Ultimook Reflections

Every now and then I repeat the invitation for someone else to write the daily update.  No one ever accepts. (“Accepts” could mean something like “I will do the update on Sept 19 so you aren’t distracted from your 18th anniversary.”  Or it could mean something like me preparing to post something and discovering someone else has already horned in with an update.  You would need to know how to log in to the website, but now that Top Allegheny had figured that out, I presume everyone has.)

It’s ok if no one else wants to do updates.  I’m fine with that.  For one thing it means that you can’t complain when I brazenly use the EFL update as a vehicle to brag about one of my descendants.

Haviland: W2, L 0; 19  – 14.   Saturday morning Sam and I left home at 6:05 to make our way to Tillamook for the Ultimook cross country meet held at a hydrangea farm on the Kilchis River. Sam ran in the boys middle school event, competing with 96 other runners. Here he is on the podium receiving his award for finishing second.

Sam is in the yellow shirt with the blue circle and the yellow capital N (for Newberg).  He’s standing on the second-highest platform.  Notice that all ten top finishers got the same lovely prize: a bouquet of hydrangeas.  You can see how giddy they all are.

Maybe you wouldn’t have been so giddy.  Maybe you wouldn’t have expected middle-school boys to be euphoric about bouquets of a flower they couldn’t have named had you spelled it out.  But that’s because you didn’t realize how happy it would make them that all 10 of them got exactly the same thing. The first-place runner finished in 11:59.55.  The 10th place runner finished in 13:04.25.  In running, I believe that’s the equivalent of finishing 64 1/2 games behind.  But there was no favoritism shown to the first place guy for irrelevant factors like how much faster he was than everyone else.

The EFL is saddled with a trophy. We only have one.  It’s kind of a moral embarrassment, which is why the finer teams decline to strive for it. Perhaps it’s time to replace or supplement the trophy with something more like these bouquets of hydrangea.  Only for the top 10 EFL finishers, of course.

Old Detroit: W 2, L 1; 12 – 10.   Yes, I know, Sam didn’t finish in first place.  Being 2 out of 96 is huge deal, but it’s still second. Yes, I also know the Wolverines are not going to finish in first place.  Sure, there are 20 or so games left, so anything is possible, but the W’s have been 3 to 5 games back forever. And they still are.  They didn’t budge over the last two days either in winning percentage (.629) or the number of games behind (3.5). It’s the way the universe is made, at least in 2015.  I’ll get used to it.

Pittsburgh: W 2, L 0; 9 – 2.    The Alleghenys haven’t quite settled into their spot in the standings the way the W’s have.  They gained 0.4 games in the last two day, and improved their winning percentage by .004.  You’d almost think they were still trying to win.

They should stop that. I took some video of Sam’s race. I should be more frank: I took about 3 minutes of video of the ground, the sky, other people’s feet, and (as Sam cheerfully pointed out) an exceptionally awkward 30 seconds of the back side of an unknown woman standing in front of me alongside the race route. (She was clad modestly in a puffy jacket and baggy ankle-length blue jeans.) I also have about 50 seconds of race action.

I would share the video with you but I can’t get my phone to upload the files.  It claims they are too big, but I suspect the embarrassment filter is just doing its job.

The segment of video I wanted to share here covers the last 50 yards of the route.  Sam appears around a curve running at about 80% effort, having lost sight of the first-place runner.  Right behind him on the barkdust covered trail is another boy, gaining fast.  My voice can be heard warning Sam that he is about to be overtaken. Sam pays my warnings the usual amount of attention. He is startled when the boy appears at his shoulder.  Caught off guard, Sam bursts into his highest gear, and he and the other boy run shoulder to shoulder past me.  Just before they reach the finish line…

…they run out of the picture.  I was watching the race, not the video screen.  You can’t tell from the video who wins second place.

Here’s a secret, Allegheny fans: I know we can’t yet see all the way to the EFL finish line. But the third-place boy doesn’t pass the Mock boy.  This is the way the universe is made, at least in 2015. Get used to it.

Flint Hill: W 3, L 0;  25 – 8 .  The Tornados are still going places! In the last two days they’ve gained an entire game in the standings and 0.008 on their winning percentage.  Will all this hustling do them any good?  I don’t know — they have a long way to go and, with all their great play, they are still only gaining 1/2 a game a day. At their current pace they might just barely squeeze into second place.  First place is pretty much inconceivable.

But, you know, I can relate.  Ultimately going to the Ultimook event was three hours of driving for 12 and a half minutes of running to achieve one second place finish.  On the surface, the return dwarfed the investment.  Still, it was interesting, the drive was beautiful as always, and I enjoyed the time with Sam.  And second place is a pretty nice place.

Cottage: W 0, L 3;  10 – 23.   The Cheese’s vector over the last two days is almost exactly equal and opposite to the Tornados’ vector: 0.008 down on winning percentage, 1.4 games lost in the standings. It’s almost like the Cheese got turned around on the course and ran the wrong direction for a while. The gap between the T’s and the Cheese grew from 1.4 games to 3.8 in two days. Keep that up for the rest of the season, and the T’s will be 26+ games ahead of the Cheese — the T’s in second place by a hair, and the Cheese in the general vicinity of the Kangaroos.

It would have been easy to get turned around on the Zweifel hydrangea farm during the Ultimook meet. The course looped around and back on itself several times, making it relatively easy to see Sam run more than just at the start and finish. He was probably in view for almost a minute altogether.

Peshastin:  W 0, L 2; 2 – 16.   Another team racing in the wrong direction, only faster — down .015 in winning percentage and a gap behind the T’s that grew from 1.9 to 4.7 game. What is going on in Peshastin?  Has management gone berzerko in its anguish over not doing better? Is it angling crassly for higher draft picks?

Our EFL news coverage clearly suffers from some blind spots.  We can’t see what’s going on inside the Pears’ organization.  Have players given up? Has management? Is the clubhouse riven by conflict?  Too much is happening where we can’t see it!

The EFL and cross country will linger in near total obscurity as long as they are so unfriendly to spectators .  At cross country meets the runners run off all at once, and then can only be seen in glimpses.  There may be a final stretch footrace like the one Sam had. But there’s no story to the event, no dramatic, suspenseful narrative of challenges issued and met (or not).

Cross country needs a standings history tracker.  Dave?  And a live commentator — not one like me who runs days late at times.  But how do we shed more light on the daily struggles and running story lines in the EFL?

 

Canberra:  W 0, L 2;  2 – 15.  Another team going the wrong way!  In Mario Kart there used to be a little guy who descended from the top of the screen bearing a sign saying “Wrong Way” when you got turned around.  We maybe need something like that.

Or maybe a fleet of drones hovering above taking video?  Why not one per runner?  Why not a stat-cast  feature so parents can monitor race standings, running pace, gait, hydration, etc?  Say good-bye to helicopter parents, so twentieth century.  This will be the era of the drone parent.  It can’t begin soon enough — I’m thinking about getting myself a fleet of parent-cam drones so I can hang out in the air a few feet above my far-flung kids and grandkids.

 

Kaline: W 1, L 1; 10 -11.    I probably should mention about now the Ultimook’s signature feature: a mud pit through which the players had to run.

This is the mud pit at rest.

Here is the mud pit in action. (Sam, remember, is wearing a blue and yellow shirt. At least, it’s blue and yellow at the start of this 1-second clip.)

Good runners can get stuck in this pit, the mud sucking at their feet,  bringing them to a standstill, seemingly inescapable.  The boy in blue with his back mostly to the camera was the first to enter the mudpit.  He is going back to rescue his shoe, because he would be disqualified from the race if he left the pit without both of his shoes on. He lost a couple of minutes at least to the search for and replacement of his shoe, and finished well back.

Sam arrived at the mudpit in third or fourth place.  He left it in second. His shoes stayed on because they were duct-taped to his legs.

Kaline right now is in position to take the 6th pick on the Rookie Draft. That’s the pick they had last year.  I thought the Wizard might empathize with the runners slogging through this mud pit.

 

Portland: W 0, L 2; 12 – 14.  The pit came about two minutes into the race.  The video shows the bulk of Sam’s two-second tenure in first place.  We have a snapshot like that of the Rosebuds in first place back on April 12.

Sam’s coach Matt Ingalls was first into the pit in the Ultimook adult men’s open — and lost his shoe. (It wasn’t duct-taped on, despite Matt’s insistence that the kids apply duct tape, because he figured he was too good of a runner to need it.)  Matt lost a ton of time retrieving his shoe… but still reeled in the leader with 100 yards to go to win the race.  I’m not saying the ‘Buds can do that here, but if we consider the race in a longer time frame than the arbitrary boundaries of a single season… why not?  “Keep running!” Matt would urge, even though your shoes are wet and full of mud. So are everyone else’s.