COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

For years, I always ran with kind of a long stride. And I ran pretty well in college and ROTC, doing my 2 mile times in 12:26 to 13:20.

Not varsity track or anything. Hardly rabbit material. but pretty good for a garden variety grunt. (In those days you had to do 11:54 to max the 2 mile run for the 18-21 age group.)

But as I got older (and heavier!), I didn't change the technique. I could run and run and run and I didn't get any faster. Finally it got to the point where I was having trouble consistently passing the run on the APFT. It wasn't for lack of running. I was just running wrong. I was running as if I were still 22 years old and had all the wind in the world.

Over the past year, I changed the running technique. I started going with a shorter, more frequent strides. What happened? Well, for any given minute, and for any given distance, I take a lot more breaths.

I had to retrain my muscles some -- you work slightly different muscle groups, and it took a while to wake them up.

Well, I took the APFT yesterday.

I've never had trouble with sit-ups at all. I'm one of those bastards who can not do a situp all year and still get 90 out of 100 points on the event. You know: like the people I hate who can do pushups like it's going out of style. And so, having had problems in the past on the run, I promised myself "alright, I'm going to take it easy on the situps and not cut my wind for the run. I need every break I can get!"

I even told the grader "don't let me do too many situps."

I planned on stopping at about 50.

But once I got to 50, I figured "fuck it. Who wants to be a wuss? I got my Captain already. So what if I bolo the run?" and did another 18, for a total of 68. Still short of my personal record of 107 in two minutes. But that was almost ten years ago and I rolled over and puked.

What a dumbass I was.


Yeah, that's brains. I think they promoted me to First Lieutenant when I got smart enough not to do dumb shit like that!

Well, I don't really have regular access to a marked 2 mile course, so I really had no idea what my time was going to be. But I took off using the new technique, and just concentrated on keeping up a steady push, no matter what happened.

Turns out I took nearly two minutes off my 2 mile run time since Thanksgiving weekend and had my best run in nearly a decade

And passed some guys I never thought I'd ever pass on the track again!!! (Believe me, the were pretty surprised. So was I!)

No, I'm still not a great runner. But it feels good to know that I can still pull in a respectable score.

The best part isn't really that I improved. What feels good is that when I talk to a soldier who struggles with the 2 mile run, I have something meaningful to tell him, and I can point to my own scores and say "see, you CAN make progress! If I can do it anybody can do it!"

Just a small victory in my ongoing love-hate relationship with the Army.

Next stop: Max the situps again.

Splash, out

Jason