Shoup Airlines

I’m gettin’ too old…

This weekend was another Guard weekend, and to make it extra special we had to take our annual APFT (Army Physical Fitness Test). I don’t think I ever went into this during Basic and AIT, but it seemed like every time I turned around we were taking another PT test. When all was said and done we took four tests in Basic and another four in AIT.

The test isn’t difficult, you just feel ragged at the end if it. There are three events: push ups, sit ups and a 2 mile run. You have two minutes to max out the repetitions in the first two events and then of course you just run as fast as you can for 2 miles. Each event has a max score of 100 and it’s weighted by age. On a side note, I’ve always found it odd that my age range, 27 to 31, has the highest repetitions and shortest time to max out the test.

To make a long story epically longer, I slacked off after getting out of training back in July so I wasn’t quite the same physical specimen. I was most worried about the run and how much time I would add since my best of 13:24 back in AIT. Apparently, the worrying worked because I only added 20 seconds and that ain’t too shabby for carrying an additional 15 pounds!

The down side? My calves have filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. They each feel like a rubber band stretched as far as possible with a nail dragging itself lengthwise across the band with each step I take. I look like Frankenstein’s monster every time I get up and try to walk until my calves relent enough for me to at least look like a low grade looney walking down the hall. And wincing through my head with each step, “and you’re going to run a marathon in February?”

I went for a 5 mile run today and stretched the calves back out. They’re a bit tight still, but better I think. It always amazes me how any aches and pains I have at the start of a run go away within the first quarter mile. I guess tomorrow morning’s crawl out of bed will be the presiding judge in this corporeal suit.

To run, or not to run…

…that is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The blisters and pain of crossing the finish line,
Or to take arms against a run of troubles,
And just forget about them? To stop: to walk;
No more; and by a walk to say we end
The leg-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That knees are heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To stop, to walk;
To walk: perchance to laze: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that walk of laze what weights may come
When we have shaken off this exercise bug,
Must give us pause: there’s the benefits
That makes endurement of so long a run;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of training,
The oppressive heat, the track star’s contumely,
The pangs of runner’s knee, the timer’s delay,
The insolence of cyclers and the spurns
That the non-running take,
When he himself might his retreat make
With a La-Z-Boy? who would bear the burden,
To grunt and sweat under a weary sun,
But that the dread of ever finishing the run,
The undiscover’d country from whose limit
No walker returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus contemplation does make cowards of us all;
And thus the natural hue of finishing the run
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of idleness,
And enterprises of great accomplishment and triumph
With this regard their completion turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

*I’m pretty sure CliffsNotes doesn’t have a translation on this one yet.
**Many thanks to the Bard and allowing me to utterly trash his timeless soliloquy.

“…a connection is made”

It’s always interesting to see where life takes you to demonstrate just how small the world truly is.

While working at ACA we would often fly over this area (Norfolk/Newport News) on our way down south. On one particular flight a Captain pointed out a bunch of mothballed Naval ships all tied together and anchored in the back bay area. You could only really see them from cruise altitudes and I never brought binoculars to get a closer look, but they were always something I wanted a closer look at. A watery grave comparable to the aircraft boneyards at Davis-Montham and Mojave.

By coincidence, I was reading Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse a few months later and a large portion of the plot took place on those very same mothballed ships. A passing thought of “hey, I know where Clancy is describing” and then it never really crossed my mind again.

Turns out Ft. Eustis is located on that very same back bay that I flew over almost daily and I never put 2 and 2 together. Until Yesterday. Running one of our painfully slow company runs (I’ll gripe about those later) we came around a corner and found ourselves along a shoreline, quite nice actually for running if you ask me. Anyway, along the shoreline appeared all of those very same mothballed Naval ships, less than a 1/4 mile away. And the world folded over on itself once more, making itself that much smaller.