took one for the team.  I think corporate wasn't too happy with me for giving Charley an escape hatch on that one.  I know it hurt my attitude toward the station and I became more detached in my approach to what was going on at the station for the rest of my tenure.  But we built the numbers especially in the key demos and by the time I left at the end of 2002 the station was on a roll.

As much as the Czarina and I disliked Fargo, the good far outweighed the bad.  We enjoyed our trips to the beautiful Minnesota lakes country.  We loved opening our house up to the news staff and throwing parties.  The staff was just an amazing group led by super photographer Dave Grant, one-man band extraordinaire Mel Stone and a number of great reporter/photographers, Andrea Larsen, Carol Han, Adam Pemble, Dave Erickson and Roxana Sabieri.  And then there was the unsinkable Julie Holgate who played mother hen to us all

Thanks to a great staff of anchors, reporters and photographers we cranked out award winning journalism on a consistent basis.  We ran circles around our competitors when it came to covering breaking news live, our chief met Too Tall Tom was as good as it gets and won an Emmy to prove it.  But I was most proud of quality storytelling that we delivered on a consistent basis.  Believe me, we were pushed hard by WDAY and they kept us on our collective toes.

Had I been single I don't think I would have ever left Fargo.  But the Czarina wanted to live in a city.  She hated the isolation.  So the quest for a new job went on in earnest in 2002 and after a number of close calls the lure of the sun and the sand of Fort Myers seemed irresistible.

Sandy sold the station just before I left.  Then the station was sold again a few years ago.  The current owners Hoak are a symbol of everything that's wrong with television now.  They've managed to run off the bulk of the veteran staff that had made KVLY a great television news operation.  Charley is gone, the strong anchor team of Daron Selvig and Robin Huebner have been run off.  A lot of talented behind the scenes people have exited.  The bottom line is all that matters.  Anything that resembles journalism be damned.

G.O.A.T.

London looms in less than two months and two men could establish themselves as the greatest Olympians of all time on the track.  First the case of Usain Bolt, the Jamaican who turned the world of sprinting upside down.  Bolt owned the Beijing Olympics in 2008 with world records in the 100 and 200 meters and a took down a third with his teammates in the 4 X 100, the last of his three gold medals.

He doubled down the following year in Berlin at the 2009 World Championships with three more golds and two more world records in the 100 and 200.  Bolt showed he was human in South Korea when he false started in the 100 at the World Championships.  But he redeemed himself with a blistering 200 in Daegu along with yet another world record in the 4 X 100.

Bolt could firmly establish himself as the greatest Olympic sprinter of all time (if he hasn't already) ahead of greats like Carl Lewis and Jesse Owens by just winning either the 100 or 200 in London.  Right now he is the odds on favorite and only two of his countrymen, Yohan Blake and Asafa Powell, and two Americans, Tyson Gay and Walter Dix, appear to have any hopes of slowing down the great Jamaican.

Then there is the great Ethopian Kenesia Bekele.  Many already consider him the greatest distance runner to have ever lived.  I think one more gold medal would remove any doubt that Bekele has surpassed his countryman Haile Gebrselassie.  Bekele has 4 Olympic medals, 3 of them gold.  He owns 6 World Championship golds and 1 bronze.  A victory at 10000 meters for Bekele in London would erase any doubt about his stature as the greatest.

But Bekele has looked vulnerable this year.  He ran a well beaten 4th in Eugene this weekend at 5000 meters.  He has run only 1 quality 10000 in the last three years.  A win by Bekele would be one for the ages.  He must defeat American Galen Rupp, Britian's Mo Farah, and a 5 other great runners from Kenya and his own country to claim his 3rd gold medal at 10000 meters.  London is calling and I for one cannot wait for 2 weeks of incredible track and field.

The Painter

I'm not quite sure what this picture has to do with the topic I'm about to cover but it is a beautiful picture of the Czarina with Natasha taken a few years ago.  It came to my attention this weekend that the Czarina had never painted before.  By painting I mean grabbing a brush and a bucket of paint and covering a wall in a bathroom or living room or where ever.  I was a little surprised by this admission.

She wanted to paint to of our closets before we have them customized.  We had these cheap wire racks that kept pulling out of the walls.  A neighbor had this company do their closets so we thought, why not?  But first she wanted to paint.

The previous owner of our home kept records on everything including the exact colors of what everything is painted.  So on Sunday we made the pilgrimage to Home Depot with the color in hand to get the necessary things to make the Czarina's painting dream come true. 

Much to my surprise the consultant directed us to some brushes and advised us not to use rollers to paint the closets.  I wasn't doing the painting so I didn't care.  The Czarina plunged into the project with mixed results.  She queried me as to my painting experience and I shared that I had done some painting for pay back in the day and did some projects for my mom.  The conversation ended there.

By Monday she was frustrated by the outcome.  She hadn't mastered the technique of using a brush so the two coats looked pretty uneven.  The Czarina asked me about using a roller and I said go for it.

Tonight I got boiled like a scalded dog.  Why hadn't I recommended a roller before?  Aren't you the painting expert?  I explained that if I had suggested a roller after the advice from the Home Depot guy it would have led to an argument which I sought to avoid.  That only made her madder.  She accomplished in about a third of the time what had taken her about six hours.  She wasn't happy me.  But the closets look great!

1999

Time to return to the chronicle of my career in broadcast journalism.  I started 1999 as the Senior Executive Producer in FOX 4 in Kansas City.  It was the beginning of my 12th year at a station I had worked at on three separate occasions.  My mother had just passed away and her sister a few weeks after that.  Life was unsettled.

To start the year my Uncle Bob who had undergone surgery for lung cancer the previous June would learn in January that he had a brain tumor.  The surgery changed his life and that of his family in ways that I can't even describe.  I have written about my uncle before and he was an important figure in my life.  The crush of bad family news left me with many a sleepless night.

I had been dating here and there for the last couple of years and on Valentine Days I had arraigned an on-line meeting with a woman from Russia.  We met at a Barnes and Nobles north of the river.  I remember the bright yellow blouse she wore, the freckles and big smile.  I offered to buy her coffee.  Little did I know that we would be married four months later. 

To quote Ferris Bueller, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." My personal life was a train wreck until I met the Czarina.  I don't know why but I knew I needed her in my life.  I saw an inner strength that I lacked.  I gained a whole new family that I love dearly.

Getting married made me reassess my entire life.  Work was a mess.  I was up for a promotion that I didn't get.  The whole deal was a cluster fuck and while I'm not saying I got screwed but if I didn't then Sindy Gaona did.  I ran a tight crew at night.  We were really good at seeing the tree in the forest and turning great stories.  Our new assistant news director didn't hesitate to exploit our abilities to his own benefit and that pissed me off in no uncertain terms.

I had a choice to make.  I could go running to my news director and whine like a little bitch or try one final time to travel the news director path.  I chose the later.  Looking back I wish I had stuck it out.  I was being self-centered.  I overlooked the needs of my new family and in particular the needs of my new 16-year-old stepson.  Andrei had been whipsawed from Latvia to a new high school in Kansas City.  Then he was uprooted to a second high school for his sophomore year.  Another move would mean three high schools in three years. 

Work wise I was at the top of my game.  The right opportunity came along.  Our new GM had forced me to quit working on my graduate degree so I felt backed into a corner.  I could either quit and finish my masters or take a news directors position in Fargo, North Dakota. 

So in the space of 12 months I met a girl, married her dragged her to North Dakota.  It kind of makes me go what the fuck?  I miss WDAF everyday.  I miss Mike Lewis, Fritz Kramer, Scott DeJong, Sindy Gaona, J.W. Edwards, Randy Davis, John Holt, Phil Witt, Al Wallace, Jana Calkins, Tom SiFuentes and so many engineers and talented people that there is not enough space to tell them what they mean to me to this very day.  But in the end I needed to experience Fargo.  And those three years in the great white north mean more to me than any that I've worked in this god forsaken business.  But that's a whole nother blog.

Made to be Broken

It's what they say about records.  Sooner or later a record will fall.  This morning one that lasted 33 years fell to the feet of a senior from Shawnee Mission West.  Jonah Heng took down the 3200 record held by one of the greatest distance runners Kansas ever produced, Brent Steiner.  Heng ran 9:06.64 to win his first state championship this morning saving more than a second from Steiner's 9:08.18 set in 1979.

Steiner ran the greatest 2 mile in Kansas high school history in the summer of 1978 losing an epic battle with Louisiana's Bobby Beck at the Junior Olympics.  Steiner ran 8:46.99 to take down the state record set by Wichita East's Randy Smith at the Kansas Relays in 1971. 

Steiner seen here on the right in front of the late, great Verlyn Schmidt went on to become an All American in cross country at Kansas.  But it wasn't until he became a duathlete in the late 1980's did he make his mark.  He became the best in the U.S.A. at running and biking.

It's difficult to call him the greatest 2 miler in Kansas history because a case could be still made for Smith.  His 8:54.4 at the Relays came on a Saturday following a 4:07.8 mile the day before.  He went on to become an All American at Wichita State in the steeplechase.  Smith captured the AAU National Championship in the steeple in 1975 and was a favorite to make the Olympic team the following year.  As you can see in the picture to the right it wasn't to be.  I captured this image just moments after Smith had bombed out in the preliminaries of the steeple at the 1976 Olympic Trials in Eugene.

If you factor in the difference in distance between 3200 and 2 miles Smith's 9:08.0 to win the state championship in 1971 still stands as a superior mark to Heng's effort.  But think of the potential.  Heng could become the greatest distance runner at a school that has produced some talented runners.

Tim Davis, a mile/800 specialist, ran 4:09.9 in 1975.  Nine years later Alex Hallock ran 9:08.6 for 3200 to put his name up alongside Davis as one of the best runners to ever come out of Shawnee Mission West.  Heng has two more years to erase those marks.  Tomorrow he runs the 1600 and who knows what he could run.  But he has a teammate who bears watching.  Junior Alli Cash has already run 4:45.63 for 1600 just off the all time state best and 10:32.01 for 3200.  Heng and Cash make quite a dynamic duo for the Vikings.

Injured

What happened to this runner?  This 15 year old sprinting to the finish of a cross country meet in the fall of 1971 enjoyed fresh legs and a competitive spirit.  The spirit remains but the legs are shot.  Yet again my hamstrings have failed me, a problem I have lived with for the last 17 years.

My left hamstring started bothering me two weeks ago.  I nursed it along for a week or so then took time off.  Then I tried jogging over the weekend.  Sunday's 5 mile run was okay but I could tell trouble was brewing.  Monday I tried the eliptical trainer and last night the pain radiating down my left hip and leg was awful

I plan to rest for another week.  I know that it is the only way to get healthy.  Then when I start running again next Monday it will be short 2 or 3 mile jaunts for a week. 

I have to get healthy.  I have 2 months to get ready for the Lake Atwood 10 mile.  I shouldn't lose too much fitness by having 3 weeks of almost no activity which is what this will amount to.  What I have to do is get back to jogging so I can get some decent long runs in through the month of June to prepare for the race. 

It's all really annoying because there was nothing in my training that showed an injury was lurking.  It popped up out of nowhere like the last hamstring tweak in late December.  That one cost me most of the month of January.  It tells me one thing.  I just have to stick to pounding out the miles and avoid the temptation of speed work.