Category: Larry

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Big Golf Weekend

I’m going to try to defend my Toftrees Cup Senior Club Championship (the Toftrees Cup is our handicapped championship competition) on Saturday and Sunday. Last year I won with a net 5 under, going 68-71 for a 139, and I won by three strokes. It’s a fun time because the competition takes place from the senior tees which we ordinarily never play.

This will also be the first time in a month that I’ve tried to play 18 holes on consecutive days so I’ll be curious about how my knees will hold up. I’ve cut my rounds back to about 1 1/2 a week and its really helped. I played 18 yesterday in a practice round and my knees felt the best they have for a month. I shot an 88 for a net 72 and that’s without making a putt on the front nine so I’m optimistic that I can give my title a good defense.

I think I may pull a Tiger and leave the driver in the bag on most holes. I’ve got a 20 degree Cobra Baffler hybrid that I can hit over 200 yards and I may go with it since the course plays much shorter from the senior tees than it does the normal tees.

As a frame of reference, Our senior tees (5571 yards, rating 68.1, and slope of 129) are about the same as Old Orchard white’s (5731 yards, rating 68.7, and slope of 127). We have five sets of tees and normally I play either the white (6259, 71.4, 133) or the blue tees (6553, 72.3, 135) so you can see there will be a considerable difference from what I typically play (PS – I almost never play the black – 7062, 74.3, 138 – I’ve learned my limits 🙂 ).

I used the hybrid yesterday during my practice round and showed that there’s no par four that I can’t get inside of 150 yards with the it. There is one par five that would be reachable in two with the driver but its a slight dog leg right and it would be easy to hit a driver through the dog leg into the woods so the sensible play would be to not use it there either. That’s the 17th hole so I will keep the driver in the bag in case I come to it on Sunday and need an eagle. 🙂

As usual, I will keep all updated on my results.

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Arts Festival Roadrace Photos

Found some old Arts Festival 10 Mile Roadrace photos taken in my running days.

Here’s Randy Woolridge with my ex-wife, Denise, and I before the start of the race in July of 1983. Notice the horns on my headband. Even then I liked to attract attention to myself.

Here are shots of Randy and I as we are finishing the race. If Randy seems to be more in stride and moving a little faster than me, it’s no optical illusion. Randy got pretty serious about his running and ran in a few marathons every year including about 10 times in Boston where I often accompanied him (TO Boston that is, once we got there, he did all the running).

Here’s Randy and Dennis Gildea replacing precious bodily fluids post race. Dennis was the writer for the Pennsylvania Mirror article that I linked to in a previous post (also one of the instigators of the Phi Psi 500 Hall of Fame hoax). He is now a professor of journalism at Springfield College in Springfield MA.

Here’s a post race shot of Randy Woolridge, Heather Carmichael, Katie O’Toole, and somebody whom I don’t remember.

First a little remeniscing about Heather. When I was in my running prime, I ran in several major road races around the country. For a few years in a row, Tod Jeffers and I would golf out way down to Atlanta for the Fourth of July and then run in the famed Peachtree Road Race, the largest road race in the country. 1979 happened to be one of the years that Tod and I ran the race. The day after the race, on our way out of town Tod and I picked up the Atlanta Constitution to read all the race stories. The talk of the race was the young unknown female runner from New Zealand who had won the women’s title.

This race attracted the top runners in the country. Famed marathoner Frank Shorter won it in 1977. Mary Decker was the women’s winner in 1978. Craig Virgin and Greta Waitz each won three Peachtree titles. But the 1979 female winner was an unknown recent high school graduate from New Zealand named Heather Carmichael. It turns out that Heather was a protegy of Arthur Lydiard, a famed New Zealand coach and trainer of legendary New Zealanders like world record miler Peter Snell. Here’s a story noting how Lydiard had prepped Heather and her teammate Karen Petley, who place third, for the Peachtree. When Heather won the race, nobody knew who she was. By the time the papers came out the next day, a couple of enterprising reporters had been able to piece together some info on her including the fact that she was headed to Penn State on a track scholarship. Tod and I immediately bemoaned the fact that we hadn’t known that the day before figuring we probably could have used that to our advantage somehow.

Scene shifts to four years later. By this time, Heather is a senior at Penn State and she’s renting a room in Randy’s house (which naturally now makes her good ole buddies with Tod and me). Unfortunately, injuries had derailed her Penn State career. She was a track All American as a freshman, taking 6th in the NCAA Indoor 5000M and 5th in the NCAA Outdoor 3000M races (she still holds the Penn State 3000m record). But as a sophomore stress injuries had taken a toll on her body and she was forced to drop from serious competition. That didn’t stop her from running in fun races from time to time including this Arts Festival race which she won handily.

The other women in the picture is Katie O’Toole. Katie is a long time friend of mine. I knew her when she was a student here at Penn State in the early 70s. She is one of many who has never left town. She is the host and writer for the award winning Penn State TV show “What’s in the News”. I’m pretty sure that I’ve mentioned Katie in the blog before, probably when I was talking about my long time friend former Penn State football player and Katie’s husband, Gary Gray. Or, if not then, then when I was talking about UncleLar “nephew” Penn State soccer player and Katie and Gary’s son David Gray (Note: Elliot and Chris, because they are Facebook friends of mine, can check out David and the rest of the Gray clan – Ali, PSU grad living in San Francisco; MoMo, student at Southern Cal; John, freshman at Penn State, and Claire, junior at State College High).

Hope you all enjoyed the old photos. Now if I could only drop forty lbs and get back to that weight. 🙁

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Arts Fest Roadrace

Traditionally, local road runners celebrate the Arts Festival with a Sunday road race. The race is now a 10K event coupled with a 5K fun run but in its early days was a much more demanding 10 miler. It’s been a long long time since I ran it but it used to be one of things that I always looked forward to. Once I got past the Phi Psi 500 in April, the next running event that I looked forward to was the Arts Festival 10 Miler.

The race was actually one of the first things that really bonded Tod Jeffers and I. I’ve related to many the story of how Tod and I met before the Phi Psi 500 (I’ll save documenting that story for another day) but I’m don’t think I’ve told too many in the family about our Arts Festival races.

The very first Arts Fest race was held in 1976 and was a large 10 mile loop that started and finished on campus. When I showed up at the start of the race in 77, Tod was the honorary celebrity starter for the event. When Tod saw me warming up before the start, he ran over and said “Are you actually running in this thing?” When I responded affirmatively, he said “Well if you can do it, I can too.” He then added that as soon as he started the race he was going to rush home, change his shoes and meet me out on the course.

Sure enough, about 15 minutes into the race, Tod pulls up behind me in his car, parks it and jumps out. In those days, Tod didn’t have a pair of real running shoes but he changed into a pair of “sneakers”. At this point we were two miles into the race and far enough out of town that he could just leave his car parked on the side of the road. That left eight miles to go – and if you aren’t a regular runner eight miles isn’t an easy thing to pull off.

I slowed down a little in order to not stress Tod too much and things went well – for a while. After about another 4-5 miles, Tod was in noticeable pain. When I asked if he was OK, he said he was having trouble with his legs rubbing together and chaffing. I told him that was typical and that I and many runners put vaseline on our legs to avoid that. That immediately started Tod thinking.

At the time, the race course ran through a little small town just outside of State College called Houserville. Many of the Houserville residents were outside on their front lawns supporting the runners as they ran by. Tod spotted this old couple sitting on their lawn chairs right outside their front doors and turns to me and says “wait here a second”. Tod ran up to the couple and politely asked if they had any vaseline available. The old man pulled himself out of his chair, disappeared into his house for a minute and reappeared with a BIG jar of KY Jelly. Tod dipped his hand into it, slapped it on his thighs and rejoined me (I had been jogging in little circles in front of the house waiting for him). He remarked to me “I took one look at the couple and just knew that they had a bunch of petroleum jelly around”.

The jelly worked wonders and Tod bounded forward with newfound energy. That newfound energy lasted about a mile or so and then he started dragging again. I will give him credit though. He did manage to gut it out and finish the race though but he was really hurting. He actually missed work the next morning for the first time in over 10 years when he was so sore that he couldn’t even get out of bed.

That experience did turn Tod into a more serious runner though. From then on he started training a little more seriously and he and I would run the Arts Festival 10 Miler every year.

That leads to another Arts Fest story. While Tod and I would run every year we weren’t very serious about it. We would always show up at the start of the race with a cooler of beer and hydrate with a beer before the start (Tod and I subscribed to the George Sheehan theory of beer being the perfect replenishment fluid for runners). After a couple of years of the 10 mile loop, the course was changed to two laps around a five mile loop. That worked perfectly for Tod and I because we could now stop at our beer cooler after 5 miles and down another beer before continuing.

In those days the race was dominated by a former Penn State runner, Greg Fredericks who was a two time Olympian. Greg would run away with the race every year and used to have to find new ways to motivate himself. One year, Tod and I, as would be our norm, completed the first five mile loop right around our standard 43-45 minutes. We stopped, had a quick beer, chatted with our girlfriends and took off for the second lap, leaving sometime around the 46-47 minute mark. By the time we finished it was sometime a little after the 90 minute mark.

When we asked who had won the race, we were told that Fredericks won in a runaway as usual but that he wasn’t happy with his finish. The first thing that he asked as he crossed the finish line was “Where’s Fall and Jeffers?” When told that we had just left, he responded “Damn, I wanted to lap them”. Greg’s fastest time for the 10 mile race was 47:37 but this year he was a couple of minutes off that pace.

Here is a report on the race the year that Greg Fredericks set his personal record time. The article is by another friend of mine Dennis Gildea who some in the family may remember from my wedding. He’s the guy who wrote the story “Mr Fall of Fame” and was one of the instigators of the Phi Psi 500 Hall of Fame hoax pulled on me (second generation Fall Family members will have to wait for another time for me to detail that incident). Dennis sums up how we all approached road running in those days when he ends his article with this quote

Quite a bit more can (and will) be said about this race, but it will not be in today’s sheet by your Mirrow track scribe. Your Mirrow scribe finished 102nd in 69:10 and then got on the business side of several Tuburg Golds to replace the precious bodily fluids that seeped out of him over the 10 miles.

My running days are far behind me now. Given the current condition of my knees I will be ecstatic if I ever reach a point where I can just walk eighteen holes of golf again. Nevertheless it was fun reminiscing about the old days.

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Getting old sucks – Part II

Had my MRI on my knee this week and it looks like I’ll be having knee surgery just as I had expected. The good news is that it will just be a scope job. It will be handled as outpatient surgery and should be minor enough that I won’t even need crutches. Recovery should be short enough that I’ll only miss a week to 10 days of golf.

The bad news is that there were definite signs of arthritis in my knees. I think I’m actually going to have to get serious about losing some weight to take some strain off my knees. And Lisa, any suggestions on where I should go to learn more about arthritis? Thanks, in advance.

I’ll be having the surgery sometime in the next couple of weeks. I’ll find out exactly when on Monday and will let all know.

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Getting old sucks

I’m probably starting to sound like a hypochondriac but once again my body is sending me messages. Right now it’s my knees that are bothering me.

Some of you may remember when I broke my left kneecap back in 1967. They wired my kneecap back together and I had to stay in a cast for about 7-8 weeks but things healed up fairly well – or so I thought. They certainly healed up well enough for Uncle Sam to draft my ass – but that’s another story for another time.

One residual effect of the injury though was that I always had problems with my left knee becoming painful if I had to sit in one position for an extended period usually a couple of hours. Because of that, whenever I would go to the movies I would always seek out an aisle seat where I could stick my left leg out into the aisle to stretch it.

Another residual effect was a cracking sound in my knee. I learned that the cracking sound is called Crepitus. Interestingly, Crepitus is also the name for the Roman god of flatulence (those crazy Romans had gods for everything) but I think that’s a story for another time too.

About five years ago, I slightly injured my knee, the same left one, playing in a field hockey game (don’t ask – it seemed like a good idea at the time – besides, that’s another story for another time). This time I think I tore my MCL (I never did go to the doctor, just self diagnosed via the internet and then self treated – treatment for MCL injuries is pretty much rest). The MCL never really recovered from that and was sometimes be a bit tender.

The knee problems were really only slightly bothersome. They never really prevented me from doing anything (well almost – they did prevent me from playing field hockey again but that might be a good thing) so I wasn’t too worried about them.

That began to change a couple of months ago. The knee problems started to escalate. Rather than be occassionally sore, the MCL seemed to be constantly sore. Plus I would only have to remain in a sitting position for a few minutes and the knee pain would start. Minor trips, like just stubbing my toe, would cause a shooting pain in my knee. I started having constant left knee pain while lying down and finding a position comfortable enough to sleep became a problem. After minor exercise, like playing golf, both knees would tighten up and walking down stairs would be an effort – I’d look like an 80 year old man.

This time my internet research had me convinced that I had arthritis. Just typing in “knee pain” in Google takes you to this post at the top of the list. When you click on the arthritis link, you are presented with a series of Q and A’s with this one being most prominent.

Who develops knee arthritis?
Knee arthritis typically affects patients over 50 years of age. It is more common in patients who are overweight, and weight loss tends to reduce the symptoms associated with knee arthritis. There is also a genetic predisposition of this condition, meaning knee arthritis tends to run in families. Other factors that can contribute to developing knee arthritis include trauma to the knee, meniscus tears or ligament damage, and fractures to the bone around the joint.

Let’s see: I’m over 50. I’m overweight. I’ve had ligament damage. My kneecap was fractured. I seemed like an ideal candidate.

I was all ready to rush off to Lisa to get her advice when I deciced I’d better go see a doctor first. I had my first appointment last week.

First, the good news. The xrays showed that I still have substantial cartilage in my knees and I’m not even close to getting to a bone on bone situation. Plus, while there were slight signs of prearthric conditions in my knees, my personal diagnosis of arthritis appeared to be incorrect.

Now, the bad news. My kneecap did not heal corrently from my surgery 40 years ago. The two halves of the kneecap did not align perfectly when they fused together so I have a well defined ridge along the fracture line. That ridge is what causes the Crepitus (at least, it’s what causes the knee Crepitus). That, in and of itself, is not necessarily a problem. The concern is what has that ridge done to the cartilage that it constantly rubs against. Xrays can’t detect damage to soft tissues like cartilage.

I am also suffering from a hereditary condition called chondro-something (I missed the last part). Basically, I’m getting small calcium deposits in the cartilage in my knee. A couple of the calcium deposits have grown large enough that they are approaching being bone spurs. Treatment for the condition involves either injections or orthoscopic surgery depending on the extent of damage the calcium deposits have caused to my ligaments. I’ll need to have an MRI to determine how far gone the damage is and I’m scheduled for that next week.

I’ll updated when I have more info.

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DYK "Edgar Allen Poe Went to West Point"?

First a little story.

When I was somewhere around 12 years old, Grace and Jack gave me a coffee table sized book for Christmas. I can’t for the life of me remember what the book was specifically about but somewhere in it there was an article or chapter about Edgar Allen Poe. For some strange reason, while I was reading the article I found it absolutely amazing that Poe was a graduate of the US Military Academy. I felt compelled to immediately share this new found piece of information with Mom and Dad so I trotted into the kitchen and interrupted whatever conversation they were having with “Wow – did you know that Edgar Allen Poe went to West Point?”.

Mom and Dad thought this was absolutely hilarious and cracked up laughing. From then on, whenever I would come up with some off the wall “did you know?” trivia fact (which it seems I was wont to do), their standard reply would be “No – and we didn’t know that Edgar Allen Poe went to West Point either.”

I share this story with you for a reason. When I saw your photo of Lex and his umbrella hat I had an “Edgar Allen Poe” moment.

Did you know that Lou Brock, the Hall of Fame basestealer for the St Louis Cardinals, was the inventor of the umbrella hat?

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Final Four Drama in Rec Hall

Fasten your seat belts folks, this is going to be a long one.

First, a little background. Rec Hall is short for Recreation Hall, a gymnasium on Penn State’s campus. It was built in 1929 and was the home for Penn State basketball until 1996 when Penn State opened the Bryce Jordan Center, a modern multi-purpose arena. Rec Hall is still the home for Penn State volleyball, wrestling, and gymnastics. This weekend, PSU and Rec Hall are hosting the NCAA men’s volleyball Final Four.

Rec Hall and volleyball hold a special place in my heart. My first trip ever to Penn State was in 1963 to play in the PIAA State Volleyball Championships. It was a double elimination tournament with play starting Saturday morning around 9am. Central Bucks was the District 1 Champion and we drew Peobody High, District 7 and defending State Champion in the opening round. We were in awe of Peobody and quickly went down to defeat.

We fell into the loser’s bracket but fought our way back with a couple of victories but couldn’t continue the streak. By about 2 in the afternoon we were eliminated. As we walked back to our hotel, we passed a fraternity, Phi Gamma Delta, that was just a block from Rec Hall. It turned out that Phi Gam was holding their annual big party, Fiji Island Weekend, that day. Here were all these guys and girls running around in bathing suits, grass skirts, and bikinis sipping all sorts of alcoholic concoctions. I saw this guy passing by an upstairs window with a girl thrown over his shoulder. I turned to the other guys on the team and said “I think I could learn to like it here”. Little could I have imagined.

That’s just a little Rec Hall and me background. Now some PSU and volleyball background. While women’s volleyball has a presence across the country, the elite men’s teams are almost all from the West, particularly from California. Penn State is one of the very few schools east of the Rockies who have a quality program. Actually, there’s little doubt that PSU is the premiere program outside the West.

To show you how dominant the western schools are, take note of these facts. Penn State was the first school from the east to ever win a match against a California school when we beat one (I forget which) in a regular season match in the 70s. In 1982, Penn State upset USC in five games in the NCAA semifinals to be the first non California school to ever make the finals of the NCAAs (Karch Kiraly and UCLA pounded us in the championship game). We had a little advantage in that match against USC in that the Final Four was held in Rec Hall, so it was actually a home game for us.

In 1994, Penn State won the NCAA title to be the first team from west of the Rockies to win the NCAAs. In the following year, we made it back to the finals (becoming the first non-western school to ever make the championship game two years in a row) only to lose to UCLA again.

The path to the Final Four in volleyball is a little unique. There are basically just three leagues that play men’s collegiate volleyball – the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF), the Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association (MIVA), and the Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association (EIVA). The winners of those leagues’ tournaments get automatic bids to the Final Four. The fourth spot is given to an at-large bid which has ALWAYS gone to a western school (once again showing the dominance of the western schools in men’s volleyball.

Because of that structure Penn State only has to win the EIVA tournament title to get into the Final Four. As dominant a program as we have for an Eastern school that is usually fairly easy. PSU has appeared in 21 Final Fours and we are second to only UCLA in that regard. However, getting past that semifinal game isn’t so easy. Coming into last night we had lost ten straight semifinal matches since our last win in 1995.

PSU has been pointing to this weekend for years. We brought in an outstanding recruiting class four years ago and we knew that we were going to host the 2006 Final Four. Everything knew that 2006 was going to be the year that we made another run for the championship. So the expectations for this year were high and the pressure was on the team to do well. The pressure might actually have been a little much because the team has not played well, at least by our standards, all year.

They opened the season up 1-5. They even lost at home to a non-Western school, Ball State. They had other questionable losses throught the season to schools like Ohio State, George Mason, and IPFW. Things were starting to look a little dicey for maybe even making it to the Final Four. Then they got a little help.

A week ago, PSU was expected to have a difficult EIVL title match against George Mason, who had knocked off PSU a month earlier in a league match. But the St Francis Red Flash pulled off a huge upset in the semifinals to knock George Mason out of the tournament. That gave PSU an easy opponent to claim the EIVL spot in the Final Four. The Nits responded with an quick 3 game sweep.

That set up the Final Four participants as UC-Irvine, UCLA, IPFW, and Penn State (read more about the participants here). To no one’s surprise, PSU was seeded fourth for the event. We had already faced all three other opponents during the year, losing to each (UCI and UCLA swept us, IPFW beat us 3-2). As the fourth seed, we drew the #1 seed and #1 nationally ranked UC-Irvine Anteaters, who were making their first ever appearance in the Final Four.

So while expectations for the season were high, our play during the season kind of reset everyone with much lower expectations coming into the weekend. That soon changed.

Penn State played absolutely flawlessly in the first 15 minutes of game 1 and eked their way to a 14-11 lead. That got the team’s confidence up and they fought their way to a hard earned 32-30 victory. UC Irvine fought off three game points before falling. At this point, I’m thinking “however this turns out, the kids have accredited themselves well with this win”. Things were just getting started though.

In game two, Penn State just overpowered the Anteaters and they raced to a 30-23 victory. Now I’m starting to think just like I did midway through the second half of our Kentucky hoops game in 2000. You know, the “Holy mackeral, we might actually beat these guys.

Game three was a battle. The UCI players were fighting for their volleyball lives and our kids were giving them no quarter. With a 29-28 lead, senior captain Nate Meerstein was serving for the match. Incredibly, he airmailed the ball about 20 feet over the endline, giving the Anteaters life. They responded and won 33-31.

Game four was a problem. Meerstein was clearly flustered with his service error in game three and all of a sudden he couldn’t get his serve in. To his credit, he continued to be an absolute monster on the front line recording over a dozen kills and blocks during the match. The Nits battled valiantly but went down to a 30-27 defeat.

That set up the dramatic game five. Matches that go the full five games are settled by a 15 point final game. That leaves little margin for error, so Meerstein wisely abandoned his jump serve and went to a floater for the remainder of the match. Shaking off their back to back losses, the Nits jumped out to a quick 2-0 lead. That set the tone for the match. We’d get a two point lead but UCI would come back to tie it up (the match was tied at 2-2, 6-6, and 12-12).

PSU pulled ahead 14-13 and had freshman Max Holt serving for the match when UCI called a timeout. I looked at my watch and realized that the match was now almost three hours long and my TiVo was about to quit recording even though I had padded it with a extra hour. Right at that point, the lights went out. And I don’t mean figuratively, I mean literally. Yup, a partial power failure (so they say, frankly I think someone forgot to turn off the timer that shuts the Rec Hall lights off at 11 PM) killed half the lights in the building.

Things like this only happen in Hollywood scripts but there it was. Because of the type of lighting, it takes about 10-15 minutes to restart the lights. UCI couldn’t have asked for anything better. How long does a basketball timeout last? How about a football timeout? 2-3 minutes max. Teams use timeouts to ice players at the free throw line, or kickers getting ready for game winning field goals. Here, UCI effectively got a 15 minute timeout to ice a freshman who was serving for a berth in the NCAA championship game.

NO PROBLEM.

Max aced the serve and we move on to play UCLA for the title on Saturday night.

Read more about the game here.

Photos from the game can be viewed here.

I can actually be seen, sort of, in a crowd shot from the photo gallery. I’ve cropped my out of the photo, hence the little white spot, and blown it up slightly. Admittedly, I’m not quite recognizable, but it is me.

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Wall of Flame

Quaker Steak and Lube has just opened a new restuarant in town so I went there to celebrate my birthday last night. One of their gimmicks is a “Wall of Flame” where you can get your name posted if you eat six of their “atomic” wings. Naturally I had to step up to the challenge. The first wing had a definite bite to it. After I finished the second I had to take off my glasses because my eyes were tearing up. By the fourth my nose was running and I was having difficulty swallowing. I did manage to eat all six but I might not have been able to handle eight.

I did learn a little secret though. After I finished the wings, the bartender gave me a shot of Hershey’s chocolate syrup which substantially helped clear up the burning sensation in my mouth. I obviously couldn’t spread chocolate all over my face but the wetnap he gave me helped somewhat (still left a residual sting however). But I really didn’t realize that I hadn’t gotten it all off my hands. On the way out, I stopped in the bathroom to take care of all the Rolling Rocks I had had. Fortunately, this was about an hour after I finished the wings so most of the sauce had worn off my hands but there was definitely enough left to leave an uncomfortable tingling down there.

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Just to let everyone know all is well

Gary called last night to check up on me since I hadn’t posted on the blog for a while (thanks for looking out for me Gar). He was concerned since it appeared I was coming down with something while out in Chicago. When I got back, I just hunkered down for four days and took it extra easy. It looks like I shook whatever bug it was (or maybe my asthma medicine really did something) because the sore throat and cough are gone knock on wood).