Battle of Battle Creek

The “battle” was last weekend and I’ve waited a week for Ron or Steve F. to post this, but I guess they’re sore losers! Yes, Steve B. is the new “Fall Family Champ”! Can you believe that? Steve F. and Ron must have really had an off weekend!

Good news Ron…

Your story isn’t gone forever.

I was afraid that your Phi Psi 500 moment in the sun might have been lost forever but the Penn State Daily Collegian has just finished digitizing all of their back issues (there was a gap from 1977-87 that was incomplete for the longest while). Guess what made the archives?

From the April 14th, 1986 issue, on page two…

Craziness was the norm at this year’s Phi Psi

For some of the runners the event was a true family affair. Larry Fall, class of 1972, has run in the race approximately 15 times, and has won the masters division in the past (UL note to Collegian writer: I won the hole damn thing too). This year, however, his brother Ron, 14 years younger, ran against him in Saturday’s race.

“I’ve heard about this race for years, now I’m going to challenge him in my first time running it” Ron Fall said.

But experience paid off in the long run as Larry Fall best his brother by about two minutes.

“It’s a pain for about 1o minutes, but from then on it’s great. I’ve met some of my best friends here at the Phi Psi 500” Larry Fall added.

I feel much better now that I know the results of the race are preserved for posterity sake.

BTW – Some added notes culled from the results piece at the end of the article:

My buddy Randy Woolridge (mistakenly spelled Woolrich in the article) won the masters in a pedestrian 8:10 time (when in shape I usually finished around 7:00 with my best time 6:35 recorded as a master).

The third place masters finisher in the race was Dave Barsda, who was a former employee of mine from Harrisburg. Dave came up from Harrisburg to see me (I had moved to CT a couple of years earlier) and run in the race.

The remark about meeting some of my best friends at the rate was quite true and reads even more eerily when I realized that I’m still in touch with three of the students who ran on the team that placed second in the race. Eric Brugel, along with his brother and sister, worked at the Tavern. He comes back to State College for an annual golf tournament that I play in. Tim Flynn, is the wrestling coach at Edinboro University.

The most successful of the bunch though is Chris Bevilacqua, who went on to make millions in the sports and TV business. Chris went to work for Nike out of college – he’s the one that started the first Nike shoe and apparel contracts with college programs. He left Nike to work for Major League Baseball for a while, then started his most successful venture College Sports Television, aka CSTV. CSTV was eventually bought out by CBS which put considerable coin in Chris’s pocket. He worked for CBS for a while as the head of the regional sports programming but then left to go out on his own. He’s currently working on some soccer/TV startup deal but I’m not privy to the details. However, on that spring Saturday, some 21+ years ago, Chris was just another beer jugging, pavement pounding College student out to have some fun.

Ron and the Phi Psi 500

by request (since it appears that he isn’t about to tell the story).

Sometime in the mid 80s, Ron called me up and said that he wanted to challenge me in the Phi Psi. I wasn’t in the greatest shape but figure my experience would count for something so I gladly accepted the challenge. Ron flew into New York from Chicago and we headed up to State College for the weekend (I’m pretty sure that Gary came along too).

I used some of my influence with the Phi Psi’s to make sure that Ron and I would be teamed together at the start – racers go off five at a time in 30 second intervals in order to space out the hordes. That way we’d be able to go head-to-head.

At some point shortly before the start of the race, a local newspaper reporter got wind that Ron had flown all the way in from Chicago to challenge me in the race so she interviewd him. I wasn’t privy to the actual interview but someone told me that Ron was brimming with confidence in the interview. He evidently said something to the effect of “I’ve been listening to these Phi Psi stories for years and, even though my brother is supposed to be pretty good, I think I can out run his butt handily.”

The way that the Phi Psi course is laid out, you have to run about a third of a mile to the first bar. The six bars are then strung closely together for about the next third of a mile. Then you finish by running the third of the mile back to the starting line. When you get to the first bar, you’ve run a decent distance and you can be quite winded but you can’t wait to catch your breath, you need to quickly slam that beer down and move on.

I knew that Ron was in better shape than I was so my plan wasn’t to try and out run him. It was to make up time IN the bars drinking the beers. I knew from experience that the Phi Psi isn’t like any other run that you have ever done and the first time you do it, it can be quite difficult.

I had no idea what Ron’s strategy for the race was going to be but having caught him mentioning several times about how he thought he could outrun me, I didn’t expect him to just run along with me. I figured he’d take off on his own and that’s exactly what he did. That was just what I had hoped. All I had to do was maintain contact with him and just look for the right moment to make my move.

Ron went off at a nice pace and I settled in a few yards behind him. I’d estiimate he probably had about 20 yards on me as he ran into the first bar, aptly named The Phyrst. The Phyrst is a basement bar so you have to run down a dozen or so steps to get into it. The beers are all lined up waiting for you on the bar right smack at the bottom. You just slam your 50 cents on the bar to pay for the beers (archaic PA laws meant that each runner had to actually pay for his beer when they came in), chug the beer, then turn to the right and go out the back door which was only about 15 feet away. There wasn’t a whole lot of room in the bar and you didn’t stay in it very long.

The 20 yard lead that Ron had meant that he probably got to the bar maybe 4-5 seconds ahead of me (however even thought he was in front of me he had no idea how big a lead he had while I knew exactly how far behind I was). As I came down the stairs, he was staring at his beer which was maybe a third empty. This was my moment. As many people have said the first time they run the race “you think you are going to be thirsty when you get to the bars but when you look at that first beer, it’s not the least bit appetizing”. I quickly chugged the beer, turned and ran out the back door and that’s the last I saw of Ron until the end of the rest.

I continued on my way and forced myself to finish the race. I wasn’t in particularly good shape, so a victory over me was really there for the taking. I don’t remember what my time was but it was one of my worst ever. I struggled but finished and then waited for Ron.

He came in a minute or two after me. He was in considerable discomfort and bent over trying to keep from getting sick. Just about that point, the reporter saw him. She came over and asked “how did you do?” Reportedly, Ron’s response was “It was a LOT harder than I thought it would be – but at least I think I beat my brother”. At that point the reporter pointed in my direction and said “I don’t think so. He’s been back here for a while.” Ron looked like this 😯 .

After he regained his composure, Ron explained what had happened. He said that he felt relatively good going off and that he thought he was running well under control. He said that when he got to the bottom of the stairs at the Phyrst and tried to drink the beer he had a little trouble getting it down. He said he took a couple of gulps and then tried to catch his breath (this was the moment that I saw him staring at his beer). He then took another couple of gulps but had trouble with them too (while he was forcing those gulps down, I had finished my beer and was headed to the back door). Ron said that at this point he decided to change his strategy. He decided he would just make sure he stayed ahead of me so he kept an eye on the front stairs waiting for me to come down as he finished the beer (unfortunately for him, at this point I was already headed UP the back stairs).

At each succeeding bar, Ron invoked the same strategy – drink the beer as fast as he could without forcing it but while also keeping one eye on the door so he could stay in front of me. Of course, while he was doing that, I was just stretching my lead.

So, although my time was one of my worst ever, my head-to-head victory made it one of my more satisfying races.

Ron – feel free to correct anything that I might have wrong (or add anything that you would like) 😆

I’m Trying to Get in Shape, too!

Over the past month or so, I’ve been trying to get back into shape by running on a regular basis.  It was actually quite timely, because my first day of running was actually July 4th.  It was the following day that Larry posted his entry about getting serious about doing something about his weight.  BTW, Larry, let’s see some updated figures!

 I had decided I had to get serious too because a few weeks prior when I was packing for our Battle Creek golf trip I tried on some of my golf shorts, and most of them didn’t fit because I had gotten too fat.  I didn’t start running at that time because back in mid-May, I was playing basketball in our driveway with Eric and was attempting to save a ball going out of bounds.  I was right on the edge of the driveway and rolled my right ankle and went down like a pile of bricks.  I was in maybe more pain then I’ve ever felt in my life.  I didn’t see stars, but I did see one bright sun.  Eric was to later say that that was probably the stupidest thing he’s ever seen me do.  The kids are at the age where they show us no sympathy.

 It ends up that I not only sprained my ankle, but several days later I realized that I had strained my achilles.  So due to that injury I wasn’t able to start running until it had healed significantly.  It still is a little tender, but it actually gives me no problems when I’m running.  It’s more bothersome in the morning when I wake up and everything has tightened up.

After a few weeks of running, I decided to start a log of my runs, so I’ve posted it here.  Sorry, no time to make any graphs, but maybe on my next update.

Date Distance Time Min/Mile Comment

I usually run at Moraine Hills State Park a few miles from home.  They’ve got 3 interconnected loops of cinder trails that are great for running.  I usually do the 3.73 mile loop, but have occasionally added a second for a 6.2 mile run.

I haven’t lost much weight, maybe 4 pounds, but my clothes are fitting much better. My goal is to first run the 6.2 mile run in under an hour.  I should be able to do that relatively soon.  As soon as the weather cools down a bit, I’ll give it a go.  My other goal is to see if I can do the 3.73 mile loop in under 30 minutes.  That’s going to be the tough one, but hopefully with another couple of months of serious running and some 50 degree weather and low humidity (as opposed to the 80’s and high humidity I’ve been running in, I just may have a shot of doing it.

 I’ll work on getting my stats to publish a little better, but right now I’ve got to run.  Not literally, I already ran today and it was tough.  I hate running in the morning.  My times are always slower because my body just isn’t ready to perform and I think it goes into shock.

Geni.com

Geni.com is a combination social network/genealogy site. They are trying to use the social network concept to create family trees with the eventual goal (quite ambitious I might add) of creating one giant family tree that includes everyone in the world – hence their motto “Everyone’s Connected”.

The site is extremely easy to use and is growing by leaps and bounds. They only went live six months ago – within one month they had signed up 100,000 users and they just recently added their 5,000,000th profile. I’ve registered on the site and started building the Fall Family Tree. I’ve also created a link to Geni.com under Web Identities on the blog sidebar. However, you won’t be able to get to the tree until someone who is a part of it invites you to be a part of it. Once you accept an invite to join, the link in the sidebar will take you to your view of the tree.

I though I’d run a little test case and see what you guys think of the idea of continuing to build the tree (I know Marilyn had a little bit of a genealogy urge a while ago but don’t know if that’s still there).

I added us, Mom and Dad, and our grandparents, along with Harry, Grace and Jack. That gave me a pretty good perspective of how the tree is built. I’m going to extend an invitation to Marilyn and Gary and encourage you two to add to the tree and invite others in your family to join (you can invite someone to join by merely putting them in the tree along with their email address – you can also add people without their email addresses if you just want to expand the tree).

Marilyn – I suggest you add Shannon and as much of the Bergquist clan that you can get to buy into it (also this might be a good opportunity to include Linda, Richie, and Carol). Gary – add the kids and see how many Cortners you might get to go along.

If that little test seems to go well, then we can open it up to Ken, Steve, and Ron and their in-laws and we’ll run with it.

One thing to keep in mind is be be sensitive to how much personal information you include when filling out an individual’s entry. At least for the living, I’m just going to put in their name (and email address when I invited them), then let them make the decision about how much info to include.

The two of you should be getting an email invite shortly (Marilyn – I’m sure this means tomorrow morning for you but Gary may still be awake). Let me know your thoughts as you play with it.

For any others who might be making their once a month visit here and are curious about what the site is like, here’s a Wall Street Journal article on Geni.com.

Time to get serious about my weight

My cutback on golf has basically resulted in me getting no exercise at all and my weight has ballooned. Sitting at the ballpark yesterday afternoon, I decided that I’d start an exercise campaign beginning today. From now on, I’m going to walk to the ballgame (the ballpark is about 2.5 miles from home). After the game I’ll either walk home or, if I’m going out for the rest of the evening, I’ll walk downtown (about another 1.25 miles), then take a cab home at the end of the night (a four mile walk on dark roads at 2:00 am isn’t a very good idea).

When the team is away, I’ll use a nice little two mile or so loop that we have in the neighborhood. I started today with a short little 35 minute walk just as a test to make sure that nothing was going to fall apart right away. It felt good to work up a nice little sweat for the first time in a while.

I think I’ll try to figure out a way to put a nice little chart in the sidebar to track my weight loss. I know how everyone was so interested in my health woes, so I’ll try to provide some good news for a change. 🙂

BTW Ron – what ever happened with your weight loss effort? Eighteen months ago you said “I’ll update the blog on a weekly basis to let you know how it’s going.” We’re still waiting for the week two update. ❓ 😆

Sometimes the internet is freaky…

I spend a fair amount of time on a sports forum called PennStateHoops.com dedicated naturally to Penn State basketball. There was a thread today that was off on a tangent where someone mentioned a couple of famous Fordham basketball players/coaches. In that thread it came to light that the poster didn’t know John Bach who coached at Fordham before he came to Penn State as their coach. I decided to educate the guy a little on Bach (see my post).

Since Natalie Berrena is John Bach’s granddaughter I couldn’t help but include a quick paragraph, and a little commercial, about her. I wanted to put a photo in the post so I naturally Google “Natalie Berrena” for images. Low and behold what popped up on the Google results page but this photo:

Needless to say I did a double take.

Google found one of my posts in our blog and I guess Natalie’s name was fairly close to our image so it tagged the image with her name.

Try it yourself – Google image search for “Natalie Berrena”.

Fall Family Champion

There is a new champion. Ron, Steve B, Nick (Ex champion), and I played Tuesday. We had three pretty nice days of weather here. Anyway, we played a points game. Six points for low man, 4 for 2nd, 2 for 3rd and zero for 4th per hole net.

Nick started slowly taking only 2 points in the first 4 holes, but made a charge on the last 4 holes of the front nine. I believe he picked up around 17 point for those holes. He was still trailing Ron and I, but was defending valiantly. Unfortunatly, he started the back nine about the same way. With five holes to play Steve B. and Nick were pretty much out of it. I was trailing by about 5 points and could have jumped to the top of the leaderboard if I was just able to knock down a couple of putts on the next 2 holes. Too bad for me, I wasn’t up to the task. On 16 I pretty much handed the championship to Ron by knocking 2 tee shots OB, but Ron let me back in the game by moving a 20 ft chip about 1 foot. He took 3rd on the hole for 2 points. I got zero.

Two holes to play and I was down 5 points. (By the way this is all by memeory so I may be a little off.) Ron bogeys the hole to lock up 2 points. I have a 6 foot parr putt to tie Nick to give me a much needed 5 points. MISS AGAIN, DAMN. I tie Ron and we both get 3 points. I need a miracle on 18. It doesn’t happen. Ron wins and is now the proud owner of 2 shirts and a hat. We still need the 2nd shirt embroidered Ron. Congratulations to Ron.

Get ready for your chance next year boys and girls. You know you can pretty much depend on an opportunity to win this coveted title at The Battle of Battle Creek. For those not aware I beleive The Battle will become a mandatory 4 day event next year.