Silent Sports Sounds Off

What follows is my editor’s letter for the July issue of Silent Sports, which just went to press.

Two miles into my 13-mile loop, a light rain graduated to a downpour. Gambling that the intensity of the storm would subside, I kept running, fruitlessly wiping the blinding droplets from my glasses and wringing the edge of my shirt onto my soaked shoes.

On a rural road six miles west of Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, I couldn’t see to avoid the deepest puddles or the water rushing across the patched pavement. In a way, I was grateful because I was spared the soul crushing view up the unrelentingly but familiar climb past the outdoor museum Little Norway, where I worked summers as a teenager.

But then came the lightening. It lit up the sky and the wooded canopy over the road ahead. And deafening thunder quickly followed, indicating that first strike was not far off. That’s when I felt most foolish and frightened. I thought about a former 20-something reporting colleague who, while on vacation in Florida a few years back, was struck by lightening and killed. It was a freakish, tragic end that he did not seek. By purposely running in a thunderstorm, I felt like I was actually asking for a similar fate.

At that point, however, I had nowhere to go but onward, so I stepped up the pace. By the time I reached the sloppy surface of the Military Ridge State Trail three miles from my mother-in-law’s house, my wife and kids pulled up in our van to offer me a ride. Since the thunderstorm had largely passed and I was so close to finishing (and I couldn’t get any wetter), I waved them off.

Only later, upon telling my father about my risky run, did he recall running up the Little Norway hill under similar conditions. “It was the worst storm I’ve ever been in,” he said. “Later that night much of Barneveld disappeared.” While my run was June 8, Dad’s was exactly 24 years earlier when, six miles west of that hill, a tornado struck and killed nine people, injured 200 more and left standing little more than the water tower. (Boneheadedness runs in the family, apparently.)

The rain in which I ran didn’t stop for at least another week, flooding wide swaths of southern Wisconsin and Iowa (visited by tornadoes, too), Indiana, Missouri and Nebraska. As of press time, three people had died and thousands were forced from their homes – 24,000 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, alone before the Cedar River had crested.

Given all the property damage – lost homes, businesses, crops, breached levees and commerce disrupted due to the closure of sections of many state highways and interstates – no one should be selectively upset to see flooding shut down state parks and bike trails (in Wisconsin, that included Devil’s Lake State Park, Elroy-Sparta State Trail and 400 State Trail).

Lake Delton pushed through an earthen barrier and drained completely into the Wisconsin River. Yet local tourism officials were quick to note that 93 percent of the nearby Wisconsin Dells attractions – ironically the waterparks, if not the Tommy Bartlett Show’s water skiers – were open and welcoming visitors.

In Des Moines, Iowa, high water and concern for E. coli contamination at Gray’s Lake Park would force the June 21-22 Hy-Vee Triathlon to be held seven miles west and truncated to a duathlon (run-bike-run). Whether a handful of elite athletes would be able to race the event to secure spots on the U.S. Olympic Triathlon Team – a story that made The New York Times – was still in doubt at press time.

Lucky just to be alive was another group of recreationists canoeing the still-swollen Milwaukee River in the town of Saukville, Wisconsin, on June 15. Several boats capsized, sending up to 10 people into fast-moving water, escaping with only minor injuries. (Mike Svob, on page 38, has something to say about that kind of behavior.)

Suffice to say, we outdoor enthusiasts need to keep things in perspective. No one, myself included, ought to risk their lives for sport. And before we rebuild our flooded trails, we should look to help others recover from much greater loss. Their misery has yet to crest.

– Joel Patenaude

As commencement speaker at Mt. Horeb High School graduation yesterday, I strongly encouraged the graduates to travel “to unfamiliar territory where you risk feeling uncomfortable.” At least that’s what I did starting with my senior year (so I skipped my graduation at MHHS in 1989, ironically) spent as an exchange student to Istanbul, Turkey. I also mentioned my year, post-college, in Cairo, Egypt, and as a print journalist in four states before landing at Silent Sports in 2004.

But I closed with this:

“I advocated earlier that you go places that make you uncomfortable. That kind of discomfort, the kind that teaches you how to adapt, is not just found some place far away. It is that whisper of self doubt that is within each of us that we ought to visit and take on.

– Joel Patenaude

Well, I got slammed by a letter writer to The Appleton Post-Crescent yesterday, but not for my column in Sunday’s paper. The letter writer, Town of Black Creek official Gary Bunnell, doesn’t spell it out, but he was a leading advocate of allowing ATVs on the Seymour-New London rail-trail and was disappointed by the lopsided Outagamie County vote against motorized use of it.

Bunnell writes:

Back in March, you couldn’t swing a cat in this town without hitting a silent sports enthusiast. Now that the decision has made by the Outagamie County Board to restrict all-terrain vehicles from the Seymour-New London Trail, the hikers and bikers have vanished.

Perhaps the county supervisors who voted against a multi-use trail shouldn’t have listened to the squeakiest wheels, but instead should have voted for common sense. If I made that horrible of a decision, I would resign.

Bravo, Mr. Bunnell. Bravo.

Seriously, I’m impressed with his latest salvo, coming as it does after so much sparring through the media as Bunnell and I did. Had I wound up on the losing side, I, too, would have been tempted to take a cheap shot at him. It is odd, however, Bunnell chose to be so adversarial just three weeks after I asked him if he would be interested in helping organize a Friends of the Seymour-New London Trail group. This was the response he posted (writing as PuppyChow II) on the Silent Sports messageboard:

“I will probably have a tough time spearheading something that I didn’t believe in. Will I contribute? Of, course, but I’m not going to be the driving force.”

Bunnell didn’t mention his plans to shoot spitballs at those actually interested in getting the trail developed.

As a local watchdog – if not a constructive contributor – I suppose his goading serves a purpose. We do need to start identifying and securing the funds necessary to develop the trail (how much of that could have been completed in just three months … well, Bunnell’s the expert, I guess). Unbeknowst to Bunnell – only because he didn’t bother to call me or Vickie before firing off his letter attacking us by name – personal issues have kept Vicki and I from getting the Friends group ball rolling.

Vickie has been in North Dakota since early May when her elderly father fell and broke his neck. She and her siblings are there helping their parents through the surgery and a change of residence.

Despite dealing with all that, Vickie emailed me asking that I “inform Gary that we have not forgotten about our committment to the trail.”

Thanks, Mr. Bunnell, for reminding us what our priorities really ought to be.

– Joel Patenaude

At least one reader – and many of his running friends, he said – are really steamed about a column I wrote, titled “Journeying to join the few who run Boston,” that appeared in yesterday’s Appleton Post Crescent.

Actually, it was one paragraph found to be insulting to the reader – a self-described 13-time Boston Marathon charity runner and eight-time Ironman. Although the majority of the column was about my own desire to qualify to run Boston and admiration for those who do, along the way I managed to diss Boston runners like him:

I wrote, “Even though Boston attracts thousands of non-registered ‘bandits’ and charity fund-raising joggers who don’t bother to meet the time standards, runners like me still insist on working hard to earn our place at the starting line.”

Although it was not my intention, that statement does suggest charity runners are neither qualified to be there (they are entirely welcome under Boston Athletic Association rules) nor work hard to get there.

That was unfair of me, and I apologize.

As the reader pointed out, many Boston marathoners like him have found fund-raising for medical research to motivate their training. They run for a purpose greater than themselves. And some happen to be fast enough to meet the qualifying time standards, too – such as the reader’s wife.

I will look toward running a “BQ” myself at Grandma’s Marathon on June 21 with a greater appreciation for what Boston means to other runners, and what the fund-raising there means for so many others unable to run.

– Joel Patenaude