Wow, more people read this little experiment then I ever thought would…what’s up everybody?
Running is Not Fun
Thank God It’s Friday! To most of you Friday means the end of the week. Your tough 5 day stretch of working, running kids to school, attending school yourself, or doing nothing and waiting for your friends to have a couple days off so you have somebody to play with…whatever the case may be. This particular Friday kicked off a challenging 4-day stretch of physical exertion for us rangers in training. As every Friday from now on will go, today was PT day. On Wednesday we were given the heads up that we’d be running our 1.5 miles today so I was a little anxious getting up this morning.
I dressed a little less on the bundled up side, grabbed some of those Powerade gels I love so much and Nick & I were out the door. Figures, I dress down a little bit and it’s just under 30 degrees this morning. Brrrrrr. On our way in we saw something that I don’t remember ever seeing in person before in my life…some dude got pulled over by a cop in the gas station I desperately needed to hit up on the way home and the officer had him behind his truck, in cuffs, and was searching the driver. This was a precursor for things to come. I remembered to throw my ID in my clipboard this time but ended up not needing it as my shirt & last name served as enough ID…imagine that! When I walked into the gym a lot of my classmates were stretching and already bumming about having to run today. Here’s a fun observation; more than 1/3 of the class was dressed the way I was on Wednesday…you know the way everybody made fun of! Hahahaha sheep. j/k.
I don’t know what is going on with me but I don’t think I’m messing with the energy gels or drinks for awhile. Our instructor warmed us up and we got two warm up exercises in and I couldn’t breathe. Granted I’m not in XC runner shape but I was training at home before I got here and I’ve always been able to run, still fairly fast I might add. I felt like my head was going to explode. It might be the elevation but I’ve been here almost 3 weeks now…when does it get better? More on that later. We got all of our warm-ups in and were supposed to go for a run outside, that changed to exploring the weight room with our partners. If we combined my partner Stan and I into 1 person we’d probably be the most versatile student in the class. I’m strong-ish and can take a pounding, he can run like a gazelle and is super flexible….both of our strengths are each other’s weaknesses…weird. We had to do 1 set of an exercise for each body part so I was able to apply some of the exercises I learned back in high school with our lifting program for BBall and then incorporated bits & pieces from the Men’s Health magazines L~DuB got for me. About midway through our session I explained to Stan, “see I know what I’m doing I just have a hard time doing it and then continuing to do it.” Could imagine how much sexier I’d be if I did!?!?! Hopefully that’ll all change over these next 3 months. While all of this was going on we got a sneak peek at the PEB (police exercise battery) we’ll have to complete in order to graduate; a former student was making his up while we were training so we saw his bench press, sit & reach, and the almighty 1.5 mile run.
Our 1.5 mile run was supposed to be a confusing trek around campus but somehow we were able to finagle our way onto the track. Sounds good right? Wrong! We had to jog across campus to get to the track itself, somewhere between a quarter mile & a half mile. When we arrived, the former student was wrapping up his 1.5miles and the instructors told us to run with him. Apparently that was to show our support but I missed memo; I thought it meant we had to just take off and do our 1.5 mile run…I was even more confused when some of the faster dudes ran across the football field to catch up with him. “That’s not legal”, I thought. So I’m halfway through the lap and the kid’s done along with the faster runners from our group and I think to myself, man there’s a lot of people behind me. I turned around…NOBODY was behind me! Apparently the support run was optional but you know me, I’m a good soldier and I follow orders. I open my stride up and my breathing got even heavier. By the time I caught up to our class, I had about 10seconds to catch my breath and we were off and running.
I thought I’d have a little more spring in my step but I was hurting…big time! I wasn’t the only one apparently as some of the students started walking during the first lap. For those of you that might not know, 1.5 miles is 6 laps around a standard track. Of our timed run, I ran a total of 5 laps and walked a total of 1. I kid you not, this was the most scared I’d ever been in my life. While running I was opening my mouth to take in oxygen (I know it should be through my nose) but NOTHING felt like it was coming in. My lungs felt dry, my lips were completely dry, and I felt that if I didn’t walk & try to control my breathing that I was literally going to die right there. One funny thing about this whole run, I got lapped by a few people and even though I was “scared” and couldn’t breathe, I cheered them on and reassured them that they “had this”. Hahahaha
People say it’s the elevation that kicked my ass. Back home in Freehold the elevation is 178ft above sea level, it’s over 7,000ft here! Like I said, I was running at home and I had this 1.5mile down below the 13minute mark…not a spectacular time but even that was an improvement from where I was when I started training. Between my walking and running I finished in 16.5 minutes; for me to pass the PEB I need to clear it in 13:57. It was a dry run so I’m not even pissed about my time What I am pissed about is that I let myself utter something that I pride myself on never saying; I can’t! Travis was 1 of the first ones done and he joined me to back me up on my last lap. I crossed the starting point for my last lap and whatever was going on in my lungs was unbearable so I tried to speed walk for a little bit, it wasn’t helping. “Let’s walk for a little bit and when we get to that line you’re gonna pick it up and finish this”, Travis urged me on. “I can’t. I can’t breathe. When we get down to the bleachers. (roughly just past the 50yd line, we’re near the endzone)”. I immediately blurted out, “I can’t believe I just said that!” With that, I began jogging again, we turned around the final bend and when we reached the straight away, I opened up my strides and was pumping my legs like a madman. People were cheering me on from the field, some running alongside me; I burned by them and had complete tunnel vision going…I couldn’t see anything else but that finish line. I walked nearly half another lap to try to cool down but I wouldn’t say a word to anybody that tried talking to me. I was pissed and embarrassed about my cowardly response….and I didn’t have enough air flowing to get any words out. If somebody tried talking to me I just waved them away from me. Travis, the determined little bugger he is, caught up to me and helped me with some breathing control techniques and those helped return me to normal.
Waiting for everybody to finish, class ran 5 minutes late so we now had an hour and 25 minutes to get back to gym, get our stuff, walk across the 2 parking lots to our cars and then I had to get gas because I was nearly running on fumes. We went back to that same gas station where we saw the “bad boy” get busted…it was packed. My second attempt to fuel up that was thwarted by overcrowding. Time was precious so Nick would have to drive back for the class portion. This was our second run at going home for lunch & shower between classes and it was a prime example as to why this routine will be very very old very very fast. Our shortest/easiest route to this particular part of campus is through the downtown area. As I’ve stated couple times, the drivers in Flagstaff suck. To make matters worse, we were stopped at nearly every red light. The only good thing about this trip home was I had the sense to see a mountain biker cut off the Ford Explorer in front of us in 1 of the 2 lanes we needed to make a turn near our house. Good thing I did because that biker stayed in front of that Explorer nearly the entire way to our house, so I was able to make some moves and get us home. It was 12o’clock which meant we had a half hour to shower, eat, get dressed in our uniforms and get back on the road for the 15minute car ride back to campus. Neither of us really ate but that was poor planning on our part then it was back to school. Nick got behind another crappy driver who couldn’t decide which lane she wanted to go in or whether or not she wanted to turn, so we passed her. Some “Mexican National” lady had a truck full of kids, a common site back in NJ….minus the car, and the entire car was looking at us and muttering something to each other. I stared right back at them; oblivious as to why they seemed so interested in our car…Nick later explained what happened. I started to feel a bad cough coming on during our trip back…ah crap I can’t be getting sick!
Today’s class lesson was geared more toward present day rangering. It was the best classroom session so far as it was a little bit of an eye opener. Our instructor was a Chief Ranger who had no law enforcement experience prior to doing a similar program that we’re doing…and she made learning fun…well a little lighter and more interesting. We went around the room and introduced ourselves, where we’re from and talked about any relevant experience we had. When it got to me I stood up and began talking about how awesome I am but I felt like the words weren’t coming out of my mouth. It felt almost like I had some bronchitis in the works and it was effecting my throat…thankfully I’m okay. It’s weird to say that today’s class was light or light hearted because it dealt with some very serious business. It was mostly centered on deadly force and we were provided with a bunch of visual aids in the form of videos. I’ve seen some of the videos before and others were new, all of them really made you think. Most of them were traffic stops which resulted in shootings and they really hit home in the wakes of Officer Chris Matlosz’s funeral back in NJ.
I’ve seen a dead body before but I’ve seen somebody actually die, not in a movie, once and even that was in a video similar to ones we watched today. One of the videos today involved a man charging state troopers with a knife, the other one wasn’t seen but heard and it involved a cop that absolutely no control over a situation and you heard his final words over the camera recording the incident. Both cases were very sad but one was an example of the troopers abiding by their training and the cop in the other one failed to abide by his training. We can do this textbook stuff until we’re blue in the face but I’m curious to see what happens out in the real world when this is all over.
For you ranger trainees reading this...this is the video that we couldn't get to work in class.
Still worn down from the morning run, surprisingly nothing on my body hurt just my psyche and my lungs a little bit, I was looking forward to getting home and resting up for the next 3 days of D-Tac & PT. Nick & decided to join Arkansas and another girl from our WFR course, “Alaska”, at one of the Mexican restaurants that we drive by everyday for dinner. I don’t like Mexican food, this would be the 3rd time in less than 3 weeks that I ate it, and I wanted to try to save some money so I wasn’t going to go initially but I decided to go. The food was cheap, they had American food too so I got some sort of weird steak sandwich that was nothing like I expected it to be and then we bounced. When we got home, I finally ran out and filled up my gas tank (spent the most I’ve spent on gas), got home and then laid in bed before falling asleep around 11.
One great surprise from today was when my former security brother Bill Domanow reached out to catch up on what was going on as he thought I was still at Holmdel Park. We chatchitted for about 15 minutes and it was the first time we talked in probably a year. He’s a good dude.
You guys didn’t adhere to my plea to send Nick stuff, in the one day you had to do so, and we pulled up to the house after school and he threatened me with violence if I had another package and he had nothing. Well we pulled up to the house and guess who had another package and guess who had nothing! Ok it was me, I got the package and he got nothing. Help the man out.
I also got a picture message from LK saying her cat Raleigh misses me….TAKE THAT GREG!
Big Wrists
Let’s see if you can guess how today’s Defensive Tactics session went if I give you this little piece of information. When we got home, Nick opened the door and I turned off my car. Neither one of us got out of the car yet, and at the same exact time for the same exact duration we let out a collective sigh. It was pretty funny.
Woke up dark & early this morning, 6:30, and it was time to get ready for our first 9hour day of D-Tac. I kept having those paranoid “wake ups” all morning, about 3 an hour from 3am on, and I had what started out as a bad dream but turned into a very good dream right before I woke up. I dreamt I was late to this class and I was going to be late to this very class and I could visualize the class’s response when I got there. In my dream, Laura and I lived together and she made everything alright before I headed to class. Back to reality. I woke up somewhat refreshed…or something. I didn’t feel too groggy but when I got out of bed I had to laugh. It amazes me that I clean my room in about 5 minutes but I can never keep it clean…in fact I practically destroy it. Jane calls it the “boy gene”. We got everything together; it was our first day with our Duty Belts! I had half of a plain toasted wheat bagel thin and we were out the door again. Nothing exciting on the way to campus but I had a bit of a parking fail. Paranoid of getting a warning or parking ticket, I parked in our usual lot. It turns out parking passes are only necessary on the weekdays.
A cool thing about our D-Tac days, they’re held in the same classroom we had our WFR course in. Nick & I were among the first ones there but we were locked out until the employee let us in. We were “strongly encouraged” to show up a half hour early to help set up the judo mats but something told me complacency was going to set in amongst us. Considering we’re held to higher standard in a formal law enforcement training program…it should pretty much click in everyone’s minds that they shouldn’t just leave their duty belts lying around…shouldn’t it? I’m not sure why I didn’t say anything as a “head’s up” to my classmates but they weren’t reprimanded for leaving them around either. I guess since it’s our first time with them things were a little lenient…at first. We put the mats together like puzzle pieces and then helped our instructors bring in their equipment, kicked off our shoes and had a little bit of class time. We reviewed some of the material from yesterday and met our new instructors, all of which are park rangers. Two of the instructors looked a lot like people I know. If one of them were bald, he’d look very much like my friend that got me into this ranger business, Eric. Another one almost looks like my cousin Steve…except he’s much taller and skinnier.
It was time to line up and practice our stances, strikes, and kicks. The instructors would periodically come by with striking pads and we’d perform the move of the moment on them…it was pretty funny when we were doing snap kicks and the instructor held up the pad and said “you’re going to send me flying.” My overall size would be brought up several times throughout the day. Some of the movements were awkward even though they were basically the same strikes and stuff we did for the park ranger academy back home. Everything was made worse by the fact that our socks were giving us no traction on the slick mats. We were informed that we’d be doing all types of conditioning exercises in our D-Tac classes but, at least for today, it seemed like we only had to do them as a punishment type of thing for mistakes we made during the different techniques we were learning.
The instructors kept track of our mistakes with tally marks on a dry erase board, each tally marks was 10 reps of certain exercise. Just as I predicted, at one point today we got 2 marks for people just leaving their training guns lying around, when they added the marks they warned us not to do the same with our duty belts. Hmmm sound familiar? Maybe I’ll hold a team meeting before class tomorrow and remind everybody to make our belts a part of our bodies or something like that. I don’t think it’ll do any good though since almost all…oh…24 of our marks came from us making the same two mistakes; the same improper command and improper positioning when the “suspect’ was in a certain position. The cool thing about these instructors…even though we’re the ones being “punished”, they do the exercises right along with us. I hope the rest of the class picks up on this and is a little more cautious with the mistakes tomorrow.
Since I don’t know who is reading these posts and I don’t want to give away too much information I’ll just tell you that D-Tac was very informative and may safe my life one day. As I’ve said, some of the strikes and our defensive falls were the same as those covered at the Monmouth County Parks’ academy, although some were called different things, the rest of the training is a HELL of a lot better here. Now I’m not bashing the MCPS by any means, but when the 4 instructors there have a (retired cop) student showing a class of almost the same size as the one here how to do handcuffing in a 5 minute block…that’s not going to cut the mustard. Then again that class had people well into their 50s in it and we were essentially hired for visitor contacts and toilet cleaning. The instructors here are VERY helpful, patient, encouraging, and fun to work with. We did handcuffing for hours, not 5 minutes!
Other things we covered today included weapon recovery from a suspect with a visible weapon in their waistband and various holds/escorts of non-handcuffed suspects…all of which will be very helpful when I get back into the security game in NJ. We had a rotation method for the suspects and when it was my turn, every one of the “officers” informed me that I had really big wrists. Hahaha. As instructors helped my partners I was referred to as a bigger guy and on about 7 occasions they informed my partners that I’m not flexible enough in my upper body to get as good of an armbar on me for certain handcuff techniques…I told my partners “screw all that noise and really crank my shit til you get it where you think it’s right.” Like I said, I can take a pounding. If only my back would get that memo. It was only on the minor level but my back got real tight and I had to pay some attention to it, nothing a little ibupro can’t fix. That was the only thing I was afraid of hurting coming out here so keep that little sucker in your thoughts.
We got a late lunch break and I’ll never get over how cool this campus is. Coming from a small state school that is commonly known as a “suitcase school”, it’s weird to see so much life on campus on the weekend. Right across the sidewalk from our building is a small “food court” that has a Jamba Juice, and bagel place, an Asian food place, a Mexican food place, and a sub place that is a spitting image of Subway…and probably tastes better too. I got to talk to my lady for the first time today and she just finished painting her new room at Stephanie’s place….YAY!!!!! Also during lunch I ran into 2 guys from the WFR course, Sean and Derek the TA. I didn’t really talk to either of them until around the Mock Scenario so it was cool to see what they were up to. Sean was teaching some sort of program and Derek was doing nothing…as usual. Hahahaha.
Tonight was very uneventful as we just sat around doing nothing outside of showering and Nick did a good job cracking my back.
Alrighty. I’m sore, I’m tired, and I’m only halfway through these challenging 4 days so it’s time for bed...Maybe after all is said and done on Monday I'll hit up the jacuzzi at The Plex! At least we’ll get an extra half hour of sleep tomorrow since the mats are already set up. The flip side to that is we’ll be staying longer which means I’ll see less of the Steelers thrashing of the Jets. Hopefully we can find somewhere to go to at least watch the second half.
Goodnight Neverland!
Flagstaff Observations
1.) There’s no Dunkin’ Donuts out here! I’ve been around the town a little bit now and if they exist out here, they are nowhere near as prevalent as they are in NJ. I don’t really enjoy DD but there goes the chances of my dad ever moving out here…then again it could be a great franchise opportunity for him.
2.) There’s no White Castle out here! Somebody else pointed this out to me, quite frankly I can only think of 2 in NJ and I don’t really eat that crap either but there goes the chances of my brother-in-law ever moving out here hahahahaha.
3.) Museum Club – Our PT instructor said this is the best place in town to go on your nights off….this is that whacked out country bar we stopped by for an hour that one time. This is the best place to go out here?!?!?! Then again…that’s not really “my thing”…maybe I’ll give it a few more tries and I’ll come home with a pickup truck, cowboy hat, and tight ass jeans that ride up to my stomach.
1.) I Miss All 4 of My Dogs – And my 2 cats, my 2 turtles, and my koi fish.
2.) 3 Weeks Down, 3 Months Left to Go – as of 1230pm EST on Sunday 1/23/11.
